Guess you're not familiar with the Galt analogy, because that's basically what I was saying. People are leaving---except they're not all becoming hermits, they're working together to create freer and voluntaryist societies.
You are correct. Society has changed in that the U.S. Government, having duped people into paying an income tax, turned itself into a global empire with its bloated military spending funded through confiscatory taxation (income tax increased to 77% during WWI), and then created myriad other things that were best left to the free market, all in order to justify the perceived "necessity" of the existence of such a big and bloated government.
Let's just shut down schools, hospitals, and such.
See my earlier post about what the U.S. Government spends its money on, and how little you'd have to reduce the U.S. Government in size in order to completely eliminate the income tax. The words "schools" and "hospitals" appears nowhere in that post.
On the topic of hospitals, here is what government intervention in what used to be a free market system has accomplished.
"Going Galt" is a breaking of the social contract...
A contract requires consent. Please show me where I consented to this contract.
In any case, there are a lot of actually productive people who'd love to become American citizens, most of whom won't be so quick to turn their backs on it if it makes them successful.
Yes, the U.S. Government is what makes tech companies successful. I'm sure that the $666.2 billion defense budget I mentioned earlier played such a huge role in the rise of Facebook. After all, if the U.S. defense budget wasn't "3-4 times larger than the 240 billions of the military budget of China, and [wasn't] more than the next twenty largest military spenders combined" (source), we'd all be saluting Hitler or Ho Chi Minh now, or something, right? e_e
Steve Jobs didn't go anywhere, Bill Gates isn't going anywhere
No but they've moved an awful lot of their corporations overseas for tax-relief purposes. Weren't there just a bunch of stories on Slashdot about all the tax dodges Apple, Google, Microsoft, and others engage in?
In reality, he robbed from the rich - who robs from the poor? They don't have any fucking money.
No, but they have their labor. It's gone by different terms, and with varying levels of severity---slavery, serfdom, peonage, taxation---but it's what governments have done since the dawn of civilization: Steal from the poor.
And when they created it in 1913, it was 1%, and only on incomes over $3,000 ($65,331.57 in 2010 dollars). There was a single 6% "surtax" on incomes over $500,000 ($10,888,594.79).
I'd tackle the discretionary spending in the defense budget first. The government is spending $666.2 BILLION there, as opposed to $80.6 billion on "health and human services" of which welfare is a part. Source.
If we reduced the U.S. Government (as a whole, not just defense) to the size it was in the 1990s you could do away with the income tax completely. Source. And think of how big the government was in the 1990s. What taxes could we eliminate if we reduced the government to the size it was before LBJ's "Great Society" (1965), the "New Deal" (1933), or even the income tax itself (1913)?
About the only way to do this would be to create a system that is truly out of everyone's control. Otherwise, you can guarantee that someone's idea of "you can't do that!" will be imposed on the system. If it's not in the name of "IP," it'll be in the name of fighting racism and bigotry. Or terrorism. Or child pornography. Or something else.
It's not having socially unacceptable thoughts that puts paedophiles in prison, genius, it's raping children.
A person expressing their pedophilic desires is not "raping children," yet there are numerous examples of someone doing so, e.g. in front of a psychiatrist, and being attacked by the legal system as a result.
A person downloading CP is not "raping children," yet this is considered an extremely serious "crime." The legal system attacks people more severely for this than it does for many actually victimful crimes, such as the actual rape of an adult woman.
A person downloading, or even making, cartoon CP is not "raping children" yet the U.S. Government has attempted to make this behavior criminal (it failed), and several other governments have actually succeeded.
I'm sure it does. As I said in another reply moments ago:
Virtually every manner of rationale, punishment, treatment, and "cure" used against pedophiles nowadays was once used against homosexuals. The comparison is apt, whether or not you find it "offensive." If you find the comparison...uncomfortable, maybe you need to re-evaluate your own biases.
Every manner of sexual non-normativeness has made people "sick" at some point in history. Homosexuality, "sodomy," polygamy, adultery, even mere "fornication." Most people in the so-called "civilized" world have woken up to the ridiculousness of legislating sexual mores. Unless someone is outright victimizing someone, their "sick" desires are harmless and should be let alone, no matter how "sick" you may think they are.
No, I don't hate gays. The point is I also don't hate pedophiles.
Virtually every manner of rationale, punishment, treatment, and "cure" used against pedophiles nowadays was once used against homosexuals. The comparison is apt, whether or not you find it "offensive." If you find the comparison...uncomfortable, maybe you need to re-evaluate your own biases.
As if I needed another reason to never purchase content made by these companies. So now they're effectively making pirated copies not just cheaper, but better, too.
http://www.nuisancelaw.com/learn/historical discusses the development of nuisance law, including uses of it to control air and water pollution all the way back to the 1300s. Following, in the section on U.S. nuisance law, there are multiple footnotes, one including the following citations:
Price v. Grantz, 11 A. 794 (Pa. 1888) (dust from manufacture of lead pipe and shot); People v. Gold Run Ditch & Mining Co., 4 P. 1152 (Cal. 1884) (dumping debris and waste into river); Chenowith v. Hicks, 5 Ind. 224 (1854) (slaughterhouse wastes dumped into waterway); Luning v. State, 2 Wis. 215 (1849) (erection of dam creating mill-pond with stagnant waters); Commonwealth v. Brown, 54 Mass. 365 (1847) (unwholesome smokes and vapors from manufacture of Neat's-foot oil; indictment held invalid); Smiths v. McConathy, 11 Mo. 517 (1848) (vapors from distillery and hog waste).
"Lobotomy" may be a hyperbolic comparison, but that doesn't change the fact that what is being advocated is using medical science to forcibly cure people of socially unacceptable thoughts.
I don't know what this "line in sand" is that he's talking about though. I'm pretty liberal and would happily defend homosexuals, pedophiles, necrophiles, zoophiles, polygamists... almost any others that you could name. But not rapists. Is that my line? Rape? I don't anticipate getting in trouble for that.
As a voluntaryist, I take the same position. Rape is a nonconsensual act and thus has an actual victim. All of these other things are just paraphilias and, however strange, are just people's desires. Desires are inherently victimless; they're just thoughts. And thoughts only become "wrong" when they're translated into action that involves unwilling participants (victims).
Up through the 1950s, they used to say that choosing to have sex with a same-sex partner demonstrated insanity and, legally speaking, insane people are considered unable to give consent, too.
Slashdot Mirror
So someplace is worse than the U.S.. What's your point?
Paying debts duly owed vs. allowing the world's biggest parasite to suck you dry, are two entirely different things.
Guess you're not familiar with the Galt analogy, because that's basically what I was saying. People are leaving---except they're not all becoming hermits, they're working together to create freer and voluntaryist societies.
Because that's the only possible way transportation would be handled in a free society...
You are correct. Society has changed in that the U.S. Government, having duped people into paying an income tax, turned itself into a global empire with its bloated military spending funded through confiscatory taxation (income tax increased to 77% during WWI), and then created myriad other things that were best left to the free market, all in order to justify the perceived "necessity" of the existence of such a big and bloated government.
And what do you have left when all the people who created successful businesses leave?
See my earlier post about what the U.S. Government spends its money on, and how little you'd have to reduce the U.S. Government in size in order to completely eliminate the income tax. The words "schools" and "hospitals" appears nowhere in that post.
On the topic of hospitals, here is what government intervention in what used to be a free market system has accomplished.
A contract requires consent. Please show me where I consented to this contract.
Yes, the U.S. Government is what makes tech companies successful. I'm sure that the $666.2 billion defense budget I mentioned earlier played such a huge role in the rise of Facebook. After all, if the U.S. defense budget wasn't "3-4 times larger than the 240 billions of the military budget of China, and [wasn't] more than the next twenty largest military spenders combined" (source), we'd all be saluting Hitler or Ho Chi Minh now, or something, right? e_e
No but they've moved an awful lot of their corporations overseas for tax-relief purposes. Weren't there just a bunch of stories on Slashdot about all the tax dodges Apple, Google, Microsoft, and others engage in?
No, but they have their labor. It's gone by different terms, and with varying levels of severity---slavery, serfdom, peonage, taxation---but it's what governments have done since the dawn of civilization: Steal from the poor.
And when they created it in 1913, it was 1%, and only on incomes over $3,000 ($65,331.57 in 2010 dollars). There was a single 6% "surtax" on incomes over $500,000 ($10,888,594.79).
I'd tackle the discretionary spending in the defense budget first. The government is spending $666.2 BILLION there, as opposed to $80.6 billion on "health and human services" of which welfare is a part. Source.
If we reduced the U.S. Government (as a whole, not just defense) to the size it was in the 1990s you could do away with the income tax completely. Source. And think of how big the government was in the 1990s. What taxes could we eliminate if we reduced the government to the size it was before LBJ's "Great Society" (1965), the "New Deal" (1933), or even the income tax itself (1913)?
More along the lines of peer-to-peer networks, Bitcoin, or Tor.
And another person "goes galt" and escapes the looters.
Exactly. It's outside the purview of the domain name system to police content.
About the only way to do this would be to create a system that is truly out of everyone's control. Otherwise, you can guarantee that someone's idea of "you can't do that!" will be imposed on the system. If it's not in the name of "IP," it'll be in the name of fighting racism and bigotry. Or terrorism. Or child pornography. Or something else.
A person expressing their pedophilic desires is not "raping children," yet there are numerous examples of someone doing so, e.g. in front of a psychiatrist, and being attacked by the legal system as a result.
A person downloading CP is not "raping children," yet this is considered an extremely serious "crime." The legal system attacks people more severely for this than it does for many actually victimful crimes, such as the actual rape of an adult woman.
A person downloading, or even making, cartoon CP is not "raping children" yet the U.S. Government has attempted to make this behavior criminal (it failed), and several other governments have actually succeeded.
I'm sure it does. As I said in another reply moments ago:
Every manner of sexual non-normativeness has made people "sick" at some point in history. Homosexuality, "sodomy," polygamy, adultery, even mere "fornication." Most people in the so-called "civilized" world have woken up to the ridiculousness of legislating sexual mores. Unless someone is outright victimizing someone, their "sick" desires are harmless and should be let alone, no matter how "sick" you may think they are.
No, I don't hate gays. The point is I also don't hate pedophiles.
Virtually every manner of rationale, punishment, treatment, and "cure" used against pedophiles nowadays was once used against homosexuals. The comparison is apt, whether or not you find it "offensive." If you find the comparison ...uncomfortable, maybe you need to re-evaluate your own biases.
As if I needed another reason to never purchase content made by these companies. So now they're effectively making pirated copies not just cheaper, but better, too.
http://www.nuisancelaw.com/learn/historical discusses the development of nuisance law, including uses of it to control air and water pollution all the way back to the 1300s. Following, in the section on U.S. nuisance law, there are multiple footnotes, one including the following citations:
"Do this or go to prison." Yes, forcibly is the appropriate adjective here.
New UK law to outlaw violent porn. When does kinky porn become illegal?. The Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 (2008 c. 4) is the bill; it's in part 5, section 63.
"Lobotomy" may be a hyperbolic comparison, but that doesn't change the fact that what is being advocated is using medical science to forcibly cure people of socially unacceptable thoughts.
As a voluntaryist, I take the same position. Rape is a nonconsensual act and thus has an actual victim. All of these other things are just paraphilias and, however strange, are just people's desires. Desires are inherently victimless; they're just thoughts. And thoughts only become "wrong" when they're translated into action that involves unwilling participants (victims).
Up through the 1950s, they used to say that choosing to have sex with a same-sex partner demonstrated insanity and, legally speaking, insane people are considered unable to give consent, too.