- in the modern society figuring out such things are simpler than ever before. There are entire sites dedicated to customer reviews. This is much better than anything that ever was available until now, including FDA, because FDA is just another corrupt government agency. Believing that government agencies are set up for your benefit and that they can stay that way even if they were thought up that way in the beginning, now that is incredibly naive.
Apparently you didn't read my post. Joe Blow's drug has not been sold to anyone yet. There are no consumer reviews.
Even if there were, plenty of con-men can have figured out how to game the system. Hell, "Natural Cures" survive in the marketplace despite scientific evidence that they do jack-squat.
As for the incorruptibility of the private-FDA, you're assuming that people who are dying of cancer have enough money to band together and hire a coterie of scientists just as good as those hired by the government, get information just as well as the government-scientists, etc.
And this has nothing to do with central planning. Central planning would be Barack Obama sitting in DC saying "We need more breast cancer drugs, Pfizer get to work on it!" What we've got is Pfizer deciding whether to work on breast cancer drugs, and then proving to Barrack Obama's pet scientists whether said drugs actually work. Joe Blow can still work on any drug he wants, even one Barack Obama hates with a passion, he just has to factor scientific studies the FDA will believe (and lawyers to make the FDA believe them) into his budget.
You heard the phrase "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others"? Bureaucratic regulation by the FDA ia also he worst form of government except for all the others.
The thing about international law is that it's precisely as valid as the nations involved want it to be. In one case the US arrested a dude in Mexico without bothering with extradition. Dude got tried in the US despite the fact several treaties said the US shouldn't do that, and the US has acknowledged Mexican sovereignty. The UK has never acknowledged Sealand's sovereignty.
So if the UK arrested Prince Michael while Prince Michael's in the UK for the funeral, Michael's screwed. And if they do that, whomever he has guarding Sealand is going to have a very good reason to turn over the fort to the Brits.
Always remember a British Court's job is to apply British Law. They don't know international law, they don't get promoted for understanding international law, they weren't hired for their ability to apply International Law, and they don't really care about International Law.
As for states on the sea, that's possible. The practical problem is that the closer you are to other people the more likely somebody (like Tonga and Minerva) is gonna have plans for the section of sea you're using, and you can't call on some big countries Navy to protect you if they decide those plans don't include you. A strategic location actually makes this worse, because if the US wants free passage past Cape Horn, and your ass is in the way, Chile is likely to receive a message "$400k in military aid if this idiot gets squished by next Tuesday."
Now if you're in the middle of the Pacific; over an area nobody sends fisherman, where there's no discovered deposits of oil, you'll be tolerated.
Of course with new pharmaceuticals it is impossible to get information on side effects without government intervention. The only people who actually know whether Joe Blow's cancer drug is Joe Blow's piss-in-a-bottle are Joe Blow and his employees. They are also the only people who know whether Joe Blow made up his success stories.
Literally the only non-government-alternative to an FDA that allows a free market is a private cartel pushing something like a Good Housekeeping label. And a private FDA, funded entirely by large drug companies, is a lot more susceptible to the evils you describe then a government agency. A government agency won't lose 1/3 of it's budget if Pfizer's goes under because it's latest cancer drug isn't approved. Moreover if Pfizer's drug is approved and turns out to kill people Congress is gonna be pissed off. If Joe Blow's drug actually works, and is denied approval by the private FDA because Pfizer pays the bills and hates Joe Blow, Joe Blow is screwed; but a public FDA is gonna have to explain why it did that to Joe Blow's Congressman.
I'm not saying it's an ideal system, or that the regulatory capture you describe is not a risk, but it's the only system that actually works.
As for Collectivism/Marxism, you really do not know history. Marx was born in 1818. Any definition of Collectivism which includes both Nazis and Communists has to include pretty much every political arrangement in Europe as of 1818. Much of India belonged to the shareholders of the East India Company. The British agricultural sector was dominated by feudal villages using an "Open Field" system. Under this system a landowner owned part of a large collective field, over which decisions had to be made collectively by a government body (usually the Mayor and his village Council). There are a handful of areas in the british Isles where this is still the case, but at least one of them (Laxton, Nottinghamshire) it's largely because two guys got stubborn about dividing up the field so everyone in the entire damn village had to stick with the open-field system. The rise of Marxism isn't a story in changing attitudes about the individuals toward the collective, it's a story of the redefinition of the collective to include everyone. Previous it would have included members of a specific social class with specific legal privileges granted by specific legal documents.
The reason we have an FDA isn't that evil Collectivists under Fascist/Communist influence decided to Destroy Freedom (tm). It's that conmen abused freedom by pissing in a bottle, calling it an anti-cancer wonder drug, and charging desperate people their life savings for it. When the modern FDA was created (1906) no Fascists existed anywhere, and Communists did not have any power in any government whatsoever. The President who signed the bill was Teddy Roosevelt. The modern FDA does make it harder for you to sell drugs, but that's because it insists you have proof your drug works. In fact the FDA actually helps people who want to sell drugs that work. Prior to the FDA the only way to get an average American to buy a drug was convince him that if he didn't one of his loved ones would die. Drugs like vaccines were unsellable because nobody would have believed their benefits outweighed the sticker price, much less potential side effects.
In other words you're claiming to be pro-free market, but ignoring the fact that a defining feature of a free market is that everyone has to know what's going on. If you don't know that the guy you're trading $4 for a bushel of wheat will actually come up with the bushel of wheat you ain't gonna trade him your $4, and no market (free or otherwise) exists. Prior to the creation of the FDA nobody but drug-sellers could actually know what their drugs did, and even many drug-sellers had not bothered to test their drugs, so no free market existed. Which meant that without the FDA there is no free market in pharmaceuticals. You can argue the FDA is too slow to approve drugs, which hinders the free market, but you cannot argue that a free market for pharmaceuticals would exist in the United States without something very much like the FDA doing things very much like the FDA does.
The whole collectivism rubric is ridiculous. A Collectivist is (by definition) someone who puts the interests of some group above his personal interests, which is a pretty fair description of the entire freakin human race. For example, Randists divide the world into groups (Moochers, Looters and Galt's Disciples) and insist anyone who does not put the interests of Galt's Disciples above those of the other groups is evil.
You're missing the point. In this one case Prince Roy was able to find a bit of land that was technically unclaimed, and defend it from a maintenance boat. Since the land was technically unclaimed the Courts didn't let them arrest him for it.
These happy circumstances are not likely to repeat. You won't get a democracy that just doesn't care some Libertarian dreamer has set up his utopia in a region where they have influence. This is proven by the numerous other attempts at micronationalism that have been destroyed by other democracies, despite their legal claims.
Moreover Sealand is now claimed by the UK. The Brits extended their territorial waters to include the platform without recognizing his sovereignty, and the court decision was only made because Sealand was in international waters at the time. Which means if they arrested Prince Michael for keeping firearms on Sealand he'd be screwed
The reason a micronation *should* be feasible is the hope that the rest of the existing nations of the world are civilized enough not to come in and slaughter their populations, just because they don't like a little competition.
Actually, the main threat to a micronation would likely be privateers.
That really depends on how seriously the micronation is taken.
There was one in the South Pacific that was broken up by Tonga. They were concerned the new nation would stop them from fishing there. I think it was called Minerva? And I vaguely recall a gay one being broken up by the Aussies. Another one in the Mediterranean was destroyed by the Italians.
Sealand isn't taken seriously by the UK, so the Brits won't simply send a cop to the platform to arrest everyone; which meant the only real threat were raiders.
But they don't have to slaughter your population to beat you.
Sealand would have been done for if they'd simply blockaded him. Prince Roy himself lived on the mainland, and could have been arrested anytime if the PM had chosen to interpret his claim to Sealand as an attack on Britain's sovereignty over HM Fort Roughs.
That's the problem with micronations. The entire earth is a) formally claimed by somebody, b) would be formally claimed if not for bureaucratic screw-ups (HM Fort Roughs, aka: Sealand, is a perfect example), or c) part of somebody's area-of-influence. Which means that somebody is always going to think your micronation is a direct attack on them.
For example setting up on a shoal in the South China Sea would probably earn you visits from the Chinese, Filipinos, and Taiwanese at a minimum even if UN maps show it as International Waters. Bir Tawli is not claimed by either Sudan or Egypt, but a Western-style Democracy there would threaten both nations who could claim it, besides which it's not in a very safe neighborhood, so raiders would be inevitable.
For one thing in 1776 the UK Military was not #1 in the world. They had virtually no standing Army, and most of India was still under the Mughals. That's why they needed the Hessians. The Royal Navy was top of the line, but the Army basically didn't exist.
For another you're ignoring the fact that the colonists actually had the resources to create an Army strong enough to resist the Brits. The OP was exaggerating with implying you need more actual troops on the day you declare independence, but his main point is sound. If you can't protect your country you don't have a country, period.
To be fair nobody really says Jordan is a bad sexist, that he isn't trying to be good, or that his books are significantly worse then those of his contemporaries (Goodkind, we're looking at you). They say he's got a few blind spots due to his being a straight dude of a certain age, and while he mostly gets past them sometimes he doesn't.
For example female nudity is much more common then male nudity, gay relationships exist but they're almost all lesbian and good lesbians (like Morraine and Siuan) tend to find a man when they've grown up.
Of course, the very weird gender relations in the world confuse things. There's Andor's Queen, the AS crushing all male magic use, every town having both a woman's government and a men's, etc. The fact that everything revolves around a man fighting the Dark One, who is usually identified as male, also means that literally every character is only important to the story in ways that illustrate their importance to a man.
The Nine Free Cities is easy. The key term is "Free City."
If a free City owes no allegiance to anyone but itself, and dominates a region similar to the way Venice and Genoa dominated their regions, then it would make sense for the entire Free City bit of Essos to only have a half-dozen or dozen of them.
Wondering why there are only nine of them is like wondering why a world with 192 countries only has 5 UN Security Council states.
The reason fantasy ignores non-Monarchies is fantasy tends to be based on RL cultures using roughly the technology in the books, which means if you want heavy cavalry (aka: knights) you can't use the Roman Republic. Moreover ancient Republics had forms of government with more hereditary privilege then any Monarchy since about 1800, and extremely complicated political systems that are impossible to explain in anything less then a PhD dissertation. For example under the Roman system only nobleman had a legal right to political office, and only the highest-ranking had any realistic shot at the top jobs. Every Republican Consul except Cicero was of born at Senatorial rank, and Cicero was born a Knight. Moreover there were ridiculous term limits, and age requirements, which meant there was a rigorous Cursus honorum of successive offices one had to hold in precise order if one wanted to advance.
The reason these states stayed Republics was that people had a complex set of laws they refused to stop following. Otherwise one guy would have been able to say "fuck this, I'm King." Which is pretty much what Caesar did, but even he didn't technically do that. He simply took over title Prince of the Senate, roughly equivalent to the US President pro temp of the Senate under the Republic, granted it a few extra powers, and proceeded to actually run things with the "help" of a half dozen officials who theoretically outranked him but actually obeyed him. His successors adopted his name, which turned into the title "Emperor" in languages ranging from Hindi to German; but were only able to grow their formal powers very slowly.
And explaining all that background, plus a plot, plus a magic system, in even a 500-page doorstop is not a trivial task.
More importantly women are far far worse at other important attributes than simply strength. It would not matter if you made a 2 lb sword, the very best women who trained tirelessly would only be as good at a moderately above average man.
Most showenly this is demonstrated in marksmanship, where strength is not really an issue. You can take the military, or professional marksmanship as perfect examples of this. At pretty much any level of skill you will get far lower than a 19% ratio.
With swords the issue wouldn't be so much how much they weighed, it would be how often and how quickly you could swing it. Women are just not built to physically fight men for half an hour, spend 15 minutes chasing down the survivors/running for their lives, and be ready to do it all again with a 20 minute breather, thus female fantasy characters tend to be archers or magic-users.
Rifle marksmanship really isn't a good example. I sincerely doubt 19% of the people who try to become good shots are female.
BTW female archers are problematic. Their accuracy is fine, but to penetrate really heavy armor you need a really heavy bow. English longbows have been estimated as anything from 80 lb draw-weight to 185 lb. There are very few people who can manage even the lowest estimate, and very few are female.
Of course books with no women in them are a lot less fun for women to read, and since the point of most fantasy is to entertain people taking Tolkien's approach reduces your book's entertainment value by 50%. I'm not saying there's no place in fantasy for gritty reality, but if you've got magic you've already let a bunch of people with no upper body strength dominate your battlefield.
Heck you aren't necessarily being that realistic. While history books won't record the names of women who did not choose to stay home when their men were sent off to fight Agincourt the simple fact is that you know some of them were there. And if they were there they weren't sitting on their butts trying to look pretty while the menfolk bled to death. There wouldn't have been a lot of them, and prior to the discovery of germ theory their efforts would not have been terribly effective, but Tolkien's male-only stories just aren't very realistic.
Moreover, in a lot of ways fantasy is better-suited to deal with gender-power issues then serious fiction. With serious fiction you've to deal with the society we actually live in, which means that if you're criticizing business for having no female top executives you're gonna turn off all the businesspeople who don't think they're sexist. With fantasy you can create a society much like modern America, give them powerful businesses, and a glass ceiling.
Just about all of the more recent ones, actually. It's very hard to be more sexist then Tolkien. That's not necessarily his fault. He was trying to create a new Norse-saga-type story, and those stories just didn't have a lot of female characters. Éowyn is the only I remembered before the movies, because in Tolkien's books all the others are simply non-factors.
Granted a lot of the modern ones suffer from sexist tropes. Women wearing metal bikinis instead of armor is a major one, but it's far from the only one. Feminists ding Wheel of Time itself because most of it's female characters are defined by their relationship with males: http://www.wordtipping.com/2011/03/robert-jordan-and-gender-roles-in-wheel.html Jordan's world is a clash between genders, which means anybody who stops clashing long enough to get married is going to be defined largely by the person they have chosen to marry, which in turn means all the women are defined largely by their men; but feminists rarely acknowledge that the reverse is also the case. Mat and Perrin are somewhat defined by their relationship to Rand, but are also defined by the noble titles they acquired when they married (Mat is Prince of Ravens, Perrin became Lord of the Two Rivers largely because of Faile). Neither is "his own man" in any meaningful sense of the term because both have to be present at TG as adjuncts to Rand. Even Rand spends several books extremely conflicted because he thinks something is wrong with him for being in love with three women. He is being defined by those women, not by himself.
Feminist-approved series tend to be by women who describe themselves as feminists. Feminists say this is because sexism is subtle, and hard to detect; which means non-victims of sexism (ie: men) and people who don't study it seriously (ie: non-feminists). To an extent this is true, but it is also true that if you've got the mental capacity required to hang out with the feminists you also have the analytical tools necessary to prove nearly anything is sexist.
Fortunately there are quite a few feminist authors (like Kate Elliott) who are quite good.
The main thing keeping most British criminals from arming themselves with firearms today isn't that they can't afford a machine shop, it's that using a machine shop to make a firearm takes a lot of skill. If you have the skill your probably taking a pay cut if you turn to crime.
3D printers will get better. Probably not better enough to make military-quality firearms, with rifled barrels, but certainly good enough to make a zip-gun. Anything that could make a metal tube would work fine. So when 3D printers are created that can print out the parts for a steam engine, they'll do the trick.
That's a major problem for the manufacturers of these devices. If they can print out the parts you need to assemble a 1/16 scale steamship then they can also print out a saturday-night-special. And if they're easy enough to use to actually revolutionize manufacturing (as their proponents claim) then anybody with the technical skills to send a Facebook status update can be armed after a few hours of tinkering.
Which means that as soon as 3D printers stop sucking every government in the world is going to have to choose between a) not allowing them and b) completely re-writing their gun policies. Nobody's going to choose b), so 3D printer companies HAVE to figure out a way around this; similar to scanners that can't scan currency, and printers that always print a unique pattern of yellow dots.
Firearms laws all have the same basic goal. Oppress the poor.
Printing guns, though illegal in some places is the ultimate expression of freedom. And makes totalitarian bosses all red, and spitting with anger that they can't control it.
When it is widespread, it will also serve to make people more polite to each other.
That's a great theory.
But I've met black people, and looked into black history. There have been plenty of incidents where ordinary American gunowners oppressed blacks. There have been precious few where black gunowners fought back. And off the top of my head I can think of precisely zero where said black gunowner did not a) lose or b) live to regret the fight.
This is what white people just cannot understand. For freedom to work you need a government strong enough to crush all potential opposition. If you don't have that government you end up with private militias (like the early Red Army, or the first iterations of the SS) oppressing people on their own. In extreme cases those militias take over the government. The way you prevent Big Brother is two-fold: first you have Courts that enforce something like the Bill of Rights, and second you have a Civil Society that won't let the Big Men in DC ignore the Courts.
You clearly did not read the article. There is no governmental involvement here.
He was leasing the printer. The printer-company did not want to be associated in the public mind with a project that could give any high schooler access to as much firepower as he imagined he wanted. Part of this is a legal issue -- what he was doing is probably legal, even if the nightmare scenarios come true and the latin Kings start using untraceable guns; but there's no actual precedent of a company leasing a printer to a dude who uses it to make a gun for felonious purposes. Which means there has to be a trial, and said company has to go on the stand and say "It's not our job to prevent your daughter's crazy ex-boyfriend from getting the gun that killed her."
We can argue over whether they were paranoid, or right in their decision. We can argue over the second amendment. We cannot argue over whether this is an intrusion on the second amendment.
You really don't understand how actual trials work, do you?
The Courts are not logic-factories staffed entirely by Mr. Spock, ruthlessly applying the law regardless of whether it feels right. They are run by people. Most of the time those people do their jobs properly, but this does not always happen. It happens most often when what's supposed to happen is well-known and obvious. Budweiser is not liable for drunk drivers because there's centuries of precedent showing brewers are not responsible for drunk people. OTOH if you make a perfectly legal arms sale to someone who says "I am going to use this to get back at my ex" the precedents are equally clear: you're screwed. You are not only on the hook civilly, you're probably in jail for conspiracy.
In this case I'd agree with you that the Budweiser precedent is applicable, but since there is no actual precedent dealing with 3D printers any incident has to go to trial. This is how the precedents that we lack are created, at trial.
And at trial you're gonna have a poor widow on the stand talking about how much she misses her husband, how their toddler doesn't understand daddy won't come back, etc. You're also going to have some suit from a nameless corporation saying "Not my fault. Not my job to protect the public. This stupid widow-bitch's whining is really eating into my golf-time"
The Jury is not gonna want to deny that toddler some compensation for her loss. They are not gonna want to let the suit earn a bonus. And in most states of the union the Judge is not going to want to control them because Judges are elected, and the public is going to agree with the Jury. Granted on appeal the widow is in trouble, but those judges are also elected.
Car manufacturers aren't liable for drunk drivers.
The analogy doesn't hold. Drunk driving is something that happens every day. There are all kinds of precedents dealing with exactly that situation, whose responsible, etc. There are no precedents for dumbass skinhead leases printer, uses it to make Saturday-night-special he can not legally purchase, and shoots up a Synagogue. Which means even if what the Courts should do is obvious there's an extremely good chance the judge won't see it that way, and will send it trial. You can always lose at trial, particularly when the plaintiff is the kind of person everyone thinks should have a lot of money (ie: a home-maker who is destitute now that her husband's been murdered) and the defendant is someone nobody likes (ie: the nameless corporation who leased a tool to make powerful weapons to a dangerous skinhead).
Remember in many states judges are elected. Come election-time the judge who ensured the widow got her day in court is gonna do a lot better then the one who ruled she didn't, even if the law's a no-brainer.
``Sporting'' is a word copied into the 1968 Gun Control Act from Nazi Germany's firearms control laws.
The intent is to emasculate the 2nd ammendment of its original intent to arm the people co-eval w/ the military so as to be able to stand against them if the government became tyrannical.
Of course in the history of the United States pretty much the only time the "people" tried to resist the Federal Government to protect their "freedoms" from "tyranny" the specific "freedom" they were protecting was the right to own slaves. And most of the people who actually lived in those slave-states were actually against protecting this particular "freedom" because 40% of the CSA's population were slaves, and the Union had enough white supporters that NC, TN, MS, and VA had to fight Civil Wars of their own to secede in the first place. SC and MS were actually majority slave.
I love the founders as much as the next guy, but the simple fact is that the complicated system they created to protect freedom just seems to be unnecessary, and when it's actually used as often as not some local tin-pot tyrant is using it to protect his right to use some poor woman as his personal sex slave. You get a Bill of Rights, strong Courts, and enough Civil Society that the top guy can't ignore the Courts and you're fine. Otherwise Canada, which has no right to bear arms, prefers Unity of Powers to Separation of Powers, and only checks the PM with the Courts, would be a Fascist hellscape.
Nothing illicit about it. It is 100% legal to make your own firearms. Federal law only comes into play when you wish to transfer the firearm to another individual (sell). At least two states (Utah and Montana) have authorized in-state only firearms that do not need any federal paperwork or serial number if made for and sold only in state.
i.e. if it does not cross state borders it does not enter interstate commerce and thus the Feds have no authority to regulate, as their authority to regulate was imposed via the commerce clause.
For one thing you clearly don't understand just how breathtaking a power the Interstate commerce clause grants the Feds. During the deppression the Feds created a Wheat Board. All wheat had to go through that board. In '42 a guy said "Screw this, I'ma grow my own wheat, and feed it to my own cattle, and the Fed's can't touch it." He lost. Apparently the fact that his alternative was to buy from the Federally-regulated market meant his decision to not buy on said market was interstate commerce. Later on Segregationists defended themselves by claiming "I'm from Mississippi, that guy's from Mississippi, if I don't want to serve him the interstate commerce clause says I don't have to." They lost. They did business with other people who did business out-state, so it was interstate commerce. UT and MT's firearms regulations are only valid because the Feds have chosen not to challenge them.
Granted the current Supreme Court majority may be chomping at the bit to overturn those decisions, but the simple fact is that until said Court actually overturns said decisions the law of the land is that the MT and UT laws can only apply in cases where a) the firearms purchaser would have bought no firearm whatsoever from outstate under any circumstances, and b) both purchaser AND seller refuse to buy anything from anyone who does business out-state. Which means they don;t have cell phones, because all cell carriers do business with all other cell carriers.
As for printers, the actual hardware of every single laser printer sold in the entire world is hard-coded to always print out a pale yellow pattern of dots that is uniquely associated with said printer, mostly because if they didn't they'd be too useful for forgery.
>Your concerns are groundless, it cost this guy way more in time and money and materials to come up with the lower than just buying it did. Plus, it's not in any way illegal if you aren't a prohibited person already. This is a stupid stunt, not some gigantic side step towards having a million more guns appear without any serial numbers on them.
Every time computers and IT have revolutionized an industry it's started with stupid stunts. The Altair where Bill Gates got his start was a toy.
I'll agree this guy was not gonna start the revolution in un-regulated guns he clearly desired anytime soon, but the simple fact is that if you support any government regulation of firearms 3D printers capable of printing firearms need to be highly regulated, which means guys like this cannot be allowed to just do their own thing. People willing to spend hours learning to use a machine shop to make their own weapons are clearly a tiny minority, OTOH 3D printers will be as easy to locate as paper printers are today, which means every gun-nut in the country will have exactly as many printed firearms as he thinks he needs when he's incredibly drunk.
I'm neither nor defending firearms regulations in this post. But the simple fact is that hey exist, and if they are to continue to be meaningful then the 3D printer community has to figure out a way to bring printable guns into that system.
In a country like the UK it would ordering a generic 3D printer, smuggling some computer files in on a DVD or thumb-drive, and print a gun would probably be a lot easier then acquiring a firearm of any type. There would also be roughly 0% chance of the cops finding out you were armed until after you'd committed a crime.
That last bit applies even in countries where guns AND 3D printers are not uncommon. If your group has never killed anyone it's likely the cops aren't watching you, and won't notice that you downloaded a torrent for your 3D printer. OTOH if you show up at a gun-show and don't fit the gun-show mold somebody's gonna start asking questions, and you may not know the right answers.
Re: Trayvon, keep in mind that most people involved in any case are assholes. But that doesn't mean they are wrong. Let's say a random person called the cops, said some kid looked suspicious and he was gonna follow that kid. An hour later the cops get a call from the dude, who now has superficial injuries, saying "It's a good thing I killed that kid, he smacked my head on the concrete, see the scrape?" The kid has no record, was exactly where he belonged, and was unarmed. I'd expect at least an arrest, and (probably) charges. But we didn't get them, and we didn't get an explanation. Which is pretty much exactly what happened in the run-up to Jim Crow. "Oh dear some black Republican activist is dead, and we know that those KKKers did it, but everyone also knows they won't tell me which one, so you're just gonna have to live without a husband ma'am. Stop bothering me."
So in a very real sense, to 10-15% of the US Population this case was more relevant to their personal freedom then anything any Libertarian has ever done. And instead of saying , "Gee Mr. Prosecutor, please explain exactly why you aren't charging Zimmerman." Libertarians chose silence. Thus the group that should be most sympathetic to an ideology based entirely on protecting freedom suspects said movement does not care whether they, black people, retain their freedom.
Always keep in mind: it's true that the only bigger jerk in the universe then Sharpton is his hair, but sometimes he actually makes sense.
Slashdot Mirror
whether Joe Blow made up his success stories
- in the modern society figuring out such things are simpler than ever before. There are entire sites dedicated to customer reviews. This is much better than anything that ever was available until now, including FDA, because FDA is just another corrupt government agency. Believing that government agencies are set up for your benefit and that they can stay that way even if they were thought up that way in the beginning, now that is incredibly naive.
Apparently you didn't read my post. Joe Blow's drug has not been sold to anyone yet. There are no consumer reviews.
Even if there were, plenty of con-men can have figured out how to game the system. Hell, "Natural Cures" survive in the marketplace despite scientific evidence that they do jack-squat.
As for the incorruptibility of the private-FDA, you're assuming that people who are dying of cancer have enough money to band together and hire a coterie of scientists just as good as those hired by the government, get information just as well as the government-scientists, etc.
And this has nothing to do with central planning. Central planning would be Barack Obama sitting in DC saying "We need more breast cancer drugs, Pfizer get to work on it!" What we've got is Pfizer deciding whether to work on breast cancer drugs, and then proving to Barrack Obama's pet scientists whether said drugs actually work. Joe Blow can still work on any drug he wants, even one Barack Obama hates with a passion, he just has to factor scientific studies the FDA will believe (and lawyers to make the FDA believe them) into his budget.
You heard the phrase "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others"? Bureaucratic regulation by the FDA ia also he worst form of government except for all the others.
The thing about international law is that it's precisely as valid as the nations involved want it to be. In one case the US arrested a dude in Mexico without bothering with extradition. Dude got tried in the US despite the fact several treaties said the US shouldn't do that, and the US has acknowledged Mexican sovereignty. The UK has never acknowledged Sealand's sovereignty.
So if the UK arrested Prince Michael while Prince Michael's in the UK for the funeral, Michael's screwed. And if they do that, whomever he has guarding Sealand is going to have a very good reason to turn over the fort to the Brits.
Always remember a British Court's job is to apply British Law. They don't know international law, they don't get promoted for understanding international law, they weren't hired for their ability to apply International Law, and they don't really care about International Law.
As for states on the sea, that's possible. The practical problem is that the closer you are to other people the more likely somebody (like Tonga and Minerva) is gonna have plans for the section of sea you're using, and you can't call on some big countries Navy to protect you if they decide those plans don't include you. A strategic location actually makes this worse, because if the US wants free passage past Cape Horn, and your ass is in the way, Chile is likely to receive a message "$400k in military aid if this idiot gets squished by next Tuesday."
Now if you're in the middle of the Pacific; over an area nobody sends fisherman, where there's no discovered deposits of oil, you'll be tolerated.
Of course with new pharmaceuticals it is impossible to get information on side effects without government intervention. The only people who actually know whether Joe Blow's cancer drug is Joe Blow's piss-in-a-bottle are Joe Blow and his employees. They are also the only people who know whether Joe Blow made up his success stories.
Literally the only non-government-alternative to an FDA that allows a free market is a private cartel pushing something like a Good Housekeeping label. And a private FDA, funded entirely by large drug companies, is a lot more susceptible to the evils you describe then a government agency. A government agency won't lose 1/3 of it's budget if Pfizer's goes under because it's latest cancer drug isn't approved. Moreover if Pfizer's drug is approved and turns out to kill people Congress is gonna be pissed off. If Joe Blow's drug actually works, and is denied approval by the private FDA because Pfizer pays the bills and hates Joe Blow, Joe Blow is screwed; but a public FDA is gonna have to explain why it did that to Joe Blow's Congressman.
I'm not saying it's an ideal system, or that the regulatory capture you describe is not a risk, but it's the only system that actually works.
As for Collectivism/Marxism, you really do not know history. Marx was born in 1818. Any definition of Collectivism which includes both Nazis and Communists has to include pretty much every political arrangement in Europe as of 1818. Much of India belonged to the shareholders of the East India Company. The British agricultural sector was dominated by feudal villages using an "Open Field" system. Under this system a landowner owned part of a large collective field, over which decisions had to be made collectively by a government body (usually the Mayor and his village Council). There are a handful of areas in the british Isles where this is still the case, but at least one of them (Laxton, Nottinghamshire) it's largely because two guys got stubborn about dividing up the field so everyone in the entire damn village had to stick with the open-field system. The rise of Marxism isn't a story in changing attitudes about the individuals toward the collective, it's a story of the redefinition of the collective to include everyone. Previous it would have included members of a specific social class with specific legal privileges granted by specific legal documents.
Libertarians are incredibly naive.
The reason we have an FDA isn't that evil Collectivists under Fascist/Communist influence decided to Destroy Freedom (tm). It's that conmen abused freedom by pissing in a bottle, calling it an anti-cancer wonder drug, and charging desperate people their life savings for it. When the modern FDA was created (1906) no Fascists existed anywhere, and Communists did not have any power in any government whatsoever. The President who signed the bill was Teddy Roosevelt. The modern FDA does make it harder for you to sell drugs, but that's because it insists you have proof your drug works. In fact the FDA actually helps people who want to sell drugs that work. Prior to the FDA the only way to get an average American to buy a drug was convince him that if he didn't one of his loved ones would die. Drugs like vaccines were unsellable because nobody would have believed their benefits outweighed the sticker price, much less potential side effects.
In other words you're claiming to be pro-free market, but ignoring the fact that a defining feature of a free market is that everyone has to know what's going on. If you don't know that the guy you're trading $4 for a bushel of wheat will actually come up with the bushel of wheat you ain't gonna trade him your $4, and no market (free or otherwise) exists. Prior to the creation of the FDA nobody but drug-sellers could actually know what their drugs did, and even many drug-sellers had not bothered to test their drugs, so no free market existed. Which meant that without the FDA there is no free market in pharmaceuticals. You can argue the FDA is too slow to approve drugs, which hinders the free market, but you cannot argue that a free market for pharmaceuticals would exist in the United States without something very much like the FDA doing things very much like the FDA does.
The whole collectivism rubric is ridiculous. A Collectivist is (by definition) someone who puts the interests of some group above his personal interests, which is a pretty fair description of the entire freakin human race. For example, Randists divide the world into groups (Moochers, Looters and Galt's Disciples) and insist anyone who does not put the interests of Galt's Disciples above those of the other groups is evil.
You're missing the point. In this one case Prince Roy was able to find a bit of land that was technically unclaimed, and defend it from a maintenance boat. Since the land was technically unclaimed the Courts didn't let them arrest him for it.
These happy circumstances are not likely to repeat. You won't get a democracy that just doesn't care some Libertarian dreamer has set up his utopia in a region where they have influence. This is proven by the numerous other attempts at micronationalism that have been destroyed by other democracies, despite their legal claims.
Moreover Sealand is now claimed by the UK. The Brits extended their territorial waters to include the platform without recognizing his sovereignty, and the court decision was only made because Sealand was in international waters at the time. Which means if they arrested Prince Michael for keeping firearms on Sealand he'd be screwed
The reason a micronation *should* be feasible is the hope that the rest of the existing nations of the world are civilized enough not to come in and slaughter their populations, just because they don't like a little competition.
Actually, the main threat to a micronation would likely be privateers.
That really depends on how seriously the micronation is taken.
There was one in the South Pacific that was broken up by Tonga. They were concerned the new nation would stop them from fishing there. I think it was called Minerva? And I vaguely recall a gay one being broken up by the Aussies. Another one in the Mediterranean was destroyed by the Italians.
Sealand isn't taken seriously by the UK, so the Brits won't simply send a cop to the platform to arrest everyone; which meant the only real threat were raiders.
But they don't have to slaughter your population to beat you.
Sealand would have been done for if they'd simply blockaded him. Prince Roy himself lived on the mainland, and could have been arrested anytime if the PM had chosen to interpret his claim to Sealand as an attack on Britain's sovereignty over HM Fort Roughs.
That's the problem with micronations. The entire earth is a) formally claimed by somebody, b) would be formally claimed if not for bureaucratic screw-ups (HM Fort Roughs, aka: Sealand, is a perfect example), or c) part of somebody's area-of-influence. Which means that somebody is always going to think your micronation is a direct attack on them.
For example setting up on a shoal in the South China Sea would probably earn you visits from the Chinese, Filipinos, and Taiwanese at a minimum even if UN maps show it as International Waters. Bir Tawli is not claimed by either Sudan or Egypt, but a Western-style Democracy there would threaten both nations who could claim it, besides which it's not in a very safe neighborhood, so raiders would be inevitable.
For one thing in 1776 the UK Military was not #1 in the world. They had virtually no standing Army, and most of India was still under the Mughals. That's why they needed the Hessians. The Royal Navy was top of the line, but the Army basically didn't exist.
For another you're ignoring the fact that the colonists actually had the resources to create an Army strong enough to resist the Brits. The OP was exaggerating with implying you need more actual troops on the day you declare independence, but his main point is sound. If you can't protect your country you don't have a country, period.
To be fair nobody really says Jordan is a bad sexist, that he isn't trying to be good, or that his books are significantly worse then those of his contemporaries (Goodkind, we're looking at you). They say he's got a few blind spots due to his being a straight dude of a certain age, and while he mostly gets past them sometimes he doesn't.
For example female nudity is much more common then male nudity, gay relationships exist but they're almost all lesbian and good lesbians (like Morraine and Siuan) tend to find a man when they've grown up.
Of course, the very weird gender relations in the world confuse things. There's Andor's Queen, the AS crushing all male magic use, every town having both a woman's government and a men's, etc. The fact that everything revolves around a man fighting the Dark One, who is usually identified as male, also means that literally every character is only important to the story in ways that illustrate their importance to a man.
The Nine Free Cities is easy. The key term is "Free City."
If a free City owes no allegiance to anyone but itself, and dominates a region similar to the way Venice and Genoa dominated their regions, then it would make sense for the entire Free City bit of Essos to only have a half-dozen or dozen of them.
Wondering why there are only nine of them is like wondering why a world with 192 countries only has 5 UN Security Council states.
The reason fantasy ignores non-Monarchies is fantasy tends to be based on RL cultures using roughly the technology in the books, which means if you want heavy cavalry (aka: knights) you can't use the Roman Republic. Moreover ancient Republics had forms of government with more hereditary privilege then any Monarchy since about 1800, and extremely complicated political systems that are impossible to explain in anything less then a PhD dissertation. For example under the Roman system only nobleman had a legal right to political office, and only the highest-ranking had any realistic shot at the top jobs. Every Republican Consul except Cicero was of born at Senatorial rank, and Cicero was born a Knight. Moreover there were ridiculous term limits, and age requirements, which meant there was a rigorous Cursus honorum of successive offices one had to hold in precise order if one wanted to advance.
The reason these states stayed Republics was that people had a complex set of laws they refused to stop following. Otherwise one guy would have been able to say "fuck this, I'm King." Which is pretty much what Caesar did, but even he didn't technically do that. He simply took over title Prince of the Senate, roughly equivalent to the US President pro temp of the Senate under the Republic, granted it a few extra powers, and proceeded to actually run things with the "help" of a half dozen officials who theoretically outranked him but actually obeyed him. His successors adopted his name, which turned into the title "Emperor" in languages ranging from Hindi to German; but were only able to grow their formal powers very slowly.
And explaining all that background, plus a plot, plus a magic system, in even a 500-page doorstop is not a trivial task.
More importantly women are far far worse at other important attributes than simply strength.
It would not matter if you made a 2 lb sword, the very best women who trained tirelessly would only be as good at a moderately above average man.
Most showenly this is demonstrated in marksmanship, where strength is not really an issue. You can take the military, or professional marksmanship as perfect examples of this. At pretty much any level of skill you will get far lower than a 19% ratio.
With swords the issue wouldn't be so much how much they weighed, it would be how often and how quickly you could swing it. Women are just not built to physically fight men for half an hour, spend 15 minutes chasing down the survivors/running for their lives, and be ready to do it all again with a 20 minute breather, thus female fantasy characters tend to be archers or magic-users.
Rifle marksmanship really isn't a good example. I sincerely doubt 19% of the people who try to become good shots are female.
BTW female archers are problematic. Their accuracy is fine, but to penetrate really heavy armor you need a really heavy bow. English longbows have been estimated as anything from 80 lb draw-weight to 185 lb. There are very few people who can manage even the lowest estimate, and very few are female.
Of course books with no women in them are a lot less fun for women to read, and since the point of most fantasy is to entertain people taking Tolkien's approach reduces your book's entertainment value by 50%. I'm not saying there's no place in fantasy for gritty reality, but if you've got magic you've already let a bunch of people with no upper body strength dominate your battlefield.
Heck you aren't necessarily being that realistic. While history books won't record the names of women who did not choose to stay home when their men were sent off to fight Agincourt the simple fact is that you know some of them were there. And if they were there they weren't sitting on their butts trying to look pretty while the menfolk bled to death. There wouldn't have been a lot of them, and prior to the discovery of germ theory their efforts would not have been terribly effective, but Tolkien's male-only stories just aren't very realistic.
Moreover, in a lot of ways fantasy is better-suited to deal with gender-power issues then serious fiction. With serious fiction you've to deal with the society we actually live in, which means that if you're criticizing business for having no female top executives you're gonna turn off all the businesspeople who don't think they're sexist. With fantasy you can create a society much like modern America, give them powerful businesses, and a glass ceiling.
Just about all of the more recent ones, actually. It's very hard to be more sexist then Tolkien. That's not necessarily his fault. He was trying to create a new Norse-saga-type story, and those stories just didn't have a lot of female characters. Éowyn is the only I remembered before the movies, because in Tolkien's books all the others are simply non-factors.
Granted a lot of the modern ones suffer from sexist tropes. Women wearing metal bikinis instead of armor is a major one, but it's far from the only one. Feminists ding Wheel of Time itself because most of it's female characters are defined by their relationship with males:
http://www.wordtipping.com/2011/03/robert-jordan-and-gender-roles-in-wheel.html
Jordan's world is a clash between genders, which means anybody who stops clashing long enough to get married is going to be defined largely by the person they have chosen to marry, which in turn means all the women are defined largely by their men; but feminists rarely acknowledge that the reverse is also the case. Mat and Perrin are somewhat defined by their relationship to Rand, but are also defined by the noble titles they acquired when they married (Mat is Prince of Ravens, Perrin became Lord of the Two Rivers largely because of Faile). Neither is "his own man" in any meaningful sense of the term because both have to be present at TG as adjuncts to Rand. Even Rand spends several books extremely conflicted because he thinks something is wrong with him for being in love with three women. He is being defined by those women, not by himself.
Feminist-approved series tend to be by women who describe themselves as feminists. Feminists say this is because sexism is subtle, and hard to detect; which means non-victims of sexism (ie: men) and people who don't study it seriously (ie: non-feminists). To an extent this is true, but it is also true that if you've got the mental capacity required to hang out with the feminists you also have the analytical tools necessary to prove nearly anything is sexist.
Fortunately there are quite a few feminist authors (like Kate Elliott) who are quite good.
The main thing keeping most British criminals from arming themselves with firearms today isn't that they can't afford a machine shop, it's that using a machine shop to make a firearm takes a lot of skill. If you have the skill your probably taking a pay cut if you turn to crime.
3D printers will get better. Probably not better enough to make military-quality firearms, with rifled barrels, but certainly good enough to make a zip-gun. Anything that could make a metal tube would work fine. So when 3D printers are created that can print out the parts for a steam engine, they'll do the trick.
That's a major problem for the manufacturers of these devices. If they can print out the parts you need to assemble a 1/16 scale steamship then they can also print out a saturday-night-special. And if they're easy enough to use to actually revolutionize manufacturing (as their proponents claim) then anybody with the technical skills to send a Facebook status update can be armed after a few hours of tinkering.
Which means that as soon as 3D printers stop sucking every government in the world is going to have to choose between a) not allowing them and b) completely re-writing their gun policies. Nobody's going to choose b), so 3D printer companies HAVE to figure out a way around this; similar to scanners that can't scan currency, and printers that always print a unique pattern of yellow dots.
Firearms laws all have the same basic goal. Oppress the poor.
Printing guns, though illegal in some places is the ultimate expression of freedom. And makes totalitarian bosses all red, and spitting with anger that they can't control it.
When it is widespread, it will also serve to make people more polite to each other.
That's a great theory.
But I've met black people, and looked into black history. There have been plenty of incidents where ordinary American gunowners oppressed blacks. There have been precious few where black gunowners fought back. And off the top of my head I can think of precisely zero where said black gunowner did not a) lose or b) live to regret the fight.
This is what white people just cannot understand. For freedom to work you need a government strong enough to crush all potential opposition. If you don't have that government you end up with private militias (like the early Red Army, or the first iterations of the SS) oppressing people on their own. In extreme cases those militias take over the government. The way you prevent Big Brother is two-fold: first you have Courts that enforce something like the Bill of Rights, and second you have a Civil Society that won't let the Big Men in DC ignore the Courts.
You clearly did not read the article. There is no governmental involvement here.
He was leasing the printer. The printer-company did not want to be associated in the public mind with a project that could give any high schooler access to as much firepower as he imagined he wanted. Part of this is a legal issue -- what he was doing is probably legal, even if the nightmare scenarios come true and the latin Kings start using untraceable guns; but there's no actual precedent of a company leasing a printer to a dude who uses it to make a gun for felonious purposes. Which means there has to be a trial, and said company has to go on the stand and say "It's not our job to prevent your daughter's crazy ex-boyfriend from getting the gun that killed her."
We can argue over whether they were paranoid, or right in their decision. We can argue over the second amendment. We cannot argue over whether this is an intrusion on the second amendment.
No they won't.
They'll just blame the government for "forcing" Stratasys to pull the lease.
You really don't understand how actual trials work, do you?
The Courts are not logic-factories staffed entirely by Mr. Spock, ruthlessly applying the law regardless of whether it feels right. They are run by people. Most of the time those people do their jobs properly, but this does not always happen. It happens most often when what's supposed to happen is well-known and obvious. Budweiser is not liable for drunk drivers because there's centuries of precedent showing brewers are not responsible for drunk people. OTOH if you make a perfectly legal arms sale to someone who says "I am going to use this to get back at my ex" the precedents are equally clear: you're screwed. You are not only on the hook civilly, you're probably in jail for conspiracy.
In this case I'd agree with you that the Budweiser precedent is applicable, but since there is no actual precedent dealing with 3D printers any incident has to go to trial. This is how the precedents that we lack are created, at trial.
And at trial you're gonna have a poor widow on the stand talking about how much she misses her husband, how their toddler doesn't understand daddy won't come back, etc. You're also going to have some suit from a nameless corporation saying "Not my fault. Not my job to protect the public. This stupid widow-bitch's whining is really eating into my golf-time"
The Jury is not gonna want to deny that toddler some compensation for her loss. They are not gonna want to let the suit earn a bonus. And in most states of the union the Judge is not going to want to control them because Judges are elected, and the public is going to agree with the Jury. Granted on appeal the widow is in trouble, but those judges are also elected.
There is no liability in this....
Car manufacturers aren't liable for drunk drivers.
The analogy doesn't hold. Drunk driving is something that happens every day. There are all kinds of precedents dealing with exactly that situation, whose responsible, etc. There are no precedents for dumbass skinhead leases printer, uses it to make Saturday-night-special he can not legally purchase, and shoots up a Synagogue. Which means even if what the Courts should do is obvious there's an extremely good chance the judge won't see it that way, and will send it trial. You can always lose at trial, particularly when the plaintiff is the kind of person everyone thinks should have a lot of money (ie: a home-maker who is destitute now that her husband's been murdered) and the defendant is someone nobody likes (ie: the nameless corporation who leased a tool to make powerful weapons to a dangerous skinhead).
Remember in many states judges are elected. Come election-time the judge who ensured the widow got her day in court is gonna do a lot better then the one who ruled she didn't, even if the law's a no-brainer.
``Sporting'' is a word copied into the 1968 Gun Control Act from Nazi Germany's firearms control laws.
The intent is to emasculate the 2nd ammendment of its original intent to arm the people co-eval w/ the military so as to be able to stand against them if the government became tyrannical.
Of course in the history of the United States pretty much the only time the "people" tried to resist the Federal Government to protect their "freedoms" from "tyranny" the specific "freedom" they were protecting was the right to own slaves. And most of the people who actually lived in those slave-states were actually against protecting this particular "freedom" because 40% of the CSA's population were slaves, and the Union had enough white supporters that NC, TN, MS, and VA had to fight Civil Wars of their own to secede in the first place. SC and MS were actually majority slave.
I love the founders as much as the next guy, but the simple fact is that the complicated system they created to protect freedom just seems to be unnecessary, and when it's actually used as often as not some local tin-pot tyrant is using it to protect his right to use some poor woman as his personal sex slave. You get a Bill of Rights, strong Courts, and enough Civil Society that the top guy can't ignore the Courts and you're fine. Otherwise Canada, which has no right to bear arms, prefers Unity of Powers to Separation of Powers, and only checks the PM with the Courts, would be a Fascist hellscape.
Nothing illicit about it. It is 100% legal to make your own firearms. Federal law only comes into play when you wish to transfer the firearm to another individual (sell). At least two states (Utah and Montana) have authorized in-state only firearms that do not need any federal paperwork or serial number if made for and sold only in state.
i.e. if it does not cross state borders it does not enter interstate commerce and thus the Feds have no authority to regulate, as their authority to regulate was imposed via the commerce clause.
For one thing you clearly don't understand just how breathtaking a power the Interstate commerce clause grants the Feds. During the deppression the Feds created a Wheat Board. All wheat had to go through that board. In '42 a guy said "Screw this, I'ma grow my own wheat, and feed it to my own cattle, and the Fed's can't touch it." He lost. Apparently the fact that his alternative was to buy from the Federally-regulated market meant his decision to not buy on said market was interstate commerce. Later on Segregationists defended themselves by claiming "I'm from Mississippi, that guy's from Mississippi, if I don't want to serve him the interstate commerce clause says I don't have to." They lost. They did business with other people who did business out-state, so it was interstate commerce. UT and MT's firearms regulations are only valid because the Feds have chosen not to challenge them.
Granted the current Supreme Court majority may be chomping at the bit to overturn those decisions, but the simple fact is that until said Court actually overturns said decisions the law of the land is that the MT and UT laws can only apply in cases where a) the firearms purchaser would have bought no firearm whatsoever from outstate under any circumstances, and b) both purchaser AND seller refuse to buy anything from anyone who does business out-state. Which means they don;t have cell phones, because all cell carriers do business with all other cell carriers.
As for printers, the actual hardware of every single laser printer sold in the entire world is hard-coded to always print out a pale yellow pattern of dots that is uniquely associated with said printer, mostly because if they didn't they'd be too useful for forgery.
>Your concerns are groundless, it cost this guy way more in time and money and materials to come up with the lower than just buying it did. Plus, it's not in any way illegal if you aren't a prohibited person already. This is a stupid stunt, not some gigantic side step towards having a million more guns appear without any serial numbers on them.
Every time computers and IT have revolutionized an industry it's started with stupid stunts. The Altair where Bill Gates got his start was a toy.
I'll agree this guy was not gonna start the revolution in un-regulated guns he clearly desired anytime soon, but the simple fact is that if you support any government regulation of firearms 3D printers capable of printing firearms need to be highly regulated, which means guys like this cannot be allowed to just do their own thing. People willing to spend hours learning to use a machine shop to make their own weapons are clearly a tiny minority, OTOH 3D printers will be as easy to locate as paper printers are today, which means every gun-nut in the country will have exactly as many printed firearms as he thinks he needs when he's incredibly drunk.
I'm neither nor defending firearms regulations in this post. But the simple fact is that hey exist, and if they are to continue to be meaningful then the 3D printer community has to figure out a way to bring printable guns into that system.
Not in the places a 3D printer would be common.
In a country like the UK it would ordering a generic 3D printer, smuggling some computer files in on a DVD or thumb-drive, and print a gun would probably be a lot easier then acquiring a firearm of any type. There would also be roughly 0% chance of the cops finding out you were armed until after you'd committed a crime.
That last bit applies even in countries where guns AND 3D printers are not uncommon. If your group has never killed anyone it's likely the cops aren't watching you, and won't notice that you downloaded a torrent for your 3D printer. OTOH if you show up at a gun-show and don't fit the gun-show mold somebody's gonna start asking questions, and you may not know the right answers.
Re: Trayvon, keep in mind that most people involved in any case are assholes. But that doesn't mean they are wrong. Let's say a random person called the cops, said some kid looked suspicious and he was gonna follow that kid. An hour later the cops get a call from the dude, who now has superficial injuries, saying "It's a good thing I killed that kid, he smacked my head on the concrete, see the scrape?" The kid has no record, was exactly where he belonged, and was unarmed. I'd expect at least an arrest, and (probably) charges. But we didn't get them, and we didn't get an explanation. Which is pretty much exactly what happened in the run-up to Jim Crow. "Oh dear some black Republican activist is dead, and we know that those KKKers did it, but everyone also knows they won't tell me which one, so you're just gonna have to live without a husband ma'am. Stop bothering me."
So in a very real sense, to 10-15% of the US Population this case was more relevant to their personal freedom then anything any Libertarian has ever done. And instead of saying , "Gee Mr. Prosecutor, please explain exactly why you aren't charging Zimmerman." Libertarians chose silence. Thus the group that should be most sympathetic to an ideology based entirely on protecting freedom suspects said movement does not care whether they, black people, retain their freedom.
Always keep in mind: it's true that the only bigger jerk in the universe then Sharpton is his hair, but sometimes he actually makes sense.