How is it that some guy in his 30's just wakes up one day after a lifetime of Big Macs and decides "gee, it must be that evil McDonalds conspiracy to make me gain weight..."
What actually happened is that some guy woke up one day and said, "look at all the other people exploiting the law for profit... maybe I can make a quick buck by suing McDonalds for providing me with unhealthy food".
People need to take some fucking responsibility for their own actions and their own meals.
I strongly agree. And, the first step in making people take responsibility for their own actions is to impose strict limits on the size and scope of government. People only exploit government for profit because it's exploitable -- and that's a direct result of an overly complex, ambiguous, bloated system of law. Reduce the size and scope of government, and the ability to exploit it will be reduced proportionately.
If we want to get rid of the cockroaches, we need to put away the food.
You refer to people who were killed by Saddam or killed by US army during that short war?
The US military, of course. The exact number of innocent deaths is unknown, but the count is well into the thousands. Here is one article you may be interested in: Extraction of media-reported civilian injuries from the Iraq Body Count database and archive of war reports provides evidence of at least 20,000 civilian injuries on top of the maximum reported 7798 deaths. 8,000 of these injuries were in the Baghdad area alone, suggesting that the full, countrywide picture, as with deaths, is yet to emerge.
when polled by Gallup great majority of Iraqis (80%) want US army to stay for another year
Yet another example of the problem I just described. This 80% (if the poll wasn't complete BS that is) are obviously not the ones who lost friends or family in the war. Does a lack of concern from 80% of a country make murder acceptable? Absolutely not.
I have been unable to detect that breakdown of civil rights you mention.
That's because it hasn't affected you on a personal level, or at least you haven't detected any noticable change in your life. By the same token, you probably wouldn't give a damn about Eminient Domain abuse until the state arrives at your doorstep with bulldozers and a piece of paper that says your ownership of land is revoked. Likewise, you probably don't care about the innocent civilian who was thrown in jail without due process, accused of having something to do with terrorism. And, you probably couldn't care less that the US has the highest inmate/population ratio in the entire world, while over half of those inmates were convicted on victimless crimes. It wasn't you, so why should you care? And then we have the thousands of innocent human beings murdered in Iraq, each of whom was infinitely more valuable than whatever "justification" the US government cares to name for war. But it wasn't you or your family or friends who was murdered, was it? So you don't give a damn. Nice.
It is exactly this kind of mindset which fosters the abuse of power. Nobody cares until the issue affects them on a personal level. By that time, it's too late. So goes the history of government.
There is no compensation for losing 16 months of your life. He could be awarded all the money in the world and it wouldn't even begin to make up for what they've stolen from him.
I call this a massive failure of government, and one which is a direct result of an overly complex, ambiguous, highly exploitable system of law, i.e. big government.
That's about as stupid as Microsoft renaming MSN to "Internet Explorer" - for the sake of "brand recognition".
I know more than a few users who actually don't know the difference between the web browser and the ISP. Hell, some people don't even know what a web browser is. To them it's simply "the internet".
The main problem here is that there is not, in fact, a free market for energy. Government is still very entangled in the energy market. "Deregulation" is nothing but a government-manufactured label for a slightly different scheme of government control -- a convienent scapegoat for when the program fails.
The argument proposed by this article (and most everyone here) is completely baseless. In order to prove that free markets cannot produce reliable energy, we actually need a free market to study. Until then, we are comparing one non-free market to another non-free market. Logically, that doesn't tell us a damn thing about free markets.
Indeed, the only thing the blackouts proved is that the current flavor of non-free market has failed.
I agree, this sounds like another pork barrel project to me: something to spend money on and make government a little bit bigger, handing a little bit more "responsibility" to those in power. It's just another small step in the inevitable conquest of Big Government. The more power they obtain, the more they want. If anyone needs more evidence, look no further than the exponential growth of the once-limited US federal government over the course of its existence.
There is no such thing as a "loss" when your business acquires its revenue through force. Any increase in government spending or "responsibility" equals profit for those in power (via administration costs among other things). This is exactly why we see pork barrel projects like this one, designed to increase the scope of government for those in power.
Simply put, what business executive wouldn't want to increase their "market share"? (In the case of government, "market share" refers to the general size and scope of government. The bigger the government, the more profit for those in power.)
There you go, now we're starting to get somewhere. Harassment is an initiation of force. The harrassment argument (sexual or not, I don't think it makes a difference) may not hold water 100% of the time, but I do agree that spam (and snail mail for that matter) may be considered harassment, especially if you've already told them you don't want to recieve it.
News flash: human beings are driven primarily by self-interest. And that's not a bad thing. It's a very good thing, in fact the very thing which drives all forms of human advancement, including evolution.
It's irrelvent that the telcos are acting out of self-interest. So are you, after all. So is everyone who opposes the RIAA. What does that change? Absolutely nothing. The important thing is that the telcos are on our side, at least with regard to this particular situation -- they don't want to take the RIAA's crap any more than we do, and it doesn't take a genius to realize that they're supporting, not weakening, our side of the story.
If someone is urinating on your property, that's an actual initiation of force, and hence a legitimate use of government to solve the problem. It is not easy to argue that spam (and junk snail mail for that matter) represents an initiation of force. That is the root of the issue for Libertarians: the role of government is to protect the citizens against the initiation of force, and nothing more. Why? Because concentrated power is the most dangerous force that exists in the world -- it needs to be strictly limited, not expanded to "solve" every concievable social problem.
The argument is not "shut up and deal with it" as the above post would have you believe. The argument is that spam does not represent a true initiation of force, and thus it is not a legitimate use of government to solve the problem. The analogy presented above is a nothing but a typical, predictable, childish evaluation of the Libertarian argument, one which completely ignores the basic principles which guide the Libertarian philosophy.
The US PTO is a money-making service for the government
Seems pretty obvious to me. Government profits off everything it does, because government cannot "fail" as private business can. When your revenue is acquired through force, rather than voluntary trade, the concepts of risk and loss are eliminated. Even when a government program fails miserably, government still profits. I'll cite the "war on drugs" as an obvious example.
More importantly, abolishing prohibition would eliminate the violent crime which is an inevitable side effect of prohibition. During alcohol prohibition, murder and violent crime rates skyrocketed. When alcohol prohibition was overturned, the crime rates dropped right back down to what they were before prohibition.
Just as alcohol prohibition gave rise to organized crime, "modern" prohibition gave us the Bloods, the Crips, and drive-by shootings. We don't see people gunning down each other in the street over caffeine or nicotine, do we? There's a very good reason for that: caffeine and nicotine are legal products which are bought and sold in a legal market. In the legal market, producers and consumers must abide by the rules of voluntary association (i.e. contract law). In the black market, there is no such rule.
That's nice, but power companies are not examples of free market enterprise. Power companies are essentially arms of government -- monopolies created and sustained through force.
I wouldn't trust an OS produced by government, period. The Chinese government is arguably more oppressive than others, but they still have a lot more in common with other governments than a private organization. At the root, a non-criminal private organization operates on the principle of voluntary association. Government, by definition, operates on the principle of force.
(For those who haven't yet realized, everything and anything government does is bound to the principle of force. At a bare minimum, government wouldn't be able to fund itself without force. The fact that some governments allow their citizens to play a role in the electoral process does not, in any way, remove the element of force from government.)
Now, back to my point. Which type of human interaction is more exploitable, the one which is based on voluntary association or the one based on force?
The income tax, which was strictly prohibited under the founders' outline of limited government, actually required an amendment to the constitution. I think that qualifies as an overturning.
You are correct, however, in that most of the recent attacks on individual liberty have been achieved through ignoring, not overturning, the limits on government.
The most important of which is (was) limits on the scope of government. Only by overturning these limits have we arrived at the system we have today: an overly complex, ambiguous, highly exploitable web of nonsense laws.
Isn't the government supposed to be working for us? Aren't our rights supposed to be first and foremost in their minds?
That would be great, but it's not logically possible. Government works for its own interests, by definition, because government is rooted in force. Force requires an inequality of power; force requires that certain people (politicians and other lawmakers) hold power over other people. Certain people have the "right" to invoke force as a business model, while others do not.
With that said, popular belief would propose that the people willingly delegate the "right" to initiate force to government, for the benefit of the people. But from a logical standpoint, no sane individual would ever willingly grant another individual the use of force as a means to an end. If the first individual consented to the interaction, no force would be necessary! Force is only necessary when an individual does not consent to the interaction. Therefore, the use of force cannot possibly be invoked for the benifit of those being forced. The use of force is invoked only for the benefit of those who are using force -- in other words, government works for its own interests by definition.
Moreover, it is impossible for an individual to delegate the "right" to initiate force to government, because the individual did not hold that right in the first place. Nor does "society", which is not a magical fairy with special powers but a collection of individuals who are all bound to the same rules of voluntary association.
As for the willingness of government to impose an entirely new, complex layer of law on top of the mess they've already created -- look no further than the profit incentive. Every new law makes government bigger. The bigger the government, the more it costs, and in particular, the more the administration of government costs. The bigger the government, the more power its lawmakers have, and the better they can exploit government for profit.
The solution to this problem, namely the problem of force being abused, is to strictly limit the application of force -- in other words, to drastically reduce the size and scope of government.
Not to mention the waste of money the war on Marijuana is.
Yes, drug prohibition is a complete waste of the taxpayer's money, but more importantly, drug prohibition creates violent crime. Just as alcohol prohibition gave rise to organized crime, drug prohibition gave us the bloods and the crips, and drive-by shootings. Of course the government would never admit this; instead they will claim that the people are the problem, not the law. But, it's hard to argue with the fact that nobody is out in the street killing each other over caffeine and nicotine. In the black market, the rules of voluntary association are simply invalidated, and thus it is possible to adopt force as a business model. Eliminate the black market, and these people will have to abide by the rules of voluntary association like everyone else.
How much do you think your electricity, water, and telephone services would cost without government regulation?
A lot less than they do now, because without government standing in the way, competition would flourish. Competition drives the market price down. Remember, public utilities are essentially monopolies created and sustatined through the force of government. Monopolies have no incentive to provide efficient service or reduce prices; after all, the customer only has one choice.
Ironic, but entirely predictable. Like many expansions of government, the name or slogan is designed to suggest a "feel good" attitude for the victim (taxpayer). It's simple propaganda, but obviously it works, because the tactic has been used over and over again throughout the course of history, not just in the USA.
In this case, who would oppose the "patriot" act but a non-patriot, i.e. someone who stands in the way of national pride?
Remember, corporations only abuse the legal system because they can. The root of the problem is government, and the fact that government has the ability to continuously expand government year after year without limit. The bigger the government, the more complex, ambiguous, and exploitable the law. The solution is to eliminate the powers of government that make it possible -- not to expand government even more via regulation, taxing, etc (all of which are guaranteed to be exploited too). We need to impose strict limits on the scope and expense of government, or the system will continue to be exploited by its very nature.
What's the matter, can't speak for yourself Mr. Moderator? Didn't like the tone of my post, so despite the perfectly valid point, you mod it down? C'mon, at least try to think for yourself.
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What actually happened is that some guy woke up one day and said, "look at all the other people exploiting the law for profit... maybe I can make a quick buck by suing McDonalds for providing me with unhealthy food".
People need to take some fucking responsibility for their own actions and their own meals.
I strongly agree. And, the first step in making people take responsibility for their own actions is to impose strict limits on the size and scope of government. People only exploit government for profit because it's exploitable -- and that's a direct result of an overly complex, ambiguous, bloated system of law. Reduce the size and scope of government, and the ability to exploit it will be reduced proportionately.
If we want to get rid of the cockroaches, we need to put away the food.
The US military, of course. The exact number of innocent deaths is unknown, but the count is well into the thousands. Here is one article you may be interested in: Extraction of media-reported civilian injuries from the Iraq Body Count database and archive of war reports provides evidence of at least 20,000 civilian injuries on top of the maximum reported 7798 deaths. 8,000 of these injuries were in the Baghdad area alone, suggesting that the full, countrywide picture, as with deaths, is yet to emerge.
when polled by Gallup great majority of Iraqis (80%) want US army to stay for another year
Yet another example of the problem I just described. This 80% (if the poll wasn't complete BS that is) are obviously not the ones who lost friends or family in the war. Does a lack of concern from 80% of a country make murder acceptable? Absolutely not.
That's because it hasn't affected you on a personal level, or at least you haven't detected any noticable change in your life. By the same token, you probably wouldn't give a damn about Eminient Domain abuse until the state arrives at your doorstep with bulldozers and a piece of paper that says your ownership of land is revoked. Likewise, you probably don't care about the innocent civilian who was thrown in jail without due process, accused of having something to do with terrorism. And, you probably couldn't care less that the US has the highest inmate/population ratio in the entire world, while over half of those inmates were convicted on victimless crimes. It wasn't you, so why should you care? And then we have the thousands of innocent human beings murdered in Iraq, each of whom was infinitely more valuable than whatever "justification" the US government cares to name for war. But it wasn't you or your family or friends who was murdered, was it? So you don't give a damn. Nice.
It is exactly this kind of mindset which fosters the abuse of power. Nobody cares until the issue affects them on a personal level. By that time, it's too late. So goes the history of government.
There is no compensation for losing 16 months of your life. He could be awarded all the money in the world and it wouldn't even begin to make up for what they've stolen from him.
I call this a massive failure of government, and one which is a direct result of an overly complex, ambiguous, highly exploitable system of law, i.e. big government.
I know more than a few users who actually don't know the difference between the web browser and the ISP. Hell, some people don't even know what a web browser is. To them it's simply "the internet".
The main problem here is that there is not, in fact, a free market for energy. Government is still very entangled in the energy market. "Deregulation" is nothing but a government-manufactured label for a slightly different scheme of government control -- a convienent scapegoat for when the program fails.
The argument proposed by this article (and most everyone here) is completely baseless. In order to prove that free markets cannot produce reliable energy, we actually need a free market to study. Until then, we are comparing one non-free market to another non-free market. Logically, that doesn't tell us a damn thing about free markets.
Indeed, the only thing the blackouts proved is that the current flavor of non-free market has failed.
I agree, this sounds like another pork barrel project to me: something to spend money on and make government a little bit bigger, handing a little bit more "responsibility" to those in power. It's just another small step in the inevitable conquest of Big Government. The more power they obtain, the more they want. If anyone needs more evidence, look no further than the exponential growth of the once-limited US federal government over the course of its existence.
There is no such thing as a "loss" when your business acquires its revenue through force. Any increase in government spending or "responsibility" equals profit for those in power (via administration costs among other things). This is exactly why we see pork barrel projects like this one, designed to increase the scope of government for those in power.
Simply put, what business executive wouldn't want to increase their "market share"? (In the case of government, "market share" refers to the general size and scope of government. The bigger the government, the more profit for those in power.)
There you go, now we're starting to get somewhere. Harassment is an initiation of force. The harrassment argument (sexual or not, I don't think it makes a difference) may not hold water 100% of the time, but I do agree that spam (and snail mail for that matter) may be considered harassment, especially if you've already told them you don't want to recieve it.
News flash: human beings are driven primarily by self-interest. And that's not a bad thing. It's a very good thing, in fact the very thing which drives all forms of human advancement, including evolution.
It's irrelvent that the telcos are acting out of self-interest. So are you, after all. So is everyone who opposes the RIAA. What does that change? Absolutely nothing. The important thing is that the telcos are on our side, at least with regard to this particular situation -- they don't want to take the RIAA's crap any more than we do, and it doesn't take a genius to realize that they're supporting, not weakening, our side of the story.
If someone is urinating on your property, that's an actual initiation of force, and hence a legitimate use of government to solve the problem. It is not easy to argue that spam (and junk snail mail for that matter) represents an initiation of force. That is the root of the issue for Libertarians: the role of government is to protect the citizens against the initiation of force, and nothing more. Why? Because concentrated power is the most dangerous force that exists in the world -- it needs to be strictly limited, not expanded to "solve" every concievable social problem.
The argument is not "shut up and deal with it" as the above post would have you believe. The argument is that spam does not represent a true initiation of force, and thus it is not a legitimate use of government to solve the problem. The analogy presented above is a nothing but a typical, predictable, childish evaluation of the Libertarian argument, one which completely ignores the basic principles which guide the Libertarian philosophy.
Seems pretty obvious to me. Government profits off everything it does, because government cannot "fail" as private business can. When your revenue is acquired through force, rather than voluntary trade, the concepts of risk and loss are eliminated. Even when a government program fails miserably, government still profits. I'll cite the "war on drugs" as an obvious example.
More importantly, abolishing prohibition would eliminate the violent crime which is an inevitable side effect of prohibition. During alcohol prohibition, murder and violent crime rates skyrocketed. When alcohol prohibition was overturned, the crime rates dropped right back down to what they were before prohibition.
Just as alcohol prohibition gave rise to organized crime, "modern" prohibition gave us the Bloods, the Crips, and drive-by shootings. We don't see people gunning down each other in the street over caffeine or nicotine, do we? There's a very good reason for that: caffeine and nicotine are legal products which are bought and sold in a legal market. In the legal market, producers and consumers must abide by the rules of voluntary association (i.e. contract law). In the black market, there is no such rule.
That's nice, but power companies are not examples of free market enterprise. Power companies are essentially arms of government -- monopolies created and sustained through force.
Privatizing? We're not even close.
I wouldn't trust an OS produced by government, period. The Chinese government is arguably more oppressive than others, but they still have a lot more in common with other governments than a private organization. At the root, a non-criminal private organization operates on the principle of voluntary association. Government, by definition, operates on the principle of force.
(For those who haven't yet realized, everything and anything government does is bound to the principle of force. At a bare minimum, government wouldn't be able to fund itself without force. The fact that some governments allow their citizens to play a role in the electoral process does not, in any way, remove the element of force from government.)
Now, back to my point. Which type of human interaction is more exploitable, the one which is based on voluntary association or the one based on force?
The income tax, which was strictly prohibited under the founders' outline of limited government, actually required an amendment to the constitution. I think that qualifies as an overturning.
You are correct, however, in that most of the recent attacks on individual liberty have been achieved through ignoring, not overturning, the limits on government.
The most important of which is (was) limits on the scope of government. Only by overturning these limits have we arrived at the system we have today: an overly complex, ambiguous, highly exploitable web of nonsense laws.
That would be great, but it's not logically possible. Government works for its own interests, by definition, because government is rooted in force. Force requires an inequality of power; force requires that certain people (politicians and other lawmakers) hold power over other people. Certain people have the "right" to invoke force as a business model, while others do not.
With that said, popular belief would propose that the people willingly delegate the "right" to initiate force to government, for the benefit of the people. But from a logical standpoint, no sane individual would ever willingly grant another individual the use of force as a means to an end. If the first individual consented to the interaction, no force would be necessary! Force is only necessary when an individual does not consent to the interaction. Therefore, the use of force cannot possibly be invoked for the benifit of those being forced. The use of force is invoked only for the benefit of those who are using force -- in other words, government works for its own interests by definition.
Moreover, it is impossible for an individual to delegate the "right" to initiate force to government, because the individual did not hold that right in the first place. Nor does "society", which is not a magical fairy with special powers but a collection of individuals who are all bound to the same rules of voluntary association.
As for the willingness of government to impose an entirely new, complex layer of law on top of the mess they've already created -- look no further than the profit incentive. Every new law makes government bigger. The bigger the government, the more it costs, and in particular, the more the administration of government costs. The bigger the government, the more power its lawmakers have, and the better they can exploit government for profit.
The solution to this problem, namely the problem of force being abused, is to strictly limit the application of force -- in other words, to drastically reduce the size and scope of government.
Yes, drug prohibition is a complete waste of the taxpayer's money, but more importantly, drug prohibition creates violent crime. Just as alcohol prohibition gave rise to organized crime, drug prohibition gave us the bloods and the crips, and drive-by shootings. Of course the government would never admit this; instead they will claim that the people are the problem, not the law. But, it's hard to argue with the fact that nobody is out in the street killing each other over caffeine and nicotine. In the black market, the rules of voluntary association are simply invalidated, and thus it is possible to adopt force as a business model. Eliminate the black market, and these people will have to abide by the rules of voluntary association like everyone else.
A lot less than they do now, because without government standing in the way, competition would flourish. Competition drives the market price down. Remember, public utilities are essentially monopolies created and sustatined through the force of government. Monopolies have no incentive to provide efficient service or reduce prices; after all, the customer only has one choice.
Ironic, but entirely predictable. Like many expansions of government, the name or slogan is designed to suggest a "feel good" attitude for the victim (taxpayer). It's simple propaganda, but obviously it works, because the tactic has been used over and over again throughout the course of history, not just in the USA.
In this case, who would oppose the "patriot" act but a non-patriot, i.e. someone who stands in the way of national pride?
Remember, corporations only abuse the legal system because they can. The root of the problem is government, and the fact that government has the ability to continuously expand government year after year without limit. The bigger the government, the more complex, ambiguous, and exploitable the law. The solution is to eliminate the powers of government that make it possible -- not to expand government even more via regulation, taxing, etc (all of which are guaranteed to be exploited too). We need to impose strict limits on the scope and expense of government, or the system will continue to be exploited by its very nature.
And the average drug dealer (who conducts his business on the principle of voluntary association) gets more time in jail than the average rapist.
What's the matter, can't speak for yourself Mr. Moderator? Didn't like the tone of my post, so despite the perfectly valid point, you mod it down? C'mon, at least try to think for yourself.
Wouldn't that be nice if it were that simple? But it's not. Here is the simple business model of government, the ONLY business model of government:
1. You seize money from some people.
2. You distribute some of it to other people.
3. YOU KEEP A PROFIT FOR YOURSELF.
Am I the only one who sees something wrong with this?