If you’ve ever lived in a big city, you’ve probably had to deal with the squeegee man.
He approaches your car – even though you have not called him over. Without asking your consent, he commences to wiping your windshield with his greasy rag. In a moment, he will demand payment for his “services” – which you’d better hand over, if you don’t want him to attack you (or damage your car).
This vignette encompasses everything that is subsumed under government: Random people accosting you with demands for payment – for “services” you never asked for, don’t approve of and don’t use – with the menace of violence looming over everything. Neither the squeegee man nor the politician nor government “worker” ever asks whether you’re interested in what they have to offer – not really. Because they never give you the option to decline. To say, “no thank you.” And have them leave you alone.
Both take the position that “services” having been provided – asked for or not, used or not – translates to pay up!
The only difference between the squeegee man and your local county commissioner, school board – or governor or president – is that some of them have better teeth (usually). And of course, more “resources” (read: violence) at their disposal. After all, you can still roll up your windows – or better yet, just drive away – when you see the squeegee man. You’re even allowed to fight him off if he physically attacks.
No such luck with the representatives of government.
This will never change – and will inevitably become worse – until enough people make the great ethical-conceptual leap connecting the squeegee man – and the more adroit squeegee men who have arrogated unto themselves the power of organized “legal” violence. Until a sufficiently large number of people – enough to tip the balance – reject ethical-conceptual compartmentalization; the habit of mind that prevents a person from grasping that theft is always theft – whether it is done by an individual squeegee man on the street or by squeegee men in offices. That aggressive violence is always to be condemned – no exceptions, ever. And more, to be openly named. You are not “asked” to “contribute” to Social Security – or any of the other myriad forms of theft employed by the squeegee men who control legally sanctioned aggressive violence. You are told you will hand over a specific sum of money – or else. The “or else” being aggressive violence directed against your person. No matter how minor the sum involved, eventually – inevitably – it will lead to a violent assault on your person. Death, perhaps, if you fight back.
It is not pretty – which is exactly why it must be euphemized. And precisely why these euphemisms and evasions must be ripped away by relentless insistence on plain, honest language.
The forms and niceties must be done away with. The ethical-conceptual exceptions no longer tolerated. We must stop giving them our sanction by pretending the interaction is something other than what it actually is. Make them bare their blood-dripping fangs. Do not permit them the illusion that they are anything more than thugs – however neatly dressed, whatever their titles.
When one shows up at your doorstep – a candidate for office – treat him with the same contempt you would the squeegee man. For they are the same thing.
Only one of them is more honest about his “work.”
We must cease smiling and dealing with them as we would people whom we freely interact with. And whom we are free to not interact with, if we so desire.
We must exclude squeegee men from civil society. They may have the power to force us to hand over our property, to do as they say. But they cannot force us to regard them as decent people in our minds and hearts – or treat them accordingly. We have the power to revile them – and to shun them. To avoid interaction with them to the extent possible. Yes/no answers. No friendly waves as they pass by on the street. Our backs turned. Our hands kept in our pockets.
Personal anecdote: Last summer, during the (s)election circus, Mittens Romney – the Red Thug – rolled into town, literally. He and his praeotorian guard shut down an entire block of the city, where I just happened to be trying to go about my business. I was trapped for half an hour awaiting the royal procession. When it finally came through, I got off my motorcycle and gave Mittens (well, his bus) the “Up Yours” salute.
It was cathartic.
I will never know whether the failed Dear Leader saw my expression of contempt. But hundreds of other people did. Perhaps a few got to thinking… .
Do not be polite to these people – these thugs, these people who live by the gun (and who very urgently wish to take away our guns).
Check yourself when you find yourself laughing at sitcoms that show government “workers” in a humorous light. Because there is nothing funny about violence – and violence is not made less violent when it is made “legal” and done by middle-aged ladies in power suits or agreeable-seeming “post racial”presidents as opposed to by Aqualung at a stop light.
In brief, we must make it plain that we understand the reality of the situation. And we must grow angry. We must resent what is being done to us – and make it plain we are resentful. That we do not accept the right of others to aggress against us, but merely yield, out of necessity, to superior force. For the present.
And the present is not necessarily the future.
Throw it in the Woods?
Nice to see the government-as-squeegee-man metaphor catching on. Squeegee Man Debuted 1.23.13 in Lew Rockwell, Facebook, RonPaulNews…
In the hands of tweedledee Republicans, the concept is spun to only accuse the tweedledum Democrats of being the squeegee man, but at least its a start.
Eric Holder Like Squeegee Guy Holding the Brick
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/10/22/Schweizer-Eric-Holder-Like-Squeegee-Guy-Holding-the-Brick
Derek Greaves Defends Guns Before CT-State Squeegee Committee
http://www.youtu.be/wVMAPyGPwSg
Legal Immigrant Henson Ong Vs Connecticut Gun Grabbers
http://www.youtu.be/5zrqJ-cGzE4
You know once you understand how the state (dis)functions it’s so easy to predict their moves.
I said years ago that the worse the economy to the tighter and tighter traffic cops would get with their citations.
I got a ticket last night in norther Detroit doing 45 in a 40. Probably the smallest discrepency I’ve ever received a ticket for in my life. Not to mention it was 12:30 am and the roads were empty on a clear night.
Buckle up folks, pretty soon they’ll be ticketing you if you’re doing the speed limit and holding them up.
That gave me an idea for a way “we” can reduce “our” deficits and reduce unlawful behavior. (win-win)
They could take the word limit off all the speed limit signs. Afterwards, the sign says Speed 45. Drive 44 of 46, it’ll cost you. Before each stop sign and traffic signal, they “create” a deceleration zone. After each stop sign and traffic signal they “create” an acceleration zone.
They should also put up a lot more cameras that automatically ticket drivers for failing to signal when they change lanes, and for the pedestrians who are jay-walking.
Allegro Non Troppo (Happy, but not too much)
http://www.youtu.be/aSEJC-cVPuA
Fu11 1976 Independent Film
http://blip.tv/juantx3/allegro-non-troppo-1976-6279810
This is a depiction of how mutated new orders are forced emerge. Orders directed through force, hierarchy, and squeegee-man-state-payroll-shills instead of natural ones. The answer isn’t smashing our current imperfect order, it’s to build something better and honest, something that can compete and survive.
This is an Anti-Consumerist direct challenge to Disney-esque Western Pseudocapitalism and its disingenous mainstream optimism of fake progress perceived by lowest-common-denominator mouth-breathing cretins with no faculties of thought. See the truth it reveals, but don’t respond by jumping into Mussolini’s or Stalin’s arms either.
It was recently mentioned on the LRC blog.
Dear Bevin, I never heard of it. But I am now examining the Leo & Kate Inception Matrix
Dysfunctional Reptilian Complex (whatever that is?)
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lhyn91VPu51qcf09zo1_500.gif
Titanic II – If Jack Had Lived
http://www.youtu.be/u7yGrD7m62g
RR Movee
http://www.movie2k.to/Revolutionary-Road-watch-movie-36800.html
Dear Tor,
That’s it!
Those are scenes from “Revolutionary Road!”
Yikes! Death from a self-abortion! Yet another false dialectic dilemma ignoring the “missing middle” of the myriad solutions individuals could find if freed from the herd’s intrusions into their unwanted pregnancies.
Titanic II – This one is I like
This is the best Kate I think – Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
From Existentialist writer of the movie – Richard Yates’ – Eleven Kinds of Loneliness – Short Story Collection:
Dr Jack O’ Lantern – Richard Yates – Short Story
First a great thanks to the crowd here and especially Eric for running a great site. It was quite nice to awaken today to intelligent conversation. I loved the Rand at a distance comment! I read Atlas Shrugged and loved it, then met some Objectivist True Believer types and thought WTF? Since I am thoroughly convinced through self experience that we are far more than a carbon suit, to say we clashed is an understatement. I tend to view this world as a giant 3D school for learning to be a real fully developed human. The NAP is the cornerstone of that concept. Too bad more outside of this crowd don’t practice the same! On Icke I have read lots of his work. In general I like. Like some of you expressed I am unsure of the shape shifting thing. I realize it is certainly technically feasible and the concept of other “races” I certainly think is very valid. However, lack of personal experience will keep the jury out on that one. Getting ready to relocate to Missouri, so any of y’all headed through would love to share a beverage! Thanks again!!!
Dear Ernie,
I loved the Rand at a distance comment!
Glad you enjoyed it.
I appreciated your recent posts too. Excellent!
That’s actually very poor tactics. The best thing to do – as generations of campaign workers have found by experience – is to be very friendly towards those of the other side who turn up, inviting them in for a chat and a cup of tea and a biscuit, generally wasting their time and keeping them away from mischief.
If you have the stomach for it, perhaps! I don’t… .
Besides, we are beyond the point of democratic games – of fixing things from inside by supporting “our candidate.”
It’s over, PM.
Eric, the ballot alone will never fix America.
tgsam
I agree, Tinsley –
See today’s rant….
If preventing further mischief is the goal, PM, there are certainly more effective tactics than chatting!
I try to gauge it. The census worker that came to our house–with the long form–I spent ten minutes educating. He seemed amenable. But if anyone from CPS ever shows up, it will be a different and much shorter conversation.
Day to day I totally agree with those who advocate shunning, disgust, and hostility. Shame them.
I like Solzhenitsyn’s strategy:
“Don’t believe them, don’t fear them, don’t ask anything of them”
I find you don’t have to be rude at all. Just smile with indifference. Generally I talk nice but turn it around to where I’ve got something going on and have to run… and could they come back some other time. They don’t. The ones who don’t “get a clue” are robo-calling telemarketing firms unless I tell them out ant out.
I stay in practice with Jehovah’s Witnesses. Sort of defeats their purpose since I chat Them up and not the other way around. They do send some really attractive young girls though so it’s not all bad…and they don’t freak when my pit bull smells them up, nice puppy, so pretty, and he thinks the same, they’re grinning, he’s grinning, me too.
Nice doggie. Sometimes I wish I could be my little Basenji; they’re such perfect creatures. In some ways they’re like Downs-syndrome kids; it’s almost a gift, to be so guileless, so trusting, so unhampered by the knowledge of evil.
And there’s the side benefit of sniffing any place you want.
But the JW’s never send cute girls to MY house…
Basenji? One canine I’ve seriously thought about getting. I prefer short hair dogs and that one is supposed to be very “clean” and not entirely barkless.
Oh, you’re in for a treat!
She’s a rescue; we got her at six months because a family had given her up for being ‘too aggressive’.
No. She’s a libertarian dog, and they were Clovers!
I’m only half-kidding. They’re so different from standard breeds, because they’re more of a ‘wild type’–almost feral. Growing up in Africa, most dogs I saw–essentially feral mutts–looked a lot like Basenjis. The word itself means “bush thing”; it’s an African “breed” if you can call it that.
Highly independent; I mean, cat-like in its self-composure…but extremely loyal and affectionate to people who’ve earned it. She listens to me almost 100%, except when it’s more fun not to–like when visitors come and she wants to greet them by jumping four feet straight up and trying to lick their faces on the way up. Or when she gets out–they have no homing instinct, they want to peregrinate so I have to chase her down in the car. By the way she runs 30 mph.
They don’t bark, or very rarely, but they yodel. Look on YouTube; it’s hysterical.
She never stinks, unlike her Weimeraner house-mate (whom she dominates completely, despite her weight 22lbs and the Weimeraner 75lbs).
Definitely a libertarian breed.
Yodeling… Yeah, that’s a hoot. I’ve had some very good dogs in the past and hate seeing them pass away so we’ve held off getting another. That and the fact the pooch-police demand tags, licenses, etc. etc. etc. To hell with them.
BrentP, no doubt it would be a good deal but I’d probably have to owe her….not sure how things would work out with her and Cholley Jack the pit bull though, he’s kinda touchy about strangers without food.
The cleaning fairy, a woman who would break into homes, clean them, then leave a bill has been arrested on warrant after being spotted shoveling the driveways of strangers without permission.
http://www.fox19.com/story/20650924/cleaning-fairy-arrested-while-shoveling-driveways-without-permission
Once again when the government does it, it’s not a crime.
Dear Brent,
Once again when the government does it, it’s not a crime.
You said it. True for so many violations of the NAP. Just a few:
Extortion. Practiced by all levels, federal, state, and local. When they do it they call it “taxation.”
Counterfeiting. Reserved for the Fed. When they do it they call it “quantitative easing.”
Kidnapping. Practiced by all levels, federal, state, and local. When they do it they call it “arrest,” “detention,” and “imprisonment” depending upon the duration of the kidnapping.
Mass murder. Practiced on the largest scale by the feds. When they do it they call “war on terror.”
Bevin you continue to harmonize with lots of stuff I’ve thought most of my life. I can’t escape the feeling we share a value system between us. Are you perhaps a Bokonist?
“Live by the foma that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.”
Actually I’m a recovering “Randite”
No longer an “Orthodox Objectivist.” Want nothing to do with the true believers at the Ayn Rand Institute.
I’m closer to what Rand apostate Nathaniel Branden referred to as “Neo-Objectivist.” I did several years of psychology workshops with the post-Schism Branden.
Also, like anarchist legal scholar Butler Shaffer, I’m heavily into Jungian Psychology and Eastern Mysticism, including Dao and Zen, where Jung got his inspiration.
Morning, Bevin!
I, too, was heavily “into” Rand during my college years. But it was a brief dalliance – because I was very rapidly turned off by her suffocating – because literally dictatorial – demands that one’s life must accord with her view of life, else one is guilty of being “irrational” and implicitly, evil. As you know, her demands went into the minutia of one’s personal taste in music and other art, one’s choice of a spouse… and so on. It struck me as both tyrannical – and nonsensical. Because, after all, what harm is there in listening to Wagner rather than Rachmaninoff – or Motley Crue, for that matter? Rand was a notorious smoker – an irrational vice – yet of course she rationalized that. You know all about this stuff.
The meanness ebbing and flowing all around Rand severely undermined the important philosophical point she was trying to make about self-ownership. That – and her failure to articulate (and embrace) the other critical element of Libertarian ethics – the NAP – are her greatest failures as a philosopher.
Dear Eric,
Good evening Eric!
I hear you, five by five.
It struck me as both tyrannical – and nonsensical. Because, after all, what harm is there in listening to Wagner rather than Rachmaninoff?
Exactly. Rationality simply does not apply at that level. Rationality, as she herself noted, has to do with what supports life.
How does admiring painter B vs. painter A not “support life?” How does listening to composer B vs. composer A not “support life?” How does reading novelist B vs. novelist A not “support life?”
To invoke an even more absurd example, which of Baskin Robbins’ 31 flavors is more pro life? Chocolate or Strawberry?
As I said, rationality simply does not apply below a certain level. To insist that it does, is ironically, the height of irrationality.
Consider her rationalization of chain-smoking.
Then he said, “I like cigarettes, Miss Taggart. I like to think of fire held in a man’s hand. Fire, a dangerous force, tamed at his fingertips. I often wonder about the hours when a man sits alone, watching the smoke of a cigarette, thinking, I wonder what great things have come from such hours. When a man thinks, there is a spot of fire alive in his mind–and it is proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his one expression.”
As a live and let live libertarian, I truly do not mind either her smoking or even her highly subjective justification for it.
But if we were to turn her own “the rational is what supports life” criteria on her, she would not fare particularly well.
Rand is best experienced from a distance. Her invaluable insights are best taken selectively. Then one can benefit from her considerable wisdom without having to deal with all the unnecessary psychological “Randroid” baggage.
I scanned Jung’s UNDISCOVERED SELF and keep it handy for study, reference, and inspiration. I bought a paperback copy in 1958 while in Automatic Tracking Radar School at Keesler Air Force Base. Published during the Cold War that inspired it, it was at the time an overlooked masterpiece. It remains high on my list of relevant works.
As far as I know, the “Warlock of Zurich” to this day has no peers.
Tinsley Grey Sammons (1936 –)
Monkey see – monkey do!
People do learn from the government….
Deutschlandic West German instead of the Insel Auslandic West German:
Ich akzeptiere nicht, dass die Regierungen können gegen mich agressen. Ich Übermacht nachgeben. Für die vorliegende.
Dear Tor,
I do not accept that governments can aggress against me. I yield to superior force. For the present.
Yes.
The difference in perception is everything.
It is one thing to “pay one’s taxes” because one believes one “owes” the government for washing one’s windshield.
It is another thing to hand over one’s wallet to a mugger because he has a knife at your throat.
From Carl Jung’s Red Book –
Realness of Imaginal Beings
This I learned in the Mysterium: to take seriously every unknown wanderer who personally inhabits the inner world, since they are real because they are effectual.
You may call us symbols….But we are just as real as your fellow men. You invalidate nothing and solve nothing by calling us symbols.
We are real and not symbols.
Fundamentally you are terrified of yourself, and therefore you prefer to run to all others rather than to yourself. You are Christians and run after heroes, and wait for redeemers who should take the agony on themselves from you, and totally spare you Golgotha.
To the extent that the Christianity of this time lacks madness, it lacks divine life. Take note of what the ancients taught us in images: madness is divine.
The serpent is the earthly essence of man of which he is not conscious….it is the mystery that flows to him from the nourishing earth-mother.
The way of life writhes like the serpent from right to left and from left to right, from thinking to pleasure and from pleasure to thinking. Thus the serpent is an adversary and a symbol of enmity, but also a wise bridge that connects right and left through longing, much needed by our life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Book_(Jung)
Fu11 Book With Eng1ish Translation
http://www.stillnessspeaks.com/assets/books/Red_Book_by_Jung.pdf
Carl Jung Quotes
“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”
“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
“Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”
“You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.”
“Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.”
“Loneliness does not come from having no people around you, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.”
“The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.”
“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.”
“As a child I felt myself to be alone, and I am still, because I know things and must hint at things which others apparently know nothing of, and for the most part do not want to know.”
“Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.”
“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
“In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.”
“The greatest tragedy of the family is the unlived lives of the parents.”
“Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not. ”
“Where wisdom reigns, there is no conflict between thinking and feeling.”
“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves. ”
“The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.”
“The best political, social, and spiritual work we can do is to withdraw the projection of our shadow onto others.”
“The acceptance of oneself is the essence of the whole moral problem and the epitome of a whole outlook on life. That I feed the hungry, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy – all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What if I should discover that the least among them all, the poorest of all the beggars, the most impudent of all the offenders, the very enemy himself – that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness – that I myself am the enemy who must be loved – what then? As a rule, the Christian’s attitude is then reversed; there is no longer any question of love or long-suffering; we say to the brother within us “Raca,”(worthless) and condemn and rage against ourselves. We hide it from the world; we refuse to admit ever having met this least among the lowly in ourselves.”
“If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.”
“Wholeness is not achieved by cutting off a portion of one’s being, but by integration of the contraries.”
“The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.”
“It all depends on how we look at things, and not on how things are in themselves. The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.”
“To find out what is truly individual in ourselves, profound reflection is needed; and suddenly we realize how uncommonly difficult the discovery of individuality is.”
“We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore, the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy.”
“Without this playing with fantasy, no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.”
“Anyone who attempts to both adjust to his group and at the same time pursue his individual goal, becomes neurotic.”
Dear Tor,
Any one of us could pen an entire editorial based on any one of Jung’s quotable quotes!
Example: “Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not. ”
This is a variant on what I mentioned earlier: “A fool who persists in his folly will become wise.”
“This is a variant on what I mentioned earlier: “A fool who persists in his folly will become wise.”
Or crippled, dead, incarcerated . . .
Poor choices, all.
After 23 years of sobriety, I still marvel at the self deception, wishful thinking, obstinacy, rationalizing and other psycho-nonsense that supported my use of ethyl alcohol for decades after the signs of impending ruin could no longer be willfully suppressed.
“Thank God I am not as other men”. My painful discovery that physiologically at least, I was mistaken.
tgsam
Dear Tor,
Ich möchte hinzufügen – und nicht für lange.
-Larry
Indeed. The whole Squeegeeverse has become so vast, and so unreal, it’s grows too painful for people to endure any longer.
“It is always the false that makes you suffer, the false desires and fears, the false values and ideas, the false relationships between people. Abandon the false and you are free of pain; truth makes happy, truth liberates.”
“Absolute perfection is here and now, not in some future, near or far. The secret is in action – here and now. It is your behavior that blinds you to yourself. Disregard whatever you think yourself to be and act as if you were absolutely perfect – whatever your idea of perfection may be. All you need is courage.”
“Fight with all the strength at your disposal against the idea that you are nameable and describable. You are not. Refuse to think of yourself in terms of this or that. There is no other way out of misery, which you have created for yourself through blind acceptance without investigation. Suffering is a call for enquiry, all pain needs investigation. Don’t be too lazy to think.”
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Sorry to digress….I’ve been on the road with minimal effective access for about a week. I would respond to the “Government is violence” meme with my own take….”Government is slavery!”. In another context, I posted somewhere OALA, EHOATAS and somebody asked me what it means……to wit…”Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one and they all stink”. Sorry for the rambling….I’m reading all of your posts and will cogitate and respond as time permits. In the meantime, you folks might want to take a gander at a rant I wrote between 2006 and 2008….I think it applies more than ever…..
http://www.thoughts.jcrowe.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/ChaosofEmpire2.pdf
Peace out,
Keep your powder dry
Dear Guiseppe,
And to quote a maxim posted by John Stovall, “The end state of
every government is tyranny!”.
You got it.
Or as I put it,
“Minarchism always becomes maxarchism.”
or
“Limited government always becomes unlimited government.”
It took me a couple of years to come to anarchism from minarchism…but if you’re honest with yourself as a libertarian, you’ll eventually recognize it. Violating the NAP is violating the NAP and no magical pixie-dust can disguise it.
A corollary: the most free minarchies become the most vicious tyrannies. Case in point: America.
Its liberty and small government built massive wealth–which is now exsanguinated into its very nemesis.
Dear meth,
A corollary: the most free minarchies become the most vicious tyrannies. Case in point: America.
Its liberty and small government built massive wealth–which is now exsanguinated into its very nemesis.
A very important insight indeed! And a very cruel irony.
Presumably the most abundant fields also enable locusts to multiply the fastest and become the largest swarm.
To make matters even worse, the much greater initial relative freedom hypnotizes the people. It lulls them into assuming “Wow. We must be unique.”
To wit, “American exceptionalism” and “It can’t happen here.”
As Madeleine Albright put it so nicely,
But if we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us.
— Madeleine Albright, NBC Today Show, February 19, 1998
Dear meth,
“… but if you’re honest with yourself as a libertarian, you’ll eventually recognize it.”
Indisputable.
Alan Watts, the famous Anglican theologist turned Zen philosoper used to say,
“The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.”
The key word is “persist.” One must not stop “checking one’s premises.”
Ironic how Rand warned about that very danger, yet failed to check her own premises, and got stuck like a broken record on minarchism.
I think the reason that minarchism appeals to some folks is that they’re uncomfortable with anarchism and can’t wrap their heads around it. It’s something even I have had to face every now and then. When you’ve been indoctrinated your whole life into a “system” it’s like going through cult deprogramming to peel away the layers of conditioning.
Or,
“The difference between limited government and totalitarianism, is the difference between the caterpillar and the moth.”
“Limited government is merely an earlier stage of totalitarianism.”
Or better yet,
“Limited government is merely the larval stage of totalitarianism.”
Eric, you tagged it well my friend!! I would go a step forward. Help those under attack by these parasitical idiots. I look at the recent “suicide” by a liberty activist and say “Where were his supporters and friends?” If nothing else they should have spirited him off and left the prosecutor with an empty bag. Instead they all sit wringing their hands with eulogies. Bottom line: the parasites won that one. We praise those who helped slaves get out of slavery, yet refuse to help our own because it would “break the law”.
Exactly! I can’t believe people still aren’t to the point where they are willing to help defend and protect their own. Cops beat the shit out of someone and everyone’s filming the hell out of it while the poor guy bleeds out. WTF?
Nobody? Nothing? Really?
But they’ll organize in a heartbeat for a “flash mob” sing-a-long in the mall.
*sigh*
I’ve discussed this with my criminal-defense libertarian lawyer friend.
His advice: If you’re going to do it, hang around afterward. Don’t flee; it will go very badly.
And use the minimum force to restrain them.
I don’t know exactly what I’d do until I’m in the situation…but if I saw that scene with the old woman with a walker, waving a puny 2-inch pocket knife…whom the cop leg-swept and face-planted on asphalt, I would not restrain myself. Consequences be damned; there is such a thing as protecting innocence.
Agreed Meth.
The objective is to simply get him to stop the abuse, whatever it is. It’s not to extract revenge or “teach him a lesson” it’s simply to – as you put it – protect innocence.
Although I would like to disarm him, cuff him, and take his pants making him scurry along his way like the vermin he is.
that scene with the old woman with a walker, waving a puny 2-inch pocket knife…whom the cop leg-swept and face-planted on asphalt
When did this happen?
This video was posted in 2009.
Perfect situation. Open parking lot, outraged crowd, lone cop…
A quick sleeper hold, tell a bystander to get the old lady to an ER and bye-bye.
I’m not 100% certain but I think I would have done it. I couldn’t watch the whole video again; the first time sent me into a rage.
This is why I try to avoid being in proximity to anything these days. I try to stay on the proverbial farm and MYOB. But even that is becoming untenable, I suspect.
Ah, I remember seeing that. I’ve seen so many like it, I’ve lost count. It’s pretty much why I have zero respect for the state’s mercenaries, and zero sympathy for them or their families when they die in the “line of duty.”
Meth, restrain hell. If I thought they didn’t have my ID, I’d knock him out and leave. Piss on the system, it’s rigged like you wouldn’t believe.
U.S. military tests a chemical laser on its own satellite.
http://rense.com/political/weapons/usfireslaser.htm
Was looking at the flight data of the predator drones. Top altitude is less than 10 miles above sea level. I’m guessing that its normal cruising is 1 mile above terrestrial. Uses a Ku band uplink to satellites as its normal communication mode. Which would be more difficult to jam unless one could get above it. Overall its a low speed piece of crap 130 mph cruising speed. Even the V-1 jet engine was able to get 400mph, Germany did that with a simple valve and tapered pipe and a spark plug to start them. 4 predators were shot down in Kosovo with SAM missles. Again these things are not meant for war with technological adept nations. The one fault of Afganistan is they may be persistent but they are not technically adept, they still won despite the predators on the overall war front. Their primary purpose therefore is for antagonizing and spying on civilians, goat herders, U.S. citizens etc. You get the picture. Wonder why the right to bear arms doesn’t include SAM’s? It should if they have the right to fly predators over U.S. cities. Arming them will be next over the U.S. As it sets right now a hobbiest could probably knock one out of the air using nothing but V-1 technology, and a primitive radar locking system, even visual lock would probably do it. Again they are counting on the fact that most people will A) Technically ignorant (goat herders or mall shoppers) B) Will know the Feds would lock you in a prison if you ever tried to make a missle remote control capable system of knocking one out of the air before a civil war scenario. During civil war and economic collapse they know the average scientist/engineer that could design a predator death tool would be too broke to fund such a development C) most people will never be able to spot them (visually) and so will be frightened in fear never knowing, most people do not have a personal ground based radar imaging systems.
Its is true the newer predator replacements will have much better performance and have encrypted video feeds, but they will always be slow and the reason is that they are made to loiter not be fast on their feet. I suppose they could add a souped up auxillary jet engine on one for evasion, but that would add extra weight and reduce the loiter effect. Given that Kosovo-Bosnia saw 4 of them shot down gives a good indication that they are pretty worthless against a capable rocket/missle. Further like satellites they are not going to last long with technically adept opponents.
The thing that bothers me the most about predators is they combined with all the other peering eye surveillance and the fact that we don’t have the right to shoot them down ourselves they just add another nail in the coffin for the average citizen to have any rights in this country. Not much can be done about it for now, in a despotic future with civil war then I’m sure we’d find a way to take the washing machines down from the sky.
“What country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance?”~Jefferson
Let it be known that the rulers think that by having the world’s most advanced military that they could easily trounce us small gun owners in America. What they fail to understand is that the spirit of resistance that is exhibited in defending gun rights is also exhibited in the very fabric of our technologic know how. Do you think Feinstein knows much electronics? Therefore they being very lightly technological as rulers have no understanding how the technology they think they have control over is actually out of their control and ours by birthright of free and dreaming productive people. I tell you these things about simple devices that could defeat a superpower aggresor not because I want someone to go destroy government/military power or property. But instead I express my spirit of resistance at what Americans have shown best at which is our innovation. They practice their civil unrest war games periodically where they show how they’d react and subdue a population with martial law, we too have the right and necessity to think of the possibilities to overthrow such a tyrannical government. We must all start thinking how we’d overcome these difficulties if something of a police state sets in here. Which increases more likely every day. Obviously a typical organized militia of volunteers mostly operates from a 70’s style guerilla warfare concept, which would easily be defeated by today’s weapons. It would take American people a lot of thought how to best throw away a dictatorship before rushing to the front lines. I’ve always advocated peaceful civil disobedience over confrontation for obvious reasons its the best option available. But if not then it is the rulers who should fear. who do they think made all those military toys they so adorn? Rulers do not tread upon these free technologic people or your bound to find your own peril here and delivery into the next world. I make these words of threat as a hypothetical future and not as present tense. May we find that it is better to allow freedom peacefully, then to lose blood and limb to regain it by force. Americans remember your innovativeness even over the gun you hold in your hands and also the can do attitude and victory shall always be yours.
From my experience and what I’ve been told outright my current view is that the society we live in and its ruling class see social manipulation as the most valuable skill. That it is better to get technically skilled people to do as you want than to be technically skilled.
Think about it… how many of us have known people who were know nothings that were socially liked that got promoted while people who did great technical work went nowhere?
I am not sure there will be a revolt of the technical. Too many are caught in the social manipulation and need to eat. Socially the plug can be pulled on a technically skilled person. That’s how the system works. It’s how the system marginalizes people like us. It’s all a series of social manipulations.
Until we can unplug people so they can see it I am not sure we can count on technically skilled people to just refuse.
“From my experience and what I’ve been told outright my current view is that the society we live in and its ruling class see social manipulation as the most valuable skill. That it is better to get technically skilled people to do as you want than to be technically skilled.”
I agree totally and the paradox is how to get technically skilled people to break free of earning a paycheck to creating their own. I too was a captured satellite for a number of years working on the treadmill making so called good money and seeing it all evaporate in taxes, so called investments, and expensive cost of living (rent, etc which were most likely due to taxes) with rising inflation. Its unfathomable that when I started out of college I was making 4x the average person, and what I had to show for it after being gouged was pretty much no different than what the single mom next door living off mininum wage and EIC (earned income credit). Add to it the pure exhaustion of pursuing somebody elses visions and goals and spending half my allotted workday in worthless boss trumpeting meetings, which the boss always went home at 5PM or earlier and expected us to work past our salaried hours by an addiitonal 5 hours. You come home beat and tired and any thought of working on your own business or projects is nill and the cycle begins again the next day. Point is that unless you are a fresh college graduate and need some practical experience, working for someone else is pure folly for the sould and growth. We need to help technically minded people understand how to be business entrepeneurs. Most engineers or technical people in general are too risk adverse to just take that leap of faith and go for it. Another problem is that when some of them do that they find the business is slow starting they might make 1/10th their present opportunity cost in the beginning, they therefore resign back to employee status way before harvest time comes. Business takes adaption and persistence not just good looks and technical knowledge.
“Think about it… how many of us have known people who were know nothings that were socially liked that got promoted while people who did great technical work went nowhere?”
I always felt that too. But this should be all the more motivation for us to leave the typical environment. It took me 20 years of my working career to finally get fed up with me making everyone else rich. Most corporations tend to be a “Great Society” in their own right and reward all the wrong people. Instead of fighting the environment the only answer is to branch away from it
“I am not sure there will be a revolt of the technical. Too many are caught in the social manipulation and need to eat. Socially the plug can be pulled on a technically skilled person. That’s how the system works. It’s how the system marginalizes people like us. It’s all a series of social manipulations.
Until we can unplug people so they can see it I am not sure we can count on technically skilled people to just refuse.”
The fact that I’m having this conversation with such a technically skilled and intellectually capable person makes me have an extreme amount of hope. I’d bet you are the guy who is 4% of the company that does the 64% of the work that matters (Pareto Principle). Its rare to meet these kinds of people in totally different fields and totally different companies and yet thanks to the internet here we are.
I will say that I was the typical neocon poster child up until about 7 years ago, when I came across Ron Paul. Though I wasn’t one who would advocate unnecessary invasions, nor did I have an adoration of the state and in fact the state had always treated my like shit all the way through childhood up. I still felt obligated to believe it had my best interest at heart. It was after Ron Paul and I started to understand the paradigm I was living in that I realized that even so called private America was in the image of the former bigger institution. Slowly but surely I started to resent more and more all the B.S. until one day I decided that I wasn’t going to play its game anymore. If it happened to me its happening to many more and remember we don’t need to convert the entire world we just need to convert the 4% that do the 64% of the work, those people already suspect that they are being used. With our help and a little nudge they are easily turned on to freedom.
We shouldn’t forget though for everyone of the 4% I’m talking about, there are many many more folds of very bright and intelligent people that were lost in the cracks. I’m talking about people that aren’t dumb but were convinced of their inferiority. I meet them all the time, they always put themselves and their capabilities down while they show me outstanding acts of brilliance and skill. These people also are ripe for the picking.
I agree with you it isn’t going to be easy, but it certainly isn’t going to be hard to find people who will hear our message.
Hot Rod
@Hot Rod re: the 4%
I’m one of the 4%; a programmer and consultant with sixteen years in many different trenches, pillboxes, and fields.
I went independent six years ago and I’ve never looked back. My hourly rate is steadily going up.
Here’s the question: when will us Atlases shrug?
Because THAT, the Elites fear–already they sense the withdrawal of consent, the loosening of their grip on the minds.
But when we withdraw our monetary tribute, they are SCREWED.
How will we coordinate it so all of us, who are 1099 and own our LLC’s, S-corps, or C-corps, stop paying taxes together?
It must be a mass movement. Stop one at a time, and the machine continues.
Stop 100,000 of us, and you have a problem.
Look what’s happening in New York; I bet they rescind the gun ban, because the faux-liberal politicians are realizing just how big a chunk they’ve bitten off.
Imagine what will happen if the taxes stop coming in.
HR, what makes people IMO risk adverse are not the technical challenges, not the the business challenges, many can lick those, it’s the political challenges. The kissing of pinky rings I call it. The regulations, the inspections, all the selective enforcement they can do if their ring isn’t kissed.
And I can see it because what most people in my profession do to be on their own is to be consultants. Other than few exceptions after taxes and expenses their take home pay is the same as working some place or less…. but the work is the same plus all the overhead business work so they end up working more for less.
There are exceptions, don’t get me wrong, but it takes a certain personality and drive and salesmanship to make it that way. The system itself is designed to prevent people from making it on their own in areas such as manufacturing. It increases the challenges and the risks sky high.
Technical people aren’t usually political people. If you’re not a political person there isn’t much left that isn’t political, where someone won’t get stomped on.
To be a bit more clear is that taking jobs from corporations as an independent contractor is better, but it isn’t free of the system. That’s what I see has been done, ‘independence’ isn’t having your own manufacturing, your own product, it’s working for a corporation as an independent contractor.
BrentP, Corporations have short memories. I was a dealer for Directv and Dish both. Dish had much politics from Echostar on to Dish corporate. Directv got so big they lost sight of who brought them to the dance and have gotten rid of countless dealers who made them what they are by dirty tricks, like not paying them for months. You have an unbelieveable amount of money tied up in equipment, labor and advertising plus the expenses of offices and all that’s related to that and when you don’t get paid, things go downhill quickly. You Have to pay advertising and if you don’t pay labor, you’re toast so they can effectively kill you off by not paying when they should. Call every part of corporate, get the run-around. Take them to court? They can really ruin you there.
“HR, what makes people IMO risk adverse are not the technical challenges, not the the business challenges, many can lick those, it’s the political challenges. The kissing of pinky rings I call it. The regulations, the inspections, all the selective enforcement they can do if their ring isn’t kissed.”
@BrentP
I understand and you are not mistaken on the government effect. I’d love to enter the medical equipment market, but that market is government protected racket. There are thousands upon thousands of CFR regulations and at any moment a entrepeneur is in violation with any one of them. This is where it pays to be small enough to be in an aftermarket that nobody cares about or may even be encouraged by a primary manufacturer to improve their overall product. Its just one of many examples where a market could be small but be insanely large for a small businessman. Idea is to build capital and invest in either nascent technolgy or stay in the shadows below the radar. In nascent technolgy you have the ability to actually dominant by being the first player. There are literally billions of new things to develop, I’m no exageratting as my mind is more busy on ideas than my hands can create them. I feel diversification is key to surviving an one government upset. I also take a poison pill approach to my business, this goes for government as well as any possible interluder. Bascially I’m not going to flaunt or brag my wealth or success for some trial lawyer to take interest or some big company I’m in the shadows to take notice. Small for them but big for me, at some time I will be big and they will be small but that is another day I plan ahead.
“And I can see it because what most people in my profession do to be on their own is to be consultants. Other than few exceptions after taxes and expenses their take home pay is the same as working some place or less…. but the work is the same plus all the overhead business work so they end up working more for less.”
@BrentP
Consulting can be a big nightmare. I did it for 5 years. Why consulting is a great step away from employee is because you are no longer dependent on one boss for a raise or reference, which will mean more and better wage increases. When I think back about my years as an employee one thing was sure that after working for the same company for 7 years all that mattered was my last two months there. If I had a great boss for 7 years but my last two months I got an irrational one that hated my guts that resulted in 7 years of vacancy on my resume. As a consultant I scarcely worked for the same company for more than two years and I had plenty of back up references and the hiring of me as a consultant they understood I wasn’t there to overly kiss their ring because of this. When the company would hold pep rallies I’d decline and the manager would just say…darn consultants while smiling. The other benefit as a consultant is that you make more because you get paid by the hour. If you make an insane amount per hour which happens if you stick to consultant and can perform under stress and you start a S-corporation then you get to declare a “reasonable salary” as an executive of your own corporation that gets the usual payroll taxes, the remainder passed down to you as a schedule K-1 (dividend) which doesn’t have payroll taxes. This can be huge savings in taxes, but you’ll work for it in having to file all the forms with the IRS and you miss a deadline and you’ll forfeit and pay more. While dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s on IRS corporation forms, you’ll learn basically the irrational tax code and its legal loopholes. You’ll also be able to call yourself CEO and this will earn you respect when your peers and business partners who will see you are registered as such and more the equal of owners of the business. Given consulting will get you more respect you’ll also meet many more top executives, capital venture angels (misnomer), and very rich founders and investors. If nothing else you’ll get to know how rich people think when working with them directly as a top consultant, and you’ll try to emulate this later when you give up consulting. The downsides to consulting is that there will be 4x the expectation and you’ll be hated by everyone as soon as you come in the door. They’ll hate you because you’ll be doing the homework they failed on, you’ll get special treatment, and like any new guy you’ll have to prove yourself. Did I mention you’ll have to prove yourself? Over and over and over and if you don’t like the stress of exams or re-establishing pecking order by periodic kick ass rhetoric to would be bullies then skip consulting. Again consulting in my opinion is a stop gap, you don’t get absolutely rich doing it but its a step in the right direction towards just breaking free and taking the learning lessons of the rich and tax avoidance with you. Some people think consulting is bad in bad times, this simply isn’t true you’ll just have to be price competitive but actually if you like doing it the work will be more abundant in bad times. Overall I loved consulting while consulting and I hate consulting now that I hope to never do it again. But I just hated being a employee of someone else no matter what.
“To be a bit more clear is that taking jobs from corporations as an independent contractor is better, but it isn’t free of the system. That’s what I see has been done, ‘independence’ isn’t having your own manufacturing, your own product, it’s working for a corporation as an independent contractor.”
I think we agree that ideally the best situation is to find a product you can manufacture and simply deal with one customer very well once. Having a product that has a natural monopoly is much better than having a standard commodity. Being a commodity to someone else is very bad for the soul and growth.
Sorry for the long response but I agree with mostly everything you said, but wanted to provide my own inputs as well.
“I went independent six years ago and I’ve never looked back. My hourly rate is steadily going up.
Here’s the question: when will us Atlases shrug?”
@Methyl
Well since we both have experienced pretty much the same on consulting. I think the more freedom one tastes the more one wants. Us Atlases will shug when we are ready and know the consequences but are willing to pay the price anyway. Although doing such one is protected better in a larger herd it behooves us to commit as many people as possible to freedom and entrepeneurship as the two are the same really. Atlas shrugged will be strictly an individual thing though that will come without any external spark, but may look as group activity when it happens to the higher ups. Certain communications and encryption technology over the internet will certainly help.
How does one shrug and do the least amount of sacrafice of our own blood, sweat, and loss of industry?
I do a bit of software myself, mostly C and C++ for gpl projects. This is for supporting the hardware I try to sell but I do a little philantropy for gpl and linux as well when I can. Its a give and take relationship as I could have neve started my business without all the great free Linux applications, at least ethically (smile). I’m obligated to return and not just take to such a great project.
I’ve always admired software guys very much. Beyond initial cost of development, the manufacturing cost of reproduction is nearly free. This makes for insane profits, so how does one offer himself say in a Linux post world in software where so much is free but one has to make a private software? Software guys are nothing but a miraculous model of free liberian philantropy and capital development for private profit. We could learn very much how to model the freedom movement in general based on the likes of great software developers.
Best Regards,
HR
@Hot Rod:
Thanks for your posts, your letter to Brent really spoke to me, too.
I’ll make the break to pure product development sooner or later…and your ideas on natural monopolies in the medical device market are spot-on.
In fact your post reminds me of the humble rodents, our mammalian predecessors, waiting patiently under rocks and in hidey-holes while the dinosaurs went stomping about in their death-throes.
Just so today’s governments; roaring and bellowing in futile rage as the asteroids come pounding down.
Hot Rod asked, “I went independent six years ago and I’ve never looked back. My hourly rate is steadily going up. Here’s the question: when will us Atlases shrug?”
Isn’t it obvious? Not until your hourly rate is steadily going DOWN.
Of course, by then it’ll be too late to do a dang thing about it and it will happen real fast. All the better to blind-side the idiots and go-along’ers.
I think it’s all starting now and it’s a downhill slide from here, imho.
Insert Johnny Cash song here:
“Down… Down… Buring wheel of…”
Oops, make that “Down… Down… bURNING… “[what is it? Lake of fire?]
I’m a rock-n-roll type of guy and that Johnny Cash stuff isn’t my normal, but it’s cool and spot on.
IME, the reason I’ve disliked consultants isn’t because they show me up, it’s because management listens to them. They tell management the exact same things I told them for months or years prior and then suddenly they listen. It’s like they need to look at a bill for hundreds of dollars an hour before they take it seriously.
One particular product I wanted to improve for years. What happens? After years of not listening to me, of me giving presentations on where the issue is, they bring in a consultant who says the same things! That’s what annoys me. I am every bit as good as these consultants, I just can’t do the social and sales BS. I am not in the extravert category personality wise. From those I know, those with personalities like mine don’t do well in it. I know why its unsuitable for me. Honestly the ideal situation for me is to work for a company, with my own projects, but be paid a percentage of my productivity. I could make millions for a very tiny percentage at the right places.
Medical device start up… been in that business. Where I was the goal was to get bought out by one of the bigs. Problem? government rules made superior and more cost effective treatment unprofitable. Result: company went bankrupt.
On government I’ve lived under FCC, FDA, and EPA rules… as well as their European counterparts. When I was in medical devices there was an entire department just to deal with FDA. Tiny company too… company wide training because if anyone screwed up some paperwork or heaven forbid something more than paperwork, it could destroy the company.
Well another product idea down the tubes… I was drinking a glass of wine while typing this and had an idea to make a vacuum pump to pull the air out of a previously opened bottle of wine… search online… already done. BAH!
“IME, the reason I’ve disliked consultants isn’t because they show me up, it’s because management listens to them. They tell management the exact same things I told them for months or years prior and then suddenly they listen. It’s like they need to look at a bill for hundreds of dollars an hour before they take it seriously.”
@BrentP
Yeah that surely can be a phenomenon. It happens inversely too though. I’ve taken on a consulting engineering position, where the departing employee was well loved. One such case they kept intervening me on every choice I made and said “maybe we should call xxx and see what he thinks?”. I was about two days from giving them my walking papers when they found out the beloved ex went to work for their competitors which then relieved me to do what I needed to fix the employees sloppy work. And I do mean sloppy work, as it was obvious that he dinked around for two years not knowing what he was doing and when they were catching on and demanding results he grabbed his parachute and went to the competitor.
No two consultants are the same as are no two Jews or no two blacks or no two anything. Everyone is an individual even in titles as you being very intelligent know. Like I said I got paid big bucks for a lot of contracts but I did nearly the impossible and I mean that when I say it. I didn’t start my life out as a coddled politician or contractor but as a regular employee working a regular job for a big crappy company. I felt the same way as you stated about contractors when working in these companies. Unfortunatley I’ve wore both sides of the shoes for better or worse. I’m agreeing with you though consulting isn’t some panacea of everyone’s ills in the workforce.
You’d also be suprised that contractors are in fact less social than employees. I’m no suavette when it comes to dealing with people. I’d consider myself a natural introvert, with a trained extrovert skin. Its hard having two personalities ( a professional and a private) and some would say that could lead to psychosis. Fortunately, I found that I could manage to smile when I absolutely had to and even manage fairly well by using libertarian priciples, though I’m a designer in natural substance and not liking to manage nonlinear people.
Basically when I managed my approach was very much different then most people I worked for, I simply did not have meetings but would rather talk directly to each and every worker of the project independently with only things that would concern them on their particular aspect of the design. If I thought that two people needed to work together as in communicate I’d then tell them to talk to each other about such issue. By skipping big meetings that always had big blowhards I was able to get a very mean and clean design team. But at start ups I also would do everything from software, firmware, hardware, digital, analog, DSP, RF by myself if nobody was standing in my way. I preferred it that way with no to few peope working by my side.
I think every field is different for consultants. Electrical design consulting isn’t as much about politics as that you can do some pretty wicked stuff with what’s available in equipment, parts and time.
You know your idea is exactly how it starts just doing something you need that isn’t available. Its hard to believe but the more you try to come up with ideas the easier they come to you. Eventually you get so many of them you have to file them away or you’d drive yourself crazy. Also, just because somebody beat you to the idea doesn’t mean you can’t do it better or cheaper.
Entrepenuership nor consulting is for everybody but I can tell when somebody would do well at it and despite your own desires to avoid them I think you’d do very well if you decided to do either.
Best Regards,
HR
Dear Don,
“Nobody? Nothing? Really?”
Two thoughts.
One. Nature documentaries of lions attacking a cape buffalo. Sometimes other buffaloes stand by and do nothing. Sometimes they have each others’ back. Always wondered why the didn’t do that all the time, consistently.
Two. People/sheeple today invariably tell themselves that had they lived in Socrates’ time or Galileo’s time, they would have been among the courageous dissidents who spoke out in their support.
Bullshit!!!!!
Those sporting “Support your local police” bumper stickers, those who mock 9/11 truthers, those who remain silent whiled Obmomber orders more drone attacks, would have been among those screaming for Socrates’ blood, and denouncing Galileo as a heretic.
How do we know that?
We know that because of how they behave today, in 2013.
Obmomber? I like that one, first I’ve seen it 🙂
“When Justice is is gone, there’s always force.
When Force is gone, there’s always Mom.
Hi Mom!”
— Laurie Anderson, “Oh Superman”
We know it, as you point out so well, because we’ve always known it.
*Obomber
typo!
Serendipity?
Clarification: I meant to type “Obomber.”
I’ve been calling him that for the past year.
But I typed “Obmomber” instead. With an unwanted second “m.”
The “logic” of Sheeple who support Obama.
http://www.youtu.be/e6J4QBmdi-c
American Deceptionalism: Charles Bukowski reveals the truth of the hollowed-out, slack-jawed watchers of the Squeegee-Men Du-Jour.
“Generally speaking, you’re free until you’re about four years old. Then starting at five, six, you go to grammar school. Then you start getting demanded and solved, oriented and shoved into areas.
You lose what individualism you had. If you have enough of course you retain some of it. But most don’t have enough so you become watchers of game shows things like that.
Then you work the eight hour job with almost a feeling of goodness. Like you’re doing something. You get married like marriage is a victory. And you have children like children is a victory. But most things most people do are a total grind. Marriage birth children. It’s something they have to do because there’s nothing else to do.
There’s no glory in it. There’s no steam. There’s no fire. It’s very, very, flat. And the earth is full of them. Sorry, but that’s the way I see it.”
Dear Tor,
Did you see the film “Revolutionary Road?” Starred Leonardo di Caprio and Kate Winslet. It’s a grim tale of suburban lives lived in quiet desperation.
Sort of a dystopian version of the hope-filled life the same two actors depicted in “Titanic.”
Leftists automatically blame “capitalism, consumerism, and materialism.”
I beg to differ. I know that without stifling government regulation, I could have made much more of my own architectural career.
I think your take about the role of education/indoctrination is far closer to the truth.
Quite a few People could have wrote: “After years of not listening to me, of me giving presentations on where the issue is, they bring in a consultant who says the same things!”
Ha! That’s a sad tale told by many.
I mention that to bring comfort, not scorn.
Another Person wrote: “I didn’t start my life out as a coddled politician or contractor but as a regular employee working a regular job for a big crappy company. ”
And That Is funny. Sad, but true, kind of thing.
It all fits with this comment: “Basically when I managed my approach was very much different then most people I worked for…”
… I kept waiting to read where you were fired. [Not that I think that would be ok.]
Obomb-the-moms … and the kids.
They don’t see it coming and they won’t know what hit them so they’ll go on supporting that which makes them weaker. Typical American cluelessness.
Did Ya hear me America? – Typical American cluelessness. – Pay attention, now. Phulease.
There, I’ve added a lot of material to my Soviet, er I mean, East German personal file…. perhaps some asshole Party Member will read it and their brain will engage or something?
Still, that shocks me: I’m living the life of an East German or a Soviet Person. There’s something Mega wrong with that, yet People around me act as if that’s just fine.
WTF? … Is there something wrong with them? Or wHAt?
Que, Don:
You know I’ve been thinking that with China having successfully knocking down a satellite with a missle and Russia having similar capability. How is it that U.S. would be prepared to use any of its GPS based systems if that was all gone. But then it dawned on me that there is actually a much cheaper anti-satellite solution and its really around the corner for just about anyone.. Chemical Lasers. I’d think it foolish to go to war with a surveilance superpower like former U.S.S.R without first poking its eyes out. And that is exactly what Russia has available. Anyway the USA did some tests and verified that indeed it could have destroyed its own satellite using a chemical laser it had. These military satellites only represent a problem for the average citizens of the country you know those who might not like being told what to do everyday and like being spied on, they might also work for a 3rd world country but not for a technological superpower or even a group of people that are technically savvy enough. The technology keeps get cheaper on all this stuff, how much longer before and average person can build his own pulse chemical laser? Lasing is pretty straight forward, the chemical reaction is straight forward, the only unknown is the reflectors and cooling them. Obviously, it seems like a pipe dream, but it isn’t really. The bad thing about satellites is that they are always at the same location predictably, which makes them a sitting duck. You know the more I think about it that is why the military was so gung ho about predators, they are a cheap replacement for satellites. Unfortunately, predators move fairly slow and I think a standard V-1 type valve jet engine missle could knock them out with very little cost, yes its possible to build one out of a pipe and check valve, spark plug, and cheap valving. Saw a guy on Ebay who sold the V-1 type rocket for bicycles some time ago, think for about $400. Electronics would be minimal. Not to mention current military SAMs of advanced nations would make mince meat of predators really quick. One thing is for sure any fool enough to go out and challenge a superpower without first addressing the eyeballs would be turned into hamburger real quick. For super powers like Russia, China, or USA they are already obsolete. For us who they are made for they are the eyeballs of a potential future beast. No I don’t advocate anyone actually trying to knock anything out of the air of the U.S governments, all this is hypothetical conjecture if the U.S. every became tyrannical and treasonous to its people of course in the far future.
Hot Rod
The big question is what they are using for mirrors….hmmm…or do they even use mirrors for the MW lasers? Would it be possible to create a resonant lasing chamber without mirrors…I think maybe.
1000 ways to sink a predator drone…
http://www.thenewnewinternet.com/2012/10/31/report-majority-of-drones-susceptible-to-hacking-lack-encrypted-communications/
Forget the lack of encryption as this is just another silly first prototypes. I’d figure that all Drones are susceptible to a RF poor Signal to Noise floor. Plain language…jamming.
Yah know as frightening as terminators are the one positive thing if American’s ever have to fight them is we don’t have to feel guilt for the loss of life if they just happen to fall from the sky.
1000 ways for a predator drone to fall from heaven:
http://www.thenewnewinternet.com/2012/10/31/report-majority-of-drones-susceptible-to-hacking-lack-encrypted-communications/
The fascinating part is that RF is easily jammed, the satellite part probably isn’t. I’m suspecting that these drones really would be susceptible to a high noise floor. I’m really suprised that more of them aren’t being knocked out of the sky by Russian or Chinese technology. Usually one of these countries always enters to test their counter technology on ours in a hot zone. Since this doesn’t seem to be happening it means either drones are not seen as a serious threat to advanced nation states. The things just don’t seem that robust to me.
Hi Ernie,
Thanks!
On your question: I think the problem is this: People like us do not like violence; we try to avoid it. This is to our credit – but it’s also a liability in that we’re perhaps too slow to respond – or even to respond at all. However, I do think a point is fats approaching when there will be some push back. Because avoidance is becoming increasingly impossible. They simply will not leave us alone.
I think you’re on the money Eric. I noticed at the pro gun rally here in Mississippi the crowd showing up was different than most “political” rallies. Everything from redneck farmers to literal biker gangs (and I don’t mean the weekend yuppie types). Knowing some of the biker crowd (they have a great bar right across the state line that is neutral ground and welcomes behaved public, place you and much of the crowd posting here would enjoy), they don’t vote, they just want to be left alone and their take is exactly your last sentence.
You’re right. During part of my forties I was a well respected Hangaround who often rode along with Gallopin’ Gooses.I got along with them very well. Like me, they just wanted to do their Thing and be left the hell alone. I never saw them go out of their way to mess with anybody. On the rather rare occasion that someone messed with them (and me when I was with them) they (we) never backed down.
All things considered, I liked their style.
Most of the Bikers I knew retired their Patches before they turned fifty. Unfortunately, accidents, gunshots, and prison claimed a few.
tgsam
No biker has ever bothered me… unlike the government.
“They simply will not leave us alone.”
Like a bully pushing you in the back as you both walk out some double doors to the outside to settle the matter in the grass and the dirt?
… With rare exception some celebrate, the matter has been decided on their side – the Other side – so far. To date. For now. For Whom the Bell Tolls. ? … All while ruled by Yertle and his turtles… while so many bend to that will, or swerve – you know – to avoid going out those doors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yertle_the_Turtle_and_Other_Stories
I have no idea wHAt the NFL or AFL or NBL version would be, I imagine it would be a bit like those guys who asked the People Who Are Opposed To Self-Defense to post signs in their yards saying they are unarmed. What a tail-gating laugh that is, eh? No wonder they drone the crowds, might break the trance?
Not until they feel it in their paychecks (pants) will they notice. Of course, by then, it’s too late. That’s why there’s a Big Push (Big Shove) now?
But why worry, People aRe smart,… right?
The wild and free hogs of the Okefenokee swamp
http://www.fieldandstream.com/forums/backlash-and-blowback/wild-and-free-hogs-okefenokee-swamp
Consider also:
“a victory of the mind” – something springing from the ‘bury your guns’ craze. … Craze is the right word, isn’t it?
http://blog.joehuffman.org/2007/11/14/a-victory-of-the-mind/
That was an interesting take on things, for sure. Perhaps landowners substitutes for gunowners, though?
As a young gunowner in 1992 I felt powerless under the landowner class selling themselves out from under us all via the war on certain uncontrollable drugs and unacceptable behaviors in general to “do” a dang thing about the Feds burning children alive in Waco.
Years of social conditioning Will do that to a Person, ya know. “Socialization” – Hmph! sO that’s wHAt public schools are for.
It was ALL theirs.
… Funny that, burning children alive. Lucky it wasn’t me too?
That’s the message I got anyway.
OH SAY CAN YOU SEE!!! ??? Psft!
It’s THE American way?
All which we endure is due to the landowner class?
It seems that way in my neck of the woods. A counted on group are the “local enablers” for the whole mighty machine! Without their support,… which they will ‘Never’ give up.
….
1992 – 1993 was a bloom failure year, all downhill from there.
… On a never ending road-trip to Hell? That’s where they’re taking us,… I’ve been there, we don’t want to go there… STOP! Just freaking STOP! and get – out – of the freaking Way!
THAT is real progress, wouldn’t you say?
One last thing,
“I’m sorry, all questions Must be submitted in writing.”
The ship is sinking, the roof’s on fire, and we don’t care, yet the danger is growing, things are not slowing, round and round,… lets not go where they want us to go.
Heck, I’d rather be ruled by 12 year olds and see where they take us, it’d prolly be a dang site better than wHAt we have now.
Pardon the rant, I’ve been thinking.
The thing about bullies – and their victims – is this:
For awhile, sometimes a long while, the bully has his way. But all the while, the victim grows more and more furious. Until – one day – he blows. It may be an eruption out of all proportion, too – far beyond what the bully ever imagined or expected.
That’s what I expect is coming. Here’s a prequel:
http://www-prisonplanet/com/prominent-gun-control-advocate-compares-firearms-owners-to-nazis.html
The fury is beginning to boil over.
For the gun controllers to call gun owners Nazis is to put on display their own astounding ignorance. As probably everyone here knows, the Nazis were gun controllers, about restricting gun ownership to the state and those close to it. Perhaps like most of the control freaks in this society they project themselves on to others.
To be more accurate, the Nazis were major beneficiaries of Weimar gun control efforts. This is relevant because it leads to a powerful argument to use with Blue Team drones who trust their president. Pointing out that the relatively innocuous Weimar government disarmed the populace, and then the Nazis took over, leads some of them to consider the implications of the next post-victim-disarmament president being an EVIL Red Teamer instead of St. Barry, Nobel peace prize recipient in the newly-created “existing while vaguely black” category.
Using their own idiocy against them, but if you can fix even one person…
A POWERFUL PRINCIPLE EXPERTLY PRESENTED
Since I’m one of America’s best Critical Thinkers I’m rather stingy with compliments. However, Squeegeeman may be your best yet and you surely deserve acknowledgemant.
The very first time I was targeted by a Squeegeeman I instantly visualized his ugly gourd in crosshairs.
tgsam
Danke sehr, Tinsley – I very much appreciate praise from you for precisely the reasons stated!
This is perhaps the best metaphor for GovCo I’ve ever seen. Beautiful in its simplicity.
But, don’t insult Aqualung…he was merely enjoying the view.
Amen, brother!
I’ve got much more respect for Aqualung. He never pulled a gun on anyone.
Eric,
Speaking of television programs that highlight government employees, has anyone noticed the proliferation of programs that seem to highlight the police and/or military as the end-all, be-all of human existence? I rarely watch network TV anyway, but the alarming increase in these types of programs has completely turned me off.
If I watch anything these days, it’s things like Pawn Stars on History, or perhaps Mythbusters on Discover. Outside of that, I’ll watch a movie of my own choosing.
Hi Mike,
Yes, definitely – especially deification of “law enforcement.” Sickening. It’s part of the reason why we threw our TeeVee in the woods a few months back. Well, we threw the cable box in the woods. Now we only watch the occasional Netflix series or documentary. It’s lowered my blood pressure considerably!
We proudly stopped watching TV several years ago. We too, only watch the occasional Netflix show, commercial free. Or movies, of course. I haven’t subscribed to cable in over 10 years.
You know that blank stare you get when you talk voluntaryism, anarchy, or free markets? Yeah… I give them that when they talk about the latest TV shows. It feels GREAT.
Ha Ha!! Yeah, exactly! I love doing that.
TMike
You don’t need an idiot box to see nauseating LEO worship. I dumped cable service more than two years ago, and I still have to see it every day in real life. Most egregiously, the ubiquitous bumper stickers (don’t know if they’re local/regional/etc) that say “Pay Police like your LIFE depends on it.” The implication apparently being that if you don’t pony up endlessly larger bribes, they’ll just murder you. So.. they get credit for honest advertizing I guess.
The military and state worship sickens me as well. My TV watching is the same sort of shows. Stuff that is for being reality TV, at least has sound economic principles behind it. Someone on LRC called Pawn Stars the best economic show on TV because it taught the basics such as time value of money, risk, profit and loss, etc and so forth.
When I am in the homes of others I sometimes see part of a televised sporting event or the evening news. I’ll just say it allows me to understand why Elvis shot television sets.
We stopped watching tv about six months ago. Since then I think I’ve seen every documentary Netflix has. Through my internet cable I could still T into it and get basic channels, but I enjoy not having them so I don’t. We use some of the money saved and apply it toward faster internet.
Years ago, when I was a young man, I commercially fished the Pacific Northwest as far north as Alaska. I did this for several years. There is no TV reception out at sea so for years, I saw no television. When I finally did come ashore and watch some TV, I was flabbergasted as to the banality of the tube. None of it made sense to me as if it was all cartoons. Today, I have my Dish TV but it tends to be background noise as I sit at my computer and navigate the world from my desk.
Dom, long ago I cut off my satellite “service” and while pocketing the savings started to pick and choose more carefully what we viewed. After a year or so I was on a business trip out of town for a few days and had to stay at a hotel. While there I thought to myself “Self. Lets see what’s on the boob tube”. Good god almighty! I turned the sound off and the rapid fire editing was all I saw now instead of the non-stop babbling. It was repetitive as hell and annoying. I turned the damn thing off after a while because it just made no sense. Like watching simians tossing scat around.
You are so right on the boob tube quality!!! My son and I have been at a hotel with satellite TV for a bit as we complete a move and decided to see what might be on these bazillion channels. Our conclusion was that we would be really pissed off to be under contract paying hard earned money for this shit. We do like some movies, but as my son said, “Hell Dad, we could buy 3-6 movies a month for what they charge for this crap!”
Yes, it’s definitely on the rise. What’s most horrifying is that the Clovers who watch this shit – who can’t get enough of it- are impervious to reason and truth. Just TRY telling a boob tube-addicted Clover that a helping of Hollywood bullshit like NCIS is the farthest thing from reality, that you know this for a fact because you, in real life, have dealt with the brain-dead, useless fucktards who are the REAL NCIS. You’ll only get either a blank stare or angry, bitter denials in response.
Truly, mind-rendingly, nausea-inducingly sickening!
Dear liberranter,
That’s right! You were in the Navy.
Do you mean to tell me that NCIS agents aren’t like this?
http://wwwimage.cbsstatic.com/base/files/styles/596xh/public/102477_d00265b.jpg
Say it ain’t so!
Amazing what the Amerikanschen schaffenmenschen will believe.
Beware the schattenmenschen. 😉
Dear mith,
Shadow men?
Okay. Ya stumped me on that one.
Bevin,
The term came up when I looked up schaffenmenschen.
It seemed appropriate since some men seem as tangible as shadows that disappear under the scrutiny of light.
7 hours of David Icke and the worldwide concentration summer camp built for the benefit of the illuminati shadow people.
Dear mith,
Okay. Gotcha.
Dear Tor,
Didn’t know what to make of mith’s “shadow men” and your “illuminati shadow people” at first.
Then I clicked on the David Icke video you cited.
He’s relatively new to me, but he’s very interesting. Not sure I agree with all of what he says. But much of it is right on the money.
Seven hours?! Good grief! Talk about a marathon session. How many 5 hour shots did he take before hitting the stage?
Maybe there’s a market (or just great fun, satisfaction) for adapting bidet technology, lol, to cars, & from there, who knows? Remote-controlled, possibly sensor-driven featured, water (& other substances) canons in various sizes generating various psi’s. Waterbroom that squeegee man away….
"Check yourself when you find yourself laughing at sitcoms that show government “workers” in a humorous light."
Sorry Eric. I know this is a serious article but I just have to quote from MIB:
"No, ma’am. We at the FBI do not have a sense of humor that we’re aware of. May we come in?"
Dear Larry,
Overheard: outspoken character on TV show refers to FBI as “Fucking bunch of idiots!”
No particular point to make. Merely FYI.
Alex Jones has David Icke on quite often. Let’s say 60% of what he say rings true. He is one of Alex Jones’ Alex Joneses. He says much a voluntaryist anarchist can agree with, but I think he is just fine with group force and “enlightened” squeegee men.
http://www.davidicke.com/headlines
“Exposing the dreamworld we believe to be real”
Icke is a smart guy and interesting to listen to. But he loses me with the shape-shifting reptile stuff.
Dear Eric,
That left me baffled too! I was “WTF?”
I hope he meant that as a metaphor, as a send-up.
Most of his other stuff is top notch.
The shape-shifting reptiles…. many people believe many different things in this regard, but what I try to do is extract the common meaning. The common meaning is that they, the so-far permanent ruling class of the planet, is a different species from the rest of us.
Now in social Darwinism they are just the more evolved form of human. In “They Live” they are aliens in disguise. To David Icke they are shape shifting reptiles. To H.G. Wells the human race would evolve into two species along class lines. Religious people may see them as devil worshipers or even possessed by demons or other evil entities. It goes on and on but it is the same theme. I think people look at the historical information, the behaviors, what they were exposed to growing up, and the science fiction and come up with their own way of expressing this basic idea that the ruling class is not (quite) human. A parasitical species that eats away at humanity.
How true is it? What parts of it are true? Is it probably the most simple explanation that they are just defective, just sociopaths, probably. I try not to get hung up on someone’s own personal idea of it, but just take the theme. Ultimately as Alex Jones says it’s not what any person thinks about this ruling class, but what this ruling class itself believes. They seem to clearly believe that by some mechanism that they are above other people.
There’s no need to get hung up on how that is expressed IMO.
Dear Brent,
Is it probably the most simple explanation that they are just defective, just sociopaths
That’s how I chose to read Ickes’ meaning, as metaphor. “TPTB are lizards” as opposed to “TPTB are like lizards.”
Metaphors come across as more rhetorically powerful that similes. Metaphors feel bolder. Similes feel more tentative.
Ickes’ literal equation of TPTB with lizards from an alien planet is likely an extended metaphor for dramatic effect, to ensure that it registers in listeners’ minds.
Sort of like when some of us refer to TPTB as parasites, or lawyers as sharks.
I try to take it as a metaphor; because the undeniable fact is the Elites and their minions are monstrous in their evil.
“Eyes Wide Shut” didn’t cover one one-thousandth of the REAL horrors these people perpetrate.
When Alex Jones says Child “Protective” Services has a bounty schedule for different types of children–to be sold off to sex-trading rings and ultimately for snuff films–I tried to convince myself it was isolated, or rare…
…until a college friend’s wife started working at Texas CPS.
They have high turnover–probably because normal people who figure out what’s going on recoil in revulsion. She saw desirable children–they love dark-haired, green-eyed girls–being targeted. They pick poor, typically immigrant, families without the resources or knowledge to fight back and work up a “case” until they lose the kid…and the kid gets lost in the system.
Which is a long way of getting to my point: there are so many references, in so many widely divergent cultures, to creatures who feed on evil…Archons, etc….that I can’t discount Icke’s explanation/metaphor.
Are they really, physically shape-shifting reptile?
Dunno.
But my own explanation—that they’re simply evil, twisted fucks–lacks a certain pizzazz. I’m willing to explore history and hear other explanations.
Meth, I think they’re just evil, twisted fucks and they’re there because they know they can live off the gummit teat and do quite well while they have their pick of kids to do their worst intentions on. I give you the case of the “cult” S of San Angelo that they busted for very unclear reasons and immediately took the kids. When asked if this would fly, an old college buddy who briefly worked for CPS after graduating said they would be taken care of and whatnot. I said the case wouldn’t stand two seconds in court ifthey had good lawyers, and they did and it didn’t. They finally convicted acouple guys on having sex with minors years later after stealing everything they had. The CPS reluctantly gave the children up, mainly because they had good representation and partly because it was so high profile and those kids were not going to become “lost” in their evil system. I cheered the day they were united with their loved ones and CPS had to go find other victims less well known which I can guarantee, they most certainly did. Just check out how many kids are later molested and killed by the very places they get “placed”, often in homes with known sex offenders. Yes, it’s evil through and through.
I have to admit I admire his passion for defending kids from paedophile rings. Something that even in this country, and government, has been hushed up from quite some time.
Nixon discusses homosexuals at
Bohemian Grove – Nixon Tapes
“Bohemian Grove, that I attend from time to time, is the most faggy goddamned thing you could ever imagine”
– Richard Nixon
Coming from Tricky Dick that’s got to tell you something.
I’ll do my best, Eric, but the Stockholm Syndrome mindset runs pretty deep. These people will use every excuse possible to defend their enslavement.
Love the metaphor of Squeegee Man, Eric.
Thanks, Mike!
I liked it, too –
You’re a car guy so try this one about “oil changes…”
http://olgreyghost.blogspot.com/2010/07/oil-changes-and-government.html
Good stuff, GG – and good to have you with us!
Ghost, near as I can tell the web is a really huge place. Why is it I keep running into you 🙂
Good Blog!
Great minds think alike and visit the same websites? 😉
The Squeegee Man is a powerful ethical-conceptual image. Thank you for that, Eric.
Did you watch the inauguration ceremony of the 43rd President of the United States, someone asks? Heck, no. Why would I waste time watching the First Squeegee Man being presented the golden squeegee by all the other self-selected squeegee men? It’s madness.
It’s infuriating to watch the squeegee men ramble incoherently about their Squeegocracy. One nation, of the Squeegee Men, by the Squeegee Men, for the Squeegee men, they all say. Now Gibbs Me a Dolla!
Stay the heck away from me, you rancid, disgusting hobos. I’ll never acknowledge you. I’m onto your con games, next thing I know, you’ll be at my front door with your Squeegees, and then I’ll never be rid of you.
It’s plain to see, the prequel to Uncle Sam. How Uncle Sam Begins. How Sam was schooled in all the con games by the ancient Squeegee artisans of the old country.
I’m not going to help the Yankee Despots bring their Squeegee Rackets to every highway of the world. No one owes these Squeegee Terrorists a nickel. I’m simply going to roll up my window and keep looking straight ahead. Those Squeegee Men will never get anything from me.
“How Uncle Sam Begins”
The Rise of Squeegee Man.
Oh, have you ever met that funny Squeegee Man…
(Squeegee man)
Have you ever met that funny Squeegee man?
(Squeegee man)
If he said, he swam to China
And he sell you South Carolina
Then you know You’re talkin’ to that Squeegee man
If he said, he walks the ocean
Any time he takes the notion
Then you know You’re talkin’ to Squeegee man
Of course that’s just my lame parody of Cab Calloway’s Reefer man, but that’s what this article put into my head…
Good article. Violence takes many forms, and our meme of “nonaggression” is a tough sell in this milieu, where everywhere and for everything we pay a tax, or face a “tip jar.” The prevalent meme is “give ’til it hurts!” The more you give, the more your “reward in heaven.” Be a good, moral person and “share,” whether you want to or not. United Way deductions from your paychecks, enforced by the office meme, underscored by memos from “the boss.”
Hell, at the local cafeteria, they used to have these sweet old ladies who bussed the trays and dishes, and occasionally would come by your table with a pitcher of tea to refill your glass. As far as I know, they rarely received tips. Then a few years back, a couple of recently arrived Asian young ladies found employment there, and, finding opportunity, have brought in a few more of their friends, and they have successfully “changed the meme” to a quite lucrative situation for themselves. They have done this by stopping by early and often at the patrons’ tables, asking in broken engrish, “is everything alright?” and bringing by the (free) water or tea to refill the glass. This plays right into the mostly older crowd (who have WAY too much disposable income, thanks to the upside-down SS and Medicare system – that’s another story altogether!) and gladly “share a dollar or two with the nice Asian lady, struggling to ‘make it’ in our economy.” Ha-ha – that little Asian is collecting many thousands with her anchor baby benefits, “earned income credit,” free healthcare, etc., while drawing 7 bucks plus an hour officially, plus “unclaimed” income in the form of all those dollars these old fools are leaving on the table for their “service.” The truth is that every “low wage” immigrant family unit in this country is collecting tens of thousands in benefits and public plunder at the expense of the few remaining productive folks who pay income taxes. Many decades ago, I watched my own grandmother eke out a living doing difficult and thankless work well into her seventies, sharing an upstairs apartment with another older lady, back when the senior gravy train wasn’t running so well. This “greatest generation,” with their multiple hip replacements, million-dollar life extension surgeries (sometimes only gaining a few months or weeks), and fat pensions, are the once and only beneficiaries of a geriatric entitlement system that will be bankrupt before more of us ever collect a penny! Rich picking for boat people, indeed…
But all this being clear, there’s something else worth mentioning: that “squeegee guy” is always a black guy. Ever notice that? That’s part of the meme that’s working there – the idea that YOU are somehow guilty of “racism” if you don’t reward him for his “free” service, and his “industrious example.” That’s, of course, a GIANT lie, as it’s the threat of violence against YOU or YOUR VEHICLE that is a big part of the coercion to ante up in these situations. Along with the “guilt” of course. Hell, arguably, the same “white guilt” meme can be seen at work in the last two presidential elections. This is truly the psychological morass we libertarians face – and it will be a cold day in hell before we succeed in electing one of our own in the face of this corrupt and upside-down system. Hell, the very idea of a real libertarian stumping for votes is a contradiction in terms – at least in the present kleptocratic system. Be free to be left alone? Not likely to happen, is it?
Thanks, needed to vent a bit, this morning.
Are you pressured by your employer to give to the United Way?
Before she met me, my wife was her office’s United Way person. Not any more.
United Way? Hell no! Every since I caught on to their shennanigans, and that was many years ago, I never give a dime. I give when and where I feel like it and guilt trip tactics don’t work on me.
Speaking of giving at the office, I recently put a new twist on that. Porky’s telemarketers called a week or so ago and asked if I would contribute to their fund to help the families of officers “killed in the line of duty”.
I said, “I gave at the clerk of court’s office” and hung up.
TOUCHE!
Whenever I get a pestercall from one of the law people requesting a donation, I often respond by saying, I’ll consider it when Drug Prohibition has been repealed.
tgsam
Well, I disagree about the Asian servers. What’s wrong with hustling? The tips are voluntary. Good for them, I say. You’re assuming an awful lot regarding “anchor babies” and all that.
“Thanks, needed to vent a bit, this morning.”
Well next time maybe you could just yell at your dog?
Hey,Eric,”GOVERNMENT IS VIOLENCE” tee shirts. What do you think?
I think it is a damn fine idea!
Seconded!
Hey Eric,
Loved the squeegee man analogy. I read it to my wife and she was like..Yeah!…Yeah!…Yeah!…Yeah! all the way through the entire piece. One of your best yet. BTW I know exactly what you mean about the no ask private service, they show up with their push cart wagon to line the public streets from early morning. It would be the one place I’d encourage a need for a business permit, on public squalor property. They are especially noxius at intersection where you are forced to wait for the light to change, you find these out of luck prosletyzers especially in gun free zone and cities like San Francisco or Austin or souther cities of Florida. Me being a kind and giving kind of guy in nature, and having taken the shit end of the stick everytime I’ve decided long ago to avoid any fee extraction to these parasites. One ahole had the nerve to approach me and ask I pay his gasoline bill. He was driving a brand new truck and mine 15+ years old. I told him fuck no and go fuck yourself! Saw him later in the gas station buying a newspaper and big slurpee and you would guess right a short but big fat fucker. These are the people that want us without guns, there is no level at which they will not stoop down.
I’ve bought a Michael Meyers mask, next time I’m passing through these squeegee parts of town I’ll be sure to wear it. Of course I’ll keep looking staight forward and show absolutely no expression to really see how it sinks in to the peddlers. Though there probably is a law against bearing a scary mask to filth peddlers. A man can find no peace in crap holes like I’m describing. Last point how do you know the scariest and worst parts of a city? Easy just look up government road, you know the one with all the welfare/social security offices. You’ll then know where all the scum reside, try to avoid these areas.
Regards,
HR
BTW I was being facetious about wanting business licenses above.
Hate to say it but it looks like the new bubble economy is on the rise. My business is going gangbusters and I speculate its all the new fiat money starting to circulate. Seen nearly a 4x times increase in just two weeks and I doubt it has much to do with anything more than free sloshing money. The best business I’m doing is in office equipment. I’ll have to be careful not to over expand in a bubble economy thanks that I’ve learned from Austrian economics on what not to do. I believe everyone else will be deceived that Obama has saved us from the depression. Temporary satiation got to make all the plebes feel good as the gun collection begins, and many will be happy to have jobs over guns guaranteed. Long as the party is going that is.
HR
Actually I got to thinking about it a bit. You know about over expanding. The thought came to me is it really possible to over expand if your company is free of all debt and long term liabilities? I realize that a company may have a fictitious IRR (internal rate of return) caused by a bubble, but even supposing that the alternative is investing money in something like treasury bonds with much lower yields a person would be crazy not to expand his business by reinvesting most of the profit back into the company? I realize that with inflation propping up a companies bottom line suppose one expands into office supplies because its booming due to fiat and avoids investing in something else that will actually have more real demand in the future. That one could safely overestimate the future of office supplies and instead maybe miss other manufacturing items that may actually be more demanded in the distant future. I do understand how the fiat money pretty much causes misallocation, but it seems a lot less disasterous to a company that avoids debt and doesn’t commit to long term liabilities that extend into the future when business slows again. Hmmmm….I hate to say it but one can only go for the ride and try to diversify into as many different markets as possible and also try to avoid debt because there is simply no way to know what market is real for the long term and which isn’t sustainable. Even at that if you look at the internet bubble some companies such as Google did very well with the seed money they got from the huge IPO’s of their day. I’d be interested in hearing ways to really estimate the correct investing in a country that is highly dependent on fiat cash flows. My only thoughts are diversification and avoiding debts and long term obligations.
Keep your on-hand inventory under control, provide a fast turn from manufacturer to end user, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to go after every bit of business that’s out there. Make sure you don’t accumulate a lot of inventory while doing this – that will limit your flexibility to shift to other product lines and potentially catch you with an unserviceable overhead in the event of a market down-turn.
Great points about inventory and I agree that could cause problems if you have to hold it and get taxed on it.
For ten years, I ran the New York Avenue gantlet in Washington, DC – often at 3 or 4 in the morning. Any of you who know DC will gnoe what I am sayin’…
If it wasn’t the Fruit of Islam and their bean pies it was schizoid derelicts… with run-of-the-mill street thugs in between. And I was often driving a brand-new press car with weird, out of state “manufacturer” tags….
Great article Eric, thank you. Its funny Ive always disdained them, ever since i was little. We truly need to abhor and detest all that is violent. When a guv agent walks by you and your children, you should put your hand out and block the children as if a dangerous animal is present. we should shun them at all levels. we must also understand to never face them in open combat unless our lives are at stake. we need to ignore them out of existence, form our own internal economies with trade and hard money. we need to start doing our own thing realizing that its going to be hard as hell and uncomfortable at first. we have to reinvent the wheel in a lot of cases unless you want to become Amish. this is going to take alot of hard work to get where we want to be, but thats the beauty of the whole thing. we’ve become fat and lazy and thats exactly what tptb want fat armchair warriors. start learning to grow your own food, or find ppl who do so you can trade and eat. the shit is starting to fly get your mind right guys lets show these bastards that there are some real men left in this country and that we can survive.
“GOVERNMENT IS VIOLENCE”
*snip* you should put your hand out and block the children as if a dangerous animal is present.*snip*
Visualize a 200 pound weasel.
tgsam
thats great i like it those weasely bastards
That would be an otter.
I’m partial to weasels Tinsley, no intention on my part to cause trouble it’s just that I think weasels have a bad rap. Some of my best friends as an adult have been members of the Mustelidae family (no bullshit, I’ve raised several). I make a habit of defending weasels. On the upside, I don’t defend lawyers; maybe that will get me into heaven 🙂
IIRC, the badger – an admirable animal – is a member of the weasel family!
The Honey Badger by Robert Ruark is a great read.
Book Title: THE HONEY BADGER
Quick Overview
There is a bloody brave little animal in Africa called the honey badger. It may be the meanest animal in the world. It kills for malice and for sport, and it does not go for the jugular—it goes straight for the groin. It has a lot in common with the modern American woman.
tgsam
Honey badger don’t give a shit!
Possibly the funniest YouTube video this decade.
“On the upside, I don’t defend lawyers; maybe that will get me into heaven.”
It will only be a good place if if JDs and career office holders haven’t deceived their way there and managed to replace the lawful power there with their unlawful legal system. I would prefer they all go to hell where they eternally stand chin deep in soupy cat feces while Satan circles them and makes waves with his motor boat.
tgsam