The US tax revenues are higher than they have ever been (by over 25% when adjusted for inflation) despite federal tax decreases for almost all industries and tax brackets.
and
[Subject: So is the deficit.]Nice try, Houdini.
Increasing state revenue through lower taxes does not, by itself, magically cause spending to increase. That requires legislation independent of that which lowered taxes in the first place.
It may be the nature of politicians to spend more when they receive more (and even more than the increase in revenues giving rise to greater deficits), but there is no universal law of finance that requres that this happen.
But, let's look at it the other way: do you really mean to suggest that raising taxes would result in less spending?
It's not like the U.S. doesn't have an equivalent of that either.
Constitutional cite, please?
The present U.S. administration might act like it has one (and shame for the population for letting it), but there is a big difference between a government that shits on people's rights and a constutution that says it can.
The purposeted justification for a notwithstanding clause is that the electorate can elect a government that will not renew bills passed using it (and thus cause the associated law to lapse). But, the flaw with this is that it reduces the country to mob rule.
I love this kind of asinine reply to a flamebait-y post... "err, well America sucks but.. hmm, here's a problem in this other country!"
Perhaps some of us find American "suckage" to be of a significantly lesser degree than that of other places. The U.S. has treated me far, far, better as a foreigner than Canada ever did as a citizen. And that's including the very few xenophobes I meet.
Ask yourself this: If the U.S. is so horrible, why do so many want in?
Note that if you chose to become a citizen or landed immigrent and become ill, you are forbidden to pay a doctor for treatment. You must stand in line, and wait your turn for state medical care. We are not responsible for your death in this case.
Welcome to Canuckistan!
If you chose to accept state medical care, you may not leave your province of residence. To do so requires reimbursing the province for any medical care received, at the rates the province prescribes.
...and get arrested for "wasting" the police state's time.
My father was once arrested for "obstructing justice":
A police office pulled him over and performed a safety check on his car (Dad thought he had a burned out tail-light or something -- usually a "get it fixed in 48 hours warning" offence). This took about half an hour.
Finally, Dad asked the cop if he was free to go.
"No, you committed a very serious offence!"
???
"You were not wearing your seatbelt!".
"Ah, officer, no I was not. I have a medical excemption so I do not have to."
"You're under arrest!"
"For what?!"
"Obstructing justice! Step out of the car with your hands where I can see them and face the vehicle with your legs apart."
"???"
"You wasted half an hour of my time by not disclosing you had a medical excemption. Surely you *knew* you were pulled over for a seatbelt violation! That's obstructing justice!"
Ah Canada, fetid swamp of communist corruption.
(The judge threw the charge out *(though not with prejudice as I would have expected), but still.)
"What's more, DOPA would prohibit sites that enable users to create their own content and share it".
There's something "Freedom of Speechish" about that that doesn't sound quite right. What's the argument going to be? "No, we aren't preventing speech about topic X -- we're preventing all speech". Riiiiight.
If given the power and authority, you would order the deaths of (say) 15 million Canadians?
If "given the power and authority", i.e. elected to kill all liberal voters in Canada, I would do just that. It would be wrong to go back on an election promise if elected. I would not think it practical to run for office on such a platform, however. Nor, do I think it necessary: Canadians are suffering the effects of their crumbling social service institutions, and when the teat runs dry the diehards will die off.
As to sanity, or lack thereof, I am merely holding up the present socio-political structure to a mirror and judging it by it's own standards. That the logical conclusions appear absurd simply refelcts the parallel absurdity of legalized theft and murder via the separation of responsibility from power through the ballot in a country with no constitution to speak of.
N.B. you could argue that Canada does not permit capital punishment. However, there is nothing preventing a declaration of war against thieving murderous liberals. Killing in war is justified. If the situation does not fit the legal requirements, redefine the language so it does -- governments are great at that.
Now, you show your ignorance: One gets a deduction for charitable contributions, so, for someone like me in a 15% marginal tax bracket, that amounts to $15 for every $100 I contributed. Hardly a good idea if I seek to maximize income, and, in fact, almost not worth claiming for small amounts contributed here and there for the paperwork.
If I were seeking to maximize net income, I would not contribute a dime.
But, your disdain speaks volumes: you clearly can not believe that a hardnosed capitalist can be charitable. Investing in improving the lot of the world's poor leads to greater world stability and is generally a worthwhile thing to do. Many "rich bastards" as you would call them are quite generous with their philanthropy, and the tax breaks are not net positive, so its not done for the money.
Where I see people struggling to help themselves, I will help out as well. Most people I know do. What I do not do is tolerate freeloaders, who effectively cry "Oh, woe is me! No one can survive without help! Help me!!" (No one? What about those doing the helping?).
Clearly you think all are stingy bastards. No doubt this is because you, yourself, are a stingy bastard, seeking to live off the efforts of others instead of your own, and can not imagine that anyone might think and act otherwise.
1. Genocide: the killing or attempted killing of persons based on their membership in a racial, ethnic, religous, or national group.
Killing murderers is not genocide. It is justice.
2. Turn of the century U.S. labor conditions improved once workers got themselves organized and not as a result of government intervention to any great degree.
But, you miss my point entirely: that, in a capitalist society, people with ambition can start from nothing and manage to live a relatively comfortable life.
Canadian socialism does squat to "make the rich pay", since they can leave, or
"help the poor" since there is nothing left after the bureaucrats have taken their cut. It robs the middle class, that is most people, by supporting a murderous parasite class.
There will always be the example of someone "who couldn't survive were it not for government help". But only a fool would believe that such propaganda was representative of reality. It reminds me of signs I used to see in Quebec depaneurs (convenience stores) urging the purchase of government lottery tickets: a happy face, with the caption "Moi. Je gagne!" (tr.: "Me. I won!") as if to suggest that every participant would be a winner.
If you see that, and you're still whining about taxes, you're just a cold hearted bastard.
Hmm, last year I took 10 kids off the streets in Rwanda, put them in school, and contributed to the building of a residence and training center so women there could learn skills to earn a living through means other than prostitution.
What did you do?
You, in all likelyhood, complained that I didn't help 100, or that I didn't solve world hunger, or any of the other miseries that abound. Most likely you just complained that your parasitic lifestyle was not subsidized to the levels you would like.
I am not a bastard. My parents were married. However, I do not take kindly to parasitic thieves. The adjective you're looking for is "hardnosed".
My parents arrived in North America as WWII refugees.
Unlike today, there was little in the way of a "safety net" or welfare for them, as foreigners, in the last 1940s. They had to earn their eventual citizenship.
Nevertheless they worked hard enough to secure an almost decent retirement for themselves, with a small cottage by a lake in rural Quebec.
I followed their example of hard work (Mom worked as a maid, and later a medical booking secretary, and Dad worked first as a farm hand (condition of immigration), then an electronics technician) -- I started paying my own way from the age of 14, providing my services as a custom software programmer on the then-new "small business computers", c. 1975 (Altairs, IMSAIs, later CP/M machines, and IBM PCs -- mostly accounting software written in BASIC).
Today, after 30 years experience, I (a) command a six-figure salary, and (b) am in serious demand despite the advanced age of 44.
I would dispute greatly that (a) I did not earn my income level, or that I (b) got a "boost" from wealthy parents.
The thing is, times got tough for Mom and Dad when the socialists took over in spades in Canada, under Trudeau -- from a CA$30k income, suddenly Dad could not support the family (USians note that Canadians can't file jointly) because of the increased taxes he had to pay, and Mom had to return to work. CA$30k was hardly an extravagent lifestyle.
Of course, Dad lost the excellent health insurance he had through work when Trudeau extended state health care to cover everything, completing the process started by Tommy Douglas. Instead of seeing my doctor when I got sick, I had to way to see some strange doctor at a clinic.
I have seen first hand how socialism destroys the middle class as it offers empty promises to the poor.
Dad died when the Canadian murderers refused to pay for an operation to save his life that would have cost 1/10th to 1/20th of that portion of his lifetime taxes earmarked for "socialised medicine" (Or rather, Jean Cretin's caviar) -- with the taxes he paid, he did not have the financial means to pay for AAA repair surgery in the U.S. (Nevermind that all the Canadian doctors qualified to perform such surgery left the socialized medicine hellhole many years prior).
Modern liberalism is just social canibalism repackaged.
Instead of earning money for their pet projects, and shunning those that do not want to participate, they steal from the productive, often claiming, "you are rich by the bounty of the 'shared' earth, and therefore you have to share that wealth", or some such drivel.
Except, who made them stewards of this 'shared' earth? I don't remember consenting to that.
If I don't take anything in a direct way from someone, I do not harm them. They might die of starvation if I do not help them overcome some crisis, but I did not bring about their predicament.
OTOH, the liberal who claims to save the world, by depriving me of some of my wealth, might very well impoverish me to the point where I can no longer spend what I earned in fair trade to save my own life.
If I die as a result, I call that murder.
Ergo, liberals are murderers and ought to be put to death. Canadian-style liberals doubly so.
There is nothing wrong with the formation of cooperatives, sharing their earning power, and expenses, and distributing risks among themselves. What is wrong is such cooperatives using force against those who prefer to not join them.
So are you saying they don't just ship the problem to other countries for cruel and unusual punishment? That's what the US does.
Perhaps, but this requires some creative interpretation of the U.S. Constitution to make it "O.K.". Canada doesn't even have such a prohibition in its.
A constitution is just words on paper, of course, and without force, if the population does not take it to heart. But, it is far easier to muster up the courage to stand up to an oppressor if the oppressor claims to respect a constitution and blatently fails to do so.
I'll take flawed U.S. policy over flawed Canadian principles any day.
About three years ago, I remember anti-drunk driving ads in Ontario that we supposed to serve as a deterrent: Driving drunk in Ontario gets one a year in jail, and the ads insinuated that one would quickly become Bubba's "girlfriend".
Of course, given that Canada does not have constitutional prohibitions against "cruel and unusual punishment", this isn't surprising. (Then again, given the Notwithstanding Clause in the Canadian constition it doesn't effectlively restrain the government from anything, and don't give me that "but they never abuse it" crap.)
The government that can "Crush" MSFT can render the use of free and open source software a "homeland security" risk, and tantamount to an act of terrorism.
I neither want the state interfering with MSFT any more than I want it interfering with GPL code.
Some arbitration panel with a few pseudo-attorneys sitting in a meeting room is going to magically stop thugs with AK47s and RPGs from terrorizing the town.
Not quite. You aren't describing a civil dispute where it is the best interest of both parties to settle it (you can't sell a piece of land you don't have clear title to because it is in dispute). You are describing the initiation of force.
What you would
Actually, though, it would be far more efficient than that. See, most people would be insured against loses due to initiation of force by others. (Your homeowners' policy covers loss due to theft, yes?) The insurance companies would take a dim view of people terrorizing and robbing the town. They would either act to recover their loss (claims payments) and go after the criminals, or subcontract out the work to the defense agencies. The point of defence companies was to eliminate the need for everyone to provide for their own defence personally. And, insurers eliminate the pesky wait to recover stolen goods or obtain arbitrated damages from a thief. "Most claims are settled the same day," and all that.
Oh, maybe you'd open a stock market for warlords. People could buy and sell shares in roving gangs. The free market will make everything work out!
I suppose you thing the defense companies will evolve into the new states run by "warlord" chairmen, then? What incentive is there for them to do this? A defense agency that starts to steal makes their shareholders liable for their crime[1]. Furthermore, their customers that willingly continue to business with them, are fueling their means to continue their offensive rampage. Now, instead of happy, willing customers paying them, they have to steal from their former customers in addition to any people they might happen to rob. To top it off, all the other defense agencies would now have cause to retaliate agains them. Besides being as safe as yelling "fu*king ni**ers" in a Black Panther's meeting, it would be just plain bad business sense.
Governments, not having to vie for "customers" can commit such attrocities all the time, since all they know is stealing. However, (a) honourable businesses would lose all their legitimate revenue almost instantly if they turned to criminal pursuits, and (b) businesses that started out criminally minded would be small, weak, and vulnerable to rapid destruction.
[1]The lack of a state precludes the fiction of a corporate veil to protect shareholders from the crimes of the companies of which they own shares.
Since you are so concerned about crime, and presumably about the largest criminal organizations (because they are the hardest to fight), let's examine where organized crime gets its revenue: the black market in prohibited goods (e.g. pot), and services (e.g. prostitution). Without a state to restrict trade, there would be no black market, and nothing to attract criminals to participate in one: why be a patron of the Mafia whorehouse when brothels are as plentyful as strip clubs? (More so, since such establishments are currently heavly regulated). Do you know where the biggest opposition to the repeal of alcohol prohibition in the U.S. came from? The Women's Temperance Movement and the Mafia! Restraints of trade are the biggest contributor to crime there is.
Face it, you can't have laws without a viable mechanism to enforce them.
No, but there is only the need for one law, and it comes quite naturally: do not initiate force against others. Period.
Enforcement exists via the fact that no one wants to associate with a criminal, lest they be found complicit in their crimes by facilitating the criminal's existence. (If no one sells food to a rapist, he will die. If you knowingly help him live, you are complicit in the next rape he commits.). Civil disputes rest on making the parties as whole as possible. But, criminal disputes involve all sorts of ancilliary restitutions: financial, pain and suffering caused to th
Unless the concept of a flying unicorn is patented.
Foot, meet bullet: and patents are granted by what...? The state, of course.
So, you have a situation where the state argues that it is necessary to "correct" free market "defects", when it is the primary cause of them.
Case in point: the boom and bust cycle.
To "kick start" a slugish economy (in which economic output has dropped, and thus so have tax revenues, are the more troublesome for the rapacious appetite of government), "monitary policy" is adjusted to make money more freely available for investment: interest rates the state charges to lend it's fiat money so banks can meet their reserve requirements go down. "Kickstart" the economy this does... and also fuel unwise investments with the inflow of free-er money into the venture market. Eventually, the artificially buoyed economic output still corrects (all those people employed to try to genetically engineer flying unicorns get layed off), and the fall is harder than if the market were permitted to correct naturally. The end result is that small variations in economic growth get amplified into large boom and bust cycles.
The state is the worst thing that exists for the economy. Show me a business person who likes government and I'll show you someone benefitting from the state's use of force against his or her would-be or actual competitors.
Imagine you are at a horse race. Imagine that you want to wager on a horse, but aren't good at handicapping them. You might look at all the other betters to see which horses they like and you see two who are making very large bets. One is wagering his own money on a horse he owns. The other, having recently robbed a bank is making a spur of the moment bet because his kids like "the pretty pony". Which one sways you more?
And there lies the difference between businees and governmment: business is rewarded when it is wise, and punished when it is foolish. Government, producer of nothing, and parasite of all, has no vested interest in the outcome save the next election results.
Unless too many people before you have already failed catastrophically, exhausing all conceivable methods of breaking the entry barriers.
Well then, you have learned what doesn't work.
And, if you think all conceivable methods have been exhausted, you simply haven't tried hard enough and deserve to suffer the monopoly.
You forget two things: (1) the monopoly proves that what it produces is producable (if there is one farm breeding flying unicorns, which are in great demand, you know it is possible to have such animals; (2) large numbers of angry people are resourceful.
Now, such resources can either be put to try to cooperatively replicate what the monopoly has produced, or become an angry mob, threatening the monopolist. The latter is wrong, of course, but humans being what they are, is certainly possible. The monopolist's costs of defense will mount, the more he alienates his customers.
I do not see vesting the force if the mob in the proxy of a government as washing the supporters of said government of the immorality of their actions. Furthermore, examination of history will show that the greatest monopolies existed not despite the aparatus of the state, but rather by it's grace (railroad moguls lobbying west coastal governments to outlaw coastal shipping as a means of competition because it was "dangerous to sailors" comes to mind).
Finally, few monopolies are absolute, in the sense that there are no alternatives until the monopoly can be broken. Alternatives won't be identical, of course, but in many cases, that is unnecessary.
There was a time when the serf could not imagine life without a feudal lord, permitting the serf to live and work the lord's lands in exchange for tribute. The lord, of course, would never let the serf keep enough of what he earned through his labour to become a threat.
Despite the misery, the serf could not imagine things being different, much less answering not to one lord, but rather a representative chosen by himself and all the other serfs.
But, feudalism gave way to democracy, didn't it?
And so, I believe that statism can give way to anarchy.
Anarchy does not imply lawlessness -- it simply means the lack of a state. As you point out, lawless societies fail, but not for lack of a state, but rather for lack of an orderly mechanism to settle disputes. It is not the lack of a state that is the problem, but rather the lack of justice.
Given the overhead, threat, and bumbling of the modern state (even when supposedly providing justice which is often a crap shoot biased in favour of the wealthy), why cling to it so?
Look around you. Is every difference of opinion, or dispute, resolved with the force of a state? Reasonable people will settle their differences in a manner that satisfies them, seeking impartial arbiters if they can not stand eachother. Arbitration agencies exist today, and can fill a much wider role in a stateless society.
It is only unreasonable people who "resort to the last refuge of the incompetent"[1], namely violence, either directly or by the proxy of the state.
Slashdot Mirror
and
[Subject: So is the deficit.]Nice try, Houdini.
Increasing state revenue through lower taxes does not, by itself, magically cause spending to increase. That requires legislation independent of that which lowered taxes in the first place.
It may be the nature of politicians to spend more when they receive more (and even more than the increase in revenues giving rise to greater deficits), but there is no universal law of finance that requres that this happen.
But, let's look at it the other way: do you really mean to suggest that raising taxes would result in less spending?
Constitutional cite, please?
The present U.S. administration might act like it has one (and shame for the population for letting it), but there is a big difference between a government that shits on people's rights and a constutution that says it can.
The purposeted justification for a notwithstanding clause is that the electorate can elect a government that will not renew bills passed using it (and thus cause the associated law to lapse). But, the flaw with this is that it reduces the country to mob rule.
Perhaps some of us find American "suckage" to be of a significantly lesser degree than that of other places. The U.S. has treated me far, far, better as a foreigner than Canada ever did as a citizen. And that's including the very few xenophobes I meet.
Ask yourself this: If the U.S. is so horrible, why do so many want in?
*cough* Notwithstanding Clause *cough*.[1]
[1]More like, *choke*, *gag*, *retch*, *gasp*.
Note that if you chose to become a citizen or landed immigrent and become ill, you are forbidden to pay a doctor for treatment. You must stand in line, and wait your turn for state medical care. We are not responsible for your death in this case.
Welcome to Canuckistan!
If you chose to accept state medical care, you may not leave your province of residence. To do so requires reimbursing the province for any medical care received, at the rates the province prescribes.
Welcome to Canuckistan!
My father was once arrested for "obstructing justice":
A police office pulled him over and performed a safety check on his car (Dad thought he had a burned out tail-light or something -- usually a "get it fixed in 48 hours warning" offence). This took about half an hour.
Finally, Dad asked the cop if he was free to go.
"No, you committed a very serious offence!"
???
"You were not wearing your seatbelt!".
"Ah, officer, no I was not. I have a medical excemption so I do not have to."
"You're under arrest!"
"For what?!"
"Obstructing justice! Step out of the car with your hands where I can see them and face the vehicle with your legs apart."
"???"
"You wasted half an hour of my time by not disclosing you had a medical excemption. Surely you *knew* you were pulled over for a seatbelt violation! That's obstructing justice!"
Ah Canada, fetid swamp of communist corruption.
(The judge threw the charge out *(though not with prejudice as I would have expected), but still.)
There's something "Freedom of Speechish" about that that doesn't sound quite right. What's the argument going to be? "No, we aren't preventing speech about topic X -- we're preventing all speech". Riiiiight.
If "given the power and authority", i.e. elected to kill all liberal voters in Canada, I would do just that. It would be wrong to go back on an election promise if elected. I would not think it practical to run for office on such a platform, however. Nor, do I think it necessary: Canadians are suffering the effects of their crumbling social service institutions, and when the teat runs dry the diehards will die off.
As to sanity, or lack thereof, I am merely holding up the present socio-political structure to a mirror and judging it by it's own standards. That the logical conclusions appear absurd simply refelcts the parallel absurdity of legalized theft and murder via the separation of responsibility from power through the ballot in a country with no constitution to speak of.
N.B. you could argue that Canada does not permit capital punishment. However, there is nothing preventing a declaration of war against thieving murderous liberals. Killing in war is justified. If the situation does not fit the legal requirements, redefine the language so it does -- governments are great at that.
Now, you show your ignorance: One gets a deduction for charitable contributions, so, for someone like me in a 15% marginal tax bracket, that amounts to $15 for every $100 I contributed. Hardly a good idea if I seek to maximize income, and, in fact, almost not worth claiming for small amounts contributed here and there for the paperwork.
If I were seeking to maximize net income, I would not contribute a dime.
But, your disdain speaks volumes: you clearly can not believe that a hardnosed capitalist can be charitable. Investing in improving the lot of the world's poor leads to greater world stability and is generally a worthwhile thing to do. Many "rich bastards" as you would call them are quite generous with their philanthropy, and the tax breaks are not net positive, so its not done for the money.
Where I see people struggling to help themselves, I will help out as well. Most people I know do. What I do not do is tolerate freeloaders, who effectively cry "Oh, woe is me! No one can survive without help! Help me!!" (No one? What about those doing the helping?).
Clearly you think all are stingy bastards. No doubt this is because you, yourself, are a stingy bastard, seeking to live off the efforts of others instead of your own, and can not imagine that anyone might think and act otherwise.
Killing murderers is not genocide. It is justice.
2. Turn of the century U.S. labor conditions improved once workers got themselves organized and not as a result of government intervention to any great degree.
But, you miss my point entirely: that, in a capitalist society, people with ambition can start from nothing and manage to live a relatively comfortable life.
Canadian socialism does squat to "make the rich pay", since they can leave, or "help the poor" since there is nothing left after the bureaucrats have taken their cut. It robs the middle class, that is most people, by supporting a murderous parasite class.
There will always be the example of someone "who couldn't survive were it not for government help". But only a fool would believe that such propaganda was representative of reality. It reminds me of signs I used to see in Quebec depaneurs (convenience stores) urging the purchase of government lottery tickets: a happy face, with the caption "Moi. Je gagne!" (tr.: "Me. I won!") as if to suggest that every participant would be a winner.
The environment gets destroyed precisely because it is treated as a socialized shared resource. Tragedy of the commons, indeed.
Hmm, last year I took 10 kids off the streets in Rwanda, put them in school, and contributed to the building of a residence and training center so women there could learn skills to earn a living through means other than prostitution.
What did you do?
You, in all likelyhood, complained that I didn't help 100, or that I didn't solve world hunger, or any of the other miseries that abound. Most likely you just complained that your parasitic lifestyle was not subsidized to the levels you would like.
I am not a bastard. My parents were married. However, I do not take kindly to parasitic thieves. The adjective you're looking for is "hardnosed".
Unlike today, there was little in the way of a "safety net" or welfare for them, as foreigners, in the last 1940s. They had to earn their eventual citizenship.
Nevertheless they worked hard enough to secure an almost decent retirement for themselves, with a small cottage by a lake in rural Quebec.
I followed their example of hard work (Mom worked as a maid, and later a medical booking secretary, and Dad worked first as a farm hand (condition of immigration), then an electronics technician) -- I started paying my own way from the age of 14, providing my services as a custom software programmer on the then-new "small business computers", c. 1975 (Altairs, IMSAIs, later CP/M machines, and IBM PCs -- mostly accounting software written in BASIC).
Today, after 30 years experience, I (a) command a six-figure salary, and (b) am in serious demand despite the advanced age of 44.
I would dispute greatly that (a) I did not earn my income level, or that I (b) got a "boost" from wealthy parents.
The thing is, times got tough for Mom and Dad when the socialists took over in spades in Canada, under Trudeau -- from a CA$30k income, suddenly Dad could not support the family (USians note that Canadians can't file jointly) because of the increased taxes he had to pay, and Mom had to return to work. CA$30k was hardly an extravagent lifestyle.
Of course, Dad lost the excellent health insurance he had through work when Trudeau extended state health care to cover everything, completing the process started by Tommy Douglas. Instead of seeing my doctor when I got sick, I had to way to see some strange doctor at a clinic.
I have seen first hand how socialism destroys the middle class as it offers empty promises to the poor.
Dad died when the Canadian murderers refused to pay for an operation to save his life that would have cost 1/10th to 1/20th of that portion of his lifetime taxes earmarked for "socialised medicine" (Or rather, Jean Cretin's caviar) -- with the taxes he paid, he did not have the financial means to pay for AAA repair surgery in the U.S. (Nevermind that all the Canadian doctors qualified to perform such surgery left the socialized medicine hellhole many years prior).
Modern liberalism is just social canibalism repackaged.
Instead of earning money for their pet projects, and shunning those that do not want to participate, they steal from the productive, often claiming, "you are rich by the bounty of the 'shared' earth, and therefore you have to share that wealth", or some such drivel.
Except, who made them stewards of this 'shared' earth? I don't remember consenting to that.
If I don't take anything in a direct way from someone, I do not harm them. They might die of starvation if I do not help them overcome some crisis, but I did not bring about their predicament.
OTOH, the liberal who claims to save the world, by depriving me of some of my wealth, might very well impoverish me to the point where I can no longer spend what I earned in fair trade to save my own life.
If I die as a result, I call that murder.
Ergo, liberals are murderers and ought to be put to death. Canadian-style liberals doubly so.
There is nothing wrong with the formation of cooperatives, sharing their earning power, and expenses, and distributing risks among themselves. What is wrong is such cooperatives using force against those who prefer to not join them.
Vote Libertarian.
IIRC, there was some stink about how closing a business should be illegal, when that happened.
Perhaps, but this requires some creative interpretation of the U.S. Constitution to make it "O.K.". Canada doesn't even have such a prohibition in its.
A constitution is just words on paper, of course, and without force, if the population does not take it to heart. But, it is far easier to muster up the courage to stand up to an oppressor if the oppressor claims to respect a constitution and blatently fails to do so.
I'll take flawed U.S. policy over flawed Canadian principles any day.
Of course, given that Canada does not have constitutional prohibitions against "cruel and unusual punishment", this isn't surprising. (Then again, given the Notwithstanding Clause in the Canadian constition it doesn't effectlively restrain the government from anything, and don't give me that "but they never abuse it" crap.)
That's pretty much how I got my current job.
You obviously never heard of the would-be cop who was turned down for the job because his I.Q. was too high.
When asked, a Vonage rep said this was "authorized".
It still makes me nervous that equipment in my possession is making network and computing requirements of military servers.
I neither want the state interfering with MSFT any more than I want it interfering with GPL code.
Not quite. You aren't describing a civil dispute where it is the best interest of both parties to settle it (you can't sell a piece of land you don't have clear title to because it is in dispute). You are describing the initiation of force.
What you would Actually, though, it would be far more efficient than that. See, most people would be insured against loses due to initiation of force by others. (Your homeowners' policy covers loss due to theft, yes?) The insurance companies would take a dim view of people terrorizing and robbing the town. They would either act to recover their loss (claims payments) and go after the criminals, or subcontract out the work to the defense agencies. The point of defence companies was to eliminate the need for everyone to provide for their own defence personally. And, insurers eliminate the pesky wait to recover stolen goods or obtain arbitrated damages from a thief. "Most claims are settled the same day," and all that.
Oh, maybe you'd open a stock market for warlords. People could buy and sell shares in roving gangs. The free market will make everything work out!
I suppose you thing the defense companies will evolve into the new states run by "warlord" chairmen, then? What incentive is there for them to do this? A defense agency that starts to steal makes their shareholders liable for their crime[1]. Furthermore, their customers that willingly continue to business with them, are fueling their means to continue their offensive rampage. Now, instead of happy, willing customers paying them, they have to steal from their former customers in addition to any people they might happen to rob. To top it off, all the other defense agencies would now have cause to retaliate agains them. Besides being as safe as yelling "fu*king ni**ers" in a Black Panther's meeting, it would be just plain bad business sense.
Governments, not having to vie for "customers" can commit such attrocities all the time, since all they know is stealing. However, (a) honourable businesses would lose all their legitimate revenue almost instantly if they turned to criminal pursuits, and (b) businesses that started out criminally minded would be small, weak, and vulnerable to rapid destruction.
[1]The lack of a state precludes the fiction of a corporate veil to protect shareholders from the crimes of the companies of which they own shares.
Since you are so concerned about crime, and presumably about the largest criminal organizations (because they are the hardest to fight), let's examine where organized crime gets its revenue: the black market in prohibited goods (e.g. pot), and services (e.g. prostitution). Without a state to restrict trade, there would be no black market, and nothing to attract criminals to participate in one: why be a patron of the Mafia whorehouse when brothels are as plentyful as strip clubs? (More so, since such establishments are currently heavly regulated). Do you know where the biggest opposition to the repeal of alcohol prohibition in the U.S. came from? The Women's Temperance Movement and the Mafia! Restraints of trade are the biggest contributor to crime there is.
Face it, you can't have laws without a viable mechanism to enforce them.
No, but there is only the need for one law, and it comes quite naturally: do not initiate force against others. Period.
Enforcement exists via the fact that no one wants to associate with a criminal, lest they be found complicit in their crimes by facilitating the criminal's existence. (If no one sells food to a rapist, he will die. If you knowingly help him live, you are complicit in the next rape he commits.). Civil disputes rest on making the parties as whole as possible. But, criminal disputes involve all sorts of ancilliary restitutions: financial, pain and suffering caused to th
Foot, meet bullet: and patents are granted by what...? The state, of course.
So, you have a situation where the state argues that it is necessary to "correct" free market "defects", when it is the primary cause of them.
Case in point: the boom and bust cycle.
To "kick start" a slugish economy (in which economic output has dropped, and thus so have tax revenues, are the more troublesome for the rapacious appetite of government), "monitary policy" is adjusted to make money more freely available for investment: interest rates the state charges to lend it's fiat money so banks can meet their reserve requirements go down. "Kickstart" the economy this does... and also fuel unwise investments with the inflow of free-er money into the venture market. Eventually, the artificially buoyed economic output still corrects (all those people employed to try to genetically engineer flying unicorns get layed off), and the fall is harder than if the market were permitted to correct naturally. The end result is that small variations in economic growth get amplified into large boom and bust cycles.
The state is the worst thing that exists for the economy. Show me a business person who likes government and I'll show you someone benefitting from the state's use of force against his or her would-be or actual competitors.
Imagine you are at a horse race. Imagine that you want to wager on a horse, but aren't good at handicapping them. You might look at all the other betters to see which horses they like and you see two who are making very large bets. One is wagering his own money on a horse he owns. The other, having recently robbed a bank is making a spur of the moment bet because his kids like "the pretty pony". Which one sways you more?
And there lies the difference between businees and governmment: business is rewarded when it is wise, and punished when it is foolish. Government, producer of nothing, and parasite of all, has no vested interest in the outcome save the next election results.
Well then, you have learned what doesn't work.
And, if you think all conceivable methods have been exhausted, you simply haven't tried hard enough and deserve to suffer the monopoly.
You forget two things: (1) the monopoly proves that what it produces is producable (if there is one farm breeding flying unicorns, which are in great demand, you know it is possible to have such animals; (2) large numbers of angry people are resourceful.
Now, such resources can either be put to try to cooperatively replicate what the monopoly has produced, or become an angry mob, threatening the monopolist. The latter is wrong, of course, but humans being what they are, is certainly possible. The monopolist's costs of defense will mount, the more he alienates his customers.
I do not see vesting the force if the mob in the proxy of a government as washing the supporters of said government of the immorality of their actions. Furthermore, examination of history will show that the greatest monopolies existed not despite the aparatus of the state, but rather by it's grace (railroad moguls lobbying west coastal governments to outlaw coastal shipping as a means of competition because it was "dangerous to sailors" comes to mind).
Finally, few monopolies are absolute, in the sense that there are no alternatives until the monopoly can be broken. Alternatives won't be identical, of course, but in many cases, that is unnecessary.
Despite the misery, the serf could not imagine things being different, much less answering not to one lord, but rather a representative chosen by himself and all the other serfs.
But, feudalism gave way to democracy, didn't it?
And so, I believe that statism can give way to anarchy.
Anarchy does not imply lawlessness -- it simply means the lack of a state. As you point out, lawless societies fail, but not for lack of a state, but rather for lack of an orderly mechanism to settle disputes. It is not the lack of a state that is the problem, but rather the lack of justice.
Given the overhead, threat, and bumbling of the modern state (even when supposedly providing justice which is often a crap shoot biased in favour of the wealthy), why cling to it so?
Look around you. Is every difference of opinion, or dispute, resolved with the force of a state? Reasonable people will settle their differences in a manner that satisfies them, seeking impartial arbiters if they can not stand eachother. Arbitration agencies exist today, and can fill a much wider role in a stateless society.
It is only unreasonable people who "resort to the last refuge of the incompetent"[1], namely violence, either directly or by the proxy of the state.
[1]"Foundation," Issac Asimov.