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of course not - same way people look for a UL sticker on their toaster, they have a very strong incentive to prefer safe drugs (as does the prescribing physician).

Even on net (risks of going too soon vs. too late) estimates are that the FDA process is responsible for twenty million excess deaths:

http://isil.org/death-by-regul...

That number could multiply significantly if we get a resistant superbug. No good person supports such an deadly system.

So: WTF?

All valid and principled stands, none of which I disagree with.

And yet, reality says that law enforcement does it anyway, and will happily extend this presumed guilt to you by association.

Seriously, do some googling -- I'm not advocating for this, but it is undeniably a fact that it happens.

Don't bitch at me about it. I'm just pointing out that it's a real thing, and that it happens all the time. I certainly don't agree with it.

So Might Is Right, then. Corporatocracy.

No, the opposite of that, if by "might" you mean arbitrary violence.

"Might makes right" is what we have today; with trillion-dollar governments, some with nuclear weapons, having tremendous influence over the public opinion through control of schools and universities, media licensing, economic controls, "family law", "intellectual property" (not to be confused with real Property Rights), fiat currency, and countless other monopolies. Governments always have tremendously more influence on the mind of the voter than the voter can ever have on the government. Democracy is a propaganda tool, the ultimate "opium for the masses", fooling them into a belief that they are in control. Voting provides the rulers with useful feedback, like which puppets are the most popular, only strengthening their rule.

"Corporatism" is what we have today - not because of "evil corporations", but because of the government whose powers they are encouraged to utilize. If some corporations try to swim against the current of government-created market incentives, they shrink and go extinct, and a less principled competitor inevitably fills the gap. Governments have tremendous influence on the marketplace, which powerful cronies can use to their advantage. Taxation and regulation gives benefits to large businesses over small, and old over the new. Cronyism is the result of socialism, not capitalism - it cannot exist without the power of the state!

In the free market, a corporation is nothing more than a voluntary agreement between individuals. This Web-site is a corporation, and so is a marriage, a Linux users' group, a not-for-profit as well as a for-profit business large or small, etc.

Large-scale voluntary cooperation (aka corporations) are the driving force of all modern progress. Do you honestly think that the only alternatives to corporations, which are "cottage industries" and Soviet-style manufacturing monopolies, could have given you smartphones and now self-driving cars?! The latter didn't even want to produce jeans lest their ideological power be threatened by them, and their cars (in spite of many designs being copied from the West) were nothing but a joke!

The governments' power comes from a wide-spread delusion about its "divine rights", but no such delusion can ever exist around private corporations. No one would pay taxes to say Walmart for unwanted services! No one would let Citibank force them to use a currency that it can then devalue! Very few would agree to join Shell Oil's army, and probably at a very high cost. And the marketplace would never allow Toyota the construction of aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines (without paying tremendous liability / insurance costs, which would make the construction of such weapons, much less ballistic missiles, utterly impossible in a free market).

The power of governments is now gradually slipping away, in spite of democracy, and all thanks to technological evolution, which is powered by corporations world-wide, and which governments are powerless to deny. The Internet is a trap that governments had no choice but allow, and which they cannot control. For the first time, they don't know what to do about Wikileaks, Bitcoin, BitTorrent, Tor, or private networks beyond their reach...

Where evolution is headed, whether you like it or not, is individualism - that is the predominance of every individual's negative Rights over his or her life! And reason, validated by Evolutionary Pragmatism, is the source of all Rights.

--libman

Don't underestimate the government demagogues - it is the evolutionary function of government to provide "bread and circuses", no matter the form, to distract the populace and promote, maintain, and expand government power. It doesn't matter if it's building pyramids, roads, socialist health-care, or the Death Star - as long as the plebs are pleased.

Democracy is a modern system of delegating feedback over trivial matters, which only strengthens the tyrants. All tyrants in history have been popular with the groups from which they derive their power, whether the feedback system is ritualized as voting or as anything else.

If I could build a monument to democracy, it would depict a mob of wretched people in chains, bound to each-other, pulling in all sorts of directions, suffocating. It doesn't matter in which direction that horrid creature stumbles, the individuals it encapsulates are slaves. The only way to freedom is for those chains to be broken! The only way to have a rational society is to have every adult individual think for him/herself and be responsible for pulling his/her economic weight. If you want to build a Death Star, then start a voluntary crowd-funding project and persuade people to join in. Free market capitalism is the ultimate reality filter - good ideas triumph while bullshit like this simply flops. With government there is no requirement of rational persuasion - any power-grabbing monstrosity be built with stolen loot!

A truly free and rational society is one build on negative Rights and individual self-ownership, including very strong physical Property Rights, Parents' Rights, and Freedom of Contract.

--libman

I just don't see the problem with the GPL license.

It is a deeply-rooted disagreement between the more libertarian (i.e. free market capitalist) approach to software philosophy vs the more socialist approach of Richard Stallman. Politics (and, to a lesser degree, other philosophical issues, like design aesthetics) have been crucial to Stallman and other founders of the GNU movement, and the (mostly accidental) popularity of their license has legitimized and empowered their ideas. There are some things we'd agree on, but the differences between our visions can neither be reconciled nor ignored.

The philosophical core behind copyLEFT believes that "money is the root of all evil", that corporations need to be destroyed, and that government force is OK just as long as it serves their desired aims. I believe in individual self-ownership, free markets, voluntary cooperation, and owning the fruits of your labor. My epistemology is grounded in rationalism, empiricism, and logical deduction of a Theory of Natural Rights; theirs is based on existentialism / emotionalism, demagoguery, and the thirst for political power. They believe that government force is legitimate when it suits them (copyLEFT enforcement, "net neutrality", funding of their pet projects, etc) and evil when it doesn't (patents, SOPA, vice prohibitionism, etc); I believe that violations of (individual, negative) Rights are always wrong.

CopyFREE and proprietary software exist in a natural symbiotic relationship. People can innovate and are free to decide how they release their innovations, including in a way that profits them the most, but free market competition eventually drives prices to zero and recognizes openness / source availability / copyFREE-ness as a competitive advantage. You eventually get the best of both worlds - the developer's rent gets paid through the next cycle of innovation, and the source is eventually released. There's no definite need for state-sponsored "intellectual property" monopolies in this process, because development can be funded through explicit contracts, SaaS (which, BTW, is the direction that Microsoft is moving in), hardware bundling (which Apple did from day one), support bundling, education / certification-bundled contractual agreements, an open reputation-based donation system, etc, etc, etc.

CopyLEFT software, on the other hand, exists in a perpetual state of uncertainty and antagonism with everything around it. The Linux kernel has avoided some of this uncertainty by pledging to stay with GPL v2, but many of Linux distros' essential components will follow the latest version, and there's no telling whether (A)GPL v4 or v9 will begin to include quotations from Chairman Mao... Businesses embracing copyLEFT as a PR-friendly add-on to copyright is not what RMS had originally intended, and fear of losing more market share is the only thing that's limiting their push for ever-more-restrictive licenses. They ultimately believe that businesses are evil and should be taxed into non-existence, and government monopolies should fund all software development and control everything - with them in charge.

The BSD license permits people to take free source code and lock it way and not share back [... below ...]. The way I see it, GPL is an immunization for the user community against the jerks who want to take source code and not share back their changes.

Copying is not a crime, and it is wrong do deal with "jerks" (who have not initiated physical aggression) through violence - lest you forgot that the power of GPL enforcement ultimately derives from the guns of state!

The BSD and other

Which boils down to "those with land have rights, those without have none."

If everything is privately owned, then existing requires you be on someone's private property. If you don't own it, then you can be kicked off it, and on to someone else's private land you "violently" trespassed onto. If you don't own land, you go to jail for initiating violence by living.

There is more to property than just land. Rights begin with your ownership of yourself: your life, your body, your mind, your skills, your time, your reputation, etc. The vast majority of people are able to use these assets in a free market to make a living, including living space to rent or eventually buy. Not all real estate owners in a free market are hostile to their renters or buyers (which would be rather bad for business and their reputation), and of course there can be non-profit living establishments, voluntary communes, charity housing projects (made crime-free with enough security cameras), etc.

As technology advances, the cost of living space relative to income should go way down, which would especially be the case without government's artificial raising of construction / maintenance costs through taxes and regulation. Cheaper transportation and telecommunication, along with more open borders, means people can move further in search of a perfect home that they can afford. Just imagine what advances in technology (cheap energy, new materials, robotics, water desalination, irrigation of deserts, etc) could do to the cost of building a house in the coming decades! (And don't even get me started on outlook further into the future - seasteading, someday space stations, etc.)

And people don't just fall out of the sky on random bits of other people's property when they begin their lives: most parents plan for their children's well-being. This becomes increasingly so as a culture becomes more civilized and fewer children are unplanned, so parents have their children later in life, with more funds available to raise them. The Internet and FLOSS / free content culture can do great things to lower the costs of education down to zero, which means anyone who is willing can learn a high-tech trade to get a good job to pull their economic weight.

--libman

DUI fines are a huge source of revenue for the city/state governments. That's why when you get a DUI, you don't go to jail for more than the night you're caught. It's the same reason we have the War on Drugs.

If I may risk being impertinent, it seems to me that you are trying to criticise a system of which you know nothing. Given that, it would perhaps not be unreasonable for you to assume that the old and well-respected system is sound rather than expecting your uninformed opinions to expose hitherto unseen problems. This rather reminds me of a post I made recently in which I suggested that the main problem with people using the internet to learn is that it leads to the idea that someone can be knowledgeable after a few minutes on Wikipedia. I'm afraid it's rather more difficult than that.

My, my, my, what a polite flame!

Unfortunately, it seems to have several problems.

• "of which you know nothing" is a great exaggeration compared to the reality, which is that my knowledge is limited, and quite certainly less than yours.
• "not be unreasonable for you to assume that the old and well-respected system is sound" is an direct argument from authority; in addition, the whole paragraph itself is a nicely phrased argument from authority. Not particularly convincing by itself, but I appreciate its elegance compared to the last time I was flamed.

To get back to the rest of your post, which is much more interesting. I thank you for the information about the judge consulting with counsel about non-standard jury instructions. However, I don't understand how this consultation could lead to a situation where the judge doesn't effectively have the final say about how he instructs the jury. Otherwise, either counsel involved could deadlock the proceedings, no? Please enlighten me further on this topic (if it would not be too much of a waste of your time considering how boorish and ignorant I am, and how impossible it would be that from such comments I might eventually become, wondrously, less ignorant).

Your comment about review by a more senior judge doesn't seem to undercut my comment in a qualitative way, merely in a quantitative way --- yes, I agree that it makes it less practical for the judiciary to "game" in this way, but it makes it far from impossible. (By the way, in the US, at least, there is a similar way for a jury to "game" the system, via "jury nullification". Many people believe that this was not because the Founding Fathers overlooked the possibility, but rather because they found it basic and important.)

The alternative would mean that people with no legal education would make up their own minds on what is and isn't the law.

This happens each and every day, tens if not hundreds of times, in the life of everyone without a legal education (and we are talking about hundred of millions of individuals). Most of the time, if they make a wrong decision, nothing happens; occasionally they receive a small fine; and very, very rarely, their life is severely affected (as in the case of Brian Aitken). Only in the courtroom do we suddenly appoint a nanny for our jurors. I acknowledge that your justification ("Even the most simple of trials would be farcical, as the decision could be changed by just a couple of jurors who had misunderstood the law - and what of the more complex areas of law and policy, like the extent to which economic loss should be recoverable, or the effect of intoxication on criminal intent?") has merit in that the efficiency of the court system might depend upon this artificial division of responsibility --- i.e., there is no better way to do it.

On the other hand, I find your view of the legal system extraordinarily utopian for someone, I assume, who has firsthand experience with it.

"putting the legal decision in the hands of the jury would create a legal lottery"

The outcome of any trial is by necessity a "legal lottery". This can be seen most cogently in the case of Capitol v. Thomas where

Are you lost sir?

The United States has the DEA enforcing it's domestic drug policy throughout the world.

Here in Canada:
http://www.cannabisculture.com/v2/articles/3261.html

Abroad, Cocaine is tolerated and seen as a great resource in South America yet America is killing civilians to thwart a domestic problem?????? A problem that stems from lack of Education, Health care and Poverty

Missionary plane shot down in Peru: collateral damage in US "drug war
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/apr2001/peru-a24.shtml
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/peru_coverup.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/04/video-of-missionaries-bei_n_449074.html

DEA agents shoot innocent 14-year-old girl in the head, but deny any wrongdoing.
http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/2998.html

http://www.isil.org/resources/lit/license-to-kill.html

DEA GO AWAY!!!
http://www.drugwarrant.com/articles/drug-war-victim/

Lets not forget Marc Emery a Canadian politician extradited because of his influence on the pro marijuana movement. He was extradited for selling seeds (which is legal in Canada) via mail to the U.S. unprecedented enforcement of American pollution on Canadian Sovereignty.

If you don't understand what I mean by "proxy" then watch the flash animation (no joke...real explanation and more)

http://www.isil.org/resources/philosophy-of-liberty-english.swf

Economics is just a completely arbitrary, man-made system of resource allocation.

To a socialist, maybe - just as sciences like geology and cosmology have no sway with a young earth creationist. But to a capitalist, on the other hand, reason is the basis of all knowledge!

Europe decides to allocate its resources to communications infrastructure, America decides to allocate its resources to a few rich people to do with as they wish.

Europe and America are not sentient organisms with a functional capacity to reason. They are abstractions for millions of human beings, each of whom has an autonomous capacity to think, act, and experience consequences of one's actions. A vague abstraction cannot own resources - those resources have been created (or homesteaded / brought into the human economy), sold, bought, transformed, etc by specific individual human beings!

In a rational (and therefore free) society, people own themselves and the consequences of their actions (aka "capital"). No one may "decide" how to allocate their minds, bodies, and fruits of their labor except them!

By the way, there's no such thing as a free market, capitalism can't exist without strong government intervention in damn near everything.

You couldn't be more wrong. The correlation between absence of government intervention and economic freedom is almost a truism, especially when you accurately define "government" as any institution that violates Natural Rights, no matter if it's a modern parliament or a Somali warlord.

The more government you have, the less freedom and less economic growth.

I am (gradualist) Anarcho-Capitalist - I don't believe anyone should have the "right" to vote away other people's Natural Rights. You have been brainwashed to believe in quasi-religious rituals that you are told somehow distinguish "taxation" from "theft", and so forth. I do not share this delusion.

That said, people do have a right to delegate their rights to others, as long as it is done on a voluntary basis - as is the case with corporations, but is not the case with the criminal enterprise that you'd call "government". Statist tyrants have a long history of empowering their collectivist institutions through government force, while denying rights to voluntary institutions that form in the free market: corporations, non-profit organizations, churches, homeowners associations, and so forth. "Divide and conquer" is what this is all about!

To conclude with a quote from a very different kind of anarchist, Leo Tolstoy: "I want only to say that it is always the simplest ideas which lead to the greatest consequences. My idea, in its entirety, is that if vile people unite and constitute a force, then decent people are obliged to do likewise; just that."

I haven't seen that movie yet, but I heard it's about the "evil corporations" trying to screw the natives, or in this case a planet of blue-faced aliens, out of their natural resources...

Like most evil in the world, this is an issue of government force, not of technology or capitalism! The public has no wide-spread delusions about the "divine rights" of corporations to initiate aggression against others, they only have this delusion about government! No one would allow a corporation to control a school their children go to, pledge allegiance to a corporate flag, involuntarily pay taxes to a corporation, allow it to inflate their currency, fight a war for it, etc, etc, etc. Capitalism doesn't need government, but it does require a universal recognition of individual rights, including the right to own property - no matter your skin color, and no matter what planet you are from!

Drugs were but an excuse. The government wanted to increase their ability to track money through the economy, reduce gray/black market activities, force people into using banking for every penny they could, increase taxation success, reduce currency in circulation, increase plastic usage, etc, just give it some thought. I can remember when successful farmers and ranchers carried rolls of hundred dollar bills with them often, no idea if they still do that or not but if they do they are at risk while just trying to do their daily business. Used car dealers on buying trips have had their money seized in forfeiture as have many others that don't have anything to do with drugs. For law enforcement, it is a license to steal and even kill. One of the examples being:

Some Police Will Kill You For Your Property

          In Malibu, California, park police tried repeatedly to buy the home and land of 61-year-old, retired rancher Don Scott, which was next to national park land. Scott refused. On the morning of October 2, 1992, a task force of 26 LA county sheriffs, DEA agents and other cops broke into Scott's living room unannounced. When he heard his wife, Frances, scream, he came out of his upstairs bedroom with a gun over his head. Police yelled at him to lower his gun. He did, and they shot him dead.

          Police claimed to be searching for marijuana which they never found. Ventura County DA Michael Bradbury concluded that the raid was "motivated at least in part, by a desire to seize and forfeit the ranch for the government . . . [The] search warrant became Donald Scott's death warrant."

Wonder how many similar things were just swept under the rug?

Obviously the US government does govern the United States. What I am saying is that it has no right to do so. Who then has the right to govern ? No one. Who should ? No one either. As you figured, I am an anarchist.

If you would like a simple but accurate presentation of these ideas, the simplest way is to look at http://www.isil.org/resources/introduction.swf

And please, I am not trolling, I like to express my point of view when political and ethical questions arise in Slashdot - which is quite often.

"legislation" never solves any social problem -- except problems government created in the first place (cases in point: segregation, slavery)

The proper solution -- and the only one that actually works in the long run without perverse, unintended consequences -- is for employees to refuse to work under such conditions.

Same reason I won't work for any employer that mandates a drug test. Period.

Coalition governments seem to have a nasty tendency to break those coalitions, because they're not truly one government. They're parties agreeing to cooperate, under current circumstances, in a power sharing deal. I have long considered this to be one of the most delicate forms of democracy, only suitable for a fledgling government trying to find a final form.

That's the thing... punishments no longer fit the crime. Everything is being criminalized, and punishments far outstrip the crime or any consequence thereof. Soon enough, the government will be able to arrest you for anything and lock you away forever, or seize your assets with no obligation to prove you did anything wrong, or even present the charges against you.

Shining a green laser at a helicopter is stupid, but so is being sentenced to twenty years prison for doing it. Vote Libertarian.

Here's my first problem.....the way you're stating this, the majority of cops are cruising around with a trunk full of cocaine just waiting to frame the innocent. Yes, there are cases where evidence has been planted, but in the ones I've heard of there's usually a stonger motive than "I want to confiscate your car". Unless you cite a good source, there's no way I believe it's that rampant.

Blumenson, Eric and Eva Nilsen. " Policing for Profit: The Drug War' s Hidden Economic Agenda." The University of Chicago Law Review 65 (1998): 35-114.

In what jurisdiction does the cop get the proceeds of auctioned property? I've never heard of this being practiced in the United States. The state gets the proceeds, and depending on where, it could go either directly to the police budget, or the general budget. Again, unless you can cite this, I'm having a hard time believing it.

It took 2 1/2 years after concerns were first raised internally for the King County Sheriff's Office to stop allowing employees to use vehicles seized in drug cases. At one point, 21 detectives and officials -- including the budget and accounting director, the legal adviser, a volunteer chaplain and the Asian community liaison -- were driving the cars.

I would suspect that corruption on that level would attract both federal investigations, and media attention.

I get the feeling that what you've got is some half-remembered anecdotes about evidence auctions, and a general dislike for the police.......

Look at civil forfeiture law in the US. The government can sue your property and is given the ability to seize and sell your property based on a mere probable cause that the property was used for criminal purposes.

http://www.isil.org/resources/lit/looting-of-america.html

Remember this when you ask for a Law, or a Commission, or "Guidelines" to solve whatever problem you perceive in the world. Might I suggest that you focus instead on building a product that people want to buy, and letting it compete in the marketplace?
Just a suggestion.

If you take this idea to its logical extreme, you wind up with this

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Because of the War on (some) Drugs, it is now considered acceptable for the police to seize property without bothering to arrest anyone or charge them with any crime (reference). Thanks to the War on Terror, it is now considered acceptable for the feds to intercept communications and execute wiretaps without all that hassle of demonstrating probable cause and obtaining a warrant. Both of these practices, along with the entire idea of fighting an undeclared "war" against a battle tactic (terrorism is a particularly despicable form of guerilla warfare), would have been considered absolutely absurd things that would never happen here 100

Good post. I like to see stuff like this even though I disagree with you.

I think that America now is a poor example of a "free" nation. Freedom does not come from your government, a right is not what you are "allowed" to do. Having a right means nobody else has a higher authority to tell you what to do. Your it, you are sovereign. I also will say that all men women and children on earth have the same rights as anyone else.. the only difference is the level of tyranny and oppression that various government enforce upon them.. or.. I guess.. that they are willing to accept without killing their leaders.

If your ruler gives you a so called freedom then that ruler has the authority to take that freedom away. Yet we understand that rights are inalienable, they are intrinsic, and government can never provide you a right. For example you do not have a right to murder in cold blood.. even if a government law was passed that supposedly gave you this right it would still be wrong to kill. You have no right to kill others no matter what government says.

The problem with unity laws and morality laws is they are intending to control your thoughts.. but you are the one that owns your mind. You own your voice, and your thoughts do not answer to any other persons command than your own.. you have a right to think what you want.. no matter how un-social or dangerous it may be.

This is what the Chinese and even American governments do not want you to know:
We are not nations.
We are not countries.
We are not societies.
We are not states.
We are not majorities.
We are not governments.
We are not even neighborhoods.

All of those words are made up, all of them are fiction created to control people.
What "we" are is individual men.. and men have NO right to control other men!

http://www.isil.org/resources/introduction.swf

I think your Bill of Rights is about as effective as ours. The government creates exceptions and work arounds of which the free speech zones are one example. Here hate speech is another example. What gets me is certain Americans who rant and rave about the first amendment like it is perfect with no exceptions.
Also you are right about problems from the fact that it is a 200 yr old document compared to ours being about 25 yrs old.
Still our supreme court has interpreted parts much wider than written, eg the search and seizure provision being a general right to privacy to the point where it is illegal to out source certain programs to the USA as your corporations are not held to the same standards, things like selling info on customers.
Just get mad when certain Americans act like your Bill of Rights is perfect and the government follows it without exception.

As for topless women, in the summer it is not that rare to actually see one around here walking down the road or riding her bike though it is still rare enough to get mentioned. More common on the beach of course. I also understand that in some states women have the same freedom. NY being one IIRC.
To show the culture differences between Canada and the USA the CRTC (Canadian FCC) got quite a few complaints about that Superbowl halftime. Not one was about Janet's boob, instead it was a beer commercial that some people considered racist.

As for the political issues, what I meant by black box was not the secret ballot which I think is needed for democracy to function but the mysterious voting machines which act like a black box. One never really knows if they are counting votes honestly or not and it is that not knowing that I find questionable. Here I can show up at the polling station in the morning, watch the empty ballot boxes being unloaded and verify they are empty. Stand around all day watching the voting procedure and also watch the counting procedure and every major political party does have representatives watching. Even though minor cheating is most likely still possible by eg getting on the voting list more than once generally there is no question about the elections. Also generally we only vote on one thing at a time so the people are more likely to be informed compared to you where the ballot can easily be multi page with everyone from the President down to the dog catcher being decided at once.
Also $50000 is quite a bit of money to me and $49000 more then is legal here. It seems quite a few laws are passed in the States where it seems to benefit some corporation more then the populace.

As for Marijuana I think we should agree to agree to disagree about harm that it causes. Still I don't see how you could argue that hemp that is very low in THC should be treated the same as Marijuana yet try buying some hemp product down there. Blue jeans being one example.
As for the seizure of assets, it does seem to be getting better down there but here are a couple of examples, though about money more than homes.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drug s/special/forfeiture.html
http://www.the-dispatch.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article? AID=/20060927/NEWS/609270339/1005/news
http://www.isil.org/resources/lit/looting-of-ameri ca.html
and of course a google search shows many more though as I said it seems to of gotten better since the '90s.
The history of prohibition is quite interesting. A couple of points. The constitution had to be amended to prohibit alcohol so under that reasoning any other Federal prohibition laws would also need constitutional amendments to be legal.
Chocolate came very close to also being prohibited around the turn of the last century. Chocolate has also been being bred for

Good point. It does make more sense if he's talking about arts as in crafts, like the art of blacksmithing.

First of all, the study of natural science gives us great tools, but it doesn't tell us how to use them. Cyanide can be used for good purposes (pest control) or evil purposes (Zyklon B). Science gives us power, but whether it is beneficial or not depends on the ordering of society.

This is an interesting point, too. I will agree that science doesn't tell us how or when to use the tools we discover through it. But I don't think you necessarily need to study religion to learn these things. All I need to do is accept that fact that each person owns him or herself (or even the simple fact that regardless of who owns them, I clearly do not), and you can work out a fairly complete system of ethics from that fact alone, without religion. I'm a Christian fundamentalist, but I still don't think you need Christianity to tell you the basics of what's right and wrong.

From the basic principle of self-ownership we get the basics of right and wrong. It agrees with large portions of Judaism and Christianity (although those religions lay lots of additional obligations on people beyond these basics). I often hear it said that all religions agree on a few basic points, and that these basics are the same basic principles of ethics everywhere. I know Thomas Jefferson said something to that effect, but I'm not sure if he originated the idea or not. I've done a lot of study of other religions, but I've tended to study what they said about God and theology, rather than what they said about man's ethical treatment of each other, so I can't say how true it is. I do think if a society doesn't develop some or most of these principles, they will fail to advance, so it makes sense to me that after millenia those societies that have survived would be those that respected basic ethics to some degree.

Hell, YES! Actually, though, I prefer the term "Anarcho-capitalist"

The reasoning for my beliefs is simply and beautifully presented in this Flash animation:
http://isil.org/resources/introduction.swf

A bunch of anarchists, minarchists, Libertarians, and small-government Republicans hang out on the FTL BBS. Come on by and browse a bit :D

Personally, I think the collapse of the dollar would be the most likely scenario that would bring about major change in the US in the next 10 years.

And fending off this collapse is the real reason we replaced saddam and will IMO start a war with Iran. It's not just about oil, but about oil being defined SOLELY in terms of the dollar

The dollar is on its last legs IMO.

Mostly right, except for the part about the judges. Judges were usually part of the problem you're describing, not (generally) part of the solution. What you're describing is called jury nullification, and is the real purpose of the jury: to be a last test of a law before it is applied to an individual case. You can read more about this sort of thing here.

Does this mean that, I, by extension, belong to the government?

I suggest that you watch this flash movie. It takes a simple concept and expands from it.

If I don't own myself, your idea that the money I earn belongs to the government is okay. In that same vein, it means that the government can tell me what I can and can't do to myself, since they own me.

There's a word for people who work for and earn money and goods, but don't actually own them when they get done.

On the other hand, if I do own myself, than the government has no right to forcibly extract wealth from me to give to someone else. Unless I give them that right.

You need to get over it. You don't get the right to force people to live the way you think they should.

Grow up. And learn to live like this.

I'm a laissez-faire, free market, anarcho-capitalist libertarian. Nothing could be more pro-free market than protecting the right of people to GIVE away their creations for whatever motive they choose. It just so happens that there are economic incentives to do so in many cases.

Anti-free market would be if you decide the government has to step in to "promote competition" (i.e., stamp out activity that seems to weird for the politician's radar and/or threatens established business models). Anti-free market would be if you RESTRICT people's right to give away what is theirs. The fundamental of the free market is the right to do what you want with what is yours.

Anti-free market would also be, IMO, granting any kind of monopolistic or exclusive rights to people or entitites, for example, "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." A real free market solution would let the free market promote the progress of science and useful arts instead of doing it by government compulsion. And we are seeing that when there is a vibrant set of public works available through public domain and/or favorable licensing terms, science and useful arts advance dramatically as almost all discoveries and inventions build on prior art. Removing these restrictions would do so far better.

Ah, a pissing match. :)

FYI, the ALL CAPS thing does appear confrontational. But, your apology cleared up my initial reaction. I will say this, though, if you weren't on your college debate team, you probably should have been. I'll give you the game, set and match. Maybe my closing argument invoking Tammany Hall and line about "nothing good coming out of government" crossed the line.

I usually re-read my sentences multiple times before hitting 'submit', just to prevent getting caught. Unfortunately, it didn't happen here. (I have had one or two moments in my past where I regretted sending an e-mail the moment I hit "send". That usually makes me re-read everything three or four times before sending. Except I didn't do it for my reply to Ratamacue.)

Even with your win, I feel that I Ratamacue hinted quite strongly in his belief that government is "evil" with the following:

I know that I don't benefit from this expansion of power. I am hurt by it in too many ways to list

This was sort of the reason I came up with the original list. He inferred that government's expansion had personally hurt him. So, I responded with what I believe are some good things from government.

As for the libertarian thing. Well, according to the web site Ratamacue linked to, I would certainly infer that the libertarian's look at government as evil. Necessary to some extent. But inherently evil. Even at the State and local level (the police department is usually a state and local function).

Anyway, I'm off. I'll be more careful with what I type. I'll try not to get political when I'm sipping my scotch. :)

Do you know of an example where protectionism been successful in the long term? It's been used many, many times. The result is always less competition. Doesn't protectionism, by definition, means you're protecting (coddling) an industry? The topic has been illustrate well in satire: The Candlemaker's Petition.

The justification of a protectionism is always that it'll have some general benefit to society, but it's always really a hidden transfer of wealth from consumers (who would otherwise pay less for the protected good) to local producers. For example, costlier steel (because of tariffs) doesn't help America, it just means our cars cost more.

P.S. I'm just as opposed as the next guy to corporate welfare.

this is BS

they posted as AC, yet provide a name and address. Probably not thir own, but rather someone else

You want to know wy I I don't ever give out anything? I have never given out the address where I live to anyone.

read this:

http://www.isil.org/resources/fnn/2002nov/every-ev il.html

> They will take power away from big government and gladly allow big business to take up the slack.

WRONG. The purpose of a corporation is to maximize shareholder value. The only way they can do that is to sell something that people like. A very democratic process. Without government intervention, the free market MUST provide consumers with the best possible products. This gets perverted when government incentives exist (subsidies, special protections). (side note: I believe there is a case for anti-trust law, but otherwise I am against governmental interference in the operation of a market.)

Corporations DO NOT wield the same power as govnement. They cannot force people to buy their products (M$ excepted - see above note on antitrust), and they cannot put people in jail because they don't like their personal choices.

The point I'm trying to make here is that governmental power is coercive power. Taking that power away simply leaves we the citizens with less coercion, and more choice. This is a Good Thing. Coercive power cannot be "snatched up" by corporations, or anyone - coercive power exists solely within the government.

> The purpose of government is to do whatever the people want it to do.

WRONG. Madison's essays on the politics of faction make some clear warnings about a minority of people (read: corporations, christian right, etc) forcing their world-view upon everyone. The purpose of government is to allow people to do as they wish while allowing others the to same , and resolving disputes arising from the above (civil courts).

Example: Let's pretend that the South won the Civil War, and slavery were still legal there. Even if the majority of people think it's OK, its the government's sole function to protect the individual liberty of its citizens. Consensus does not equal justice.

Once again, pardon my rantings if you disagree... just give me a good retort. That's what America's all about (to me): open discussions and wildly different points of view.

OK: The libertarian party home page is at http://www.lp.org/. Other sites I enjoy are the ACLU, the Internation Society for Individual Liberty, and NORML.


- jonathan.