Out of 38 police departments, he was able to obtain complaint forms from THREE departments. On officer ran him out the office and actually threatened him by putting his hand to his gun.
Nowadays, I wouldn't call the police to ever settle a dispute.
Whatever. The U.S. was formed largely on anarchic principles. Society exists because the majority of people will it to exist, not because men with guns keep everyone from killing each other. If 1% of the population suddenly decided to stop obeying the law, the police would be powerless to stop them. That people do not descend to the level of animals is due to the fact that nearly all agree that society is better served by people coexisting peacefully.
BTW, what keeps the leaders from becoming the henchmen you speak of? Aren't they simply men like you and me?
I prefer voluntary participation in a society. No one's forcing you to stay a member of that society. If you do, you have two options: you can either try to change that society, or you can leave.
So you do advocate robbing people at gunpoint for the good of society, eh? Thanks for clearing that up.
Second, your market solution is the butt of many bad jokes. Like the one about the medical insurance guy who says he should get into Heaven, at which point St. Peter says, "Give him three days, then send him to Hell."
As if Medicare/Medicaid are any better. Sorry. Linux aside, there's no such thing as a free lunch.
i don't think the communist experiment will be tried again (in any case, it's not entirely clear communism was ever really "tried" - the so-called communist states were not so much communist as totalitarian-dictatorial), but i'm a little curious if its a question of technology.
People like to own things. I like to have a house that I can retreat to without being bothered. Without private property, there's no chance of privacy.
Communism requires people to forego ownership for the betterment of all. People resist this because they desire that privacy and the feeling that their efforts have resulted in their betterment. Otherwise, what's the point of laboring at all? We're all better off doing something fun (i.e. leisure) if work doesn't produce any benefits. Since people want to better themselves through work, they will resist giving up those benefits for the good of society. Since people will resist this, they must be forced to do so in order for communism to have any chance of success. Communism will always lead to totalitarianism.
the problem with this kind of state-planning economic activity/resource allocation is the difficulty with getting correct information etc. about what to produce and so on. information management is what technology is supposed to improve. if a state had the kind of ERP system that, say, Wal-mart has, would it be able to manage resource allocation sufficiently well?
The state will never allocate resources as efficiently as a private entity simply because the state relies upon violence, not free association, to achieve its ends. Wal-Mart cannot hold a gun to your head and force you to buy their products. The government can and does this every day. The state has zero incentive to do its job well. It will exist whether you like what it produces or not. Wal-Mart must do its job well to survive.
Right. It's not really ownership. When I own something, I get to determine how I use it. Paying a tax for the right to use it is not ownership in any sense of the word.
All those other freedoms are irrelevant if there is nowhere to exercise them. I prefer not to acquiesce to the state to allow me to practice my own religion or say what I want. I'd rather do so on property that belongs to me. Every government that has ever existed is about squelching individual freedoms for the good of society - an artificial construct of real individuals.
And who the hell cares about the right to vote? I'm not interested in participating in a popularity contest to determine who gets to rule over me. I'm much more interested in making sure my family is well-provided for than who gets to take my freedoms away from me.
The U.S. is a socialist state by your own definition. You don't own land; you lease it from the state in the form of property taxes.
> Capitalism allows freedom only when it doesn't get in the way of a profit.
I don't even know what this is supposed to mean. Capitalism is the very definition of freedom. Capitalism is nothing more that economic freedom of association.
There's a market solution to your problem. It's called insurance. If government programs all went away, private insurance would fill the gap and would allow people to manage their own risk as they see fit. You have no such choice with government programs. They are enforced at gunpoint.
So you advocate robbing people at gunpoint for the good of society?
> Otherwise, it's anarchy and even money does not exist.
Sorry, this is complete bullshit. Gold has functioned as money since humans first looked for a way out of rudimentary barter economies. Mnay societies that had no semblance of what we would consider a state of any sort have managed to figure out money without the help of a state-endorsed central bank.
Your right to be free from poverty steps on my right to private property. Who's right? Or do you advocate the elimination of private property as well? And why is your right to be free from poverty more important than my right to retain my private property?
The U.S. is not a capitalist society; it's socialist as well. Socialism is merely a state-managed economy. We have all kinds of ways of managing the economy: minimum wage laws; equal employment opportunity laws; OSHA regulations; SEC regulations; and taxes, taxes, taxes. There is no free market in the U.S. It's a managed market, period.
Since you say capitalism doesn't work, I assume you mean people should not be free to engage and associate with whomever they please. Congratulations! That's the first step to authoritarianism.
No to mention that every nation that has attempted to adhere to communistic principles has turned into an economic hellhole. That's what the absence of a market leads to. Without a market to provide information to both consumers and producers through prices, economic progress is impossible. The state certainly is incapable of determining appropriate prices for every good and service. Only individual consumers can determine the approrpriate price of something.
No one owns anything, even in the U.S. Stop paying your property taxes for a few months and see what happens. The state essentially owns everything and leases it to you. Even if you have lots of other stuff besides land, it's worthless if you have nowhere to put it. In essence you own nothing.
Without private property, no other rights exist. If you don't own the land you're standing on, you don't own anything. Without private property you have to rely on others to dole out to you what you need. There's no incentive to work harder to better yourself since the fruits of your labor are not your own. You certainly can have no expectation of privacy, free speech, religion, assembly or anything other right people like to list as essential to a free society. If you don't have any place to freely exercise those rights, they essentially do not exist.
Free speech is nice, even though it's largely a myth, but the right to private property is the one thing that preserves a free society. The quickest way to destroy a seemingly strong nation is to take away the right to private property. Looking back, it's amazing that merely 40 years ago, the Soviet Union was viewed as an equal to the U.S. and that communism was looked on by many as a better economic system than capitalism. But that's what communism does. Without a free (or nearly free) market to determine prices based on the preferences of individual consumers, there is no way to establish a workable system of exchange of goods and services. China has taken the lessons of the Soviet Union to heart.
Why have jurors at all then? If it was simply a matter of whether a law was broken or not, a computer could do a much better job than a person. Reality is never black and white.
You should always strive to do what's right regardless of what you're told. You moral compass is a much better indicator of whether or not harm has been done than whatever a guy with a badge tells you.
If we have helped offset an Ice Age, human-caused global warming is a GOOD thing. A new ice age would result in the elimination of most of the food-producing climatic regions on this planet. Most of humanity would die off because it couldn't feed itself. In short, we'd be lucky to survive as a species.
I'll gladly take a few more hurricanes and slightly higher sea levels than the virtual extinction of homo sapiens.
Slashdot has no responsibility to provide you with a "balanced" view. It is a privately-run website that you may choose to read or ignore, so your beliefs about what should be done are irrelevant.
The difference is that science is self-correcting. When controlled experiments support a hypothesis, regardless of how absurd it may seem, scientists change their views about it. This is not the case with religion. When evidence emerges that contradicts the widely-held views of a particular religious group, it seems the preferred course of action is usually to supress, ignore, and/or attack.
I say this as a Christian myself who has seen far too much of this occur within my sphere of influence.
Slashdot Mirror
A South Florida newsteam did an expose like this as well.
h tml
http://cbs4.com/topstories/local_story_033170755.
Out of 38 police departments, he was able to obtain complaint forms from THREE departments. On officer ran him out the office and actually threatened him by putting his hand to his gun.
Nowadays, I wouldn't call the police to ever settle a dispute.
You're familiar with Echelon, right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON
You think the Pledge now is chilling. Just take a look at the way it used to be recited:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellamy_salute
Try to imagine a whole room full of children giving a Nazi-style salute to the flag. Now that's chiling.
Whatever. The U.S. was formed largely on anarchic principles. Society exists because the majority of people will it to exist, not because men with guns keep everyone from killing each other. If 1% of the population suddenly decided to stop obeying the law, the police would be powerless to stop them. That people do not descend to the level of animals is due to the fact that nearly all agree that society is better served by people coexisting peacefully.
BTW, what keeps the leaders from becoming the henchmen you speak of? Aren't they simply men like you and me?
I prefer voluntary participation in a society. No one's forcing you to stay a member of that society. If you do, you have two options: you can either try to change that society, or you can leave.
So you do advocate robbing people at gunpoint for the good of society, eh? Thanks for clearing that up.
Second, your market solution is the butt of many bad jokes. Like the one about the medical insurance guy who says he should get into Heaven, at which point St. Peter says, "Give him three days, then send him to Hell."
As if Medicare/Medicaid are any better. Sorry. Linux aside, there's no such thing as a free lunch.
i don't think the communist experiment will be tried again (in any case, it's not entirely clear communism was ever really "tried" - the so-called communist states were not so much communist as totalitarian-dictatorial), but i'm a little curious if its a question of technology.
People like to own things. I like to have a house that I can retreat to without being bothered. Without private property, there's no chance of privacy.
Communism requires people to forego ownership for the betterment of all. People resist this because they desire that privacy and the feeling that their efforts have resulted in their betterment. Otherwise, what's the point of laboring at all? We're all better off doing something fun (i.e. leisure) if work doesn't produce any benefits. Since people want to better themselves through work, they will resist giving up those benefits for the good of society. Since people will resist this, they must be forced to do so in order for communism to have any chance of success. Communism will always lead to totalitarianism.
the problem with this kind of state-planning economic activity/resource allocation is the difficulty with getting correct information etc. about what to produce and so on. information management is what technology is supposed to improve. if a state had the kind of ERP system that, say, Wal-mart has, would it be able to manage resource allocation sufficiently well?
The state will never allocate resources as efficiently as a private entity simply because the state relies upon violence, not free association, to achieve its ends. Wal-Mart cannot hold a gun to your head and force you to buy their products. The government can and does this every day. The state has zero incentive to do its job well. It will exist whether you like what it produces or not. Wal-Mart must do its job well to survive.
> Land ownership is like that everywhere.
Right. It's not really ownership. When I own something, I get to determine how I use it. Paying a tax for the right to use it is not ownership in any sense of the word.
All those other freedoms are irrelevant if there is nowhere to exercise them. I prefer not to acquiesce to the state to allow me to practice my own religion or say what I want. I'd rather do so on property that belongs to me. Every government that has ever existed is about squelching individual freedoms for the good of society - an artificial construct of real individuals.
And who the hell cares about the right to vote? I'm not interested in participating in a popularity contest to determine who gets to rule over me. I'm much more interested in making sure my family is well-provided for than who gets to take my freedoms away from me.
The U.S. is a socialist state by your own definition. You don't own land; you lease it from the state in the form of property taxes.
> Capitalism allows freedom only when it doesn't get in the way of a profit.
I don't even know what this is supposed to mean. Capitalism is the very definition of freedom. Capitalism is nothing more that economic freedom of association.
There's a market solution to your problem. It's called insurance. If government programs all went away, private insurance would fill the gap and would allow people to manage their own risk as they see fit. You have no such choice with government programs. They are enforced at gunpoint.
So you advocate robbing people at gunpoint for the good of society?
> Otherwise, it's anarchy and even money does not exist.
Sorry, this is complete bullshit. Gold has functioned as money since humans first looked for a way out of rudimentary barter economies. Mnay societies that had no semblance of what we would consider a state of any sort have managed to figure out money without the help of a state-endorsed central bank.
You really don't know what you're talking about.
Your right to be free from poverty steps on my right to private property. Who's right? Or do you advocate the elimination of private property as well? And why is your right to be free from poverty more important than my right to retain my private property?
The U.S. is not a capitalist society; it's socialist as well. Socialism is merely a state-managed economy. We have all kinds of ways of managing the economy: minimum wage laws; equal employment opportunity laws; OSHA regulations; SEC regulations; and taxes, taxes, taxes. There is no free market in the U.S. It's a managed market, period.
Since you say capitalism doesn't work, I assume you mean people should not be free to engage and associate with whomever they please. Congratulations! That's the first step to authoritarianism.
No to mention that every nation that has attempted to adhere to communistic principles has turned into an economic hellhole. That's what the absence of a market leads to. Without a market to provide information to both consumers and producers through prices, economic progress is impossible. The state certainly is incapable of determining appropriate prices for every good and service. Only individual consumers can determine the approrpriate price of something.
No one owns anything, even in the U.S. Stop paying your property taxes for a few months and see what happens. The state essentially owns everything and leases it to you. Even if you have lots of other stuff besides land, it's worthless if
you have nowhere to put it. In essence you own nothing.
Corporations are not individuals and are thus not entitled to the rights preserved for individuals.
Corporations are constructs of government for the sake of protecting people from taking responsibilty for their own actions.
Without private property, no other rights exist. If you don't own the land you're standing on, you don't own anything. Without private property you have to rely on others to dole out to you what you need. There's no incentive to work harder to better yourself since the fruits of your labor are not your own. You certainly can have no expectation of privacy, free speech, religion, assembly or anything other right people like to list as essential to a free society. If you don't have any place to freely exercise those rights, they essentially do not exist.
Free speech is nice, even though it's largely a myth, but the right to private property is the one thing that preserves a free society. The quickest way to destroy a seemingly strong nation is to take away the right to private property. Looking back, it's amazing that merely 40 years ago, the Soviet Union was viewed as an equal to the U.S. and that communism was looked on by many as a better economic system than capitalism. But that's what communism does. Without a free (or nearly free) market to determine prices based on the preferences of individual consumers, there is no way to establish a workable system of exchange of goods and services. China has taken the lessons of the Soviet Union to heart.
No. I'm Spartacus!
Really.
The First Amendment does not apply to private enterprises. The U.S. military is no private enterprise.
Do what you're told. We'll take care of the rest.
Anyone interested in preserving a free society.
Why have jurors at all then? If it was simply a matter of whether a law was broken or not, a computer could do a much better job than a person. Reality is never black and white.
You should always strive to do what's right regardless of what you're told. You moral compass is a much better indicator of whether or not harm has been done than whatever a guy with a badge tells you.
If we have helped offset an Ice Age, human-caused global warming is a GOOD thing. A new ice age would result in the elimination of most of the food-producing climatic regions on this planet. Most of humanity would die off because it couldn't feed itself. In short, we'd be lucky to survive as a species.
I'll gladly take a few more hurricanes and slightly higher sea levels than the virtual extinction of homo sapiens.
Slashdot has no responsibility to provide you with a "balanced" view. It is a privately-run website that you may choose to read or ignore, so your beliefs about what should be done are irrelevant.
Excellent! This is going directly into my collection of quotations.
Kierkegaard was a very wise man.
The difference is that science is self-correcting. When controlled experiments support a hypothesis, regardless of how absurd it may seem, scientists change their views about it. This is not the case with religion. When evidence emerges that contradicts the widely-held views of a particular religious group, it seems the preferred course of action is usually to supress, ignore, and/or attack.
I say this as a Christian myself who has seen far too much of this occur within my sphere of influence.
Real libertarians don't vote.