Suffering and possibly permanently damaging your knees and getting nothing in return. Is that maturity?
In point of fact, running is good, not bad, for your joints. Runners have fewer disabilities, a longer span of activity in their lives and are less likely to die early.
All languages grow and develop or they wouldn't have become languages.
Some do it more than others, for various cultural reasons. The French famously have an institute, the Académie française, to keep their language "pure"; several other nations have something similar, to varying degrees. On the other hand English is a filthy whore who'll go bed with any other tongue.
I don't know about the spoken language, but my understanding is that over the centuries, written Chinese has changed much less than written English (because of it's logographic nature), so that it's much easier for a Chinese native speaker to read ancient texts than it is for us to read Old English.
And for all you "information wants to be free" idiots out there, realize that when confidential information is released, usually somebody gets hurt.
Sometimes, yes. That does not change the nature of the flow of information.
"Information wants to be free" is not a value judgement. It's a statement of behaviour, like saying "water 'wants' to flow downhill' or 'hot air 'wants' to rise'". It tells us that if you want to get water to flow uphill, or hot air to sink, or information to not flow freely, you've got a lot of work to do.
In spite of much Presidential rhetoric about "this great Democracy of ours", and general ignorance of the subject by many people, the U.S. is not now, and has never been, a democracy.
Yes, it is. A constitutional democratic republic is a form of democracy.
some pretty smart cookies who understood very clearly that true democracy cannot be trusted to work on any significant scale. And why is that?
Because actual democracy is bad for the privileged classes. The Founders who argued the loudest against too much democracy in the Constitution were believers in aristocracy.
Even so, much of their planning revolved around how to give voters the tools to grasp the bigger picture: our educational system for one
You do know that public schooling didn't come to the US until decades after its founding, right? And that the federal Department of Education didn't come along until the 20th century?
You are confusing the cause and effect by stating that police not carrying guns results in more peaceful society. I think it's the other way around.
It's a cycle. When the state behaves violently, it sets an example for the people; kids grow up assuming that violence is the way to deal with problems. When the people behave violently, the state becomes more aggressive.
That is the problem, a taser is a 'pain-compliance' tool, like pressure points, if someone wants to they can go right back to fighting, or at least resisting right after the 5 seconds, so the cop will use it again, etc. That is how you get stories of cops tasing someone 15 times, because (in theory) the person continued to resist 14 times.
Gee, someone resisting a thug who's shown a willingness to use a potentially lethal electric torture device? Imagine that.
The Droid Incredible appears to be more powerful while weighing half as much and fitting in a pocket comfortably.
And therefore having a much smaller screen and keyboard. (Does the Incredible even have a real keyboard?)
The "bigger than a cellphone, smaller than a netbook" size is useful for many things. It's good for gaming, as the success of the Ninendo DS shows. It's a better size for watching videos or reading e-books than a phone, while still fitting -- if awkwardly -- into a pocket. It's also good for writing -- my Zaurus CL-3000 goes to bars and coffeehouses, on planes and trains, and lets me work on poems and essays with much more convenience than if I were trying to edit text on my Centro.
I'm not much of a gamer, but I might be interested in a Pandora as a replacement when my beloved Zaurus eventually gives up the ghost.
firearms are for the distinct purpose of killing and destroying only
Firearms are for the distinct purpose of throwing small bits of metal very fast.
The purpose to which those bits of metal are thrown, is solely at the discretion of the operator. They can be thrown at marked pieces of paper or other inanimate targets for fun; at animals, for the thrill of killing or in order to eat the corpses; at innocent people, for the thrill of killing or in order to take their stuff (or, rarely, in order to eat the corpses); or at people who are a threat to the safety of others, in order to damage the threateners' bodies to such an extent that they are no longer a threat.
Tasers are meant to try and avoid that
Tasers are meant for the distinct purpose of delivering an electric shock -- usually, but not always, below the lethal level if administered singly -- to the target.
The purpose to which that shock is delivered, is solely at the discretion of the operator. It can be delivered so that some sadistic person can get his jollies; it can be delivered so as to incapacitate someone and take their stuff; it can be delivered to enforce authoritarian power hierarchies, by causing pain and humiliation and the risk of death to people who don't "keep their place"; it can be delivered multiple times so as to murder someone, either for thrills or to take their stuff; or it can be delivered to people who are a threat to the safety of others, in order to incapacitate them to the point that they are no longer a threat.
(c) it's an economic necessity that we drill for oil
It's an economic and ecological necessity that we stop using fossil fuels. We should regard this incident as the same sort a wake-up call a junkie gets when he has a disaster while hustling for a fix.
(d) Murphy's law -- no matter how hard you try, eventually mistakes will be made.
Which does not alter the presence of criminal negligence.
BP is doing everything possible to fix the problem
No, they're not. "Everything possible to fix the problem" would have meant that they were taking the proper steps to prevent it, and prepared with the proper cleanup equipment if there were a leak.
In a sane world, after a fuck-up like this, BP would simply cease to exist, its corporate charter shredded and its assets nationalized for the duration of the emergency, and then auctioned off to parties who have demonstrated the ability to behave responsibly.
Just yesterday the EPA decided to intervene by ordering BP to stop using the dispersant which has been effective in reducing the impact because they think it might do some damage to the environment.
On what basis do you claim that the dispersant has been effective in reducing the impact? I have to say I trust the judgment of the EPA on that more than I trust J. Random Slashdotter or BP, but I'm willing to look at expert opinion if you can cite some.
And that is all any government agency can do. Interfere.
When corporate criminals are fouling the planet, I'm all for government agencies interfering with them.
It is exactly the same, if more invasive, as fingerprinting.
It's not "exactly the same" precisely because it is invasive.
The sovereignty of the state ends at my skin. Period.
You want to put me in a "clean room" for a bit and then pick up any bits of hair and skin I leave behind? Ok, I won't resist, assuming it's a legit arrest. You want to take a microgram of living flesh from me? Fuck you, buddy. That's stepping over a bright, clear line.
I'd like to hear some arguments against a DNA database including the entire population of the US
Here's an argument for you: the state has no right to any amount of my flesh.
None. Zero. Nada.
I'll pay taxes with only minor grumbling: "render on to Caesar what is Caesar's", and all. But my flesh is not Caesar's.
And I don't have a problem with people who have shown that the are a threat to the rights of others, being placed under the close supervision of the state, even including losing to some degree the right to make choices about their bodies. But this proposal is not about convicts, it's about presumed-innocent arrestees; and a population-wide database would be that much worse.
The only argument in favor of such a database is that it makes live easier for cops. There's a term for a nation where laws are made on that basis: police state.
Personally, I'm going to inform any cop who tries to take any part of flesh that I regard that as sacrilege and as the moral equivalent of rape, and will resist by any means necessary and available. Yes, I will quite likely be beaten while resisting; that doesn't change my duty to resist heinous crimes.
(requiring users to register) is pretty much absolutely essential for a web site to have "stickiness": keeping the user coming back for more.
So, um, in order to keep me coming back for more, you're going to make me jump through hoops before I can use your site at all?
Brilliant, that. "You can come into my store after you fill out this membership form." That works if you're Costco, but is not a good general business model.
We can have a much greater control over our local government than we can over the big, powerful feds. You can go bitch at the city council directly. Good luck trying to get the mic on Capitol Hill.
Well, not so much. People clamored for the federal government to take up a larger role exactly because they couldn't get corrupt state and local governments to listen to them. Buying a city councilman was practical for a rich man; a large business could buy a state legislator.
In any big city, you can't effectively go bitch at the City Council, they're in the pockets of local land developers, or bought off by big corporations who promise to bring in jobs. At the state level, political machines run things. So the people clamored for reforms like the direct election of Senators, and greater federal regulation of big business.
The problem is that we let the concentration of wealth in this country grow to the point where corporations could buy off not just local and state government, but Congresscritters too.
All we want is the government to follow the 10th Amendment.
The 10th says that the feds don't have powers not mentioned in the Constitution. As the health care bill that has the right so inflamed uses the federal powers of taxation, spending for the general welfare, and regulation of interstate commerce granted in the Constitution, the 10th does not apply.
They just declared they have "essentially unlimited" authority to impose "requirements" on Americans to do things and "fines" to punish them for disobedience. (Their words.)
If they'd been smarter, maybe they would have listened to you and used your argument -- but they didn't.
Well, of course everyone is smarter when they listen to my arguments.:-)
But seriously...it doesn't matter what argument Congresscritters use when they go politicing; they can argue that the ghost of Emperor Norton commanded them to pass the legislation. That might affect how I vote next time around, but has no legal impact on a bill.
What matters is whether they have the Constitutional authority to pass this bill. Substantially, for the reasons I pointed out above, they do. (It certainly may be the case that some small details will be snipped by the courts, I'm not claiming familiarity with every provision; but Congress has Constitutional authority to put just about any tax it likes on us.)
If we let this law stand, then logically we accept that the feds can order us to do pretty much anything, and the 10th Amendment is even deader than it's been since FDR.
The 10th says that the feds don't have powers not mentioned in the Constitution. Taxation and regulation of interstate commerce (which health insurance companies are definitely engaged in) are powers mentioned in the Constitution. Ergo, the 10th is not relevant.
My favorite example is that you'd have to accept a 99% income tax on any American who won't move to a collective turnip farm.
Congress has Constitutional authority to say "We are putting a 99% tax on all incomes; collective turnip farms are exempt." And if the President signs it, it would be the legitimate law of the land.
They would, of course, all be voted out of office at the next opportunity, and replaced with candidates who would repeal that law. That's the Constitution's guard against really stupid laws.
The fact that you don't like a law, or even that a law is really, really stupid, does not mean that it is unconstitutional.
I'm going to die anyway - it makes no difference to me if it happens at age 60 or 70.
I'm sorry to hear that you value your life so little.
(Or perhaps you're just very young...your opinion may change when you're 60. Family lore has a story about my grandmother going to nursing school when she was 50, and some snot-nosed young brat in her geriatric medicine class saying, "I just hope I live to be 50, by then I will have done everything I want." Grandma, bless her, gave that kid an rapid education.)
I am of the opinion that insurance is unnecessary for young healthy people (below age 60), since the odds of getting sick are about the same as the odds of winning the lottery. i.e. Near-zero.
You are wrong by several orders of magnitude.
Odds of winning hitting the jackpot in a 6/49 Lotto: 1 in 13,983,816.
I consider MY view to be the more intelligent one and since this is a "free" country, I am entitled to the view.
Yes, you are entitled to that view. As I have demonstrated, it is based on hideously wrong assumptions, but you're entitled to it anyway. And I am entitled to the view that "Tax policy is giving you an incentive to behave more intelligently". Great, now that we've affirmed each other's rights of belief and speech...what's your point?
So government pre-dates concentrated wealth in the history of mankind?
Absolutely. Concentrated wealth only became possible with civilization and agriculture; when we were nomadic hunter-gatherers, no one owned land, and personal possessions were limited to what you could carry. Back then, "wealth" was that you had a nicer spear and shiner trinkets than the next guy. It was only after it became possible for you to have more land (or better land), or more cattle, than me, that we could have a real difference in wealth.
Goverment predates all of this. The most primitive form of government -- the alpha of the pack -- predates humanity. Even if we limit discussion to Homo sapiens, nomadic groups had tribal chiefs or councils. And kings and princes pretty much came with cities. (As did priests, but that's another rant.)
Poverty, therefore, is a thing created by that which is called civilized life. It exists not in the natural state.
...
It is a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural, uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race. In that state every man would have been born to property. He would have been a joint life proprietor with rest in the property of the soil, and in all its natural productions, vegetable and animal.
But the earth in its natural state, as before said, is capable of supporting but a small number of inhabitants compared with what it is capable of doing in a cultivated state. And as it is impossible to separate the improvement made by cultivation from the earth itself, upon which that improvement is made, the idea of landed property arose from that parable connection; but it is nevertheless true, that it is the value of the improvement, only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property.
(Technically, it could be argued that "the history of mankind" only picks up with writing, thus after civilization, but I'm presuming the broader meaning of "humanity's existence including prehistory" here.)
wealth will concentrate in the hands of those with the greatest willingness and ability to use force. The fact that this is currently the government does not escape me.
The group that has the greatest potential to use force, is by that fact the government --
de facto, if occasionally not de jure. If we shrank and shrank our democratically elected government until it could be "drowned in a bathtub", government by plutocrats or by strongmen would fill the power vacuum.
And indeed, this often seems to be the goal of some leaders of the conservative movement; going back to this nation's founding there have always been those who are suspicious of too much democracy, and want to tilt the scales to aristocracy and plutocracy. They appeal to the universal American desire to "get government off our backs!" -- but don't mention that it's because they want to put the leeches of landlords, bankers, and absentee investors on our necks.
How else do you explain that I will be fined $950 because I exercised a Pro-Choice decision not to have hospital insurance
Calm down. You're not being "fined". Your taxes are going up.
Your taxes are higher if you rent rather than own your home; your taxes are higher if you don't have kids; your taxes are higher if you purchase one sort of vehicle over another; your taxes are higher if you don't sock money away in a retirement fund. You still have the choices, and these are not fines or "oppression", and it's ridiculous to label them as such.
Neither are you being fined for making the (stupid) choice to fail to carry health insurance. If you are seriously injured or fall gravely ill, you will not be able to "pay cash directly to the doctor", that's the whole point of insurance. Tax policy is giving you an incentive to behave more intelligently, and is making you pay your share of the costs for a public good, but you still have the choice.
A new and truly liberal idea is to let each Individual be sovereign & run his/her own affairs with virtually no government interference.
Indeed. So long, that is, as we understand that all forms of concentrated wealth arise from government interference -- landlordism, corporate ownership, inheritance, et cetera -- and eliminate them.
I don't think, though, that you'll find many conservatives arguing that the government's power to issue and enforce land deeds, corporate charters, copyrights, patents, etcetera, should be restricted.
"Smaller government!" has been only a marketing slogan for conservatives, even as federal spending has gone up more under GOP administrations than under Democratic ones. For most in the conservative movement, "Smaller government!" means only less regulation on economics parasites like landlords and shareholders, less regulation of pollution and of shoddy, dangerous, and fraudulent goods, and fewer laws to enforce civil rights; but more government power to regulate personal behavior, and more power to back up private privilege.
Slashdot Mirror
In point of fact, running is good, not bad, for your joints. Runners have fewer disabilities, a longer span of activity in their lives and are less likely to die early.
If you do run, though, skip the expensive running shoes.
Some do it more than others, for various cultural reasons. The French famously have an institute, the Académie française, to keep their language "pure"; several other nations have something similar, to varying degrees. On the other hand English is a filthy whore who'll go bed with any other tongue.
Japanese is an interesting mis-mash of its own native words, Chinese imports, and words stolen from English, Dutch, German, French and Portuguese.
I don't know about the spoken language, but my understanding is that over the centuries, written Chinese has changed much less than written English (because of it's logographic nature), so that it's much easier for a Chinese native speaker to read ancient texts than it is for us to read Old English.
"If you don't jump the turnstile like that punk did, then you have no worries about getting tazered."
"If you don't step on the grass like that punk did, then you have no worries about getting tazered."
"If you don't look cockeyed at a cop like that punk did, then you have no worries about getting tazered."
Running on a ballfield does not justify the use of a potentially lethal torture device.
Sometimes, yes. That does not change the nature of the flow of information.
"Information wants to be free" is not a value judgement. It's a statement of behaviour, like saying "water 'wants' to flow downhill' or 'hot air 'wants' to rise'". It tells us that if you want to get water to flow uphill, or hot air to sink, or information to not flow freely, you've got a lot of work to do.
Yes, it is. A constitutional democratic republic is a form of democracy.
Because actual democracy is bad for the privileged classes. The Founders who argued the loudest against too much democracy in the Constitution were believers in aristocracy. Even so, much of their planning revolved around how to give voters the tools to grasp the bigger picture: our educational system for one
You do know that public schooling didn't come to the US until decades after its founding, right? And that the federal Department of Education didn't come along until the 20th century?
A 16% increase in diagonal size -- fairly significant.
Not every worthy of consideration, then.
It's a cycle. When the state behaves violently, it sets an example for the people; kids grow up assuming that violence is the way to deal with problems. When the people behave violently, the state becomes more aggressive.
Gee, someone resisting a thug who's shown a willingness to use a potentially lethal electric torture device? Imagine that.
And therefore having a much smaller screen and keyboard. (Does the Incredible even have a real keyboard?)
The "bigger than a cellphone, smaller than a netbook" size is useful for many things. It's good for gaming, as the success of the Ninendo DS shows. It's a better size for watching videos or reading e-books than a phone, while still fitting -- if awkwardly -- into a pocket. It's also good for writing -- my Zaurus CL-3000 goes to bars and coffeehouses, on planes and trains, and lets me work on poems and essays with much more convenience than if I were trying to edit text on my Centro.
I'm not much of a gamer, but I might be interested in a Pandora as a replacement when my beloved Zaurus eventually gives up the ghost.
Firearms are for the distinct purpose of throwing small bits of metal very fast.
The purpose to which those bits of metal are thrown, is solely at the discretion of the operator. They can be thrown at marked pieces of paper or other inanimate targets for fun; at animals, for the thrill of killing or in order to eat the corpses; at innocent people, for the thrill of killing or in order to take their stuff (or, rarely, in order to eat the corpses); or at people who are a threat to the safety of others, in order to damage the threateners' bodies to such an extent that they are no longer a threat.
Tasers are meant for the distinct purpose of delivering an electric shock -- usually, but not always, below the lethal level if administered singly -- to the target.
The purpose to which that shock is delivered, is solely at the discretion of the operator. It can be delivered so that some sadistic person can get his jollies; it can be delivered so as to incapacitate someone and take their stuff; it can be delivered to enforce authoritarian power hierarchies, by causing pain and humiliation and the risk of death to people who don't "keep their place"; it can be delivered multiple times so as to murder someone, either for thrills or to take their stuff; or it can be delivered to people who are a threat to the safety of others, in order to incapacitate them to the point that they are no longer a threat.
Uh, yes, it is. Are you suggesting that "unprecedented failure" is an excuse rather than a condemnation?
No, there weren't. That's the problem. Safeguards were left out. Failed tests were ignored , and the "blowout preventer" was known to be damaged.
It's an economic and ecological necessity that we stop using fossil fuels. We should regard this incident as the same sort a wake-up call a junkie gets when he has a disaster while hustling for a fix.
Which does not alter the presence of criminal negligence.
No, they're not. "Everything possible to fix the problem" would have meant that they were taking the proper steps to prevent it, and prepared with the proper cleanup equipment if there were a leak.
In a sane world, after a fuck-up like this, BP would simply cease to exist, its corporate charter shredded and its assets nationalized for the duration of the emergency, and then auctioned off to parties who have demonstrated the ability to behave responsibly.
On what basis do you claim that the dispersant has been effective in reducing the impact? I have to say I trust the judgment of the EPA on that more than I trust J. Random Slashdotter or BP, but I'm willing to look at expert opinion if you can cite some.
When corporate criminals are fouling the planet, I'm all for government agencies interfering with them.
Right-click, View Page Info, Media: http://www.google.com/logos/swf/pacman10-hp-sound.swf. Though this only loads when the game starts.
The game itself is Javascript.
It's not "exactly the same" precisely because it is invasive.
The sovereignty of the state ends at my skin. Period.
You want to put me in a "clean room" for a bit and then pick up any bits of hair and skin I leave behind? Ok, I won't resist, assuming it's a legit arrest. You want to take a microgram of living flesh from me? Fuck you, buddy. That's stepping over a bright, clear line.
Here's an argument for you: the state has no right to any amount of my flesh.
None. Zero. Nada.
I'll pay taxes with only minor grumbling: "render on to Caesar what is Caesar's", and all. But my flesh is not Caesar's.
And I don't have a problem with people who have shown that the are a threat to the rights of others, being placed under the close supervision of the state, even including losing to some degree the right to make choices about their bodies. But this proposal is not about convicts, it's about presumed-innocent arrestees; and a population-wide database would be that much worse.
The only argument in favor of such a database is that it makes live easier for cops. There's a term for a nation where laws are made on that basis: police state.
Personally, I'm going to inform any cop who tries to take any part of flesh that I regard that as sacrilege and as the moral equivalent of rape, and will resist by any means necessary and available. Yes, I will quite likely be beaten while resisting; that doesn't change my duty to resist heinous crimes.
Letting people create an account is not the issue. Forcing them to do so in order to complete an order, post a comment, or whatever, is.
So, um, in order to keep me coming back for more, you're going to make me jump through hoops before I can use your site at all?
Brilliant, that. "You can come into my store after you fill out this membership form." That works if you're Costco, but is not a good general business model.
Which is why the gods made reCAPTCHA.
Well, not so much. People clamored for the federal government to take up a larger role exactly because they couldn't get corrupt state and local governments to listen to them. Buying a city councilman was practical for a rich man; a large business could buy a state legislator.
In any big city, you can't effectively go bitch at the City Council, they're in the pockets of local land developers, or bought off by big corporations who promise to bring in jobs. At the state level, political machines run things. So the people clamored for reforms like the direct election of Senators, and greater federal regulation of big business.
The problem is that we let the concentration of wealth in this country grow to the point where corporations could buy off not just local and state government, but Congresscritters too.
The 10th says that the feds don't have powers not mentioned in the Constitution. As the health care bill that has the right so inflamed uses the federal powers of taxation, spending for the general welfare, and regulation of interstate commerce granted in the Constitution, the 10th does not apply.
Citation? (A reliable one, please; the "CNS News" that you mention, creation of right-wing loon L. Brent Bozell and perhaps an even worse source of disinformation than even Fox News, has already been brought to task for distortions of health care reform - more than once, in fact.) Thanks.
Well, of course everyone is smarter when they listen to my arguments. :-)
But seriously...it doesn't matter what argument Congresscritters use when they go politicing; they can argue that the ghost of Emperor Norton commanded them to pass the legislation. That might affect how I vote next time around, but has no legal impact on a bill.
What matters is whether they have the Constitutional authority to pass this bill. Substantially, for the reasons I pointed out above, they do. (It certainly may be the case that some small details will be snipped by the courts, I'm not claiming familiarity with every provision; but Congress has Constitutional authority to put just about any tax it likes on us.)
The 10th says that the feds don't have powers not mentioned in the Constitution. Taxation and regulation of interstate commerce (which health insurance companies are definitely engaged in) are powers mentioned in the Constitution. Ergo, the 10th is not relevant.
Congress has Constitutional authority to say "We are putting a 99% tax on all incomes; collective turnip farms are exempt." And if the President signs it, it would be the legitimate law of the land.
They would, of course, all be voted out of office at the next opportunity, and replaced with candidates who would repeal that law. That's the Constitution's guard against really stupid laws.
The fact that you don't like a law, or even that a law is really, really stupid, does not mean that it is unconstitutional.
I'm sorry to hear that you value your life so little.
(Or perhaps you're just very young...your opinion may change when you're 60. Family lore has a story about my grandmother going to nursing school when she was 50, and some snot-nosed young brat in her geriatric medicine class saying, "I just hope I live to be 50, by then I will have done everything I want." Grandma, bless her, gave that kid an rapid education.)
You are wrong by several orders of magnitude.
Odds of winning hitting the jackpot in a 6/49 Lotto: 1 in 13,983,816.
Odds of getting cancer before age 40: 1 in 70 for men, 1 in 50 for women.
Yes, you are entitled to that view. As I have demonstrated, it is based on hideously wrong assumptions, but you're entitled to it anyway. And I am entitled to the view that "Tax policy is giving you an incentive to behave more intelligently". Great, now that we've affirmed each other's rights of belief and speech...what's your point?
Absolutely. Concentrated wealth only became possible with civilization and agriculture; when we were nomadic hunter-gatherers, no one owned land, and personal possessions were limited to what you could carry. Back then, "wealth" was that you had a nicer spear and shiner trinkets than the next guy. It was only after it became possible for you to have more land (or better land), or more cattle, than me, that we could have a real difference in wealth.
Industrial civilization has only amplified this trend, giving us the L curve of wealth, where the top 1% make in one year what it takes a mere millionaire a lifetime to accumulate.
Goverment predates all of this. The most primitive form of government -- the alpha of the pack -- predates humanity. Even if we limit discussion to Homo sapiens, nomadic groups had tribal chiefs or councils. And kings and princes pretty much came with cities. (As did priests, but that's another rant.)
As Tom Paine, that radical socialist, noted,
(Technically, it could be argued that "the history of mankind" only picks up with writing, thus after civilization, but I'm presuming the broader meaning of "humanity's existence including prehistory" here.)
The group that has the greatest potential to use force, is by that fact the government -- de facto, if occasionally not de jure. If we shrank and shrank our democratically elected government until it could be "drowned in a bathtub", government by plutocrats or by strongmen would fill the power vacuum.
And indeed, this often seems to be the goal of some leaders of the conservative movement; going back to this nation's founding there have always been those who are suspicious of too much democracy, and want to tilt the scales to aristocracy and plutocracy. They appeal to the universal American desire to "get government off our backs!" -- but don't mention that it's because they want to put the leeches of landlords, bankers, and absentee investors on our necks.
Calm down. You're not being "fined". Your taxes are going up.
Your taxes are higher if you rent rather than own your home; your taxes are higher if you don't have kids; your taxes are higher if you purchase one sort of vehicle over another; your taxes are higher if you don't sock money away in a retirement fund. You still have the choices, and these are not fines or "oppression", and it's ridiculous to label them as such.
Neither are you being fined for making the (stupid) choice to fail to carry health insurance. If you are seriously injured or fall gravely ill, you will not be able to "pay cash directly to the doctor", that's the whole point of insurance. Tax policy is giving you an incentive to behave more intelligently, and is making you pay your share of the costs for a public good, but you still have the choice.
Indeed. So long, that is, as we understand that all forms of concentrated wealth arise from government interference -- landlordism, corporate ownership, inheritance, et cetera -- and eliminate them.
I don't think, though, that you'll find many conservatives arguing that the government's power to issue and enforce land deeds, corporate charters, copyrights, patents, etcetera, should be restricted.
"Smaller government!" has been only a marketing slogan for conservatives, even as federal spending has gone up more under GOP administrations than under Democratic ones. For most in the conservative movement, "Smaller government!" means only less regulation on economics parasites like landlords and shareholders, less regulation of pollution and of shoddy, dangerous, and fraudulent goods, and fewer laws to enforce civil rights; but more government power to regulate personal behavior, and more power to back up private privilege.