The best reason to try this on the moon is that there is nowhere on Earth where the people on the surface wouldn't presume to own what was underneath the surface.
The best way to avoid wars and to keep people happy is to let folks who must "Agree to disagree" choose to not be neighbors.
We're out of places for free people to live on Earth's land masses. Everything on Earth's surface is owned and controlled by somebody at this point -- somebody who has no problem killing you if you don't do what they like.
Where is a free-minded man to live? Where is the next frontier? The sea-steading folks are working on a promising option, but that merely moves the goal posts out a bit farther, but doesn't solve the problem.
Space-steading is the long term answer. Getting a functional permanant society on the moon is step 1. Anything that makes that easier is worth looking at.
What China does for its education is simply not relevant here. The US government (until very recently) has never asserted the same powers that the Chinese government has over its populace, nor do I wish it to. Obviously solutions "that work" in other places where you have helpful factors like monoculturalism, ubiqoutous welfare, no individual rights, etc don't directly apply to the US.
Germany, for instance, completely criminalizes homeschooling. That sort of socio-political environment is not something I'm willing to tolerate (and i am cognizant that it was the law in some parts of the US for some time), the educational approaches and attitudes that result from that environment simply don't apply here.
If you read the Rothbard book about education that I mentioned, the history of public schooling in Germany is given special treatment, incidentally.
You could read "Education: Free and Compulsory", by Murray Rothbard. It's available as an online PDF from mises.org, iirc.
Of course, you will probably decide he is also a "crackpot".
The US has a relatively unique set of problems that many other places do not suffer from. I frankly do not care how things work in other places - I am concerned with how they can be made to work here, especially for my children.
Wasn't it Stalin who said, "The capitalists will sell us the rope we use to hang them."
You should assume that anyone in Russia or anywhere else that wants the windows code for naughty reasons already has it.
Nothing quite like putting quarterly profits above national security.
This brings up the more interesting half of my response.
What is Microsoft's obligation to US national security interests?
Microsoft (last i heard) had 40% of its revenue from outside the US. One reason MS has to continue putting up with the EU shakedowns is that MS gets so much money from its European customers. It would be financially irresponsible to just "walk away" and so MS has to continue putting up with the mafia style tactics employed by the EU.
The US DOJ has waxed and waned on how much it feels like "Sticking it" to Microsoft. Certainly the outrageous patent-troll lawsuits, monopoly litigation, and other things can be construed as "attacks" against Microsoft either by government entities in the US, or by MS competitotors using the force and authority of US government entities.
On the other hand, the current copyright and IP law protection regime in the US has some beneficial effects for MS. In the early days, having a strong copyright and anti-piracy legal framework was certainly a boon. These days when MS if the victim of many patent troll lawsuits it's not as clear that IP law is doing us much good.
I hold the (unpopular) view that Corporations have no moral obligations whatsoever.
When we see other countries doing bits of corporate protectionism to favor their domestic producers, we cry foul. IOW: I don't expect or want the US government to "help" Microsoft. But that's a two way street. Microsoft is a multi-national entity. WHy should it be loyal to the USA? Shouldn't its loyalties shift towards whomever provides the most benefits (or the minimum amount of pain/intrusion?)
I enjoyed reading your post. Insofar as you are discrediting the garage sale theory, I'm inclined to agree with you.
But then you come kind of unhinged.
The natural state of affairs in the consumer distopia is to, get this, consume without any regard to the consequences
Well, that's not quite true. Replace the word "Consequences" to "Costs", and you are flatly wrong. People respond to _costs_. And the fact of the matter is, for many Americans, the cost of throwing something away is quite low, and there's no reason for them not to do so.
For instance, I live in Fargo, ND. The city landfill is on the northwest edge of town. I've been there several times.
I can tell you what land here costs, and i can tell you the fill/pile-over rate of the landfill, and the population. And from this we, can extract the land acquisition and rent-value of continuing to do nothing more intelligent than simply _stacking garbage on city property_.
The fact of the matter is, that here, it doesn't make economic sense to do much of anything else with our garbage. My in-town residential garbage pickup costs me $9 a month.
Recycling occurs in the fucked-up model of "free market" only if some material in the waste is somehow worth extracting
Can you explain, generally, why people should feel bad about not doing things that you admit aren't worth doing?
The glorious "freedom" to pollute as long as it is somewhere else then you, cause "you got yours and the rest should go get theirs", you mendacious fuck, no?
The electricity your PC used when making your angry screed caused pollution. According to the EPA, the CO2 that you exhaled while composing your response is a pollutant.
Presumably, you feel that your post is so important that the pollution it creates -- pollution i have no choice but to contend with and accept, uncompensated -- was worth the tremendous insight you are offering.
On the other hand, the people dumping garbage in rathole countries for money are at least compensating those countries.
Your real beef is with the governments in these places -- who think so little of their own people that they satisfy garbage-storage obligations by dumping them on their own people, who, in those countries, have NO choice in the matter.
While we should be quick to lay the appropriate amount of evil at greedy bastards who would love nothing more than to pollute you and I to the moon to shave a cent of their own expenses, an honest assessment of the facts will reveal that by far, the worst polluters in the world, in terms of environmental impact, but also in terms of how many humans are harmed without recourse, are governments.
Because this is the USA, if you don't want to see your toxic garbage dumped in China, you can opt not to patronize the companies here whom do business that way.
But if you were in China, you'd have no choice at all.
My wife and I are hobbyist bee keepers. A few comments
1) bees will fly several miles from their hive when looking for nectar and pollen. Of course i wouldn't expect a pefectly symmetrical distribution of bee activity in all 360 degrees and at all distances away from the hive. So siting the hive is a relevant concern
2) the collection of nectar/etc is non-uniform with the passage of time. the amount of material collected depends on things like colony size [which in turn depends on the amount of nectar collected.. yay for cross-talk in experimental variables:)]. The bees are obviously collecting much more when something nearby is blooming. However, bees mostly stay home in cold weather or rainy conditions. So the amount of foraging bees do as a function of calendar date depends on the bloom and the weather conditions.
One could say that the experiment ignores this by only taking two measurements......which brings me to my final point: a hive is usually tended to considerably more often than twice in a season. the bees can put away a tremendous amount of honey in a short time if the colony is at full strength and there is a strong nearby bloom. if the hive becomes too crowded the colony will split and swarm. If the hive is made so large so as to be empty, it will be difficult to tell when a certain cell of comb was filled.
There are other factors: the creation of honey involves bees filling a cell with nectar and then vibrating their wings over that cell to manage the heat and evaporation. Any number of factors might affect the evaporative rate of the honey, like the local temperature or the rate at which a given cell was filled.
Certainly, some of the pollutants they are looking for would be affected by the evaporative rate of the water in the nectar, and without frequent monitoring and much higher precision data logging, i don't really know how you'd measure that.
So in summary: there is no guarantee that bees will go a certain place, much less at a certain time, nor is there any uniformity in how much work they do, nor in how they put up the nectar, nor in how they create the honey.
If the experiment is "i wonder how many airborne pollutants show up in a beehive after 1 season", then fine. But i wouldn't use it to measure anything else. I wouldn't even compare it to other beehives to see if airports create more pollution -- the activity of a given colony is simply not uniform.
Can you explain what public concern is served by preventing sick people from getting better?
I don't see that the FDA justifies its existance [and continued killing of Americans] based on "public concern" type issues.
Vaccinations, for instance, are not required in the USA. They often are for certain US institutions -- like public schools.
I have a general sense that many Americans would sooner see a sick person die than allow her to make a choice that the government doesn't approve of.
I have to tell myself that they must never think of things in those terms, as otherwise, how could they live with themselves?
The other things you mention are ALSO things I don't want the FDA to be able to do in a _regulatory_ fashion. I'd be happy to buy information from the FDA -- and to even subsidize making that information available to others for free, but I'd take that information under advisement.
Ultimately, I want to be treated like a free man, not someone who cannot be trusted with sharp objects.
Say the FDA were to go away, who do you think would be trying out these new experimental treatments first?
Sick people?
there is something extremely morbid about using the poor as medical guinea pigs due to their desperate situation
There is something extremely morbid about telling them to go die in this country, because they cannot afford to try and get better in other countries.
Taking away freedom hurts everone. But it hurts the poor the most.
The progressive ideology, while commendable for expressing so much concern for the poor, is killing them and keeping them poor. The cynic in me suggests that many progressive politicians only want to help the poor people show up on voting day -- and to keep them poor perpetually for just such occasions.
I'm going to do something a little distasteful, which is to bring political ideology into a thread where a man talks about his grim situation. But in your case, it is a matter of life and death, and it is for many people every year. It's not so often that we hear from them first hand.
You always hear politicans talk about shrinking the government in vague ways. If you listen long enough, you start to hear from libertarians that say _crazy_ sounding stuff.
One such occasion was when I started reading Milton Friedman, who is very middle of the road between "now" and the "utopian anarchy" of someone like Murray Rothbard.
Anyway, Milton Friedman (and a bunch of other people) says that the FDA should be abolished.
As I read I thought, "sure, it's not constitutionally authorized, and sure, it's more than is strictly required to run the country, but really, we'd be better off without it?"
And then I continued to read, and he made the case very eloquently: all of the testing that the FDA currently does could and would be done by non-governmental entities, or even perhaps government entities. There is certainly a useful function being done there.
But where the FDA does damage is what is affecting the OP. There are people out there, whom after consulting with their doctors, are ready to try a new and experimental treatment. They've considered the risks and they've decided to go for it.
And the FDA says, in effect, "NO. We don't trust you and your doctor to make decisiosn for yourself, and we would honestly rather that you died -- for sure, all the way -- than chance you _maybe_ getting better or _maybe_ getting sicker".
And so you have the weird outcome that the FDA is responsible for the deaths of many Americans every year -- people who are unwilling to break the law in this country [and unwilling or unable to get treatment elsewhere] die every year because the FDA doesn't allow them to try and live.
The insidious evil of government power is that there is always a downside. Government's only tool is coercion. In this case, an agency meant to protect Americans gives some of them a death sentence. Every year.
It's easy to say "oh sure, but they help more than they kill".
It's very easy to say if you aren't one of the ones getting killed.
The FDA shouldn't be able to ban medicines or procedures. It is killing Americans.
If the U.S. government wants more Ph.D.-level scientists so bad; start encouraging universities to open up more admissions slots, offering grants (instead of loans) for qualified candidates, and offering better paying post-doc positions. Otherwise STFU and stop complaining that no one is insane enough to go into serious research (more like serious *debt*).
The US government shouldn't "want" these things unless it has a big list of unfilled positions on specific projects requiring that level of talent.
What will all of these new PhDs do? They won't have tenure track positions. Will they have teaching positions? Only if any of the following happened: 1. undergrad enrollment went way up 2. researcher-only positions got created (with long-term funding not subject to congressional whims every year) 3. PhDs started teaching, taking back this responsibility from masters and other T/A type faculty.
#1 won't happen: the US university system is past saturation due to a variety of misguided US policy which has lead to skyrocketing costs and a collapsing middle class #2 won't happen because we are, as a nation, out of money, and out of national vision #3 won't happen, because university adminsitrators don't want the inflated payrolls
Remember when we were watching the news together? There was the story about that lady that went to the bar by herself, and turns out, she got raped later that evening.
It's primarily from oil revenues. There has been huge renewed interest in oil recovery in the western part of the state, and the state government gets license and other fees from the recovery of that oil.
Thus, the huge budget surplus.
Naturally, this surplus is a once-in-a-lifetime deal: there had to be the right arrangement of market oil prices, recovery technology, geologic discovery, and availability of drilling equipment and crews, such that it became very profitable to go after this new stuff. Once those factors change, the money will dry up.
Faced with this possibility, some wise ND legislators put an initiative on the ballot to lock up the money in an endowment type account, and to only let the state spend the profits, never the actual endowment. THis would have given us a sustainable spending / budget boost.
Of course, the voters rejected that idea. So I imagine we'll be burning through that money in pretty short order.
I have some bad news for you. America is already "a bunch of corporatists". Ironically, Ron Paul is probably one of the only legitimate critics of that policy, and is so "right wing" that the republican party does everything it can to suppress and exclude him.
It's really frustrating to try and talk politics in this country when people think of things only in terms of "i am on my team, and you are on your team, and your team is always wrong about everything".
There are no teams; we're _all_ going to lose big.
Some people may, but I am not "hoping for a terrible end". I have 2 babies in the NICU right now, and nothing will make you feel helplessly vulnerable and dependant on an advanced modern society like that does.
I'm saying unpopular things here [and elsewhere] to provoke discussion, and if there is any merit to the notion of our impending financial collapse, to do two things: - to help people prepare to ride-out the impending storm - to help people convince voters to vote-in people who will attempt to control the crash instead of letting the country go blindly over a cliff, saying "it won't happen" all the way down..
I keep showing up to work ever day, so I beleive that the US economy isn't a lost cause. I'm doing my part to keep the ship from sinking.
But I'm doing some other stuff on the side to hedge my bets.
the year over year output of US manufacturing has gone up.. for a long time.
Doing this "ratio stuff" you are doing is what is irrelevant. Burma doesn't have a financial services sector to speak of. Of _course_ the contribution of domestic manufacturing hasn't grown as fast as the GDP growth of finanical services.. we just got smashed by the long-standing financial sector bubble in this country. We also just got smashed by a real-estate speculation bubble. We also have the worlds largest software industry. Blah blah.
You are using all kinds of different bars and measures, but you keep calling it "us manufacturing".
If what you meant is "us manufacturing jobs are declining", just say so. If what you meant was "US manufacturing, as a precentage of the total US economy, is declining, as we transition to a service-based economy [btw, that ship sailed]", just say so.
Regarding our debt situation: people are flocking to the USD because while we're screwed, the Euro is screwed even more.
The US has been the proxy manager of the European economic system for about 100 years now. But that doesn't mean our governance has been inerrant. We are currently on our 3rd or 4th "arrangement" with Europe's monetary system... previous arrangements being Bretton Woods, dollar/gold convertability, etc.
Euroean investors are going crazy trying to put money anywhere they can. It's like watching rats on a sinking ship. Did you know that the Austrian mint was _out_ of certain of its bullion products? In 1 month they moved more hard-metals merchandise than they had in the enter previous year?
I am not concerned with the strength of the US economy as compared to others. I am interested in its absolute strength and solvency. Telling me that "at least we're doing better than Europe" isn't very comforting: europe has imploded multiple times in the last 100 years.
The picture of the woman shoving wadfuls of marks into the furnce should be burned into everyone's mind.
Without agreeing or disagreeing with you on the specific case of California, states don't really have the freedom to try alternative levels of public spending and public revnue generation, because the federal government takes from the individuals first, and gives some of it back to the states.
Ask yourself why the lionsshare of your tax bill is to the federal government, when the majority of the services you need are provided locally?
Even though the federal government may not have the legal power to assert certain authorities over states and state lawmaking, by controlling the purse strings, and withholding money from states, the Feds in effect have backdoor control over all kinds of things that should be purely state matters.
I think your assertion regarding california is probably incorrect -- the policies of california are probably economic suicide, even without the tremendous federal outflow of money -- but i'd be happy to restructure the state/federal funding relationship so that californians can try that experiment for themselves.
The group of founders who opposed a strong national government had indicated their desire for each state to be a mini-experiment in governance and society.. where states differed tremendously based on local preferences. I think that's a great idea.
He's an opportunist dipshit, I don't watch TV, and everytime you dismiss someone -- based solely on who you surmise them to be a proxy of -- you escalate the problems that are complict in the undoing of America.
You mean the end-of-May jobs numbers that caused the market to crash when they were released?
The one that said the only real job growth was the 400,000 temporary census workers?
Take the minority of Americans who pay taxes [guess what: over half of AMericans are no longer net tax payers], and tax them at _100%_. Do it. Do the math.
If you taxed all current tax payers at 100%, you could not raise enough revenue to cover us.
It is a spending problem -- and only a spending problem.
North Dakota ran a $1 billion budget surplus for 2009.
Nobody else had a surplus, iirc.
Note that a single-year defecit -- which (iirc) every other state ran in 2009 -- does not mean that the state is insolvent. So I'll back down from my original statement and say "most state governments are _also_ screwed":)
There are two commonly held misconceptions in your post:
1) the US manufacturing sector is in decline
This is not true. US manufacturing _output_ has been going up for years. However, the number of US manufacturing JOBS has been going down.
So, we're still making lots of stuff here, but we need fewer people to do it.
2) The US economy is recovering
[technically, you stated that we're not out of the woods "yet", which is true, but you seem to think that there is any evidence that we might be improving or heading in the right direction. There isn't, because we aren't.]
The US economy will cease to exist as you know it within your natural lifetime. I say "natural" lifetime because with the pending socio-political-economic collapse, many people will probably come to unnatural ends much sooner than they expect.
The US dollar is on a crash course towards hyperinflation. The United States Federal government, as well as the governments of 49 of the 50 states, are legally insolvent. Not only is the federal government out of money, but the largest area of spending growth is debt servicing. Even if there is a politician who can actually cut spending [I'd trust Ron Paul to do it; but that's about it], my earlier statement holds.
To rescue the federal government, and the US dollar, you'd have to roll back so much government -- so quickly -- that the federal government would be unrecognizable to "Americans" today.
No i understand the point you were making and the realities of CAFEs vs. family farms and what not.. my point was that how the animal treated is not the appropriate argument to make, because it seems to suggest than animal has some pre-existing right to be treated "nicely".
It doesn't have any such right.
I happen to know that I feel awful if I harm certain animals, and I also know that certain value systems which are not legally enforced but never-the-less many folks try to ascribe to posit that one must be a good "steward" of the life placed under the dominion of humanity.
The point is, none of the impetus for not abusing the snot out of animals comes from some intrinsic right of animals to not be mistreated. It comes from value systems that humans project onto themselves and onto animals.
Arguing that animals have it better off when on a farm vs. in the wild concedes the point that how things go for the animals actually matters. If you posit that there is some obligation or benefit to the animals that comes from "treating them well", then it _is_ a slippery slope -- certainly in the twisted minds of PETA -- that leads to releasing them from captivity being "better" for them than carefully managing them as livestock.
IOW: often, the impetus for discussing the treatment of animals comes from projecting humanity onto them. This leads to where PETA is going -- that they ought to have the same rights as people. Including the notion that "captivity is slavery".
An animal, raised right by humans for food, suffers FAR LESS than its wild counterpart. Being raised by a good rancher is a great bargain for a cow. A pleasant life with plentiful food and no predation, in exchange for a quick and painless death. If I were a cow, I'd take that over constant fear of predators and the threat of starvation
Here, let me fix that for you
A black slave, raised right by humans for work, suffers FAR LESS than its wild counterpart. Being raised by a good master is a great bargain for a slave. A pleasant life with plentiful food and no predation, in exchange for a quick and painless death. If I were a black man, I'd take that over constant fear of predators and the threat of starvation
I don't think you want to make a case for captivity being preferable to freedom based on some sort of practical basis.
However, and this is what the PETA people get so badly wrong, people and animals aren't the same.
Arguments that apply to humans _dont_ apply to animals. I _am_ a speciesist, and anyone that doesn't recognize and accept the outright supremecy of the human over all other thus-discovered life on earth is just stupid.
The rest of the life on this earth is merely a utility for whatever purposes man can dream up. Nothing more. Dogs and Dolphins should be accorded whatever rights they fight for and reserve for themselves.
The human is completely set apart from all other life because his purpose in life is to think, and his ideas out live him not just by one generation but for time immemorial. A human who is only a mind and has no body will still be distinct as a human, because he is a creature _defined by_ his thoughts.
The only reason not to brutally torture animals is because it is usually bad for the human who does so. The dog typically does't like it, but the dog has neither the facility nor ambition to contemplate any other mode of life.
fwiw, i fully expect some advanced alien race to look upon humanity as I have looked upon our own non-human species. If humanity wants to persist in the face of such an overwhelming superiority, it can put up or shut up.
Any reason why a doctor makes so much more than a phd?
People are willing to pay more dollars more often to have the health or life of a loved one saved than they are to listen to some boring self important blowhard dipshit.
We honestly need to commoditize health care and offer medical school free to qualifying students. Let surplus labor drive down costs.
_I_ don't need to do anything. There are already lots of ways _you_ can provide scholarships for qualified students to become doctors. Why aren't you?
There are several things that make health care very expensive in this country: 1) nobody knows what it costs, so they never comparison shop on price; they rarely refuse service because of costs. Thus, there is no incentive to control costs. There is no market, so to speak. 2) not everybody pays, but everybody receives. That uncompensated care is paid for _somehow_ 3) Doctors have their labor union legally protected by law everywhere in the US. Want to be a doctor? All the other doctors in the US get to decide that they're willing to tolerate some competition before you're allowed to practice medicine here.
Breaking the union stranglehold on who can practice medicine, and not requiring care providers to render care regardless of ability to pay would make medicine very affordable. The first would probably allow some people to receive lower quality care some of the time. It would also allow some people to receive higher quality care some of the time. I bet it's a net positive for both care and affordability [since providers would compete on reputation instead of on union membership].
You would think that the latter -- removing the legal obligation to provide care -- would mean that many people would immediately start going without care, but I don't think this is the case. In the not-so-distant past, people and doctors managed to work out payment plans and there weren't epidemic die-offs due to inability to acquire "insurance".
Essentially, the high cost of care is due to collusion between government and insurers. Remove the government involvement, and things get better.
Of course, that's not the direction people are trying to take things...
society, progress, civilty, education, progress: none of this is possible with the state
Hey! We agree. Of course, you probably mis-typed:)
"hey, lets rule by consensus".
The US never said that. The USA is a republic -- the rule of law. There was a great deal of discussion as to whether or not George Washington would be _King_ or not.
for simple matters, like taxes
The revolutionary war was fought over taxes.
to build your roads, it was expected of everyone to contribute
This is not true now, nor has it ever been true.
. not contributing means you were freeloading. so then the issue is to come ask "why are you not contributing?"
you could have simply chatted, and said "i don't believe i am a part of society, even though i enjoy fruits from it" or "i have no cash currently, could we come to payment plan?"
1) have you ever actually done this? How do cops like it when you say "hey, let's talk this over". How does the IRS like it when you say "you know, i really don't think I should be paying.
meanwhile, the usa, even with rule by consensus, still has its injustices
Rule by consensus is the definition of injustice. It is mob rule. It is the complete suppression of the individual.
The current sitting president, and many previous ones, have been very successful at confusing you. This is not a democracy, this is not a rule-by-consensus nation.
Individuals have god-given rights that they are born with. Them having neighbors do not change the nature of these rights. The LAW is what is used to protect these rights. It should not exist for any other purpose or function. Yet today it does.
because we are a democracy. we rule by thought, dialog, consensus.
See above. You are wrong.
we don't rule by force
This is an obvious contradiction. What happens when I don't follow the rules?
that is genuinely the truth. to believe otherwise is to insist your delusions are more true than plain matter of fact simple facts of the construction of the state known as the usa
Everything you have said about the design/construction and principles of governance of the USA thus far has been wrong.
feds knocking on my door: respond with shotgun. same violent overreaction, same source of injustice in the world
Merely owning a shotgun while owning a door isn't violent. Holding a shotgun while opening a door isn't violent. _Pointing_ a shotgun at someone while they stand in MY doorstep with their OWN guns at the ready isn't violent. But it may be showing the proper amount of "respect" to your uninvited guests.
you complain about something, and then YOU DO THE SAME THING. you don't reply to violence with violence, you ARE THE ONE INJECTING THE VIOLENCE
I have not injected violence, and I have not responded to it with violence. Possessing the tools of violence no more makes me violent than possessing the tools of prostitution makes one a prostitute.
The state has violence or the threat of violence as the only tool by which to do its work. It does not create, it only steals. It does not create, it only destroys. THe people who founded the USA described the state as an intrinsically evil yet unfortuneate necessity. They did not have any such ridiculous goal of "perfecting" it. They seeked to form a perfect union/harmony of men, and for that purpose, they destroyed their current state, and made a new one which was absolutely minimalist, and which was based on the unassailble rights of individuals.
Your profanity and capitalization tell me that you are unstable and angry. I'm afraid. Luckily, I have a gun -- in case I need one.
Yes, I'm talking to you because, as I said previously, I despreately hope you and people that think like you never come charging into my house for whatever crazy reason they think gives them the right to do so.
But you are mischaracterizing the nature of what's going on here. YOU are already holding a gun. You've delegated your violence to the police and to law makers. So anytime you or they are talking to me, _they_ are armed.
Why do I pay taxes? Becuase If i don't, for long enough, eventually somebody is going to shoot me over it. And you will solemnly nod as you read the paper and opine that I deserved it, because I didn't do what I was told.
The state thinks it has a monopoly on violence, and you think that the state reigns supreme over the individual.
I disagree -- on both counts.
It is the state -- and always the state -- which brings violence everywhere it goes. Every action of the state is underscored by its beleif -- and the beleif of people like you -- that the state has the unique authority to initiate violence for whatever ends it sees fit.
It is right and just for the government to be afraid of the citizens. A single or small group of citizens have rarely committed grevious harm to anyone much beyond themselves. But the record of governments, allegedly acting in the interests of humanity, often with the broad support of many, is outstanding. Tens of millions of dead, almost all who never so much as said an unkind word about their neighbor.
This is the supremecy of an all-powerful, ruthlessly violent state that you support. And somehow, you accuse me of being unable to think, unable to speak, and quick to resort to violence?
Look in the mirror.
The PATRIOT act. No-knock warrants. The war on some drugs. Domestic surviellance. The ATF.
All of these, and many more, are intrusions -- usually violent -- into the affairs of people who allegedly have rights, like the right to life and to a fair trial.
I will join you in trying to work within the system to end these transgressions against all Americans. Personally, none of them really affect me. I had the good fortune of choosing affluent white parents, and not ever becoming interested in recreational drugs; so my objections are entirely philosophical [thus far].
But just like Karl Marx was the son of a wealthy capitalist who railed against a system that benefitted him yet which he found unfair [wrong though he was:)], I too am a beneficiary of a society that I find completely unethical. So long as I do what I am told, by arbitrary and capricious tyrants who spend my tax money finding more ways to take ever more of it and reduce my freedoms [and thus, my humanity] ever further... so long as I submit completely to the ever present implied violence of my neighbors... I'll _probably_ get left alone? [Until a transcription error or a bad tip "accidentally" sends a no-knock goon squad to _my_ house at 2am...] This is the system I am meant to support? This is the negotiator that I should deal with calmly and unarmed?
The problem is one of ideology. I do not serve my neighbors. You, even when you get 51% of people to agree with you, do not have the right to do with me and my property as you like. To dissaude you from thinking you could do this easily, I have taken arms and proclaimed as much publicly. Don't try it.
You state that I should put down my weapons and talk.
I ask you to do the same.
But know this: on the subject of my right to defend myself and property: there can be no disucssion. I am alive, and my property is mine. Should you try to confiscate either, my right to defend it is absolute.
My claim is that it is not guns that you have a problem with, but with the idea that a man somewhere might think that he owns himself, and that he might have the conviction to say to you and the tyrants you support: "No".
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The best reason to try this on the moon is that there is nowhere on Earth where the people on the surface wouldn't presume to own what was underneath the surface.
The best way to avoid wars and to keep people happy is to let folks who must "Agree to disagree" choose to not be neighbors.
We're out of places for free people to live on Earth's land masses. Everything on Earth's surface is owned and controlled by somebody at this point -- somebody who has no problem killing you if you don't do what they like.
Where is a free-minded man to live? Where is the next frontier? The sea-steading folks are working on a promising option, but that merely moves the goal posts out a bit farther, but doesn't solve the problem.
Space-steading is the long term answer. Getting a functional permanant society on the moon is step 1. Anything that makes that easier is worth looking at.
What China does for its education is simply not relevant here. The US government (until very recently) has never asserted the same powers that the Chinese government has over its populace, nor do I wish it to. Obviously solutions "that work" in other places where you have helpful factors like monoculturalism, ubiqoutous welfare, no individual rights, etc don't directly apply to the US.
Germany, for instance, completely criminalizes homeschooling. That sort of socio-political environment is not something I'm willing to tolerate (and i am cognizant that it was the law in some parts of the US for some time), the educational approaches and attitudes that result from that environment simply don't apply here.
If you read the Rothbard book about education that I mentioned, the history of public schooling in Germany is given special treatment, incidentally.
You could read "Education: Free and Compulsory", by Murray Rothbard. It's available as an online PDF from mises.org, iirc.
Of course, you will probably decide he is also a "crackpot".
The US has a relatively unique set of problems that many other places do not suffer from. I frankly do not care how things work in other places - I am concerned with how they can be made to work here, especially for my children.
I'd like to respond to this in two halves
You should assume that anyone in Russia or anywhere else that wants the windows code for naughty reasons already has it.
This brings up the more interesting half of my response.
What is Microsoft's obligation to US national security interests?
Microsoft (last i heard) had 40% of its revenue from outside the US. One reason MS has to continue putting up with the EU shakedowns is that MS gets so much money from its European customers. It would be financially irresponsible to just "walk away" and so MS has to continue putting up with the mafia style tactics employed by the EU.
The US DOJ has waxed and waned on how much it feels like "Sticking it" to Microsoft. Certainly the outrageous patent-troll lawsuits, monopoly litigation, and other things can be construed as "attacks" against Microsoft either by government entities in the US, or by MS competitotors using the force and authority of US government entities.
On the other hand, the current copyright and IP law protection regime in the US has some beneficial effects for MS. In the early days, having a strong copyright and anti-piracy legal framework was certainly a boon. These days when MS if the victim of many patent troll lawsuits it's not as clear that IP law is doing us much good.
I hold the (unpopular) view that Corporations have no moral obligations whatsoever.
When we see other countries doing bits of corporate protectionism to favor their domestic producers, we cry foul. IOW: I don't expect or want the US government to "help" Microsoft. But that's a two way street. Microsoft is a multi-national entity. WHy should it be loyal to the USA? Shouldn't its loyalties shift towards whomever provides the most benefits (or the minimum amount of pain/intrusion?)
Replacement:
Arms - Check
Legs - Check
Heart - Check
Hands - getting there
Eyes - getting there
I enjoyed reading your post. Insofar as you are discrediting the garage sale theory, I'm inclined to agree with you.
But then you come kind of unhinged.
Well, that's not quite true. Replace the word "Consequences" to "Costs", and you are flatly wrong. People respond to _costs_. And the fact of the matter is, for many Americans, the cost of throwing something away is quite low, and there's no reason for them not to do so.
For instance, I live in Fargo, ND. The city landfill is on the northwest edge of town. I've been there several times.
I can tell you what land here costs, and i can tell you the fill/pile-over rate of the landfill, and the population. And from this we, can extract the land acquisition and rent-value of continuing to do nothing more intelligent than simply _stacking garbage on city property_.
The fact of the matter is, that here, it doesn't make economic sense to do much of anything else with our garbage. My in-town residential garbage pickup costs me $9 a month.
Can you explain, generally, why people should feel bad about not doing things that you admit aren't worth doing?
The electricity your PC used when making your angry screed caused pollution. According to the EPA, the CO2 that you exhaled while composing your response is a pollutant.
Presumably, you feel that your post is so important that the pollution it creates -- pollution i have no choice but to contend with and accept, uncompensated -- was worth the tremendous insight you are offering.
On the other hand, the people dumping garbage in rathole countries for money are at least compensating those countries.
Your real beef is with the governments in these places -- who think so little of their own people that they satisfy garbage-storage obligations by dumping them on their own people, who, in those countries, have NO choice in the matter.
While we should be quick to lay the appropriate amount of evil at greedy bastards who would love nothing more than to pollute you and I to the moon to shave a cent of their own expenses, an honest assessment of the facts will reveal that by far, the worst polluters in the world, in terms of environmental impact, but also in terms of how many humans are harmed without recourse, are governments.
Because this is the USA, if you don't want to see your toxic garbage dumped in China, you can opt not to patronize the companies here whom do business that way.
But if you were in China, you'd have no choice at all.
My wife and I are hobbyist bee keepers. A few comments
1) bees will fly several miles from their hive when looking for nectar and pollen. Of course i wouldn't expect a pefectly symmetrical distribution of bee activity in all 360 degrees and at all distances away from the hive. So siting the hive is a relevant concern
2) the collection of nectar/etc is non-uniform with the passage of time. the amount of material collected depends on things like colony size [which in turn depends on the amount of nectar collected.. yay for cross-talk in experimental variables :)]. The bees are obviously collecting much more when something nearby is blooming. However, bees mostly stay home in cold weather or rainy conditions. So the amount of foraging bees do as a function of calendar date depends on the bloom and the weather conditions.
One could say that the experiment ignores this by only taking two measurements... .. .which brings me to my final point: a hive is usually tended to considerably more often than twice in a season. the bees can put away a tremendous amount of honey in a short time if the colony is at full strength and there is a strong nearby bloom. if the hive becomes too crowded the colony will split and swarm. If the hive is made so large so as to be empty, it will be difficult to tell when a certain cell of comb was filled.
There are other factors: the creation of honey involves bees filling a cell with nectar and then vibrating their wings over that cell to manage the heat and evaporation. Any number of factors might affect the evaporative rate of the honey, like the local temperature or the rate at which a given cell was filled.
Certainly, some of the pollutants they are looking for would be affected by the evaporative rate of the water in the nectar, and without frequent monitoring and much higher precision data logging, i don't really know how you'd measure that.
So in summary: there is no guarantee that bees will go a certain place, much less at a certain time, nor is there any uniformity in how much work they do, nor in how they put up the nectar, nor in how they create the honey.
If the experiment is "i wonder how many airborne pollutants show up in a beehive after 1 season", then fine. But i wouldn't use it to measure anything else. I wouldn't even compare it to other beehives to see if airports create more pollution -- the activity of a given colony is simply not uniform.
Can you explain what public concern is served by preventing sick people from getting better?
I don't see that the FDA justifies its existance [and continued killing of Americans] based on "public concern" type issues.
Vaccinations, for instance, are not required in the USA. They often are for certain US institutions -- like public schools.
I have a general sense that many Americans would sooner see a sick person die than allow her to make a choice that the government doesn't approve of.
I have to tell myself that they must never think of things in those terms, as otherwise, how could they live with themselves?
The other things you mention are ALSO things I don't want the FDA to be able to do in a _regulatory_ fashion. I'd be happy to buy information from the FDA -- and to even subsidize making that information available to others for free, but I'd take that information under advisement.
Ultimately, I want to be treated like a free man, not someone who cannot be trusted with sharp objects.
Sick people?
There is something extremely morbid about telling them to go die in this country, because they cannot afford to try and get better in other countries.
Taking away freedom hurts everone. But it hurts the poor the most.
The progressive ideology, while commendable for expressing so much concern for the poor, is killing them and keeping them poor. The cynic in me suggests that many progressive politicians only want to help the poor people show up on voting day -- and to keep them poor perpetually for just such occasions.
I'm sorry about your situation.
I'm going to do something a little distasteful, which is to bring political ideology into a thread where a man talks about his grim situation. But in your case, it is a matter of life and death, and it is for many people every year. It's not so often that we hear from them first hand.
You always hear politicans talk about shrinking the government in vague ways. If you listen long enough, you start to hear from libertarians that say _crazy_ sounding stuff.
One such occasion was when I started reading Milton Friedman, who is very middle of the road between "now" and the "utopian anarchy" of someone like Murray Rothbard.
Anyway, Milton Friedman (and a bunch of other people) says that the FDA should be abolished.
As I read I thought, "sure, it's not constitutionally authorized, and sure, it's more than is strictly required to run the country, but really, we'd be better off without it?"
And then I continued to read, and he made the case very eloquently: all of the testing that the FDA currently does could and would be done by non-governmental entities, or even perhaps government entities. There is certainly a useful function being done there.
But where the FDA does damage is what is affecting the OP. There are people out there, whom after consulting with their doctors, are ready to try a new and experimental treatment. They've considered the risks and they've decided to go for it.
And the FDA says, in effect, "NO. We don't trust you and your doctor to make decisiosn for yourself, and we would honestly rather that you died -- for sure, all the way -- than chance you _maybe_ getting better or _maybe_ getting sicker".
And so you have the weird outcome that the FDA is responsible for the deaths of many Americans every year -- people who are unwilling to break the law in this country [and unwilling or unable to get treatment elsewhere] die every year because the FDA doesn't allow them to try and live.
The insidious evil of government power is that there is always a downside. Government's only tool is coercion. In this case, an agency meant to protect Americans gives some of them a death sentence. Every year.
It's easy to say "oh sure, but they help more than they kill".
It's very easy to say if you aren't one of the ones getting killed.
The FDA shouldn't be able to ban medicines or procedures. It is killing Americans.
The US government shouldn't "want" these things unless it has a big list of unfilled positions on specific projects requiring that level of talent.
What will all of these new PhDs do? They won't have tenure track positions. Will they have teaching positions? Only if any of the following happened:
1. undergrad enrollment went way up
2. researcher-only positions got created (with long-term funding not subject to congressional whims every year)
3. PhDs started teaching, taking back this responsibility from masters and other T/A type faculty.
#1 won't happen: the US university system is past saturation due to a variety of misguided US policy which has lead to skyrocketing costs and a collapsing middle class
#2 won't happen because we are, as a nation, out of money, and out of national vision
#3 won't happen, because university adminsitrators don't want the inflated payrolls
So what are all of these PhDs going to do?
Hey! I recognize you!
Remember when we were watching the news together? There was the story about that lady that went to the bar by herself, and turns out, she got raped later that evening.
Remember what you said after seeing the story?
I do. It was "stupid bitch was asking for it"
It's primarily from oil revenues. There has been huge renewed interest in oil recovery in the western part of the state, and the state government gets license and other fees from the recovery of that oil.
Thus, the huge budget surplus.
Naturally, this surplus is a once-in-a-lifetime deal: there had to be the right arrangement of market oil prices, recovery technology, geologic discovery, and availability of drilling equipment and crews, such that it became very profitable to go after this new stuff. Once those factors change, the money will dry up.
Faced with this possibility, some wise ND legislators put an initiative on the ballot to lock up the money in an endowment type account, and to only let the state spend the profits, never the actual endowment. THis would have given us a sustainable spending / budget boost.
Of course, the voters rejected that idea. So I imagine we'll be burning through that money in pretty short order.
I have some bad news for you. America is already "a bunch of corporatists". Ironically, Ron Paul is probably one of the only legitimate critics of that policy, and is so "right wing" that the republican party does everything it can to suppress and exclude him.
It's really frustrating to try and talk politics in this country when people think of things only in terms of "i am on my team, and you are on your team, and your team is always wrong about everything".
There are no teams; we're _all_ going to lose big.
Some people may, but I am not "hoping for a terrible end". I have 2 babies in the NICU right now, and nothing will make you feel helplessly vulnerable and dependant on an advanced modern society like that does.
I'm saying unpopular things here [and elsewhere] to provoke discussion, and if there is any merit to the notion of our impending financial collapse, to do two things:
- to help people prepare to ride-out the impending storm
- to help people convince voters to vote-in people who will attempt to control the crash instead of letting the country go blindly over a cliff, saying "it won't happen" all the way down..
I keep showing up to work ever day, so I beleive that the US economy isn't a lost cause. I'm doing my part to keep the ship from sinking.
But I'm doing some other stuff on the side to hedge my bets.
the year over year output of US manufacturing has gone up.. for a long time.
Doing this "ratio stuff" you are doing is what is irrelevant. Burma doesn't have a financial services sector to speak of. Of _course_ the contribution of domestic manufacturing hasn't grown as fast as the GDP growth of finanical services.. we just got smashed by the long-standing financial sector bubble in this country. We also just got smashed by a real-estate speculation bubble. We also have the worlds largest software industry. Blah blah.
You are using all kinds of different bars and measures, but you keep calling it "us manufacturing".
If what you meant is "us manufacturing jobs are declining", just say so. If what you meant was "US manufacturing, as a precentage of the total US economy, is declining, as we transition to a service-based economy [btw, that ship sailed]", just say so.
Regarding our debt situation: people are flocking to the USD because while we're screwed, the Euro is screwed even more.
The US has been the proxy manager of the European economic system for about 100 years now. But that doesn't mean our governance has been inerrant. We are currently on our 3rd or 4th "arrangement" with Europe's monetary system... previous arrangements being Bretton Woods, dollar/gold convertability, etc.
Euroean investors are going crazy trying to put money anywhere they can. It's like watching rats on a sinking ship. Did you know that the Austrian mint was _out_ of certain of its bullion products? In 1 month they moved more hard-metals merchandise than they had in the enter previous year?
I am not concerned with the strength of the US economy as compared to others. I am interested in its absolute strength and solvency. Telling me that "at least we're doing better than Europe" isn't very comforting: europe has imploded multiple times in the last 100 years.
The picture of the woman shoving wadfuls of marks into the furnce should be burned into everyone's mind.
Without agreeing or disagreeing with you on the specific case of California, states don't really have the freedom to try alternative levels of public spending and public revnue generation, because the federal government takes from the individuals first, and gives some of it back to the states.
Ask yourself why the lionsshare of your tax bill is to the federal government, when the majority of the services you need are provided locally?
Even though the federal government may not have the legal power to assert certain authorities over states and state lawmaking, by controlling the purse strings, and withholding money from states, the Feds in effect have backdoor control over all kinds of things that should be purely state matters.
I think your assertion regarding california is probably incorrect -- the policies of california are probably economic suicide, even without the tremendous federal outflow of money -- but i'd be happy to restructure the state/federal funding relationship so that californians can try that experiment for themselves.
The group of founders who opposed a strong national government had indicated their desire for each state to be a mini-experiment in governance and society.. where states differed tremendously based on local preferences. I think that's a great idea.
No.
He's an opportunist dipshit, I don't watch TV, and everytime you dismiss someone -- based solely on who you surmise them to be a proxy of -- you escalate the problems that are complict in the undoing of America.
You mean the end-of-May jobs numbers that caused the market to crash when they were released?
The one that said the only real job growth was the 400,000 temporary census workers?
Take the minority of Americans who pay taxes [guess what: over half of AMericans are no longer net tax payers], and tax them at _100%_. Do it. Do the math.
If you taxed all current tax payers at 100%, you could not raise enough revenue to cover us.
It is a spending problem -- and only a spending problem.
North Dakota ran a $1 billion budget surplus for 2009.
Nobody else had a surplus, iirc.
Note that a single-year defecit -- which (iirc) every other state ran in 2009 -- does not mean that the state is insolvent. So I'll back down from my original statement and say "most state governments are _also_ screwed" :)
There are two commonly held misconceptions in your post:
1) the US manufacturing sector is in decline
This is not true. US manufacturing _output_ has been going up for years. However, the number of US manufacturing JOBS has been going down.
So, we're still making lots of stuff here, but we need fewer people to do it.
2) The US economy is recovering
[technically, you stated that we're not out of the woods "yet", which is true, but you seem to think that there is any evidence that we might be improving or heading in the right direction. There isn't, because we aren't.]
The US economy will cease to exist as you know it within your natural lifetime. I say "natural" lifetime because with the pending socio-political-economic collapse, many people will probably come to unnatural ends much sooner than they expect.
The US dollar is on a crash course towards hyperinflation. The United States Federal government, as well as the governments of 49 of the 50 states, are legally insolvent. Not only is the federal government out of money, but the largest area of spending growth is debt servicing. Even if there is a politician who can actually cut spending [I'd trust Ron Paul to do it; but that's about it], my earlier statement holds.
To rescue the federal government, and the US dollar, you'd have to roll back so much government -- so quickly -- that the federal government would be unrecognizable to "Americans" today.
No i understand the point you were making and the realities of CAFEs vs. family farms and what not.. my point was that how the animal treated is not the appropriate argument to make, because it seems to suggest than animal has some pre-existing right to be treated "nicely".
It doesn't have any such right.
I happen to know that I feel awful if I harm certain animals, and I also know that certain value systems which are not legally enforced but never-the-less many folks try to ascribe to posit that one must be a good "steward" of the life placed under the dominion of humanity.
The point is, none of the impetus for not abusing the snot out of animals comes from some intrinsic right of animals to not be mistreated. It comes from value systems that humans project onto themselves and onto animals.
Arguing that animals have it better off when on a farm vs. in the wild concedes the point that how things go for the animals actually matters. If you posit that there is some obligation or benefit to the animals that comes from "treating them well", then it _is_ a slippery slope -- certainly in the twisted minds of PETA -- that leads to releasing them from captivity being "better" for them than carefully managing them as livestock.
IOW: often, the impetus for discussing the treatment of animals comes from projecting humanity onto them. This leads to where PETA is going -- that they ought to have the same rights as people. Including the notion that "captivity is slavery".
Well, the obvious critique of your post is this
Here, let me fix that for you
I don't think you want to make a case for captivity being preferable to freedom based on some sort of practical basis.
However, and this is what the PETA people get so badly wrong, people and animals aren't the same.
Arguments that apply to humans _dont_ apply to animals. I _am_ a speciesist, and anyone that doesn't recognize and accept the outright supremecy of the human over all other thus-discovered life on earth is just stupid.
The rest of the life on this earth is merely a utility for whatever purposes man can dream up. Nothing more. Dogs and Dolphins should be accorded whatever rights they fight for and reserve for themselves.
The human is completely set apart from all other life because his purpose in life is to think, and his ideas out live him not just by one generation but for time immemorial. A human who is only a mind and has no body will still be distinct as a human, because he is a creature _defined by_ his thoughts.
The only reason not to brutally torture animals is because it is usually bad for the human who does so. The dog typically does't like it, but the dog has neither the facility nor ambition to contemplate any other mode of life.
fwiw, i fully expect some advanced alien race to look upon humanity as I have looked upon our own non-human species. If humanity wants to persist in the face of such an overwhelming superiority, it can put up or shut up.
People are willing to pay more dollars more often to have the health or life of a loved one saved than they are to listen to some boring self important blowhard dipshit.
_I_ don't need to do anything. There are already lots of ways _you_ can provide scholarships for qualified students to become doctors. Why aren't you?
There are several things that make health care very expensive in this country:
1) nobody knows what it costs, so they never comparison shop on price; they rarely refuse service because of costs. Thus, there is no incentive to control costs. There is no market, so to speak.
2) not everybody pays, but everybody receives. That uncompensated care is paid for _somehow_
3) Doctors have their labor union legally protected by law everywhere in the US. Want to be a doctor? All the other doctors in the US get to decide that they're willing to tolerate some competition before you're allowed to practice medicine here.
Breaking the union stranglehold on who can practice medicine, and not requiring care providers to render care regardless of ability to pay would make medicine very affordable. The first would probably allow some people to receive lower quality care some of the time. It would also allow some people to receive higher quality care some of the time. I bet it's a net positive for both care and affordability [since providers would compete on reputation instead of on union membership].
You would think that the latter -- removing the legal obligation to provide care -- would mean that many people would immediately start going without care, but I don't think this is the case. In the not-so-distant past, people and doctors managed to work out payment plans and there weren't epidemic die-offs due to inability to acquire "insurance".
Essentially, the high cost of care is due to collusion between government and insurers. Remove the government involvement, and things get better.
Of course, that's not the direction people are trying to take things...
Hey! We agree. Of course, you probably mis-typed :)
The US never said that. The USA is a republic -- the rule of law. There was a great deal of discussion as to whether or not George Washington would be _King_ or not.
The revolutionary war was fought over taxes.
This is not true now, nor has it ever been true.
1) have you ever actually done this? How do cops like it when you say "hey, let's talk this over". How does the IRS like it when you say "you know, i really don't think I should be paying.
Rule by consensus is the definition of injustice. It is mob rule. It is the complete suppression of the individual.
The current sitting president, and many previous ones, have been very successful at confusing you. This is not a democracy, this is not a rule-by-consensus nation.
Individuals have god-given rights that they are born with. Them having neighbors do not change the nature of these rights. The LAW is what is used to protect these rights. It should not exist for any other purpose or function. Yet today it does.
See above. You are wrong.
This is an obvious contradiction. What happens when I don't follow the rules?
Everything you have said about the design/construction and principles of governance of the USA thus far has been wrong.
Merely owning a shotgun while owning a door isn't violent. Holding a shotgun while opening a door isn't violent. _Pointing_ a shotgun at someone while they stand in MY doorstep with their OWN guns at the ready isn't violent. But it may be showing the proper amount of "respect" to your uninvited guests.
I have not injected violence, and I have not responded to it with violence. Possessing the tools of violence no more makes me violent than possessing the tools of prostitution makes one a prostitute.
The state has violence or the threat of violence as the only tool by which to do its work. It does not create, it only steals. It does not create, it only destroys. THe people who founded the USA described the state as an intrinsically evil yet unfortuneate necessity. They did not have any such ridiculous goal of "perfecting" it. They seeked to form a perfect union/harmony of men, and for that purpose, they destroyed their current state, and made a new one which was absolutely minimalist, and which was based on the unassailble rights of individuals.
We have completely perverted their design, to
Your profanity and capitalization tell me that you are unstable and angry. I'm afraid. Luckily, I have a gun -- in case I need one.
Yes, I'm talking to you because, as I said previously, I despreately hope you and people that think like you never come charging into my house for whatever crazy reason they think gives them the right to do so.
But you are mischaracterizing the nature of what's going on here. YOU are already holding a gun. You've delegated your violence to the police and to law makers. So anytime you or they are talking to me, _they_ are armed.
Why do I pay taxes? Becuase If i don't, for long enough, eventually somebody is going to shoot me over it. And you will solemnly nod as you read the paper and opine that I deserved it, because I didn't do what I was told.
The state thinks it has a monopoly on violence, and you think that the state reigns supreme over the individual.
I disagree -- on both counts.
It is the state -- and always the state -- which brings violence everywhere it goes. Every action of the state is underscored by its beleif -- and the beleif of people like you -- that the state has the unique authority to initiate violence for whatever ends it sees fit.
It is right and just for the government to be afraid of the citizens. A single or small group of citizens have rarely committed grevious harm to anyone much beyond themselves. But the record of governments, allegedly acting in the interests of humanity, often with the broad support of many, is outstanding. Tens of millions of dead, almost all who never so much as said an unkind word about their neighbor.
This is the supremecy of an all-powerful, ruthlessly violent state that you support. And somehow, you accuse me of being unable to think, unable to speak, and quick to resort to violence?
Look in the mirror.
The PATRIOT act.
No-knock warrants.
The war on some drugs.
Domestic surviellance.
The ATF.
All of these, and many more, are intrusions -- usually violent -- into the affairs of people who allegedly have rights, like the right to life and to a fair trial.
I will join you in trying to work within the system to end these transgressions against all Americans. Personally, none of them really affect me. I had the good fortune of choosing affluent white parents, and not ever becoming interested in recreational drugs; so my objections are entirely philosophical [thus far].
But just like Karl Marx was the son of a wealthy capitalist who railed against a system that benefitted him yet which he found unfair [wrong though he was :)], I too am a beneficiary of a society that I find completely unethical. So long as I do what I am told, by arbitrary and capricious tyrants who spend my tax money finding more ways to take ever more of it and reduce my freedoms [and thus, my humanity] ever further... so long as I submit completely to the ever present implied violence of my neighbors... I'll _probably_ get left alone? [Until a transcription error or a bad tip "accidentally" sends a no-knock goon squad to _my_ house at 2am...] This is the system I am meant to support? This is the negotiator that I should deal with calmly and unarmed?
The problem is one of ideology. I do not serve my neighbors. You, even when you get 51% of people to agree with you, do not have the right to do with me and my property as you like. To dissaude you from thinking you could do this easily, I have taken arms and proclaimed as much publicly. Don't try it.
You state that I should put down my weapons and talk.
I ask you to do the same.
But know this: on the subject of my right to defend myself and property: there can be no disucssion. I am alive, and my property is mine. Should you try to confiscate either, my right to defend it is absolute.
My claim is that it is not guns that you have a problem with, but with the idea that a man somewhere might think that he owns himself, and that he might have the conviction to say to you and the tyrants you support: "No".