Twenty-three United States Senators voted against extending the non-eternal provisions of the contemptible and misleadingly named Patriot Act of 2001. The most vocal of the opponents had to have been Rand Paul, which is no surprise since Ron Paul has been the lone voice against the act from the beginning. The surprise—at least to the casual political observer—is that only four of the twenty-three dissenting votes were Republicans. Why would nineteen Democrats—you know, the ones who hate freedom and constantly try to control everyone's life from birth to death and beyond, according to conservative estimates—vote against something that allows spying on Americans who haven't committed any crime? Why vote against Big Brother when Big Brother is your goal?
The bigger surprise, at least to me, was that both Senators from Washington, Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, were in that group of nineteen naysayers. The two Senators are both documentable "liberals," or in other words, not "conservatives," so it stands to reason, or so I assumed, that both would be on board with permitting the state to surveil, harass, and intimidate any person, anywhere, with no due process, on any grounds. Someone who stands by the selfgenerated right of the state to determine what kind of food you should eat, what types of light bulbs you should be permitted to have in your home, what type of business you should be able to operate, what kind of car you can drive and how far you should be able to drive it, how much of your money should go to the government, and which tools you should be allowed to defend yourself with, surely wouldn't mind a few wiretaps here and there. Just applying whatever logic got you to the conclusion that the state knows best would, or should, help you reach the conclusion that the Patriot Act and all of it's tenticular provisions are OK, and we can all trust the government to do the right thing and only watch terrorists. Something in the provisions must have rubbed these two the wrong way to make them vote against their own power.
I can only think of two reasons: civil rights and republicans. It could be that, even though both Senators voted for the original Patriot Act*, they have come to the realization that the act has been ineffectual in figthing terrorism, and the ramifications have been detrimental to society in general, and have been the greatest factor in creating an embryonic paranoid police state full of tasers and check points. It could be that they care somewhat about civil rights, even though they haven't seemed to see their way to caring about other things that libertarian-minded people care about. Yet. The other possibility is that House Republicans were the driving force behind getting the bill to the Senate (because Republicans care about freedom, and protecting Americans from terrorism, and also, they want to win the War on Terror, or course), and anything the Republicans want, the Democrats don't want. Petty partisanship, in short.
Either way, voting against this heinous incursion into our natural rights was a good thing. To paraphrase Pavlov, any behavior that is reinforced is likely to be repeated. It might be a good idea to contact Senators Cantwell and Murray—despite the odds against them actually reading an email—to let them know we appreciate their respect for civil rights, and hope to see more votes n the future against travesties of justice like the Patriot Act, and more votes for liberty.
*Did you know that USA PATRIOT Act is an acronym for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act? These government folks are clever.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Monday, May 2, 2011
Lose-Lose
So Osama is dead. Supposedly. I'm not sure why anyone would take DC's word for it, since nothing resembling truth ever comes from that wretched hive of scum and villainy, but they say he is. Nice to know that "justice" has been done, and that the American variety of justice is now slimmed down and more efficient than ever, having been completely stripped of due process, fair trials, and innocent-until-proven-guilty tradition. And it's about time too! That stuff is just for the Soft On Crime types.
Anyway, if Osama is really dead, and they really ditched the body in the ocean in one of the most asinine and ridiculous moves in the history of executive assassinations, then it's only bad news for the rest of us. A foreign military, combined with a team from the elected dictator's private army, went into another country, unannounced and uninvited, raided a residence, killed several people, and then left a wrecked helicopter for the host* nation to clean up. Nice. I'm trying to imagine the righteous indignation of Ann Coulter or Michele Bachmann (if she could find a way to form coherent sentences) on hearing news of the death of a notorious Mexican drug lord at the hands of Mexican Special Ops. In Nebraska. Somehow I don't think everyone would be happy with uninvited foreign military operations in America. So along with bad PR (and honestly,who really cares about PR anyway? Can't we just let the brilliance of Hollywood be our ambassador to the world?), Pakistan has a serious grudge against us—which they probably already had, and for good reason—and the rest of the world knows that "we" (not me, really) will come barging in anytime, anyplace, with the gift of democracy or maybe with teams of assassins, and along with that a bunch of people will have a solid and rational reason to believe that the United States loves to kill muslims and then desecrate their bodies. As if they didn't have enough reason to believe that, but hey, slow learners over there I guess.
All of this, plus American citizens have been revealed as a gaggle of chanting dunces, prone to gathering spontaneously in order to celebrate the assassination of some hobgoblin or other, not to mention that it took the self-proclaimed bestest military ever in the world multiple trillions of dollars that don't exist and innumerable lives (that just happened to be in the way) to find and kill one guy. And some of his family. "We" lose.
But if none of that is true, it's a whole different story. Or at least a similar but different story, because now the world—which is full of muslims, who are, obviously, just waiting for any opportunity to explode in a fiery ball of primitive rage and force their brutal religion of violence and oppression on the grand civilizations of The West, obviously—knows, or thinks it knows, what the elected officials of the United States would do in that situation. So if the whole thing is a lie, it's a really stupid lie. Burial at sea? If you wanted to raise suspicions there is no better way to do it. If it's a lie, latent terrorists are still mad because they think all of that stuff happened. "We" lose again, for mostly the same reasons, plus being uncreative liars.
If neither of those is true—maybe he's been dead for years, maybe he's still alive somewhere—then the whole thing is a surreal circus event, inadvertently revealing how deeply the tentacles of an unspeakable parasite have entrenched themselves in everything, from an unthinking, collaborative network of media prostitutes, to the psyche of the people who call themselves Americans. Bin Laden, if he's still alive, continues to bask in the glory of his victory over the greatest and best freest country in the world. He laughs every time a TSA goon sticks their hands down your pants, smiles every time the border patrol searches a car at a check point nowhere near any border, and claims victory every time our wise leaders in congress borrow another trillion dollars from our great-grandchildren to spend on technology that was cutting edge ten years ago. Every time some moron claims we have to give up our freedoms in order to protect freedom, bin Laden puts another mark in his win column, two if that moron happens to be the president. If neither story is true, we live in a world where no lie is off limits, because the liars know that we'll believe anything we're told, and we'll endure any abuse to be safe from whatever it is the liars tell us is dangerous. If the raid and assassination are a complete fabrication, then we are obviously the gullible Eloi the Morlocks assumed we are. In which case, "we" lose.
*Do I mean "host" like the host of a party, or "host" like the host of a parasite? I don't know, maybe both. Pick whichever one you like better.
Anyway, if Osama is really dead, and they really ditched the body in the ocean in one of the most asinine and ridiculous moves in the history of executive assassinations, then it's only bad news for the rest of us. A foreign military, combined with a team from the elected dictator's private army, went into another country, unannounced and uninvited, raided a residence, killed several people, and then left a wrecked helicopter for the host* nation to clean up. Nice. I'm trying to imagine the righteous indignation of Ann Coulter or Michele Bachmann (if she could find a way to form coherent sentences) on hearing news of the death of a notorious Mexican drug lord at the hands of Mexican Special Ops. In Nebraska. Somehow I don't think everyone would be happy with uninvited foreign military operations in America. So along with bad PR (and honestly,who really cares about PR anyway? Can't we just let the brilliance of Hollywood be our ambassador to the world?), Pakistan has a serious grudge against us—which they probably already had, and for good reason—and the rest of the world knows that "we" (not me, really) will come barging in anytime, anyplace, with the gift of democracy or maybe with teams of assassins, and along with that a bunch of people will have a solid and rational reason to believe that the United States loves to kill muslims and then desecrate their bodies. As if they didn't have enough reason to believe that, but hey, slow learners over there I guess.
All of this, plus American citizens have been revealed as a gaggle of chanting dunces, prone to gathering spontaneously in order to celebrate the assassination of some hobgoblin or other, not to mention that it took the self-proclaimed bestest military ever in the world multiple trillions of dollars that don't exist and innumerable lives (that just happened to be in the way) to find and kill one guy. And some of his family. "We" lose.
But if none of that is true, it's a whole different story. Or at least a similar but different story, because now the world—which is full of muslims, who are, obviously, just waiting for any opportunity to explode in a fiery ball of primitive rage and force their brutal religion of violence and oppression on the grand civilizations of The West, obviously—knows, or thinks it knows, what the elected officials of the United States would do in that situation. So if the whole thing is a lie, it's a really stupid lie. Burial at sea? If you wanted to raise suspicions there is no better way to do it. If it's a lie, latent terrorists are still mad because they think all of that stuff happened. "We" lose again, for mostly the same reasons, plus being uncreative liars.
If neither of those is true—maybe he's been dead for years, maybe he's still alive somewhere—then the whole thing is a surreal circus event, inadvertently revealing how deeply the tentacles of an unspeakable parasite have entrenched themselves in everything, from an unthinking, collaborative network of media prostitutes, to the psyche of the people who call themselves Americans. Bin Laden, if he's still alive, continues to bask in the glory of his victory over the greatest and best freest country in the world. He laughs every time a TSA goon sticks their hands down your pants, smiles every time the border patrol searches a car at a check point nowhere near any border, and claims victory every time our wise leaders in congress borrow another trillion dollars from our great-grandchildren to spend on technology that was cutting edge ten years ago. Every time some moron claims we have to give up our freedoms in order to protect freedom, bin Laden puts another mark in his win column, two if that moron happens to be the president. If neither story is true, we live in a world where no lie is off limits, because the liars know that we'll believe anything we're told, and we'll endure any abuse to be safe from whatever it is the liars tell us is dangerous. If the raid and assassination are a complete fabrication, then we are obviously the gullible Eloi the Morlocks assumed we are. In which case, "we" lose.
*Do I mean "host" like the host of a party, or "host" like the host of a parasite? I don't know, maybe both. Pick whichever one you like better.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Thank Goodness I Live in a Free Country
An essay of thankfulness, by Don Cooper. Yes, our public servants do serve, and serve well. Thanks and praise to them, and to the leaders and masters who make it possible. What ever would we do without them? Aside from making our own choices and living our own lives, of course.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Stealing From The Government
Harold Crick: It says, in the file, that you only paid part of your taxes for last year.
Ana Pascal: That's right.
Harold Crick: Looks like only 78 percent.
Ana Pascal: Yep.
Harold Crick: So you did it on purpose?
Ana Pascal: Yep.
Harold Crick: So you must've been expecting an audit.
Ana Pascal: Um, I was expecting a fine, or a sharp reprimand.
Harold Crick: A reprimand? This isn't boarding school, Miss Pascal. You stole from the government.
Ana Pascal: No I didn't steal from the government. I just didn't pay you entirely.
Stranger Than Fiction, 2006
The idea of stealing from the government presents a discrepancy, and if thought about too deeply could result in the discomfort of cognitive dissonance. Of course, everyone knows stealing from the government is bad. It's worse than stealing from a regular person. If you steal cash out of a purse at the mall, you might get in some trouble and have to wear an orange vest and clean up a little trash along the highway, but try sneaking a book of stamps at the Post Office and you've really crossed the line. You stole from the government. Those were The People's Stamps, and you selfishly tried to make them your own. The cash was just from some lady—an individual—but the stamps, those belong to the people. Until an individual buys them, but whatever.
The government (technically multiple governments, but there's only one Capital G Government, because they all answer to, and beg money from, the federal one) has lots of property, and you can't steal any of it. Cars, trucks, buildings, land, anything really. Sometimes it's even called public land, but the public (that's us) has to ask permission to use it, and even then it can only be used in a very limited manner (unless the particular member of the public has tons of money, and then it's different). The big question is where does the government get all of this stuff? Does land automatically just belong to the government? How do they buy those fleets of vehicles? Well, the government is rich, right? It can just buy whatever it needs. Sort of.
Anyone who has ever paid taxes has helped the government acquire all of that stuff. Actually, some people who haven't paid taxes yet, and maybe aren't even born yet, will, in some distant future, be paying for the stuff the government has right now. Maybe you didn't know this, but the government, with the help of the non-government Federal Reserve, borrows more money than you can imagine. The government is not rich, the government has a huge credit card. So either way, whatever the government claims it owns, was actually paid for, or will be paid for, by the subjects it disingenuously calls citizens.
That begs the question, is it possible to steal from the government? The government (meaning, of course, the state, but that's a different topic) has forcibly* extracted money from everyone in the form of taxes, including the sneaky tax of inflation, in order to get whatever it is it needed to continue, in a less efficient and more brutal manner, to extract increasing amounts of money from the same everyone. If a private sector thief takes your property are you justified in trying to retrieve it? "Hey, that's my TV, give it back!" Seems legit. Try getting a TV back from the local TSA office. Even though he had an enormous mustache, Friedrich Nietzsche was right when he said, "Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen." If the state hasn't stolen everything it has, then why is there a need for an armed collection agency? Why are people coerced** into filing tax returns every year? If given a choice, we wouldn't buy the things the government buys, so they have to take it with threats of violence. Can you really claim to own something you bought with stolen money? Can you really be angry when someone steals what you stole first?
You can be prosecuted and punished for taking something the government claims to own, but is it stealing? Maybe, maybe not. You can be prosecuted and punished for not paying taxes—they call it stealing—but is it stealing? They are stealing it from you, not the other way around.
*Yes, forcibly. Just call the IRS and tell them you're never paying any taxes again and see what happens. They have guns.
**Watch this hilarious video of Harry Reid claiming the opposite.
Ana Pascal: That's right.
Harold Crick: Looks like only 78 percent.
Ana Pascal: Yep.
Harold Crick: So you did it on purpose?
Ana Pascal: Yep.
Harold Crick: So you must've been expecting an audit.
Ana Pascal: Um, I was expecting a fine, or a sharp reprimand.
Harold Crick: A reprimand? This isn't boarding school, Miss Pascal. You stole from the government.
Ana Pascal: No I didn't steal from the government. I just didn't pay you entirely.
Stranger Than Fiction, 2006
The idea of stealing from the government presents a discrepancy, and if thought about too deeply could result in the discomfort of cognitive dissonance. Of course, everyone knows stealing from the government is bad. It's worse than stealing from a regular person. If you steal cash out of a purse at the mall, you might get in some trouble and have to wear an orange vest and clean up a little trash along the highway, but try sneaking a book of stamps at the Post Office and you've really crossed the line. You stole from the government. Those were The People's Stamps, and you selfishly tried to make them your own. The cash was just from some lady—an individual—but the stamps, those belong to the people. Until an individual buys them, but whatever.
The government (technically multiple governments, but there's only one Capital G Government, because they all answer to, and beg money from, the federal one) has lots of property, and you can't steal any of it. Cars, trucks, buildings, land, anything really. Sometimes it's even called public land, but the public (that's us) has to ask permission to use it, and even then it can only be used in a very limited manner (unless the particular member of the public has tons of money, and then it's different). The big question is where does the government get all of this stuff? Does land automatically just belong to the government? How do they buy those fleets of vehicles? Well, the government is rich, right? It can just buy whatever it needs. Sort of.
Anyone who has ever paid taxes has helped the government acquire all of that stuff. Actually, some people who haven't paid taxes yet, and maybe aren't even born yet, will, in some distant future, be paying for the stuff the government has right now. Maybe you didn't know this, but the government, with the help of the non-government Federal Reserve, borrows more money than you can imagine. The government is not rich, the government has a huge credit card. So either way, whatever the government claims it owns, was actually paid for, or will be paid for, by the subjects it disingenuously calls citizens.
That begs the question, is it possible to steal from the government? The government (meaning, of course, the state, but that's a different topic) has forcibly* extracted money from everyone in the form of taxes, including the sneaky tax of inflation, in order to get whatever it is it needed to continue, in a less efficient and more brutal manner, to extract increasing amounts of money from the same everyone. If a private sector thief takes your property are you justified in trying to retrieve it? "Hey, that's my TV, give it back!" Seems legit. Try getting a TV back from the local TSA office. Even though he had an enormous mustache, Friedrich Nietzsche was right when he said, "Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen." If the state hasn't stolen everything it has, then why is there a need for an armed collection agency? Why are people coerced** into filing tax returns every year? If given a choice, we wouldn't buy the things the government buys, so they have to take it with threats of violence. Can you really claim to own something you bought with stolen money? Can you really be angry when someone steals what you stole first?
You can be prosecuted and punished for taking something the government claims to own, but is it stealing? Maybe, maybe not. You can be prosecuted and punished for not paying taxes—they call it stealing—but is it stealing? They are stealing it from you, not the other way around.
*Yes, forcibly. Just call the IRS and tell them you're never paying any taxes again and see what happens. They have guns.
**Watch this hilarious video of Harry Reid claiming the opposite.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Patriot Watch List
I got an idea from Liberranter about requesting to be on the Southern Poverty Law Center's patriot watch list. Here is the request I sent them:
I was just wondering if I could be on your "Meet the Patriots" watch list. I'm not really a leader of anything, and I haven't done anything infamous or dastardly, but I do harbor a lot of those so-called anti-government sentiments. I hope for the dissolution of the IRS, CIA, FBI, DHS, as well as the Departments of Education, Energy, Justice, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs. I'm also not so impressed with Treasury and Defense, so those could go too, but at least the DoD could change it's name back to Department of War, right? That would make more sense. Or maybe Department of Offense would be more fitting. The State Department can stick around because someone has to be the official greeter for visiting dignitaries. I mean, I'm not totally unreasonable.
And another thing that's ticking me off is that Janet Napolitano sounds like a dude, but Tim Geithner comes off like a sissy. Obama, make Tim eat some meat once in a while! Toughen that guy up.
Here's another thing that might make me worthy of a watch list. I don't care about global warming, or climate change as they're calling it now. It's probably a big lie, but even if it isn't, the morons who are freaking out about it are just using it as another reason to regulate and control everything. Like Al Gore gives a rip about carbon emissions? Please!
Which leads me to another thing. I hate the UN. It would be great if the UN was just a collection of worthless money wasting blowhards, but they're worse than worthless, they're detrimental to civilization. They must think people are stupid, because they constantly send out "peace keeping" forces, but these "peace keepers" are riding around in tanks. And remember that one time when they helped the Hutus kill a bunch of Tutsis? Jerks.
And what about the Federal Reserve? I don't have time to explain how much I hate that whole corporatist swindle.
I could go on about things the government does that suck, but you'd be bored, I'm sure. If you want a more complete list, let me know. If it would help, I can try to organize a militia or something, but don't bother sending infiltrators. I can sniff those suckers out pretty easy.
Thanks a million and let me know what you think.
Sic Semper Tyrannis,
Isaac Stanfield
I was just wondering if I could be on your "Meet the Patriots" watch list. I'm not really a leader of anything, and I haven't done anything infamous or dastardly, but I do harbor a lot of those so-called anti-government sentiments. I hope for the dissolution of the IRS, CIA, FBI, DHS, as well as the Departments of Education, Energy, Justice, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs. I'm also not so impressed with Treasury and Defense, so those could go too, but at least the DoD could change it's name back to Department of War, right? That would make more sense. Or maybe Department of Offense would be more fitting. The State Department can stick around because someone has to be the official greeter for visiting dignitaries. I mean, I'm not totally unreasonable.
And another thing that's ticking me off is that Janet Napolitano sounds like a dude, but Tim Geithner comes off like a sissy. Obama, make Tim eat some meat once in a while! Toughen that guy up.
Here's another thing that might make me worthy of a watch list. I don't care about global warming, or climate change as they're calling it now. It's probably a big lie, but even if it isn't, the morons who are freaking out about it are just using it as another reason to regulate and control everything. Like Al Gore gives a rip about carbon emissions? Please!
Which leads me to another thing. I hate the UN. It would be great if the UN was just a collection of worthless money wasting blowhards, but they're worse than worthless, they're detrimental to civilization. They must think people are stupid, because they constantly send out "peace keeping" forces, but these "peace keepers" are riding around in tanks. And remember that one time when they helped the Hutus kill a bunch of Tutsis? Jerks.
And what about the Federal Reserve? I don't have time to explain how much I hate that whole corporatist swindle.
I could go on about things the government does that suck, but you'd be bored, I'm sure. If you want a more complete list, let me know. If it would help, I can try to organize a militia or something, but don't bother sending infiltrators. I can sniff those suckers out pretty easy.
Thanks a million and let me know what you think.
Sic Semper Tyrannis,
Isaac Stanfield
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Do The Collapse
"Only government can break the vicious cycles that are crippling our economy -- where a lack of spending leads to lost jobs which leads to even less spending; where an inability to lend and borrow stops growth and leads to even less credit."
Barack Obama
A person's last resort tends to be their most powerful god. A lifelong agnostic, hanging from a cliff by his fingernails, just might become less skeptical and try praying, just this once. So what happens when a nation's (or the world, but whatever) economy begins a downward spiral? Where do people turn? Barack Obama turns to government.* Only government can break this cycle (never mind that government intervention created the cycle in the first place). Only government is big enough, and powerful enough. Only government can raise taxes, redistribute wealth, regulate, legislate, and rescue industries in a way that would fix whatever problems ail us. In fact, one of the few moments of outright honesty since Obama's campaign started getting national attention came with an admission of that concept. The monopoly on violence government claims ensures the continuation of various attempts at rescuing the common folks from all manner of horrible and uncomfortable states of being. The federal government, being the largest and best armed, is the boss government, all others submitting to it.
If Obama (and Bush, and Cheney, and Romney, and all the rest of them) turns to government to cure our national ills, where do we turn? How do we display our faith? Who do we trust with the most important aspects of our civilization? Of course we don't trust our children to the government, that would be foolish. No, we raise our own children. Except for the 180 days a year of six (not including homework) hour days spent in government run schools, for thirteen of the first 17 or 18 years of their lives. Certainly not our homes, which belong to us, and are a sacred sanctuary from the world. Except government instructs us on how and where we are permitted to build (building permit, get it?), what materials we can use, how much we have to pay to keep it (property taxes), and the various agencies that can demand inspections and remove our children on the slightest whim, not mention the TV and radio—controlled by the government via regulation of radio and airwaves, among other methods—that are omnipresent within our homes. OK, fine, but not our personal safety. We can take care of ourselves! Except for guns, because the federal government needs to make sure that only safe people own guns, for our own safety. And knives. Some knives we can't have. And metal plates of a certain thickness. But other than that, it's just the taxes that are distributed (redistributed? Shock!) to the military for our national security. And to the intelligence agencies. And to the programs to connect the military, intelligence agencies, state police, and local police, for our own safety. Other than that, no way do we let the feds control our personal safety. I could go on about every aspect of modern life, but hopefully you get the point. I covered life, liberty, and property, so that should suffice.
What would we do without the federal government? What would happen if every person and every corporation stopped paying the extortion fee we call income tax? The federal government would collapse, right?** (Assuming they would run out of money, which they wouldn't because the Federal Reserve can print or "create" as much as it want, whenever it wants, without asking you, which it does on a regular basis.) And then what? Would the interstate highways crumble to dust due to neglect? Would communication break down and isolate us from distant populations? Maybe mobs would rampage through the streets, looting and pillaging, and warlords would conquer your neighborhood. There would be no food in the stores, because everyone knows that only the federal government can authorize food in the stores. Can you imagine the chaos if government appendages like the Department of Education ceased to exist? Who would educate the children? And the local favorite, the Department of Energy, what would we do then? Get the candles! Man the bicycle-driven generators! To assume that all of this flows from the federal government, or is in some way bestowed on us or allowed by it, is to assume that people aren't capable of doing these things themselves. That would be the same people who do it everyday, themselves, right now. Do power plant operators need a government agent to stand behind them everyday and convince them not to push the self-destruct button? Do they need the federal government at any point in their education, training, or career to be able to do what they do? Does any occupation? Dispelling the myth that we need federal agencies to guide every aspect of our lives only requires a little logic. So here it comes.
Pretend you somehow overcame the licensing and regulatory hurdles and you now own a dairy farm. What is your goal? To make money. How do you make money? People give it to you. Why do they give you money? Because you give them dairy products. So far so good. Everyone is happy. But wait, how can we be sure your milk isn't poisoned? Because we all know that people who are just out to make money are soulless vampires hellbent on ravaging the general population. We learned that in college. But that doesn't account for the fact that a dairy farmer can't make money if all of his customers are sick or dead. Even if a small percentage of people get violently ill from his products, people will hear about it, and then he's in big trouble. It's in the farmer's best interest to put out the best product he can, and for the best price he can afford. If slick marketing gets him a better price, good for him. So where does federal regulation need to come in? At what point do we need federal agents enforcing price controls? If one farmer can sell milk for $1 a gallon, fine. If we're so stupid that we pay $10 a gallon for a different brand, that's our problem. I don't see how it's the federales business what goes on with milk.
How about the aforementioned energy production? Would energy companies wantonly dump waste into rivers if not for government saving the day? Again, it doesn't make sense for a company that needs to make money to kill or harm those who will give it money. Only when government comes in and sets guidelines (and who can doubt that federal regulators are always experts in their fields and have only the best interest of the people in mind?) for who can do what and when that the minimum guidelines are met, absolving companies of any liability beyond that. Apply this to the banking industry, clothing, cars, computers, books, TV, all manner of agriculture, medicine, pharmaceuticals, money, etc, and you might begin to see that the federal government has its boundless nose where it doesn't belong in every situation.
Economically, the situation is simple. If Uncle Sam has to rob—I mean tax—Peter to pay Paul, that seems simple enough. But when he goes to pay Paul, there isn't enough. Uncle Sam had to take his cut, so now Paul is short. But look! There's James, rob—I mean tax—him too! It becomes an untenable situation because more than one person has to be robbed—I mean taxed—to pay just one person. Soon Uncle Sam will run out of persons to rob—I mean tax—with no shortage of people to pay. The numbers don't add up. The moral of this story is that whenever government invests in something, it isn't really an investment. Opportunity cost kicks in, and whatever opportunity Peter had to invest his money is now lost. Maybe he would have invested in Paul's enterprise, or helped James buy a new fishing boat in return for a percentage of the profit. But now he can't, because his capital is gone. He ended up "investing" involuntarily in Uncle Sam, who will use his cut to buy himself better guns with which to rob everyone else and fortify his position as the baddest bandit in the land. So every time something is heavily controlled and regulated (a redundancy, sure, but some people might be slow on the uptake) by the government, we can be sure that there were many more opportunities lost than there were created. I know what you're asking now, so I'll get to that.
"What about things that are just so important that the government has to do them?" you may be asking. "All of those national labs are working on such important stuff, we can't just leave it to chance." If these projects were so important, wouldn't they be undertaken by someone anyway? If there is an opportunity to profit from innovation, wouldn't someone take it on? If profit were the goal, wouldn't these projects be done on a budget and in as short of period of time as possible? History says yes. No one forced Rockefeller to revolutionize the petroleum industry. No one had to regulate Henry Ford into developing a faster way to build a cheaper car. No one legislated the light bulb into existence. And if there is no use for these government mandated projects, perhaps the harsh truth is that they aren't needed at all.
If you find yourself thinking that the most important things should be done under the direction of the most corrupt and inefficient entity known to human kind, then maybe you should think about it a little longer. And if you find yourself thinking that the most important aspects of modern life can only be saved by government, maybe you should examine who and what you put your faith in, and who you look to for salvation when it really matters.
*Just for clarity, government means that entity which claims control over the population of a certain geographical area. I've dispensed with the notion that "the people" are the government, because that doesn't really seem to be the case, with ample evidence available on the web. It's a whole different topic, so just go with it.
**To make it easy, I'm not going into how tenaciously the federal parasites would hang on to their hosts, and what means they would use to keep their power.
In order to give credit where credit is due, I should note that Do the Collapse is the name of an album by Guided By Voices.
Barack Obama
A person's last resort tends to be their most powerful god. A lifelong agnostic, hanging from a cliff by his fingernails, just might become less skeptical and try praying, just this once. So what happens when a nation's (or the world, but whatever) economy begins a downward spiral? Where do people turn? Barack Obama turns to government.* Only government can break this cycle (never mind that government intervention created the cycle in the first place). Only government is big enough, and powerful enough. Only government can raise taxes, redistribute wealth, regulate, legislate, and rescue industries in a way that would fix whatever problems ail us. In fact, one of the few moments of outright honesty since Obama's campaign started getting national attention came with an admission of that concept. The monopoly on violence government claims ensures the continuation of various attempts at rescuing the common folks from all manner of horrible and uncomfortable states of being. The federal government, being the largest and best armed, is the boss government, all others submitting to it.
If Obama (and Bush, and Cheney, and Romney, and all the rest of them) turns to government to cure our national ills, where do we turn? How do we display our faith? Who do we trust with the most important aspects of our civilization? Of course we don't trust our children to the government, that would be foolish. No, we raise our own children. Except for the 180 days a year of six (not including homework) hour days spent in government run schools, for thirteen of the first 17 or 18 years of their lives. Certainly not our homes, which belong to us, and are a sacred sanctuary from the world. Except government instructs us on how and where we are permitted to build (building permit, get it?), what materials we can use, how much we have to pay to keep it (property taxes), and the various agencies that can demand inspections and remove our children on the slightest whim, not mention the TV and radio—controlled by the government via regulation of radio and airwaves, among other methods—that are omnipresent within our homes. OK, fine, but not our personal safety. We can take care of ourselves! Except for guns, because the federal government needs to make sure that only safe people own guns, for our own safety. And knives. Some knives we can't have. And metal plates of a certain thickness. But other than that, it's just the taxes that are distributed (redistributed? Shock!) to the military for our national security. And to the intelligence agencies. And to the programs to connect the military, intelligence agencies, state police, and local police, for our own safety. Other than that, no way do we let the feds control our personal safety. I could go on about every aspect of modern life, but hopefully you get the point. I covered life, liberty, and property, so that should suffice.
What would we do without the federal government? What would happen if every person and every corporation stopped paying the extortion fee we call income tax? The federal government would collapse, right?** (Assuming they would run out of money, which they wouldn't because the Federal Reserve can print or "create" as much as it want, whenever it wants, without asking you, which it does on a regular basis.) And then what? Would the interstate highways crumble to dust due to neglect? Would communication break down and isolate us from distant populations? Maybe mobs would rampage through the streets, looting and pillaging, and warlords would conquer your neighborhood. There would be no food in the stores, because everyone knows that only the federal government can authorize food in the stores. Can you imagine the chaos if government appendages like the Department of Education ceased to exist? Who would educate the children? And the local favorite, the Department of Energy, what would we do then? Get the candles! Man the bicycle-driven generators! To assume that all of this flows from the federal government, or is in some way bestowed on us or allowed by it, is to assume that people aren't capable of doing these things themselves. That would be the same people who do it everyday, themselves, right now. Do power plant operators need a government agent to stand behind them everyday and convince them not to push the self-destruct button? Do they need the federal government at any point in their education, training, or career to be able to do what they do? Does any occupation? Dispelling the myth that we need federal agencies to guide every aspect of our lives only requires a little logic. So here it comes.
Pretend you somehow overcame the licensing and regulatory hurdles and you now own a dairy farm. What is your goal? To make money. How do you make money? People give it to you. Why do they give you money? Because you give them dairy products. So far so good. Everyone is happy. But wait, how can we be sure your milk isn't poisoned? Because we all know that people who are just out to make money are soulless vampires hellbent on ravaging the general population. We learned that in college. But that doesn't account for the fact that a dairy farmer can't make money if all of his customers are sick or dead. Even if a small percentage of people get violently ill from his products, people will hear about it, and then he's in big trouble. It's in the farmer's best interest to put out the best product he can, and for the best price he can afford. If slick marketing gets him a better price, good for him. So where does federal regulation need to come in? At what point do we need federal agents enforcing price controls? If one farmer can sell milk for $1 a gallon, fine. If we're so stupid that we pay $10 a gallon for a different brand, that's our problem. I don't see how it's the federales business what goes on with milk.
How about the aforementioned energy production? Would energy companies wantonly dump waste into rivers if not for government saving the day? Again, it doesn't make sense for a company that needs to make money to kill or harm those who will give it money. Only when government comes in and sets guidelines (and who can doubt that federal regulators are always experts in their fields and have only the best interest of the people in mind?) for who can do what and when that the minimum guidelines are met, absolving companies of any liability beyond that. Apply this to the banking industry, clothing, cars, computers, books, TV, all manner of agriculture, medicine, pharmaceuticals, money, etc, and you might begin to see that the federal government has its boundless nose where it doesn't belong in every situation.
Economically, the situation is simple. If Uncle Sam has to rob—I mean tax—Peter to pay Paul, that seems simple enough. But when he goes to pay Paul, there isn't enough. Uncle Sam had to take his cut, so now Paul is short. But look! There's James, rob—I mean tax—him too! It becomes an untenable situation because more than one person has to be robbed—I mean taxed—to pay just one person. Soon Uncle Sam will run out of persons to rob—I mean tax—with no shortage of people to pay. The numbers don't add up. The moral of this story is that whenever government invests in something, it isn't really an investment. Opportunity cost kicks in, and whatever opportunity Peter had to invest his money is now lost. Maybe he would have invested in Paul's enterprise, or helped James buy a new fishing boat in return for a percentage of the profit. But now he can't, because his capital is gone. He ended up "investing" involuntarily in Uncle Sam, who will use his cut to buy himself better guns with which to rob everyone else and fortify his position as the baddest bandit in the land. So every time something is heavily controlled and regulated (a redundancy, sure, but some people might be slow on the uptake) by the government, we can be sure that there were many more opportunities lost than there were created. I know what you're asking now, so I'll get to that.
"What about things that are just so important that the government has to do them?" you may be asking. "All of those national labs are working on such important stuff, we can't just leave it to chance." If these projects were so important, wouldn't they be undertaken by someone anyway? If there is an opportunity to profit from innovation, wouldn't someone take it on? If profit were the goal, wouldn't these projects be done on a budget and in as short of period of time as possible? History says yes. No one forced Rockefeller to revolutionize the petroleum industry. No one had to regulate Henry Ford into developing a faster way to build a cheaper car. No one legislated the light bulb into existence. And if there is no use for these government mandated projects, perhaps the harsh truth is that they aren't needed at all.
If you find yourself thinking that the most important things should be done under the direction of the most corrupt and inefficient entity known to human kind, then maybe you should think about it a little longer. And if you find yourself thinking that the most important aspects of modern life can only be saved by government, maybe you should examine who and what you put your faith in, and who you look to for salvation when it really matters.
*Just for clarity, government means that entity which claims control over the population of a certain geographical area. I've dispensed with the notion that "the people" are the government, because that doesn't really seem to be the case, with ample evidence available on the web. It's a whole different topic, so just go with it.
**To make it easy, I'm not going into how tenaciously the federal parasites would hang on to their hosts, and what means they would use to keep their power.
In order to give credit where credit is due, I should note that Do the Collapse is the name of an album by Guided By Voices.
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