A person cannot lose his rights without violating another person's rights.
- really?
What rights did 99% of the Gitmo violated of others, that they lost their right to freedom?
Consider a 20 mph speed limit on a road. I can drive faster than the limit - violate the limit - but the limit still remains 20 mph.
- and? Consider a highway without a speed limit, you can go as fast as you want and as you can and as conditions permit. So how fast do you go?
A right is an aspect of an innocent human being, and a consequence of being an innocent human being. They are not separable.
- really? A right to life of an innocent human being is violated all the time, when that innocent human being is murdered by the state or when his property is taken by the state, when his freedom is violated by the state. Happens many times a day, so what?
Which part is not clear, the difference between what a government is and what a nation is? Is it the point that a 'strong' government makes for weak individual liberties?
I answered this question long ago - people have rights that they are willing to fight for, that's all. So if a bunch of people are willing to kill in order to secure their rights, then they have these rights.
The next logical step is to outsource the killing part to an entity (or entities), call those 'governments' and then give governments certain rights and deny all other rights to the government.
Why is it important to deny all rights to governments except for the ones that are explicitly allowed? Because otherwise you end up with a system that can kill people legitimately (or imprison/fine them) and that system gains more and more rights and every right that it gains it has to take away from the individuals.
So you end up with a 'legitimate' killer system and people who have no rights at all. That there happened too many times for people not to care and not to understand the implications of that situation, so that is why Constitution of USA is a document that lists what the government can do and everything that is unlisted is explicitly denied.
Over the course of time, the tricksters in government (and around it, who decided they'd benefit from government power) figured out how to craft language and rhetoric that allowed them to go above and beyond the laws limiting the government power, so the government grew and grew and now you have an unstoppable killing machine on the loose with all the powers and individual rights don't matter anymore.
Productivity comes out of capital, which is what one needs to increase productivity. Capital is what allows purchasing/building more/better tools, which makes a process cheaper/faster/increases quality.
So 100 men with shovels cannot be as productive as a man with an excavator, that's what productivity really means - 1 person doing work of 100 people because of all of the capital that went into the newer/better tools.
Capital comes out of savings (as opposed to the wrong idea that it comes out of the printing presses or taxes).
Capital is the difference between the production and consumption (call it over-production or under-consumption), so if a fisher catches 100 fish a month and only eats 50 fish, he can sell 50 fish (exchange 50 fish for something else) and store the value of catching the 50 fish - these are legitimate savings.
The man eventually saves equivalent of 5000 fish and buys a bigger boat and hires some help and now he can catch 1000 fish a month instead of 100 fish, it's because he increased his productivity by using his savings capital to improve his tools and even hire some labor. Now in a shorter period of time he'll save more fish equivalent units (so whatever he catches, minus all the expenses including the labor costs and whatever taxes) and he can now buy another boat, more nets and more labor - now he is running a real business, maybe he doesn't need to fish himself anymore, but now he changed from being a fisherman to becoming a business owner who needs to manage the business.
In the process of becoming a larger business, he now has more instruments to bring more fish to the market, this creates more supply and prices fall (given constant value of money), which creates more savings, as people now have to pay less for the fish they buy, and this drives more capital, more investment, lower prices (again, given constant value of money).
Then gov't politicians see all this new investment and new innovation and they want a bigger piece of the pie, so they create some rules that prohibit anybody from fishing until they buy a fishing license, giving gov't power to establish a monopoly on fisheries.
The man with the fishing business buys the license and because he sees gov't with this power, he goes to a politician and offers a bribe to make licenses more expensive, raise the cost of regulations, increase barriers to entry to prevent competition.
This prevents others from entering the fishing business because now they have to overcome not just the costs of boats and nets, but also licenses and regulations and more taxes (which the man with the big business is not paying, because again - more bribes).
So now the price of fish in the market is no longer falling, because there is no competitive pressure for it to fall, even though there maybe more fish caught by the man's fishing business.
People who can't start their own fisheries become dependent on hand outs by the gov't, who now sees an opportunity to grow further, by using popular demand for a 'living wage' (because they see they can't grow as the man with the fishing business) and the populist movement creates opportunity to introduce more taxes upon the workers, and it's done under the guise that the man with the big fishery will be taxed more. However the man realizes what's going to happen and starts moving his fishery business to another country, where the fishing licenses are non-existent and neither are most of the various taxes (liability costs, regulations, departments, all that were created by the gov't growing out of bribes of similar businesses and eventually from counterfeit money).
The man with the fishing business is still selling the product on the US market, but he catches 90% of fish elsewhere (true numbers for USA today). The people in the country are poor, can't have their own fisheries due to lack of investment, because they have no jobs and due to high costs of entry into the business because of gov't.
The politicians in the meanwhile understand that ther
Sovereignty of EU "nations" has been completely thrown out of the window, first by establishing the EU government and then by completely giving in to all of these nonsense US and UN driven deals.
Of-course with most of Europe being welfare states and not actually working for what they are consuming (and most of US being in the same position), the interests of the individuals and the sovereignty of nations are completely disregarded in order to provide the continuation of the unsustainable life styles that are not paid for by those enjoying them.
This is a 'bread and circuses' culture that has been bred throughout the 'first world' countries, it's going to end the economies of those very countries, but not before they suck the life out of everything they can get their hands on always through police/military means.
They used to 'pay' for this 'welfare' with taxes of working individuals (so this was done with police force), now that the investment left those countries because of the unsustainable economic 'welfare' and counterfeiting, and the jobs now are elsewhere, they can't even tax enough to spend on their lifestyles, so now it's the job of the military to harass and steal from others, who still have something.
It was Iraq, then it will be Iran, but eventually it will have to be the actual producer nations, who will end the supply of all of the goods that are entering the welfare zones, so eventually it will be Asia and South America.
The only thing I ever worry about is whether they go on strike or not, but the government prevents me from discriminating against people who refuse to do the work I tell them to do. Funny... sounds like it's the same for doctors.
- my point is that it is none of government's business to tell private individuals who they must hire or who they must have as clients, just as much as it is none of government's business to tell individuals who they must date or marry.
this is great, of-course for local jobs this will pretty quickly degenerate into cheapest bj proposals given what the majority of the people's skillz are.
So what you're saying is that you can't cite a single country in the entire world that currently has a minimal government but strong individual liberties? Not a single one?
- sure, USA used to be it. China is moving in that direction.
Doesn't that say something to you?
- yes, governments have too much power and people are letting themselves to be used as cattle.
If you are a male, have you ever discriminated against a female for a potential relationship based on anything, her looks, age, race, religion, job, status, anything?
If you are a heterosexual male, have you ever discriminated against a potential relationship with gay males?
If you are an employee, have you ever discriminated against your potential employer based on the offered pay, conditions, type of work, location, etc.?
If you are an employer, have you ever discriminated against your potential employee based on salary expectations, conditions, type of work, location, etc.?
I can go on forever here, but you are not seeing the forest for the woods.
I cited two examples: Somalia and Afghanistan. Somalia probably comes closer than any other country on earth to having no government at all. And it's a terrible place for individual liberties.
- actually you don't understand Somalia and Afghanistan. Part of Somalia has some form of central government, the rest of it has various local governments and they have their own court systems as well. Afghanistan is a tribal system with very strong Islam based government, it's just not the kind of government that you are used to.
That does not make either of them examples of free market capitalist government, which USA was prior to 1913, which is my example and it's the best example because it was a country that was established Constitutionally that way and it didn't have a history or tyranny within the American continent (though the people still came to USA from tyrannies all around the world).
All of the government structures that are not built the way USA was built are built upon previous tyrannies and tyrannies do not relent power.
USA would have ended up exactly like UK from the start if it wasn't for a misunderstanding, by the way, the misunderstanding was that in UK the voting block consisted of land owners and this anachronism was also brought to USA.
However the huge difference between UK and USA was not precisely intended - over 50% of USA population actually owned land by the time the Constitution was signed. So USA became much more democratic simply because half of the population could vote.
The politicians were still buying votes with various promises at the time, but politicians were not all powerful, with enormous reach over every aspect of trade, they couldn't pass laws that affected all of the States, people had their own laws in their States and in their localities and there was no monopolization of power.
There was no EPA, FDA, FDIC, FED, FHA, HUD, Dep't of education, commerce, agriculture, energy, SS, Medicare, Medicaid, Patriot Act, TSA, HLS, the taxes that people paid at the time were laughable, on the order of 3-4% of their SPENDING, not of their income.
The gov't was small and insignificant, but it was not a non-functional government as you are mistakenly repeating.
Your statement:
In reality, post Civil War America had much less individual liberty than America, or most other western nations, do today.
- is pure nonsense. USA didn't have the central government with any sort of power of any other nation exactly because of the system that was built, that didn't provide for a 'strong' federal government.
A 'strong' federal government would not have been possible, because the States would not have ratified the Constitution with a 'strong' federal government, that could tell States how to conduct their business. That power came much later and all of these agencies and departments, the ability to tax DISPROPORTIONATELY (the awful 16th amendment), things like PROHIBITION of alcohol on the federal level (the 18th amendment), Federal reserve that monetized the government debt allowing it to grow uncontrollably by creating inflation and causing the depression of 1921 and then of 1929 and then of 1971 and the current one.
All of the things that destroy personal liberties make for a strong government. TSA, EPA, FDA, FAA, FCC, FDIC, FED, IRS, HUD, FHA, SS, Medicare, Medicaid, all forms of departments (education, energy, commerce, agriculture, etc.), all the quasi government institutions like Freddie/Fannie (and now the banking system and even GM and GE, etc.), the constant wars.
It's all due to a 'strong' government and 'weak' individual liberties, which cause economic destruction and at the end destruction of the nation.
I am sure you still don't get it, but I have reached the point in this thread where it makes no sense to continue.
And how do you explain the simple fact that such people began to win thir freedom, often helped by Federal government action, in the 1960's, rather than your mythic dream time?
- I explain it by your lack of knowledge.
Women's suffrage movement started exactly at the time of greatest freedom from government specifically because women were able to participate in an economy, which they could not do under previous conditions that were changed by the free market capitalism. Almost no woman of child bearing age prior to industrialization would have any resources or freedoms to argue for her rights.
Don't forget - the main issues that women (as an example) were solving were their issue of freedom AGAINST GOVERNMENT. Because in case of suffrage, women weren't allowed into the political process because they did not represent a powerful enough ECONOMIC force.
Only when women became a powerful enough economic force due to the fact that the free market capitalism gave them the ability to stop having multiple children to sustain agricultural lives of large farming families, and when enough capital was in play that allowed the market to come up with labor saving devices, like washing machines, refrigerators, safer food (all thanks to market working towards more sales, which drives up competition and innovation in all those areas), did women actually become more economically independent and capable of participating in the political process to gain power.
You see, you don't understand that all of the issues you are talking about are proving my point precisely.
Every issue you are talking about is about INDIVIDUALS getting POWER away from established GOVERNMENT.
Slavery actually mostly ended by the beginning of 19th century in USA. Segregation was a SOCIETAL problem, but slavery was a GOVERNMENT problem.
The government was too strong and it took power away from some individuals and turned them to slaves.
Today the system is similar somewhat in the sense, that people are forced to pay taxes on their earnings - income, corporate, payroll, and that's a form of slavery. You aren't really taken care of by your 'masters', but you are forced to work for them half of your time regardless of what you do. If you don't do it, you'll end up in jail and with various fines above you too. That's a form of slavery, it's just a more uniformly distributed form of slavery, where your skin color doesn't matter much.
You are referring to 1960s and the desegregation movement, which was again, mostly government created but was also a cultural problem (societal).
But cultural problems are only solved with time as generations pass and something that was acceptable generations ago becomes unacceptable later (mostly, because it's bad business).
The so called 'Civil Rights Act of 1964' is not actually a 'Rights' Act where it concerns private property and private individuals. It's a good act where it concerns the government desegregation, but where it forced private people and businesses into a different pattern of behavior based on government becoming STRONGER - handing out punishment for not following the new rules, people lost rights, didn't gain them.
That part of the "Rights Act" became actually an "Entitlement and Obligations Act", with some people getting entitlements and some getting obligations enforced by a 'stronger' government.
You are still confused on what it means for a government to be "strong". A "strong" government means destruction of your rights.
Fed, IRS, departments of agriculture, education, energy, commerce, FDA, EPA, HLS, TSA, FBI, CIA, etc..... UN, NATO, NAFTA, WTO, etc..... . FDIC, SS, Medicare, education loans, HUD, FHA, Freddie/Fannie, etc. Patriot Act (establishing concentration camps and indefinite wars), now NDAA with indefinite detention provisions not just for funny looking foreigners, but also US citizens..... You'll have SOPA, PIPA, etc.etc..... Of-course the complete default on honest money and thus the beginning of the end of the economy happened in 1971.
As to "Women, Blacks, Jews, Irish, Chinese, homosexuals" - sure, government was against those people, and it was obviously a BAD agreement, a bad compromise on the part of the States that ratified the Constitution that said for example that Blacks were not fully a person.
However it was the improving economy, the raising of all boats by the increase in overall wealth of the economy due to the free market and due to the 'weak' government of the time, that in fact allowed improvements in all of those areas. 1870 to 1913 was the time of weak government and strong individual freedom, which created the strongest economy in the world and this allowed the people who were oppressed by the government previously to that time to rise up.
This is the exact similar situation that is happening in Russia right now, with the latest protest of 120,000 people coming out on the streets to protest against Putin and United Russia party rigging the elections, and as opposed to other types of protest in Russia, this one was different in a very important way:
The people who came out to protest this time were closer to middle class and their grievances with the current Russian government cannot be simply dismissed with a monetary hand out.
These were not POOR people who are protesting, these were well off people, rich enough that government cannot buy them, they were buying coffee for the military and special forces that were stacked against them on the streets, they weren't listening to any of the propaganda of competing parties that were shouting into megaphones on the streets during the protest, they just came out with a strong message against the GOVERNMENT OPPRESSION.
So that's the exact thing that happened in USA - with the incredible rise of the economy in 19 century, early 20 century, the people were already not exactly poor, majority could afford good food and medical treatment, etc., and they were protesting for their FREEDOMS.
And you, right now, are completely misunderstanding that freedoms make nations strong, not 'strong' government and weak people, but strong people and governments that cannot take away the freedoms.
Every country today is suffering, and every country that is suffering has a very 'strong' government, there are no countries with governments that are 'weak' enough for people to be strong and not to suffer in the hands of their governments. But some countries are moving in the right direction, and this includes China and hopefully Russia but USA is moving in the exact opposite and wrong direction.
Of-course I replied with an example of a country that had 'weak' government and 'strong' individual liberties, that country became the stronger economic power over the time that it had the weak government and strong individual liberties.
There is power of the market and there is power of the government, a 'strong' government means government that can overpower individuals in ways that individuals are not authorizing the government to do so.
Government power has legitimacy under the law that no corporation or individual has to impede on liberties of individuals, and that's the only power that matters.
An individual can kill you, but it does not mean that the individual who kills you can walk around freely and be left alone and have others assume that the killing was legitimate.
Same with a company - if a company kills you somehow, it doesn't give legitimacy to the killing.
When GOVERNMENT kills you (like Obama killing the US citizens Anwar al-Awlaki and his son and others), there is legitimacy unfortunately.
Obama isn't going to JAIL for killing Anwar al-Awlaki and his family members. Obama continues to be in office and there is no court that he will have to attend because he killed people, even though he killed them despite the individual liberties that people have. This is a subversion of power by government and it's deemed 'legitimate' and the perpetrators are not being tried for murder.
and note that there is nothing amazing about this application of existing technologies, so there is no reason for this to cost much more than any of the new CPUs that Intel is selling for example.
But there is a huge difference there - FDA and all of the government might that stands behind the health care / insurance monopolies with government protections, anything from patents to laws on advertising, etc.
Technology is supposed to make medical procedures cheaper, not more expensive, just like the narrator said in the video: instead of taking a slice of skin just use this 'white box' for imaging and viewing what's there. So clearly it's tens or hundreds of times easier and cheaper and would take almost no time to use that 'white box' than to take a slice of skin and send it for analysis.
Yet even so called 'economists' (Keynesians) argue that technology is SUPPOSED to make medicine more expensive and that's why it's getting more expensive (same with education), but it's nonsense.
Technology makes medicine and education less expensive, not more. CPUs are not simple devices, yet you can buy one for near nothing today and you can buy the most expensive ones for a fraction of a cost of any US medical bill. It takes billions of dollars to design/develop/build CPU fabs and it's still cheap at the end - because there is no government standing between the CPU manufacturer and the consumer.
IF government was in business of providing everybody with a 'cheap CPU', then CPUs would be the next debt bubble and they would cost about the same as a house today and only the richest people could afford to actually buy them rather than to loan them from banks.
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A person cannot lose his rights without violating another person's rights.
- really?
What rights did 99% of the Gitmo violated of others, that they lost their right to freedom?
Consider a 20 mph speed limit on a road. I can drive faster than the limit - violate the limit - but the limit still remains 20 mph.
- and? Consider a highway without a speed limit, you can go as fast as you want and as you can and as conditions permit. So how fast do you go?
A right is an aspect of an innocent human being, and a consequence of being an innocent human being. They are not separable.
- really? A right to life of an innocent human being is violated all the time, when that innocent human being is murdered by the state or when his property is taken by the state, when his freedom is violated by the state. Happens many times a day, so what?
What was the point of your comment?
W
I don't understand, you are talking about 140km/h, that's almost standing still.
Which part is not clear, the difference between what a government is and what a nation is? Is it the point that a 'strong' government makes for weak individual liberties?
I answered this question long ago - people have rights that they are willing to fight for, that's all. So if a bunch of people are willing to kill in order to secure their rights, then they have these rights.
The next logical step is to outsource the killing part to an entity (or entities), call those 'governments' and then give governments certain rights and deny all other rights to the government.
Why is it important to deny all rights to governments except for the ones that are explicitly allowed? Because otherwise you end up with a system that can kill people legitimately (or imprison/fine them) and that system gains more and more rights and every right that it gains it has to take away from the individuals.
So you end up with a 'legitimate' killer system and people who have no rights at all. That there happened too many times for people not to care and not to understand the implications of that situation, so that is why Constitution of USA is a document that lists what the government can do and everything that is unlisted is explicitly denied.
Over the course of time, the tricksters in government (and around it, who decided they'd benefit from government power) figured out how to craft language and rhetoric that allowed them to go above and beyond the laws limiting the government power, so the government grew and grew and now you have an unstoppable killing machine on the loose with all the powers and individual rights don't matter anymore.
Productivity comes out of capital, which is what one needs to increase productivity. Capital is what allows purchasing/building more/better tools, which makes a process cheaper/faster/increases quality.
So 100 men with shovels cannot be as productive as a man with an excavator, that's what productivity really means - 1 person doing work of 100 people because of all of the capital that went into the newer/better tools.
Capital comes out of savings (as opposed to the wrong idea that it comes out of the printing presses or taxes).
Capital is the difference between the production and consumption (call it over-production or under-consumption), so if a fisher catches 100 fish a month and only eats 50 fish, he can sell 50 fish (exchange 50 fish for something else) and store the value of catching the 50 fish - these are legitimate savings.
The man eventually saves equivalent of 5000 fish and buys a bigger boat and hires some help and now he can catch 1000 fish a month instead of 100 fish, it's because he increased his productivity by using his savings capital to improve his tools and even hire some labor. Now in a shorter period of time he'll save more fish equivalent units (so whatever he catches, minus all the expenses including the labor costs and whatever taxes) and he can now buy another boat, more nets and more labor - now he is running a real business, maybe he doesn't need to fish himself anymore, but now he changed from being a fisherman to becoming a business owner who needs to manage the business.
In the process of becoming a larger business, he now has more instruments to bring more fish to the market, this creates more supply and prices fall (given constant value of money), which creates more savings, as people now have to pay less for the fish they buy, and this drives more capital, more investment, lower prices (again, given constant value of money).
Then gov't politicians see all this new investment and new innovation and they want a bigger piece of the pie, so they create some rules that prohibit anybody from fishing until they buy a fishing license, giving gov't power to establish a monopoly on fisheries.
The man with the fishing business buys the license and because he sees gov't with this power, he goes to a politician and offers a bribe to make licenses more expensive, raise the cost of regulations, increase barriers to entry to prevent competition.
This prevents others from entering the fishing business because now they have to overcome not just the costs of boats and nets, but also licenses and regulations and more taxes (which the man with the big business is not paying, because again - more bribes).
So now the price of fish in the market is no longer falling, because there is no competitive pressure for it to fall, even though there maybe more fish caught by the man's fishing business.
People who can't start their own fisheries become dependent on hand outs by the gov't, who now sees an opportunity to grow further, by using popular demand for a 'living wage' (because they see they can't grow as the man with the fishing business) and the populist movement creates opportunity to introduce more taxes upon the workers, and it's done under the guise that the man with the big fishery will be taxed more. However the man realizes what's going to happen and starts moving his fishery business to another country, where the fishing licenses are non-existent and neither are most of the various taxes (liability costs, regulations, departments, all that were created by the gov't growing out of bribes of similar businesses and eventually from counterfeit money).
The man with the fishing business is still selling the product on the US market, but he catches 90% of fish elsewhere (true numbers for USA today). The people in the country are poor, can't have their own fisheries due to lack of investment, because they have no jobs and due to high costs of entry into the business because of gov't.
The politicians in the meanwhile understand that ther
POWERLESS?
The second amendment is not there for you to shoot at pheasants and burglars.
In any case, before that time comes, I think there is one step that can be taken to prevent the inevitable civil war in the country.
Ron Paul 2012.
Sovereignty of EU "nations" has been completely thrown out of the window, first by establishing the EU government and then by completely giving in to all of these nonsense US and UN driven deals.
Of-course with most of Europe being welfare states and not actually working for what they are consuming (and most of US being in the same position), the interests of the individuals and the sovereignty of nations are completely disregarded in order to provide the continuation of the unsustainable life styles that are not paid for by those enjoying them.
This is a 'bread and circuses' culture that has been bred throughout the 'first world' countries, it's going to end the economies of those very countries, but not before they suck the life out of everything they can get their hands on always through police/military means.
They used to 'pay' for this 'welfare' with taxes of working individuals (so this was done with police force), now that the investment left those countries because of the unsustainable economic 'welfare' and counterfeiting, and the jobs now are elsewhere, they can't even tax enough to spend on their lifestyles, so now it's the job of the military to harass and steal from others, who still have something.
It was Iraq, then it will be Iran, but eventually it will have to be the actual producer nations, who will end the supply of all of the goods that are entering the welfare zones, so eventually it will be Asia and South America.
It's better for China to recognize what the danger is sooner than later and stop subsidizing the US and European war machine.
China will grow itself into oblivion
- this a beautiful display of complete nonsense, how very Orwellian.
The only thing I ever worry about is whether they go on strike or not, but the government prevents me from discriminating against people who refuse to do the work I tell them to do. Funny... sounds like it's the same for doctors.
- my point is that it is none of government's business to tell private individuals who they must hire or who they must have as clients, just as much as it is none of government's business to tell individuals who they must date or marry.
Oh, don't worry, I identified your brand of insanity a few posts ago.
- and I correctly identify your lack of knowledge. Women's suffrage movement was in the second half of 19th century, not in 1960s.
Slavery in USA mostly ended by the beginning of 19th century.
Yup. I see exactly what you are.
- what is it? You can't argue on issues you come up with nonsense?
That's fine, but don't expect me to argue with you on issues then.
this is great, of-course for local jobs this will pretty quickly degenerate into cheapest bj proposals given what the majority of the people's skillz are.
So what you're saying is that you can't cite a single country in the entire world that currently has a minimal government but strong individual liberties? Not a single one?
- sure, USA used to be it. China is moving in that direction.
Doesn't that say something to you?
- yes, governments have too much power and people are letting themselves to be used as cattle.
The rest of your comment I didn't read.
Say you are driving this 46 Ford and the other side is driving a modern car and there is a head on collision. The moder car is your crumple zone.
yeah, I wrote a number of DOS viruses back in the day. Today it's not as fun.
If you are a male, have you ever discriminated against a female for a potential relationship based on anything, her looks, age, race, religion, job, status, anything?
If you are a heterosexual male, have you ever discriminated against a potential relationship with gay males?
If you are an employee, have you ever discriminated against your potential employer based on the offered pay, conditions, type of work, location, etc.?
If you are an employer, have you ever discriminated against your potential employee based on salary expectations, conditions, type of work, location, etc.?
I can go on forever here, but you are not seeing the forest for the woods.
I cited two examples: Somalia and Afghanistan. Somalia probably comes closer than any other country on earth to having no government at all. And it's a terrible place for individual liberties.
- actually you don't understand Somalia and Afghanistan. Part of Somalia has some form of central government, the rest of it has various local governments and they have their own court systems as well. Afghanistan is a tribal system with very strong Islam based government, it's just not the kind of government that you are used to.
That does not make either of them examples of free market capitalist government, which USA was prior to 1913, which is my example and it's the best example because it was a country that was established Constitutionally that way and it didn't have a history or tyranny within the American continent (though the people still came to USA from tyrannies all around the world).
All of the government structures that are not built the way USA was built are built upon previous tyrannies and tyrannies do not relent power.
USA would have ended up exactly like UK from the start if it wasn't for a misunderstanding, by the way, the misunderstanding was that in UK the voting block consisted of land owners and this anachronism was also brought to USA.
However the huge difference between UK and USA was not precisely intended - over 50% of USA population actually owned land by the time the Constitution was signed. So USA became much more democratic simply because half of the population could vote.
The politicians were still buying votes with various promises at the time, but politicians were not all powerful, with enormous reach over every aspect of trade, they couldn't pass laws that affected all of the States, people had their own laws in their States and in their localities and there was no monopolization of power.
There was no EPA, FDA, FDIC, FED, FHA, HUD, Dep't of education, commerce, agriculture, energy, SS, Medicare, Medicaid, Patriot Act, TSA, HLS, the taxes that people paid at the time were laughable, on the order of 3-4% of their SPENDING, not of their income.
The gov't was small and insignificant, but it was not a non-functional government as you are mistakenly repeating.
Your statement:
In reality, post Civil War America had much less individual liberty than America, or most other western nations, do today.
- is pure nonsense. USA didn't have the central government with any sort of power of any other nation exactly because of the system that was built, that didn't provide for a 'strong' federal government.
A 'strong' federal government would not have been possible, because the States would not have ratified the Constitution with a 'strong' federal government, that could tell States how to conduct their business. That power came much later and all of these agencies and departments, the ability to tax DISPROPORTIONATELY (the awful 16th amendment), things like PROHIBITION of alcohol on the federal level (the 18th amendment), Federal reserve that monetized the government debt allowing it to grow uncontrollably by creating inflation and causing the depression of 1921 and then of 1929 and then of 1971 and the current one.
All of the things that destroy personal liberties make for a strong government. TSA, EPA, FDA, FAA, FCC, FDIC, FED, IRS, HUD, FHA, SS, Medicare, Medicaid, all forms of departments (education, energy, commerce, agriculture, etc.), all the quasi government institutions like Freddie/Fannie (and now the banking system and even GM and GE, etc.), the constant wars.
It's all due to a 'strong' government and 'weak' individual liberties, which cause economic destruction and at the end destruction of the nation.
I am sure you still don't get it, but I have reached the point in this thread where it makes no sense to continue.
And how do you explain the simple fact that such people began to win thir freedom, often helped by Federal government action, in the 1960's, rather than your mythic dream time?
- I explain it by your lack of knowledge.
Women's suffrage movement started exactly at the time of greatest freedom from government specifically because women were able to participate in an economy, which they could not do under previous conditions that were changed by the free market capitalism. Almost no woman of child bearing age prior to industrialization would have any resources or freedoms to argue for her rights.
Don't forget - the main issues that women (as an example) were solving were their issue of freedom AGAINST GOVERNMENT. Because in case of suffrage, women weren't allowed into the political process because they did not represent a powerful enough ECONOMIC force.
Only when women became a powerful enough economic force due to the fact that the free market capitalism gave them the ability to stop having multiple children to sustain agricultural lives of large farming families, and when enough capital was in play that allowed the market to come up with labor saving devices, like washing machines, refrigerators, safer food (all thanks to market working towards more sales, which drives up competition and innovation in all those areas), did women actually become more economically independent and capable of participating in the political process to gain power.
You see, you don't understand that all of the issues you are talking about are proving my point precisely.
Every issue you are talking about is about INDIVIDUALS getting POWER away from established GOVERNMENT.
Slavery actually mostly ended by the beginning of 19th century in USA. Segregation was a SOCIETAL problem, but slavery was a GOVERNMENT problem.
The government was too strong and it took power away from some individuals and turned them to slaves.
Today the system is similar somewhat in the sense, that people are forced to pay taxes on their earnings - income, corporate, payroll, and that's a form of slavery. You aren't really taken care of by your 'masters', but you are forced to work for them half of your time regardless of what you do. If you don't do it, you'll end up in jail and with various fines above you too. That's a form of slavery, it's just a more uniformly distributed form of slavery, where your skin color doesn't matter much.
You are referring to 1960s and the desegregation movement, which was again, mostly government created but was also a cultural problem (societal).
But cultural problems are only solved with time as generations pass and something that was acceptable generations ago becomes unacceptable later (mostly, because it's bad business).
The so called 'Civil Rights Act of 1964' is not actually a 'Rights' Act where it concerns private property and private individuals. It's a good act where it concerns the government desegregation, but where it forced private people and businesses into a different pattern of behavior based on government becoming STRONGER - handing out punishment for not following the new rules, people lost rights, didn't gain them.
That part of the "Rights Act" became actually an "Entitlement and Obligations Act", with some people getting entitlements and some getting obligations enforced by a 'stronger' government.
You are still confused on what it means for a government to be "strong". A "strong" government means destruction of your rights.
yeah, and I've never paid money for an OS.
You didn't address this point, merely claiming, with no evidence, that the USA before 1913 was freer than it is today.
- so when I mentioned all of the ways, in which government is now "stronger" against the individual than it was prior to that time, you were asleep?
Fed, IRS, departments of agriculture, education, energy, commerce, FDA, EPA, HLS, TSA, FBI, CIA, etc. .... .... .... ....
UN, NATO, NAFTA, WTO, etc.
. FDIC, SS, Medicare, education loans, HUD, FHA, Freddie/Fannie, etc.
Patriot Act (establishing concentration camps and indefinite wars), now NDAA with indefinite detention provisions not just for funny looking foreigners, but also US citizens.
You'll have SOPA, PIPA, etc.etc.
Of-course the complete default on honest money and thus the beginning of the end of the economy happened in 1971.
As to "Women, Blacks, Jews, Irish, Chinese, homosexuals" - sure, government was against those people, and it was obviously a BAD agreement, a bad compromise on the part of the States that ratified the Constitution that said for example that Blacks were not fully a person.
However it was the improving economy, the raising of all boats by the increase in overall wealth of the economy due to the free market and due to the 'weak' government of the time, that in fact allowed improvements in all of those areas. 1870 to 1913 was the time of weak government and strong individual freedom, which created the strongest economy in the world and this allowed the people who were oppressed by the government previously to that time to rise up.
This is the exact similar situation that is happening in Russia right now, with the latest protest of 120,000 people coming out on the streets to protest against Putin and United Russia party rigging the elections, and as opposed to other types of protest in Russia, this one was different in a very important way:
The people who came out to protest this time were closer to middle class and their grievances with the current Russian government cannot be simply dismissed with a monetary hand out.
These were not POOR people who are protesting, these were well off people, rich enough that government cannot buy them, they were buying coffee for the military and special forces that were stacked against them on the streets, they weren't listening to any of the propaganda of competing parties that were shouting into megaphones on the streets during the protest, they just came out with a strong message against the GOVERNMENT OPPRESSION.
So that's the exact thing that happened in USA - with the incredible rise of the economy in 19 century, early 20 century, the people were already not exactly poor, majority could afford good food and medical treatment, etc., and they were protesting for their FREEDOMS.
And you, right now, are completely misunderstanding that freedoms make nations strong, not 'strong' government and weak people, but strong people and governments that cannot take away the freedoms.
Every country today is suffering, and every country that is suffering has a very 'strong' government, there are no countries with governments that are 'weak' enough for people to be strong and not to suffer in the hands of their governments. But some countries are moving in the right direction, and this includes China and hopefully Russia but USA is moving in the exact opposite and wrong direction.
So how much is a browser going for nowadays?
But I assume this OS can be downloaded from a free software site as source code?
Of-course I replied with an example of a country that had 'weak' government and 'strong' individual liberties, that country became the stronger economic power over the time that it had the weak government and strong individual liberties.
The country was USA.
Nonsense.
There is power of the market and there is power of the government, a 'strong' government means government that can overpower individuals in ways that individuals are not authorizing the government to do so.
Government power has legitimacy under the law that no corporation or individual has to impede on liberties of individuals, and that's the only power that matters.
An individual can kill you, but it does not mean that the individual who kills you can walk around freely and be left alone and have others assume that the killing was legitimate.
Same with a company - if a company kills you somehow, it doesn't give legitimacy to the killing.
When GOVERNMENT kills you (like Obama killing the US citizens Anwar al-Awlaki and his son and others), there is legitimacy unfortunately.
Obama isn't going to JAIL for killing Anwar al-Awlaki and his family members. Obama continues to be in office and there is no court that he will have to attend because he killed people, even though he killed them despite the individual liberties that people have. This is a subversion of power by government and it's deemed 'legitimate' and the perpetrators are not being tried for murder.
and note that there is nothing amazing about this application of existing technologies, so there is no reason for this to cost much more than any of the new CPUs that Intel is selling for example.
But there is a huge difference there - FDA and all of the government might that stands behind the health care / insurance monopolies with government protections, anything from patents to laws on advertising, etc.
Technology is supposed to make medical procedures cheaper, not more expensive, just like the narrator said in the video: instead of taking a slice of skin just use this 'white box' for imaging and viewing what's there. So clearly it's tens or hundreds of times easier and cheaper and would take almost no time to use that 'white box' than to take a slice of skin and send it for analysis.
Yet even so called 'economists' (Keynesians) argue that technology is SUPPOSED to make medicine more expensive and that's why it's getting more expensive (same with education), but it's nonsense.
Technology makes medicine and education less expensive, not more. CPUs are not simple devices, yet you can buy one for near nothing today and you can buy the most expensive ones for a fraction of a cost of any US medical bill. It takes billions of dollars to design/develop/build CPU fabs and it's still cheap at the end - because there is no government standing between the CPU manufacturer and the consumer.
IF government was in business of providing everybody with a 'cheap CPU', then CPUs would be the next debt bubble and they would cost about the same as a house today and only the richest people could afford to actually buy them rather than to loan them from banks.