You’ve heard about “class action” lawsuits. A group of people who’ve all suffered a common harm at the hands of a single offender get together and sue jointly for damages. I think all the people who were victimized for the 20 years the 55 MPH National Maximum Speed Limit (NMSL) was in effect (1974-1995) ought to consider doing something along those lines.
“Drive 55” – as it was styled – came into force in 1974, just before Tricky Dick Nixon was almost frog-marched out of the Oval Office over the Watergate thing and other sordid abuses of office. But Tricky Dick was never held accountable for this crime.
Though enacted – officially – as a fuel-conservation measure, people – millions of people – were issued speeding tickets for driving in excess of 55 MPH on the highway. They were dunned by the state – and then dunned afterward by their insurance companies, which used these “speeding” convictions as evidence of “unsafe driving habits.”
This went on for 20 years – until the mid-1990s – when Congress finally did something not-criminal and rescinded the NMSL.
Now, here’s the thing – the basis for my demand (and perhaps, yours) for a refund – plus interest – for all the money taken from me at gunpoint during the NMSL years: It is objectively provable that all the tickets issued for “speeding” – that is, driving faster than 55 – were just state-authorized shakedowns that had nothing – absolutely nothing – to do with “safety.”
Clovers always defend speed limits – all speed limits – as being by definition the “safe” speed to drive. The corollary of this, of course, is that to exceed any speed limit is – again, by definition – “unsafe.” This is their thought process – their defense of/justification for both speed limits themselves as well as enforcement of speed limits. Ok.
Now, a quick history lesson – and summary of the situation today. Prior to the imposition of the NMSL, the legal speed limit on most American highways was 70 MPH. Many were posted 75. Some – as in Montana – had no formal speed limit at all (the “reasonable and prudent” standard obtained). By definition, therefore, those speeds were “safe” to drive. Clovers cannot argue otherwise. It was “the law” – and “the law” is never wrong – and must always be respected as well as enforced.
Well, the law changed in 1974. Fine. But how can it be that what was “safe” (because legal) the day before the NMSL went into effect – driving 70 on a highway posted 70 – became no longer “safe” the next day, merely by dint of changing a sign? The road was the same; the cars were the same; the drivers had not changed.
Only “the law” had changed.
Well, ok. You can make the Cloveritic argument that it’s “the law” – and only “the law” that’s relevant. However, Clovers also make the argument that “the law” (when it comes to speed limits) is also – by definition – synonymous with the “safe” speed to drive. But how is it that what was “safe” one day became “unsafe” the next? And how can it be that – when the NMSL was repealed in the mid-1990s – what had been “unsafe” the day before suddenly became “safe” once more?
Let’s not forget that all those tickets issued to all those millions of people during the era of Drive 55 were not resource depletion tickets. People were not merely charged with a velocity violation, either. No, they were very specifically tarred with the “unsafe driver” brush – both by the state and by the insurance Mafia. The same Mafia that aggressively pushed for – and later, defended – Drive 55. The same insurance Mafia that used some of the money it stole (because insurance “premiums” are not given voluntarily but extorted by threat of force) from all those millions of victims to help finance aggressive enforcement of the NMSL via radar guns (and radar detector detector equipment) oh-so-helpfully donated to law enforcement agencies across this land.
I myself was shorn of thousand of dollars in fines and “adjusted” premiums – all based on a provable fraud. Because today, the speed limit on those same highways where I was issued countless “speeding” tickets is no longer 55. One can legally drive 65, 70, 75 – even 80 MPH. These speeds are therefore “safe” – by definition – because after all, they comport with “the law” (i.e., the speed limit). That necessarily means that all the millions of tickets for “speeding” during the era of the NMSL – which became the pretext for “adjusting” the mandatory insurance premiums of millions of drivers, who were told these tickets constituted evidence of their “unsafe” driving – constitutes a fraud perpetrated upon them.
It is one thing for the state to fine people based on violations of “the law.” It’s still arbitrary, unjust – and many other things besides. But it’s legal.
On the other hand, the insurance Mafia is not (we are told) legal authority. It has no power (we are told) to pass laws – or to enforce them. Yet it used force – the provisions of law that compel people to purchase vehicle insurance – to take money under false pretenses. The demonstrable – inarguable – falsehood that it’s evidence of “unsafe” driving to drive 65, 70, 75 or 80 MPH. It may have been illegal to have driven those speeds during the period when the NMSL was in force and 55 MPH the law of the land. But it cannot have been “unsafe” – the pretext for all those “adjustments” by the insurance Mafia – because it is now (once again) legal to drive at those speeds. And legal – by definition, by the definition used by the insurance Mafia – is the same as “safe.” It is impossible to argue otherwise without contradicting yourself. 
Irrespective of “the law,” it is either safe – or it’s not safe – to drive 65, 70 75 or 80 MPH. If it’s “safe” (because legal) to drive 70 today, then surely it was also safe to drive 70 in 1990 – even if it may have been technically illegal. The state had legal authority (illegitimate, but nonetheless) to fine people for transgressing “the law.” But the insurance Mafia perpetrated a fraud.
I’d like a refund. With interest – and punitive damages.
How about you?
Throw it in the Woods?
(Hat tip to HR and Rev for inspiring this one.)
Couple of interesting precedents set in Oz lately – We MIGHT be winning 😉
http://www.news.com.au/national-news/supreme-court-rules-person-is-entitled-to-do-runner-if-not-under-arrest/story-e6frfkvr-1226205953554
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/police-power-to-stop-cars-under-threat-20130620-2oluv.html
I need to read your site when it first comes out instead of when I receive it 2 weeks later. The stories and examples are amazing and entertaining. I never paid for extortion until it was forced on me by the insurance industry. I have been fined for it, but I convince the courts that I’m crazy because they made me that way by their outrageous laws. The judges in the courts even tell us that they will find our money, our bank accounts, our credit cards and take our money, so we better tell the truth. By the time they get through having to deal with me and wasting numerous court hearings and watching my outrageous behavior, the courts conclude that I’m crazy and are happy to get community service to pay my fines since I’ve convinced them that I’m broke. The prosecutor even got me a free lawyer, at their expense because she couldn’t handle dealing with a crazy man. Defendant smiles. Court collects 0 and has to pay for the attorney.
The false dichotomy of Somalia being a Libertarian’s paradise:
I’m unsure of the original context in which Noam Chomsky discussed and published an analysis of this outrageous claim. It caught me off guard the first time I saw it. After spending some time considering it, I have realized this critique is no different than a conservative or right-wing libertarian responding to a criticism of modern state capitalism by snorting, “oh yeah, and how did the Soviet Union turn out, ya Marxist?”
It’s intellectually dishonest. It’s lame. Yet it remains quite popular, currently returning “About 173,000 results” on Google. You’ll see many articles about it on DailyKos or Huffington Post. Probably by the same writers who opine about “Teabaggers” and that anyone who wants to dissolve the United States is a loon like Michele Bachmann. It’s a shabby lie to hang around the necks of those who would dare imagine a world where people are free to organize and live in communities not subject to the coercive interference of an outside, centralized power.
Somalia, a failed state, that has been torn apart by decades of Western state intervention, in it’s long running war against Eastern state intervention.
Somalia who endured a U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion and brutal military occupation that left more than 16,000 civilians dead and forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes. Somalia seeing the destruction of the first semblance of normalcy the country had experienced in nearly two decades.
Somalia, a battlefield of an ongoing U.S. war involving CIA torture chambers and drone strikes, Somalia, ravaged by powerful profiteering nation-states, and not by anarchy.
But hey, let’s put that all aside and just concede for a moment that Somalia is in fact some anarchist’s wet dream, “a libertarian’s paradise.” Let’s just ignore the fact Somalia was ruled by a military dictator for decades and not make the cheap point that the period preceding its current “anarchist” stage therefore indicts anyone who believes in the justness and necessity of centralized power.
We can say this for the little old anarcho-paradise that is Somalia: At least it hasn’t, like some other countries in the region, murdered tens of thousands of its neighbors. At least, like another government I know whose legitimacy has never been questioned by any respectable liberal writers, dropped nukes on any Japanese cities or killed upwards of one million Iraqis or puts two out of every 100 of its own citizens in steel cages or on home detention.
What’s next? Using this logic, isn’t North Korea, with its socialized health care and strict regulation of business, a “liberal paradise”?
A question I really want these violent little statist parasites to answer:
What will you do to me if I refuse to live for you?
Hi Sally,
We all know the answer, of course. The Bobs of this world will use force to compel us to live for them.
I’m surprised the parasitic statist assholes didn’t answer me…Oh, Wait…No I’m not.
I *HATE* filthy animals that claim to own me!
Ditto, Sally!
Hey, PS: If you register as a member, your posts won’t be held in Moderation. Once I see you’ve signed up, I’ll approve you – and your posts/replies will appear as soon as you post ’em. And, don’t worry: Nothing here is tied to FauxBook or any other NSA front.
Thanks,
E
Here’s my take Sally: Bob Tenneb (Bob Bennett’s alter ego from a probable reality where individual Liberty and responsibility are the norm) finds himself cast into the good ol’ contemporary US of A. Being an independent minded and self sufficient individual, Mr. Tenneb sets to work diligently with integrity to produce goods and services that his neighbors want, are willing to pay for and thus become his repeat customers. He is financially successful, buys a house and land and pays for them outright with the fruits of his labor.
At the end of the year the county sends him a property tax bill. Not understanding what this is for, because where he’s from when you buy something it’s “yours”, he calls the county collector and questions this since his property is paid for in full. The collector explains that this “tax” is to cover all the “services” that the county provides for him like the sheriff’s department, the public schools, the dog catcher, the building inspector, the senior center, the department of family services and such. So Bob says “I don’t use any of those services. I provide my own security, I have no children in school, I have a fenced yard so the neighbors’ dogs don’t bother me and I have no need of “social services of any kind. So why should I be expected to pay for all this stuff? Let my neighbors pay for it if that’s what they want.” The collector explains, “The services are provided by the county for the community at large. Many of your neighbors want and need these services, so it’s your responsibility to pay your share under the ‘social contract’ you entered into by moving to this community. So Mr. Tenneb responds, “I don’t recall entering into a contract. Can I see a copy of that? To which the collecter curtly responds “You’ll need to pay *your* taxes by December 12 Mr. Tenneb or we will assess you penalties and interest as well. Have a nice day”, and hangs up.
Bob is really puzzled because in a “free country”, especially one billing itself as the Land of Liberty, no one should have to pay for things they don’t want, need or use. Bob thinks to himself, ‘This is crazy. I’m not chattel property. I don’t work hard and play fair to have the fruits of my labor stolen by county agents acting to steal on behalf of my neighbors. Screw these people.’ So Bob throws that tax bill in the trash. December 12 comes and goes and Bob gets another, bigger bill for “property taxes overdue” in the mail, tosses it in the trash too and continues on peacefully conducting his affairs, minding his own business and harming no one. Then one day Bob receives a letter from the county telling him that since he has not paid *his* property tax, the sheriff will be auctioning off Bob’s house and land on the courthouse steps. He gets a good laugh out of that, because after all, he paid for the house and land and no one else, not even the sheriff has any legitimate claim to his property.
But two days after the “official” auction, the new “owner” of what was formerly Bob’s property shows up with a sheriff’s deputy who tells Bob he must move out of his own home by the fifteenth or they will remove him by force. Bob isn’t laughing now, since there’s a man with a gun in funny clothes standing on his front porch telling him this. Bob informs this pair that what they are attempting to do amounts to conversion of his rightful property, they are trespassing and they need to get off his land. Deputy Claim Jumper says “We’ll be back.” and they leave.
Understanding that he is now literally under attack by potentially violent criminals, Bob secures his property with a gate, posts it with no trespassing signs, adds bars to his windows and reinforces his doors. Bob is awakened at 2:00 AM by the sound of his dog barking frantically. Bob watches as men in black suits with masks over their faces cut the lock off his gate, swarm his yard and shoot his dog. At this point, figuring that he will be next, Bob does what any reasonable frightened person would do when under attack, he shoots as many of these armed interlopers as it takes to make them retreat. But the armed thugs come back with even more masked men, an armored vehicle all paid for by Bob and of course with a vengeance. They shoot incendiary teargas grenades into Mr. Tenneb’s home until it and Mr. Tenneb are consumed in the conflagration. The thug scrum slaps each other on the back for a job well done (non-judicial extermination of a “cop killer”) and no conflicting testimony on the witness stand. In fact there won’t even be a witness stand since there’s no longer any Bob Tenneb to potentially confuse the jurors with his side of the story and the interlopers superiors will “cover for them.”
Now our own Bob Bennett reads about this whole affair in The Falling Star and sneers “Served the dumb SOB right. All he had to do was just pay his taxes. After all, it was *his* government too. Idiot. Got what he deserved.” Never mind that taking other people’s property under pain of death, property that the victim has legitimately paid for with their own wealth, is wrong because it is a violation of their rights and Natural Law. The Bob Bennetts of this world never seem to make the connection that it doesn’t matter how many of your predecessors and contemporaries got together and decided for you “how things are going to be.” That doesn’t make coercion, theft and murder right, *official* or not. Whether it’s “legitimate” bandits in red bandanas with six-guns being straight up about it: ‘Stick ‘em up! Hand over th’ loot pilgrim!’ Or official actors in black balaclavas and M-4 carbines with a “Writ of Assistance” in hand, the results are the same for the victim.
The moral of the story is what’s right and wrong is apparently irrelevant to folks like Bob Bennett when it comes to “our” gun-vernment doing it to us. What really counts is apparently what (everybody thinks) is “legal” and if it benefits “society as a whole” (i.e. that group of free-loaders at the courthouse and the statehouse, their wards and connected cronies). Duh Constitution and Bill of Rights, Natural Law and equal protection under the law? Fuggedaboudit! Yuh dealin’ wit’ Big Paulie heah, see? An’ if youse don’ shuddup an’ pay up you cud have a fiah. KnowwhudImean!?’ So head on down to the local assessor or collector’s office and see about “changing things through the system.” They may be a bit more polished than the mob enforcer, but the end result will be the same; shut up and pay up or else.
Boothe,
That was top drawer; eloquent and to the point. Thank you for taking the time to write it!
Thank you Eric. That means a lot coming from a pro, but I can’t take any credit. There’s Someone far greater than me that gives me the words once in a while. I’m just the typist. 😉
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs pyramid always irked me. At the very bottom should be liberty, otherwise; a slave on a plantation would be said to be excelling according to that chart.
I think maybe Clovers would be/are very happy to be slaves. Gil seems to be.
Back to Bob:
For another primer on psychology and how flawed the whole field is, check this out:
The secret at the bottom of psychiatry’s rabbit hole
http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2013/02/24/the-secret-at-the-bottom-of-psychiatrys-rabbit-hole/
If you read that, maybe then you’ll understand why, Authorities never have “issues with authority”
http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/authorities-never-have-issues-with-authority/
And if you’re still with it, you might even be able to grasp how, Reality is a psyop
http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2013/04/21/reality-is-a-psyop/
Perhaps you’ll wonder how you were ever a part of, The attempt to destroy the individual, in the fist place?:
http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2013/05/27/the-attempt-to-destroy-the-individual/
If you’re wise, you’ll even be able to look back though the years and understand, How “kill the pigs” became “only the police should have guns”
http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2013/03/30/how-kill-the-pigs-became-only-the-police-should-have-guns/
Please, read the links and reflect. Then get back to us.
So Jon Rappaport has been “deplatformed,” that is, censored, from WordPress for “violations of terms of service?” Somebody’s got to be kidding….
His new address https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/
Although, that doesn’t help get a person to those old links, which I imagine are on his new website. Somewhere?
You have done nothing in that post other than what eric just falsely claimed that I was doing… Name calling.. So why don’t you make yourself useful and answer what eric will not, i’ll make it simple for you.
What are you going to do to those who won’t be good in your wonderful world that dosen’t exist anywhere?
I’ll even give you the granular questions so there can be no doubt…
Who will bring those people to whatever mechanism you choose to determine their guilt?
What mechanism/ process will be used to determine their guilt?
Where will you put them if you find them to be guilty? Or whatever it is you want to do after the determination.
Knocking an education is not an answer and certainly not debate, so please stick to answering the questions. Thanks
Is that simple enought for you?
A lot of people think a libertarian, anarchist voulantaist, or panarchist society never existed. They never consider the fact that all the societies of history are not known, so it’s not possible to say such never existed. However; what comes pretty dang close is the Vikings:
Rampaging hordes – or darlings of the Dark Ages?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/4991411/Rampaging-hordes-or-darlings-of-the-Dark-Ages.html
Contary to popular opinion, life in the middle ages came pretty close too:
Decentralization Hidden in the Dark Ages
http://bionicmosquito.blogspot.com/2013/02/decentralization-hidden-in-dark-ages.html
As far as how to deal with criminals today, the past is a good guide, most people don’t have a clue about the way things were:
The Culture of Violence in the American West: Myth versus Reality
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo195.html
The idea of not having to rely on cops is a hard hill to climb for some, this is a good primer on how to see from a different perspective:
Judge Napolitano on the Virtues of Private Justice
http://lewrockwell.com/wile/wile58.1.html
For more on that, consider reading this:
The Idea of a Private Law Society
http://www.mises.org/daily/2265
Whatever you do, Bob. Don’t say we didn’t answer your questions. Now, if you would, don’t be lazy, check out the links and open your eyes,
Bob,
Let me put this as simply to you as possible. I’m not going to do anything and neither are you as a bystander, unless of course you are God or the one that is being agressed against. Then you would do exactly what the rest of us would do and that is use defensive force to protect yourself, your family, and/or your property.
Again you miss the point even though I’ve already stated it very clearly. If you’re trying to imply society can’t exist without police then you’ve obviously never been acquainted with the old west. I’m talking of an era that was both prosperous and low crime despite all the Hollywood B.S. movies. And I’m not talking about the Hollywood version or the Dodge City types of history. I’m talking about the 98% society that existed back when my great grandparents lived. Somehow they were able to protect themselves, their cattle, their kids, their 250 acre property without the need of cops or soldiers. And the few cases of soldiers were absolutely sad cases of history both in the trail of tears, small pox infested blankets, and jerks that couldn’t keep one straight promise. And yet are you saying that we can’t protect ourselves on a parcel of 1/4 acre without professional troops/cops? Man you are really a weak man if you believe that I’m going to fear some nutcase to the point I appoint one a badge and give him unlimited power over me. Please give it a break, we don’t need the very bad people we are talking about choosing government badges instead of robbing a bank. And the latter not being as profitable or rewardable.
What’s your solution Bob? You want more boot stompers to force morality on people? We had the priests and inquisitors try that and it didn’t work, what makes you think that a bunch of jack booted thugs without any pretext of religious morals will do any better than that worse? Your lack of imagination in the abilities of people both believing in righteousness and its inherited rewards and also being able to defend themselves is appalling and scary. But don’t worry you aren’t alone and certainly you are the average these days in the unenlightened period. Good luck.
Bob,
I do want to apologize if it sounded like I was calling names. I still defend my statement though that people that have a hard time believing in morality are actually looking in a mirror at themselves. Case example, most of the flagrant male adulterers I knew personally were also the most suspicious about their wives cheating to the point that one of them beat his wife under false pretenses. Generically it doesn’t say much when a person doesn’t believe in morality and its natural rewards, people of that strata on Maslow Hierachy actually are still at the insecurity point and not at the apex. Coincidently crooks, scum and thugs rarely get above the breathing, food, water, sex, sleep, homeostatis and excretion (level 1). The next level up would be safety level. Because you have doubts on safety and your ability to provide it to yourself you are stuck on level 2. Its totally possible that by looking beyong the immediate curve on the highway to a half mile out you might respond better in driving. Take a look out at the 4 and 5 of Maslows. Three being self esteem and four being actualization and empowerment. People on this site are at 4 and 5 and are hoping to pull up as many as possible from levels 1, 2, and 3. But when you are down there it impossible to see the bigger picture. I’m really trying to help you break from 2 and this is all pscyho theory that you supposedly believe in.
Stages of Maslows
5) Self Actualization (top of pyramid)
4) Esteem
3) Love/Beloging
2) Safety <– Bob is here
1) Pysiological (bottom of pyramid)
What’s your solution? Let people sort things out for themselves? That sounds like a recipe that suits the strong and the rich. You’re a small farmer being harassed by a group from a larger farm who want the land? Well sort it out yourself because to force others to pay for your protection is evil statism. You decide it’s safer to leave then fight them? Oh well the bad guys won but that better than starting a government. Then again you referred to cattle – i bet you had no intention of mentioning sheep.
Stages of Maslows
5) Self Actualization (top of pyramid)
4) Esteem
3) Love/Beloging
2) Safety <– Gil is here too
1) Pysiological (bottom of pyramid)
Gil, that’s so Hollywood I wouldn’t even go there. Makes no difference how much land or money you have, you’re not going to harm your neighbor simply because you want his land too. If you want it bad enough, you will be able to find a satisfactory price between the two parties and if not, c’est la vie.
Gil,
Normally I don’t even respond to your arguments. But, yes the people are more than capable of sorting it out and dealing it out when personally involved, that is what freedom is all about. And for someone so worried about the big farmer eating the smaller farmer. What makes you not so concerned when the biggest shark in the sea is in bed with the biggest farmer? Say Monsato? How do you right that wrong when your biggest hero turns out to be the worst of villians you ever could imagine? Do you turn away because it doesn’t fit your world view paradigm? Because you see I’m not one that would that pass by a person in need and I’d take a stand against an unethical big farmer, and lowly life bum scum that thinks he can kill or steal, or a big mafia government. I’m the most non hypocritical person you’ll ever meet Gil because I care and I do believe. I even believe in you.
Of course Gil will say more regulation on Monsato. But she then still fails to see that Monsato is a cartel of the government. Rotating seats. So when I say her biggest fan farmer is Monsato its actually the cover face of her biggest god the government. The two being synonymous. It never dawns of people that the powerful get in control of the levers of power positions in government. What never..!!! We’ll vote them out!
Since there’s no functional central government in Somalia then it’s no a fallacy to cite it. Somalia shows people aren’t going to play nice and there no guarantee that you’ll be safe in any manner because you have noble intentions. You suppose the government is just a gang and you’d rather pay tribute for their “protection” than fight them? Safety over liberty? Whatever.
“Somalia shows people aren’t going to play nice and there no guarantee that you’ll be safe in any manner because you have noble intentions”
Somalia is in disarray because:
1) The vast majority of people (like you) believe that a violent coercive ruling class is necessary for a peaceful, moral, just, and cohesive society.
2) The various gangs lording over chunks of real estate around the world, esp. that biggest one calling itself the U.S. government, just can’t stand the fact that one of it’s former adherents is trying to break away from the religion, and are doing everything they can to reimpose a state.
Somalia simply shows that, yes, private gangs can easily pick up the slack when government is gone. But then so what? At least with the U.S. you get a trial by jury and a Constitution to work from whereas a private gang will just shoot you. Then again why should you and your PDA be any more noble? They’re going to use force to enforce the views you hold to because that’s what you pay them good money to do. Just as when you pay big money for a very good lawyer – you want to get you off the hook regardless of whether you’re actually guilty or not.
No, Somalia shows that gangs are gangs regardless of the labels (like “Government”) people put on them. And protection services are not “private gangs.” It is a service I would use to protect me from statists like you who have zero problem sicking your “Government” gang on me. I posted three “Law without Government” links that explains how it could work. Maybe you could take a few minutes from your state worship and look at them.
Nice try, lberns1.
I doubt Gil, or any of the Clovers, takes the time to read links.
If they did, they would see how in the U.S. you often Do Not get a trial by jury and you Do Not really have a Constitution to work from and it’s frequent that a private gang called ‘cops’ will just shoot you.
Here’s some supporting facts:
Tyranny and the Rule of Prosecutors
http://lewrockwell.com/anderson/anderson327.html
The Anatomy of a Wrongful Conviction
http://www.lewrockwell.com/anderson/anderson254.html
Who Will Protect Us From the ‘Protectors’?
“… Police and prosecutors are fond of claiming they “protect” the public from “the bad guys.” There only is one problem with that; for the most part, police and prosecutors are the “bad guys,”…”
http://lewrockwell.com/anderson/anderson363.html
That’s just three such links, there are thousands more. …If only Clovers would read.
Or you assume your PDA is noble when you sic them onto someone you don’t like because you feel noble when you do it but to everyone they look like hired guns.
Depends, you could walk away to start fresh somewhere else or stand and fight or you could get forced out but those things happen with a government as well. At least the strong and/or rich have to hire a gang of thugs and with that there is always the possibility those thugs will turn on their rich employer rather than the farmer scratching out a living. Another point being if you’re considered a slippery customer then no one will deal with you, maybe not even the thugs. With a government the rich and powerful are always courted by politicians no matter how slimy they are.
“Suits the strong and the rich.” That is precisely correct. In short order, letting people sort things out will encourage people to be strong and rich. It will increase the numbers of strong and rich.
How can you advocate a system that suits the weak and the poor? A system that encourages people to be weak and poor? A system that increases the numbers of weak and poor?
Because he is stupid and weak….
The politicians take money from the strong and rich for the explicit purpose of stealing from everyone else via economic monopolies backed by state terror threats to competition. You really have to be stupid to think government helps the weak and poor when the upper 1% have never been richer.
“Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.” – Ben Franklin
Bob,
Neither I nor most of the others here take issue with peace officers – as distinct from law enforcement. The former intercede only when someone has committed an aggressive act that results in harm to persons or property. The latter… enforces the law. Irrespective of actual harm done. Do you see the difference?
You keep trotting out how EDUCATED you are. Yet you seem unable to make distinctions, to think conceptually or logically, to have a reasoned discussion.
Bob Bennett,
There are a few avenues available depending on the harm committed.
One could use an arbiter to mediate the dispute. (Assuming that both parties agree to abide by the arbiter’s judgement.)
The legal system can be used.
Shunning and ostracizing can be used. If word gets around that you are not dealing fairly with others, you may run out of people to scam.
Regardless of the system used one will not be able to eliminate crime.
I say this as a matter of expressing a principle; you are probably right that a free society based on voluntary interaction and which leaves the individual alone is never going to exist… precisely because of attitudes such as yours.
Not because of me, I play by the rules. Because there are many others that won’t play by the rules and I have tried repeatedly to get you to answer the simple question….. What do we do with them?
I have taken a shed load of psychology classes in the past, I know the reasons (most anyway) that we aren’t going the way you would like. Sure… wouldn’t it be just grand if we could all be good citizens but some of aren’t for various reasons. Even those who would normally do the right thing in the light of day, me and yourself included, have, on occasion said fuck it it’s different, it’s me and I deserve or whatever to justify our less than honorable actions.
Business is full of bad vs worse decisions and doing the right thing isn’t always even possible because of the available choices or the actions of others. At least I’m honest about it.
I’m not following, Bob.
We seem to agree that wrong conduct (that is, conduct which causes harm to others) ought to be punished. Yet you seem to take the position that a free society is incompatible with this.
How so?
i don’t follow either Bob. I believe your problem might have to do with taking all the psychology courses. That will screw anyone up. Is it possible that you are conveying and even studying such matters because of deep hidden id and ego moments inside of yourself? I’ve always found it crazy how the crazies run the crazy farm if you know what I mean? I’ll be frank the reason most people study psychology is because they themselves are loons and want to know what is wrong with themselves. I have a simple answer, but you’d never buy it so I won’t waste my engineering knowledge sharing it.
Eric I suppose that Bob hasn’t figured out that in a free society that ordinary people would have the right to defend themselves against criminal and dangerous people by using lethal force if necessary? I think his confusion is the belief that free people would be helpless against the wolves of the world, which is actually inverted to the truth.
Even outside the right to use lethal force natural law already has a way of dealing with what some call pyschopathic and others called possessed. You see if you cannot socially get along with others in a free market without government jobs, you’d most likely be starved out or shot on first approach against the peaceful sheep. Sheep being peaceful as long as they are not infringed upon first by the criminally insane. In today’s world the bully psychopaths go and get the badges and government uniforms or stand a lofty podium telling others why they are going to sacrifice their blood and loot for their own psychopathic urges. Create a powerful position that requires no real accountability or perfomance feedback from a people that have their loot stolen from those same people, and I’ll tell you where the psychopaths will be working sooner than later. And no democratic mob rule over such positions doesn’t work either. One because psychopaths of government will eventually cheat the vote and two because the majority in history is almost always wrong. Also, though normality in psychology comes from its statistioal meaning which is the averages of a sized sample set, where psychology pegs it all wrong is calling normaility equal to sanity. Again if you believe normality is sanity then please explain the members of the majority in Hitlers movement along with a dozen other huge historical monuments. Sanity is not defined by people of averages, its defined by natural law which leads to higher creation. There i wasted my time even though I seriously doubt you are the type who wants to be free because you have dark incentives to hope all of us are your personal sheep. You are dead wrong sir.
Eric I suppose that Bob hasn’t figured out that in a free society that ordinary people would have the right to defend themselves against criminal and dangerous people by using lethal force if necessary?
Yea… that’s an answer… right.So my semi-retarded sister-in-law, who no man wants, is going to be packing heat to defend herself. Please! That has to be the dumbest thing I have heard today.
So my semi-retarded sister-in-law, who no man wants, is going to be packing heat to defend herself. Please! That has to be the dumbest thing I have heard today.
If I am wrong, go into details of how it would work, people want to know!
Bob,
Yes, people have the right to use lethal force to defend themselves if necessary.
Do you not comprehend the moral difference between aggressive violence and defensive violence?
Then, you spout the following nasty little non sequitur:
“So my semi-retarded sister-in-law, who no man wants, is going to be packing heat to defend herself. Please! That has to be the dumbest thing I have heard today. ”
First, what has this woman’s marital status got to do with anything? It’s just another example of the low-rent insults that form the basis of your conversation. How nice of you to describe a member of your close family this way in a public forum. And for purely gratuitous reasons.
Perhaps she’s not that bright. Ok – so?
Does this mean she’s going to commit murder or violent assault? And if she does, why would that justify restricting the rights of others who have done nothing harmful to anyone?
Morning, HR!
Bob took the time to look up where I live; he knows, therefore, that I live in a very rural area – literally, a one stoplight county.
If someone breaks into my house it will be up to me to protect myself. Town (and the local sheriff) is 15 miles away. It will be over long before any cop shows up. Cops are, therefore, useless to me. My guns are not. I’d rather spend my money on things that are useful to me.
Bob would rather force me – and thee – to spend money on things he deems useful.
“If I am wrong, go into details of how it would work, people want to know!”
Here it is explained in three parts how it could happen:
Law without Government, Part One: Principles
Law without Government, Part Two: Conflict Resolution in a Free Society
Law without Government, Part Three: The Bargaining Mechanism
Underlying Bob’s position is that all people (or most people) are inherently vicious and will prey on others absent … predatory government put in place to make it all official and legal.
He misses the obvious – that it’s preferable to deal with individual predators or even gangs of them than to cede official sanction to a single omnipotent gang that you are legally prohibited from defending yourself against.
If a thug crashes through my front door, I can threaten to shoot the bastard if he doesn’t back away; actually shoot him if he comes at me and I legitimately fear for my life – legally. But if a state-costumed thug kicks in my door – without a warrant, without even the pretext of probable cause – and I raise a weapon in self-defense, I will be charged with serious felonies. I must – by law – Submit & Obey.
Which scenario is preferable?
Bob never directly responded to my observation that we already know coercive collectivism doesn’t work. That it leads inevitably to human bondage – and not infrequently, to mass murder. Yet he insist that our alternative – which hasn’t even been tried – is “unworkable.”
I say: Why not try it and see?
We could start small, for instance, with traffic laws. Let’s eliminate those that punish people not for any harm caused, but only for violations of statute. No more fines (or arrests) for “speeding” or failure to signal or for making a right turn at a red light.
Instead, sanction (hold responsible) only those who cause harm to others. If you wander over the double yellow and strike another car – whether out of inadvertence, incompetence, or impairment as a result of excess alcohol consumption – then you’re held fully accountable for the harm you’ve caused.
But no more arresting people for “drunk” driving solely because they are found to have “x” arbitrary BAC at a probable cause-free “checkpoint.” No more checkpoints. No more seatbelt laws. No more laws, period – except the one law: Do no harm to others. Violate that law – and be held responsible. Otherwise, go in peace.
I wonder whether Bob would be willing to try that.
Based on his comments thus far, I’d say not.
Iceland’s sysem lasted for centuries. Much longer than the typical force-based government. Anyway the state appeals to base human traits in order to get people to accept it. Laziness, jealousy, fear, and so forth. By appealing to these traits and emotions people accept it. The state will often create an outside threat itself to generate fear. It will pit different groups of people against each other. It will foster negative feelings between people of different economic status. All for the further glory of the state.
Voluntary society vs. the state comes down to those fables of hard work and effort to do something yourself or to take the easy road offered by someone else. The second road will lead to doom.
The pieces just keep adding up. You play by the rules. Sounds like someone who is in chest deep with the system that allows him an excellent living by using the rules. That is the licensing, the regulation, and so forth that funnel the economic benefits in his direction.
You keep moaning about people doing something. A voluntary society means just that, people doing things instead of expecting the government to do them. When it comes to garden variety fraud and theft problems in a voluntary society it could work much more like 19th century USA. Many systems have been proposed over the centuries with how to deal with these problems too. You can read them if you go look for them. It’s not my duty or Eric’s to bring you up to speed on every form of dispute resolution that has been proposed for voluntary societies.
BrentP, the first day he posted I immediately thought of insurance. Bob Bennett insurance. Bennett real estate, financing services, etc. etc. Oh yeah, insurance is now a sweet deal for every agency since govt. mandates so many types.
I am not evading anything. You are conflating things.
You are still doing it.. evading. I am pointing out REAL life examples of REAL life possibilities and asking you how you would deal with them in your BS utopian world and you are avoiding the answer because you know that you are not going to be able to answer without framing the current criminal law system within your answer.
You see I want you to tell me what WE or you and those wronged by bad me, have to do to those who choose to not be followers of your natural law. Or are you suggesting that you and the family of the decesed form a posse to get that guy (bad me).
You can’t have it both ways.
You’re not making any sense.
Why do you suppose it would be impossible to deal with real criminals (those who cause harm to others) in a free society?
And why must you always resort to petty name-calling and condescension?
Give the guy not paying and stealing a car and all the rest the proper government badge. Call these things taxes, official appropriation, and so forth. There’s the system you want.
Some animals are more equal than others.
Another example of private transportation over a fairly large distance is (if I’m not mistaken) the D.C. Metro trains. They do not operate on taxes, – they are quite proud of this – and fares have not been suddenly tripled, maybe that’s because enough people would find other ways to get around, or simply stay home, wiping out any benefit from tripling rates?
WRONG!
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41191.pdf
Funding is a perennial problem for WMATA, as it is for most public transit agencies, because it is heavily reliant on government support to cover …
I admit to being wrong about the D.C. Metro, I was mistakenly relating a second hand observation about a company out that way that operated without taking taxes. There is one, I just don’t have the details. Glad to see you’re at least paying attention and trying. …Keep it up.
My “employer” is me and I have both a dictatorship and a communistic relationship with my businesses. Meaning that I have partners in the biggest company and I am also the sole owner of a few other entities.
I make a lot of money and I happen to like how that all works. It allows me to freely move around the world with just a passport and some cash. On that note, some of you have no idea how free you are to do as you please, just ask some native Jamaican how far they are allowed to travel and it’s not just them.
I have traveled to somewhere in the area of 20, probably more, lost count, countries, I know how free I am comparatively, most of you don’t.
How many of you have even left the us to go to Canada or Mexico?
Bob,
That America is (for now) more open than, say, North Korea is immaterial. The fact is, it’s less free than it was recently; much less free than it was within living memory – and becoming less and less free almost daily. It’s much less free than it ought to be – that’s the point.
Whatever “freedoms” we still have are on very shaky ground; conditional privileges for the most part – revocable at the whim of the government. We no longer enjoy legally codified, inviolable rights.
Your travels are neither here nor there as regards the questions at issue. Just as the extent of your education (or mine) is immaterial to the factual correctness of a given statement. If the statement is correct, it matters not whether the person stating it never graduated high school – or holds multiple advanced degrees.
Rather than debate the merits of something, you trot out the specious argument from authority. It amounts to: I’m right because I have a degree (or whatever) and you don’t.
It’s not an argument, though. It’s a way to evade an argument.
But, in any event: I’ve been to several countries in Europe as well as to Mexico and Canada, many times.
The fact is, it’s less free than it was recently; much less free than it was within living memory – and becoming less and less free almost daily. It’s much less free than it ought to be – that’s the point.
To which I completely agree but it doesn’t make your koolaid a good drink. US can be bigger than THEM and take back what was lost, it has happened before in this country. All it takes is for someone like MR. Snowden to give up his future and possibly life to draw us together and push back.
That is how it has always been achieved. Again nothing new. Rosa parks got what for her trouble?
So, let’s see:
You agree the country is becoming less and less free – and that this is bad; that it ought to be more free.
Yet you take issue with me for advocating freedom over collectivism and coercion…
Bob, you’re getting what you want. This is where the system you want goes. All that can be messed with is the rate at which it gets there. The USA has had a particularly long run. It’s getting close to the inevitable end given the present rate and it’s acceleration.
Actually, Bob, you do not have a dictatorial relationship with the people you do business with. Because they can choose to not do business with you. You can’t (unless you’re an insurance mafiosi) force people to do business with you.
In a dictatorship – whether of one man or many men – you have no choice. You must do as you are told. You cannot say: This isn’t working for me; I’m going to go my own way. Thanks – and good-bye.
Do you see?
Eric,
Bob likes the present system. The present system is about building relationships with people in government to achieve monopoly so people do not have a choice. It’s pretty clear that Bob likes this system and he claims to make a lot of money. If we are to put two and two together, Bob’s customers probably don’t have a lot of choice.
Morning, Brent!
Yes, Bob appears to like statism when it operates in his favor. But the galling thing is he won’t admit the aggressive (i.e., non defensive) violence – and thus, the immorality – behind it.
Ever notice how the various statists that wander in here all full of themselves claim to make a lot of money?
Well Bob, it’s nice to know you are fully vested in the status-quo. Did you know the passport as we know it is a relatively recent invention? Imposed after world war one. For many years before that people just went where they wanted to.
I remember traveling in europe before 2001. My passport didn’t even get stamped. Flashed it like a high school bus pass if there was even someone in the booth. Nobody gave two shits except the US federal government.
Anyway it sounds like you’re going for another love it or leave it argument. Well, it seems people in the USA want a government that mimics the governments in the rest of the world, particularly the third world. The results which we are already seeing the start of, will be similar.
BrentP asked, “Ever notice how the various statists that wonder in here all full of themselves claim to make a lot of money?”
Yes – I – did.
I’ve come across several guys like that elsewhere online (one owned a gold mine) they always have the same take on things, the same lines (as Boothe noted here) and the same belly full of spite. Makes me wonder sometimes if they’re not all the same people.
I hope not.
On that note, reminds me of a comment this thread:
http://www.backwoodshome.com/blogs/ClaireWolfe/2013/06/15/lying-lawyer-nsa-scum/#comments
“… One of the forums I go to posted a link to a Mozilla Firefox add-on that tells you whether or not the website you go to is being monitored by NSA by playing music if it is.” …
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dark-side-of-the-prism/
“… One of the forums I go to posted a link to a Mozilla Firefox add-on that tells you whether or not the website you go to is being monitored by NSA by playing music if it is.” …
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dark-side-of-the-prism/
I’ll DEFINITELY have to add that one – not, of course, that it will deter me from going anywhere I want to go (FUCK YOU, NSA).
lib, I checked it out and it merely played some Dark Side of the Moon when you go to a Google, Yahoo, etc. sponsored site. I did notice something last year though right before the election, between two and three weeks before. So many sites I normally visit didn’t want to load up since I use NoScript. I keep a lot of Google scripts blocked because you don’t need them but it was exactly Google scripts being blocked that wouldn’t allow sites to load. It looked as though there were a dozen new scripts from them alone. I also noticed that many sites that hadn’t previously been sponsored by Google now were so I can only assume Google went on a big drive to get more business and probably offered everybody a cheaper rate….for all their new scripts. As far as I can tell, those sites are still heavily Google and I have had to allow some scripts I’d always kept blocked for them to work. I mentioned it on a private forum and only one person cared or actually realized what I was trying to tell them. Apathy, the new Amerika.
Yeah he’s a real meatball’s express tycoon. I’m guessing he read Eric’s Cadbury company town article and started fantasizing he was the dictator of his own Sim City. Truth is I’ve had personal relationships with billionaires and most do not see themselves as either communist or dictators. I’d say most of them are strongly libertarian in views yet they don’t polically bother because they know what a waste of time. Some may act the part of dictator when certain individuals think they can oust or out-alpha them. Usually this consists of you’re fired and get your ass out of here. But even those working are not obligated to continue buying or working for the company and can just as easily go work for their competitor and often do if mistreated enough.
If anything Bob represents a meatball express manager or works as a big corporation manager. If he is the first I’m sure he hires minimum wage workers and thinks he’s big fish in a small pond. If he is the later then this should be the motivation why its so important to free people to start their own companies and take out the big corporations and yes its possible. Big corporations I’d agree are communist on average. Why else they exist but by the protection as cartels from the government. What little productive goes on is quickly divided by the non-participants. There is very little respect in these institutions for individual privacy as almost all of them demand urine tests for drugs when its obvious if you are a drug user simply by performance alone (engineering work). So again he’s either a Jezebel manager who thinks he’s top shit because he works in a big corp as a hatchet man. Or he’s a small time meatballs express owner. Congratulations either way Bob you prove exactly why I want the productive to bypass you. And unfortunately your attitude doesn’t work for high skilled workers, you’d never keep any talent with you attitude period. Or you’d find them taking your trade secrets to another company or competing directly with you. That is why I know you are a meatball packer or simply a wanna be sim city manager or a big corporation nothing.
You can call it stawman all day long but it’s fact and it supports my arguement not yours. Look around at how these folks posting here are acting… very civil?
You didn’t answer my question… how do you keep out those who don’t pay?
When you buy gas you are buying a subscription to drive through….
Taxes!
Not perfect but it’s what you are doing and what you even suggested, you just don’t like that the government does it. I believe the you are mincing words to prove the unprovable, since there is no place in the world that does it the way you would wish except in very small scales, but even there it works much the same with a different name.
What would happen if some private company that owned the only passage from point a to point b decided to double their rates in your libertarian free market private system? Or say triple or more what do you do now?
Bob,
What is your argument? That coercive collectivism is better than voluntarism and peaceful cooperative ventures?
You’re arguing against something I never said.
As far as:
“how do you keep out those who don’t pay?”
By any number of methods; that’s not the issue. The issue is: Is it right to expect people who use something by choice to pay for it?
If I choose to order and eat a meal at a restaurant, I am obligated – morally obligated – to pay for it. No one else.
If I wish to use a road, I am obligated to pay the specified fee.
I am not “owed” a road. Or a meal. Or “free” healthcare, either.
If the fee to use a road exceeded a certain threshold, someone else would offer a more economically viable alternative. A free choice.
That’s exactly what we don’ have, Bob. Free choice.
Because of “WE” ….
What is your argument? That coercive collectivism is better than voluntarism and peaceful cooperative ventures?
No I think I stated it clearly, you are just playing dumb and you know it. Obviously, cooperation is preferred but when all else fails..
By any number of methods; that’s not the issue. You made it the issue with your BS guns and violence crap.
I ate your food at your restaurant and refused to pay then I got in somebody else’s car and drove on your road without paying and parked the car in a tree at a rather high speed. Then I went into the nearby hose killed the occupants and stole their car and money. The I proceeded to drive on somebody else’s road without paying. The I di a bunch of other criminal acts before arriving home for the day. How do you fix this problem considering tommorrow is a new day to do more of the same?
I would argue that we sometimes have so many choices that it’s hard to decide depending on what we are talking about. Please get a passport and fly to Guam, Africa (almost anywhere) or some other second or third world country. We are complacently free and most don’t even know it.
“..when all else fails.”
So, you favor violence – thuggery – provided it serves some higher purpose (as defined by you).
If I don’t freely agree, you will force me to submit. You – or your anointed goons, acting on your behalf – will take my property.
This is the sine qua non of the collectivist’s despicable philosophical position; it is the street thug’s creed. The bully – writ large, codified and sanctioned via the ballot box, “the law.”
But it is violence – thuggish, ape-like violence nonetheless.
You evaded the question again.
I ate your food at your restaurant and refused to pay then I got in somebody else’s car and drove on your road without paying and parked the car in a tree at a rather high speed. Then I went into the nearby house killed the occupants and stole their car and money. Then I proceeded to drive on somebody else’s road without paying. The I did a bunch of other criminal acts before arriving home for the day. How do you fix this problem considering tommorrow is a new day to do more of the same?
Bob,
I am not evading anything. You are conflating things.
It’s wrong to take what’s not yours – or to expect others to pay for it. But it’s right to expect someone who has taken what’s yours to compensate you for what he has taken. And to defend yourself against such takers.
See the distinction?
The actions you describe are morally wrong – and of a piece with the state (government) doing the same things (i.e., taking things that belong to others).
One “fixes” such problems by (first) accepting that such actions are wrong – no matter who (or what) does them.
And then, one holds the people who commit such acts accountable.
Peaceful people – those who have caused no harm to others – have, on the other hand, an absolute right to be left in peace. You have no right whatsoever to use force against them. I don’t care if you’re dying of cancer – and “Smith” has the cure. You have no right to force “Smith” to provide you the cure.
Your problem is you’re in love with violence; you accept it – you embrace it. As you see it, violence gets shit done. You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. Etc. The ends justify the means.
I find violence (except in self-defense) disgusting, appalling.
My ideal society may be “pie in the sky” – but I take comfort knowing it’s the right ideal to work toward, even if it’s never realized.
Bob is the typical citizen trapped by the Matrix Big Government has created. He can’t manage to think for himself and understand the principles at issue here. He knows almost nothing about the theory of libertarianism as evidenced by his moronic parotting of the old saws “What about the roads?” and “What about the schools?” and “You use this stuff, too, but you don’t want to pay for it?” and “If you don’t like it, then leave!” He advances the discussion NOT at all because he isn’t informed or original and can’t even BEGIN to argue effectively or even BEGIN to ask intelligent questions.
Bob is wasting everyone’s time showing up at a site like this and spewing misunderstandings and demonstrating a complete lack of serious study of the issues that libertarians have wrestled with for a LONG LONG time before he found the internet and started telling everyone else how it is.
If you haven’t read AND understood Bastiat, Spencer, Spooner, Thoreau, Rand, Rothbard, etc. and the more modern guys like Tom Woods and his ilk on the web, you have no idea what you’re talking about. When you bring up these grade school level issues like roads and schools, it just shows you’re not equipped to debate here.
Maybe someday Bob will be ready to consider these issues as an informed adult. For now, though, he’s just a waste of time…
If we free the black man, who will pick the cotton?
If we get rid of the terror state, who will build the roads?
You and I seem to be the only people here using our real names. And I looked you up to see what type of person I was dealing with.. not a threat just curiosity. I also know your ~ income, your gmail account, your family members and few other things that are publically available. BTW – none of that is possible in north korea so your comparision is void.
Eric, you have been civil and I haven’t been mean to you however nobody else here has acted in that manner. Say what you will but you have a gathering place for extremists who have made up their minds and HATE anyone who has even a slightly differing opinion.
You also seem to be benefiting from the system that you despise so what do you do about those who don’t pay you, this is assuming that you are a business owner which appears to be the case. Do you utilize the courts that you dispise?
Just wondering how hypocritical you are in fact, rather than just assuming.. it’s obviuos that you are a hypocrite, since you have a very nice spread there and that takes money, money that is provided through the system… so what is it eric. good or bad? Perhaps it’s a bit of both…
Bob,
What I (and others here) hate – what we despise – is people who believe it’s ok to use force against others except in self-defense; to extract money from them; to compel their obedience to laws that are just arbitrary, man-made edicts whose violation entails no actual victim.
Think about that. Our hate is the hate of the victim toward his tormenter. It is a righteous hate. A moral hate. We don’t want anything from you – except to be left in peace, and to extend the same courtesy to you in return.
We are extreme in our defense of human rights – of liberty. We are absolutists when it comes to the non-aggression policy (NAP), which simply means: Leave others alone – period – unless they have aggressed against you first.
It’s all straightforward, intellectually consistent – and non-contradictory. What is your specific objection? Is some abuse of peaceful people ok? I say it’s never ok. That’s all.
As far as myself:
I have been a professional writer (and editor) most of my adult life; all my income was earned (not “provided”) through voluntary free exchange – never through coercion or wealth transfer at gunpoint. I have never – not once – partaken of government “benefits,” unless you count the years I attended government schools as a minor who had no say in the matter. Whatever I have, I did not get by taking from others.
This conforms with my moral philosophy. How does it make me a hypocrite?
You drive on the SOCIALIST roads and seem to enjoy that activity. You are using a device that was invented by and financed by our government (DARPA to be exact). You make and spend money in the system that is supported and created by OUR government. You likely have used many services provided by your local government, it’s almost impossible to avoid. You stated yesterday that you pay into and expect something from social security. I could go on and on, the reason being, you aren’t living on some island or a different planet, you live a stone’s throw from our nation’s capital.
If I had found that you lived on an island, you would have a better case, but you don’t…..
Bob,
The roads predate my existence – I had no say over their creation and have little choice but to use them. And I do pay to use them. Same as regards the Internet.
Regardless, it is irrelevant to the question: Are such things (infrastructure created by coercive collectivism) preferable to such things created through voluntary free exchange? Should we do things in the future based on coercive collectivism? Or through voluntary free exchange?
I am asking you to consider principles, Bob. To think conceptually – and to apply that conceptual thinking to particulars.
I expect nothing – want nothing – from Social Security except for the government to cease stealing my money to provide for the retirement of random strangers to whom I owe no obligation enforceable at gunpoint. I would, even now – after 25-plus years of being compelled to “contribute” forswear all “benefits” (i.e., stolen funds) in exchange for leaving me alone from this day forward. I am responsible for my own retirement; no one else is responsible for mine. Nor I for theirs. This is the principle at issue here.
What “services” do I use, Bob? I take responsibility for my own physical security; I have no interest in “law enforcement” officers – who are mostly a thug caste charged with enforcing unjust laws. I do not have kids in government schools. I therefore do not wish to be forced to provide funds to “help” support them. And so on.
Your use of ALL CAPS to express your veneration for “OUR” government is telling.
The government creates nothing, Bob. It merely redistributes that which is created by others. That which it takes – by force – from unwilling victims.
You still use the roads regardless and that is an implicit acceptance and no you did not pay for the roads WE did, so that argument is void. Sorry, try again!!
Do you understand economics and psychology? If so, then you must understand that what the government does at times is give incentive to do something. People, left to their own devices would rather lay back and relax rather than work hard, there are a few of us that are exceptions, I have been self employed most of my life and have no real work hours. I work more than the average person and I have the benefits of that but i and possibly you are a different breed than most. Some of those who need to be employed, but aren’t, because they aren’t self motivated (a large crowd) resort to taking other people’s shit, what do you suggest we do?
The great pyramids, the parthanon, what were they? Public works projects to keep idle hands from doing bad things perhaps? None of this is new and there has never been a libertarian anything other than this current club because it just doesn’t work over the long haul, never has…
I am pretty upset by our current crop of government boobs but unlike you I KNOW that this too will pass. It always does!
So you can’t claim that I don’t answer yor questions…
“Are such things (infrastructure created by coercive collectivism) preferable to such things created through voluntary free exchange?”
There would be no infrastructure to talk about because STANDARDS are required for progress, much in the way that we are using a standard language to comunicate, it requires agreement(s) and those are sometimes very hard to get without some incentive or coercive actions. THERE IS NO FREE MARKET, there never has been for any length of time. Anytime some quote free market arises someone with the means to do so intervenes to take control be it government or some wealth fuck, it’s always the same. Get used to it.
Should we do things in the future based on coercive collectivism? Or through voluntary free exchange?
It would be nice to assume that we’ll all play nice but there are a lot that won’t, so I say it probably will always be a mixture of both depending on the circumstances.
WE NEED to fix our government and WE can do it, you can’t and neither can I. WE can go to the moon, but you and I can’t as individuals. Some things are only possible when WE do them together.
Bob,
The fact that I use the roads (which I pay to use) is neither here nor there as regards the question: Should society be organized on coercive collectivist principles (i.e., socialism, fascism, corporatism, etc.) or on the basis of voluntary free exchange?
Can you answer the question?
You write:
“If so, then you must understand that what the government does at times is give incentive to do something.”
You mean force, Bob. Use force – the threat of violence, or its actuality – to compel people to do as you – or whomever wields force – desires. That’s the philosophy of the street thug, the tyrant.
It’s not my philosophy.
Is it yours?
A free society has yet to be tried, Bob – so you’re making a straw man argument. Semi-free systems have been tried – only briefly. Most systems have been extremely un-free. We know they don’t work – unless your standard is how effectively they enslaved/murdered people, in which case they worked very well indeed.
So, rather than continue trying what has proved to be a failure – often, a vicious, evil one – why not try the one thing that hasn’t been tried?
You know… a free society?
You keep turgidly shrieking about “WE.”
How about you do your thing – and leave me out of it?
Ah, but that’s the rub – right? You are unwilling to leave me (and others) out of it. You demand we submit to your WE. To the collective.
No thanks.
I say this as a matter of expressing a principle; you are probably right that a free society based on voluntary interaction and which leaves the individual alone is never going to exist… precisely because of attitudes such as yours.
Because of WE.
Bob,
Roads predate the present government system. Even good paved roads are the result of the work of the American Wheelmen, a private bicycling club. In the USA we have had less than 100 years of government roads. That’s what’s remarkable about statists, their ignorance. They think things not only can be one way but that they have always been that way.
As to your remark about the internet, you likely never experienced the pre 1995 internet. I did. You’re way off the mark. Today’s internet has practically nothing to do with the thing the government started. Even so, you assume that something would not have grown out of the various private networks that existed prior. Back in the 1980s there were various competing computer networks.
The highway system that supports all these little roads is a huge government project and wouldn’t be possible in your libertarian heaven. If so, show me how you keep out those who wouldn’t or couldn’t afford to pay their fair share. Oh perhaps with force. It’s called “the tragedy of the commons”, look it up.
I worked at compuserve in the early eighties, guess again! BBS anyone?
Bob,
You continue to make straw man arguments; the fact that “huge government projects” exist – or existed in the past – is neither here nor there as regards the desirability, the rightness or wrongness, of such things.
You value “huge government projects” more than individual liberty – the right of each human being to not be forced into servitude (the degree being immaterial) for the benefit of other men.
I, on the other hand, value the absolute right of every human being to be left in peace, so long as he is peaceful. And to never legitimize the use of force against peaceful people for some (alleged) “greater good.”
You claim privately financed/organized roads can’t work. Except they have – and do. Perhaps not on the scale of an Interstate highway, but in principle, there’s no reason they couldn’t work. Rights of way purchased without coercion; use on a pay-as-you-go basis, or via subscription, or some other way. And yes, those who don’t pay to use the roads would not have a right to use them. Just as people who don’t pay their tab at a restaurant have no right to a free meal.
Bob, your words: “you did not pay for the roads WE did.” I think that just about sums it up. Sorry I might have inadvertently dissed your employer, but hell, Bob, it’s only a job.
Bob, once again you assume because government took something over it always ran it and that’s the only way to do things. There are many ways to do things.
Your knowledge of 1980s networking is rather limited. The internet, as its name indicates, was a way of connecting the already existing networks. Arpanet was one of them.
It is a leap of faith to assume something would not have happened if the government didn’t take monopoly and do it. Everything about both roads and computer networking indicates they still would have happened by other means. For instance, the pre web internet was a very different place. What people know as the internet today is totally of private creation.
Bob, that just ain’t true. In my “extremist”, knuckle-dragging, tiny dicked, big gun totin’ way, I didn’t denigrate you. Many others didn’t either.
I’ve been very polite to you Bob, and you can see I am not using a handle either. However you keep using tired old arguments with a very ridiculing tone. You’re not arguing anything new that anyone here hasn’t encountered before. It might seem to you our minds are made up, but that’s because your arguments are old and we’ve already dealt with them. Perhaps if you brought up something new and interesting things would be different.
Perhaps I should show you the incrementalism that I was talking about.
You are the sheriff here eric and you gun is to shut down my voice. Out in the greater world you’d be head of the posse sent out to shut me up with guns and wait for it … wait for it…. VIOLENCE!
It’s that simple and yet you deny it. We are tribal by nature. You have your small and shrinking tribe here, others have their tribe there, it’s all tribal… nothing new under the sun!
Excuse me?
I’ve deleted an obscene post or two on my web site. Which is exactly like my asking you to not come onto my land.
You are free to express your opinions elsewhere – and I’d never attempt to interfere with that. In fact, I’d vigorously defend your right to voice your opinions – whatever they may be – provided you’re doing so using your own publication/venue (or a publication/venue that freely consents to airing your opinions).
But I am not obligated to give you free reign to pollute my web site with your invective.
That is not doing you violence. It’s declining to provide you with a an unlimited forum at my expense.
Can you discern the difference?
No Bob, out in the world, after meeting you and speaking with you awhile, you’d just be one of the countless I’d avoid like the plague. Nothing against you personally….just the personal beliefs you have about anyone who doesn’t take the blue pill as you have done and can’t seem to realize there are different ways of doing things, much better ways than “gummint enforced”, and yes, with gun in hand, as they always do. Yep, every time I’ve had dealings with gummint reps, they always leave their guns at home and just come to talk philosophy.
I counted not one response from your friends that was an actual debate. Please point out which one wasn’t insulting me. Please feel free to point out which one was interested in an honest debate. I’d really like to see what you would refer to as a debate by just one of your cohorts here.
I’ve responded at length to several of your posts – with reasoned arguments that you may disagree with, but which were nonetheless reasoned arguments.
If you’ll reply in kind, we can move on.
You are not “your friends”. You may want to debate but they just want to throw shit. Monkeys slinging dung, it’s just that civilized here.
I could care less if you want to debate while your friends sling shit since it is just as I was pointing out earlier. They are your gang and I am the one being harrassed for my opinion. The outsider chum that even you “clovered” whatever the hell that is..
That is not the nature of debate. Not one of them was kind. Not one of them wants REAL discussion. They just want to sling dung, like fucking tribal monkeys.
“They are your gang and I am the one being harrassed for my opinion.”
That’s because your opinion would have me thrown in a cage, or shot for resisting, if I disagree with it. Why would I want to be civil with anyone who advocates using violence as a means to an end?
In case you are interested in understanding what I’m talking about, read this. If you can grasp what the author is saying, I’ll eat my words an apologize for being mean, and offensive.
Hey, Eric: If we’re part of your “gang,” where/what are our colors, man? Don’t we get a leather jacket, a bandana, or something like that? How about our secret gestures/handshake? Or maybe a tattoo of some kind on our foreheads?
Isn’t “Libertarian Gang” a contradiction? Again…Bob is too stupid to even realize it…Like all statist maggots that think they own me.
Bob,
Can you respond – civilly, reasonably – to the arguments I presented?
I get that you just want to be left alone, some people want that but living in Copper Hill, Virginia doesn’t seem to be a place to do that. Perhaps one of the dakotas, Wyoming or even down south in alabama / texas would be a better choice. Although it doesn’t look too crowded from a google perspective..
http://maps.google.com/maps?oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a&q=721+Hummingbird+Lane+SE+Copper+Hill,+Virginia+24079&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x884d831ff0a4699b:0x7bd61a6200706fa9,721+Hummingbird+Ln+SE,+Locust+Grove,+VA+24079&gl=us&sa=X&ei=DNy9UdDOIozE4APNlYGADw&ved=0CCwQ8gEwAA
Is that you in the front yard?
Copper Hill’s a nice place, Bob. I very much enjoy living here – because to a great extent, people do leave you alone. No HOAs or even zoning laws, for instance.
I’d like to be left entirely alone, of course. But I prefer this to, say, Northern Va.
PS: I’m not sure what motivated you to look up/post my home address. It’s not something I hide – just as I don’t hide behind an anonymous Internet identity (e.g., “Bob”). I suppose you’re trying to make some sort of point – that you “know where I live” or something like that. Great. So? Are you going to pay me a visit, “Bob”?
If so, why?
I haven’t threatened you. I want nothing from you – expect for you to respect my right to be left alone, to not be compelled at gunpoint to provide you (or anyone else) with material benefits at my expense.
You might not like me; you might think I’m a kook. But I’m a peaceful kook – a kook who loathes violence; who respects the rights of others as much as I value my own rights. I would never lift a finger against you, Bob – unless you lift a finger against me first.
And that’s all I’ve got to say about that.
Bob, why are you behaving like a gangster?
‘Nice place you have here, shame if something should happen to it’.
Bob is a fucking collectivist tribal monkey…It already admitted that in one of its posts here. Bob is a fucking tribal gangster that thinks it owns you and your income. It does not have the intellectual capacity to be fully human and a peaceful individual.
You are a die-hard predictable state worshiping authoritarian collectivist control freak, Bob. I already know everything you will say, what you think, believe… all of which boils down to you advocating for the state to point it’s guns at me to get what you want. I’m not interested in debating anyone like you.
Bob, what do you, or anyone else think of this thought experiment?
The UN has announced a world wide declaration of peace.
1 All national sovereignty is hereby subordinated to the UN. All security treaties are hereby subordinated to the UN.
2 English is hereby declared the official language of the internet, and of all nations and governments, other languages are provided for convenience purposes, but do not carry the force of law, and are to be posted below English on all signs. Any non-english official documents and signage are to be translated. A UN transition fund is available to help.
3 Eastern Standard Time is now the official world time. All former timezones are discontinued. The official calendar of New York State is now the official calendar of the world. Any other date systems are to be posted below the official one. A UN transition fund is available to help.
4 The 176 million adherents of Shia Islam are hereby notified that the Shia religion will be discontinued starting July 1st, 2013. This is in response to Shia being designated by the United National Governement as a terroristic religion. All institutions and associations are to be converted to other approved forms of Islam. A UN transition fund is available to help. Any display or mention of this religion after the termination date, is a crime punishable by immediate apprehension and execution by local authorities.
5 All people will be provided a single unique identifying name, the second name being a system generated alphanumeric code, and this unique name must be kept on your person and broadcast during any telecommunication session at all times, violation punishable by immediate apprehension and execution by local authorities.
6 All people are hereby granted a single world bank account in their unique name. All taxes and social benefits are accounted for in this account. Any person in need is authorized to use this account to obtain necessities without exception anywhere in the world, subject to local availability. Everyone’s bank balance is a matter of public record.
7 e.g. Michael Rubens Bloomberg’s official name becomes Michael 7BW9A2 Rubens Bloomberg. His bank account number is the same as his United National Name. Lifetime contributions +172 Million USD Lifetime benefits -1.2 Million USD.
8 Taqueesha Chavez’s official name becomes Taqueesha 61PEB5 Chavez. Her bank account number is the same as her United National Name. Lifetime contributions +82 USD Lifetime benefits -365,024 USD.
9 Any money from fines and costs of incarceration and courts would be visible in a citizen’s bank account, which is public record, so we would know exactly how much each person is costing the system. We would also know who is a net supporter of the system.
– – – – –
It’s seems to me, the greater good and greater freedom of the many would be improved by this, and it would only entail the sacrifice of the few. Any suggestions to improve, expand, and refine this idea are welcome
10. 10 months per year…9 days per week…bag nov. and dec. Leap Year is January 37th.
11. SIR Metric system for weights and measures.
Only I would make a “good” dictator!
That’s a disturbing and kind of scary thought experiment, Tor.
What’s worse is, there are many people who like those ideas.
Bob, what do you, or anyone else think of this thought experiment?
Good Lord, Tor, what on earth would possess you to ask Bob or any of his Clover pals here to engage in anything involving thought? Are you trying to cause the poor creature to self-destruct?
It’s obvious that higher education has passed all of you by a long time ago since you don’t even understand the nature of the psychology behind our tribalism and how it affects what we do.
Ignorance isn’t bliss, it’s rather painful in modern society, that is why you are so pissed off…
You are not enlightened, you are the knuckle draggers who will be bread out of the future. Sorry, if you don’t understand, it’s just the way we work.
We will be “bread” out of the future, Bob?
This is the third post of yours that contains no facts, no attempt at reasoned discussion. Just mouthing off.
Last warning.
No Bob, higher education or any brand of state education did not pass us by. We overcame the indoctrination of a system based on the 19th century Prussian school model. That system was designed to produce good little compliant citizen-soldier-worker-bees that will keep their heads down, their mouths shut and march of to war to be maimed and murdered while their wealth and productivity is stolen from them. It’s for a good cause though; the benefit of the few and well connected and their progeny that somehow manage to sit out these human chess games with life, limb and property intact. One of the cornerstones of their “educational” program is to tell you that you must work through the system to change it. If the folks that actually own this world thought for one moment that would actually change things, rest assured it would be illegal.
And when one of the worker bees sticks his head up and says “Behold, the emperor hath no clothes!” they Brandon Raub / Julian Assange / Bradley Manning his ass, post haste. Thank God there are brave men like Edward Snowden that will stick their necks out to expose the rot in the bowels of the system. Sadly, he will probably be “disappeared” for telling the truth. Carol Elizabeth Howe worked through the system. She told he ATF handlers about the upcoming OKC bombing. They blew her off, cooked the books, told her the bomb making materials she brought them were nothing more than hardware store items, to take them back where she got them. When she blew the lid off their little charade after the fact, they attempted to convict of possessing…bomb making materials…the same items they told her to return to Elohim City. She’s just one of a long list of people who have attempted to work through the system to their own detriment. So keep on dreaming Bob, click your heals three times and repeat “There’s no place like home.”
Local politics? Sure, go to the board of commissioners meetings, the school board meetings, stand up and voice your opinion. But the local moneyed interests do what they want anyway. And if you do have a public hearing you need to be aware of the Delphi Technique (or Delphi Method) of controlling the unwashed crowd (http://www.vlrc.org/articles/110.html). The organizers make sure the deck is stacked in their favor. Does that make it hopeless to attempt to speak out? No. But it does make it difficult when the chair claims the subject matter is one thing, disallows valid opposing arguments to their agenda and allows sensationalism and emoting shills to gush garbage as long as it supports the official position.
I first encountered (or perhaps just recognized) this at a public hearing in Richmond, Virginia years ago, supposedly concerning the proposed definition for “assault weapon.” It turned out to be a love-fest for gun ban advocates. When learned and articulate men spoke about the proposed violations of the Virginia Constitution and the Second Amendment, the secretary of public safety told them to sit down and shut up or they would be removed. When a Sarah Brady lookalike sobbed about how her son had been shot seventeen times execution style with an “AK-47”, which had nothing to whatsoever to do with the “official” agenda of the hearing, she was allowed to spew on for the full time as the board went dewy eyed. When I got up to speak my wife prayed hard to bind them [the panel} and they had to sit there, the chairman was slack jawed and unable to speak, while I informed them that what they were doing was criminal, but that’s a whole story unto itself. So how is it that I don’t participate Bob?
Bob, I’ve met with “my” representatives and senators. I’ve met with those from other districts. I’ve spoken out, written letters to the editor, written letters to officials, made phone calls, donated money, printed and disseminated information, challenged onerous managerial policies on the job and “worked through the system” for years. In some areas it would appear that we’ve made inroads. Despite the shrill cries of the Bloombergs, Reids and Pelosis out there, private firearms ownership is more popular and jealously guarded in the private sector now than I can ever remember. That’s been accomplished through genuine education; the truth has a ring to it that resonates with most normal folks.
But often our efforts have been co-opted by the powers that be. For instance, the CCW permit. Most states now have some avenue where the individual can, if he is able to prove himself “reliable” (see 1930’s Germany), get permission to exercise his inalienable right to keep and bear arms. But what do we really have? A back door firearms owner registration database. With reciprocity laws “allowing” you to carry across state lines, DHS fusion centers and enhanced cooperation and information sharing between L.E. agencies, you have a de facto registry in place in violation of the Supreme Law of the Land. Combine that with drivers’ license photos, finger printing, bio-metric data, background checks and all of the dealer records that have been turned in over the years, and Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Goring are all getting one big collective woody in their graves just thinking about the possibilities. By the way, those guys all worked through the system too.
Now that the nine eunuchs in tunics have ruled that you can be DNA sampled and anal probed for a routine traffic stop, I’d say the national DNA database and the police state to implement it is well on its way to fruition. How do we work through that system Bob? Go down to the local cop shop and give them a DNA sample and an iris scan as a preemptive measure? Will they give us each a hall pass that says “Let this one pass, he’s already had 18 inches of state obelisk shoved up his tail pipe”?
So before you come here making blanket statements that we don’t “participate” or the tired old ‘if ya’ don’t vote, don’t bitch’ routine, come back and tell me when the last time was you went to the IRS and asked them to show you the tax they claim you’re liable for? I did with two witnesses and a tape recorder back in ’96 and they couldn’t. But I did get to see two IRS employees sweat. Ever signed your tax returns, county assessments or car titles “Under duress”? Did you ever take your son the Department of Education for a home school field trip and question the Common Core of Learning? Have you ever started a minor blue collar uprising at the DMV during lunch time? Got balls Bob?
Don’t come here and talk down to us. Don’t come here with your limited scope of “education” and anecdotal life experience and lecture us. Many, if not most of us that post here can be considered very well read, reasonable, logical and in other words, well educated. But having seen the truth, we are often cynical and if you don’t like that I hear you can register and post over at Salon or Huffington Post where you may find the crowd acceptable. Many of us here have resisted authority (and still do), but we tend to pick our battles carefully (because we’re no good to anyone dead or incarcerated). We tend to walk the narrow path; the remnant.
You sir appear to be on the broad path because you still think you can fix this mess from inside. I believe I can speak for most of my peers when I state that we don’t care to join you in your hive mind folly. Bob the termites holding hands are the only thing left preventing this shack we call U.S. government from collapsing on us. Sometimes you have to throw in the towel and just get ready to rebuild when the dwelling is caving in. So…enjoy your trip as you’re pushed along with the rest of the lemmings…but watch that last step, I hear it’s a doozie.
That was a really fine post, Boothe.
Really fine.
There are a couple of other fine posts here as well, but that one, it describes many many people – and what they encountered while facing the dragon – oh so well. Bravo.
Boothe, excellent post. I actually lose sleep thinking about involuntary DNA sampling, iris scans(as I pointed out before, I think Tx. has already done at the TxDOT getting your DL) RFID and it’s myriad perambulations. I lose sleep over this country being taken down by TPTB to rid it of it’s most vehement anti-govt. citizens, us oldies who know better also. I wish I could confine it to a few subjects but it all comes down to the big foot on your back. This(http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/06/inside-the-militarys-secret-terror-tagging-tech/) is worth a read although it’s not anything to really “wow” anyone on this site.
Bob is too stupid to realize that tribalism/democracy is violence. It thinks the peaceful individual is the knuckle dragger. It is too stupid to live in civil society and too stupid to be free.
“…tribalism/democracy is violence”
That is an irony apparently lost on Bob. It’s bizarre, isn’t it, that people who renounce first-use of violence, who seek to live in peace with others on the basis of free exchange and cooperation are considered “knuckle draggers” by guys like Bob.
“…free exchange and cooperation are considered “knuckle draggers” by guys like Bob.”
Lincoln, Mussolini, Hitler, Mao, and Stalin spouted the same shit…Individualism is for selfish brutes. I know that is what the scum in DC/UN are going to start spouting when “the time comes” for implementation of their Slave Plantation Earth NWO. Maybe Bob is an agent of the terror state? Probably just a violent moron.
Bob is probably another one of the Department of Hopeless Stupidity’s paid net trolls. If that’s the case, he’ just serving as further proof of the fact that they have no hiring standards at all and that no one with an IQ north of 50 need apply for a position. I’m only shocked at the fact that anyone here has continued to give him the time of day. I’d have put him on IGNORE after his second post, when it became obvious that he was nothing but another Clover trolltard.
liberranter, there are two reason I didn’t ignore him, as much as I was tempted to:
1.) It might actually be possible to get through to him.
Many former necocon’s and Marxists are now very vocal and well known freedomista types.
2.) My hope was that ‘some guy’ (or girl) lurking in the background might read the stuff and go, “hmm”.
Downshift, those are the very reasons to not simply blow someone off. I worked for a decade or longer to get a few old college buddies to come around. They pretend to be Libertarian and even voted that way this past election but still can’t stand for me to say anything about Bush when it was his administration that started the rapidly mounting illegal spying we have today…and it’s not that much worse. Of course these people think it is more because BO is black I think than any other reason although they’d never admit it.
1.) It might actually be possible to get through to him.
It might also be “possible” to cure someone of rabies after they’ve been infected with it, but given an approximately 0.0000000000000017 percent success rate so far (only two people in all of human history have been successfully cured of rabies once they contracted it), the odds against success might as well be zero. Bob, so far, isn’t looking like someone who is going to make it onto the “Had An Epiphany/Saw The Light” list, with symptom number one being his demonstrated lack of ability to think critically.
You are my chum now.. and this is fun. Just remember, you started it.
So, when you hold that gun does it make you feel more like a man? It’s obvious that you are nothing more than a sawed off, pissed off peaon.
You deserve your condition!
Bob,
Can we have a reasonable discussion? Or is it going to be insults and nonsense?
You ascribe to the mantra of liberty for me but not for thee… it’s obvious. And bear in mind I don’t mind debating however you don’t debate, so I am just doing what you do.
When in rome…
Does that gun make your penis seem bigger?
“You ascribe to the mantra of liberty for me but not for thee..”
Really? How so – please be specific.
PS: I’ve warned you now twice about childish insults. One more “does that gun make your penis seem bigger” comment and you’re done here.
You didn’t pay for the roads that you are driving on did you? WE DID Your buddy still wants his social security… yea … that makes you the leachy maggot.
Hit the nail on the head and boy does it hurt.. doesn’t it?
Enjoy your pissed off existence, I, on the other hand, will be laughing my way to my grave at a ripe old age…
I don’t expect a moron to understand, it’s the nature of your condition..
Bob,
Everyone who purchases gas pays motor fuels taxes – which pay for the roads. You can choose not to pay motor fuels taxes by not purchasing gas.
Social Security, on the other hand, is a direct wealth transfer from one person to another. From people who may want nothing to do with it. Who have no choice about “contributing” to it.
A prediction, if your mentr / moderator let’s it through, since he qushed a post of mine already. In ten years you’ll still be bitching and nothing will have gone your way. Same for twenty and eternity since you want the goods but you don’t want to pay for them. Kinda like the “private” roads that are just everywhere.
You’ll leave this world as disapointed as you are right at this moment or even more so. Gun toting, small penised, pissed off loner males… That’s the long and short of it.
Thanks for a glimpse into insainity..
Clovers Gosh, I’m just so very hurt… Oh I’ll never recover. LOL!
Hear that, Eric? Libertarians/Ancaps/Voluntaryists want things just handed to them.
You are fucking dumber than mud, Bob.
Bob,
I quashed (deleted) a post of yours that was nothing more than an obscenity filled rant that added nothing to the discussion. If you’re civil, your posts will not be deleted.
You mentioned that we (myself, others here) are “cheap skates” who desire not to pay for things. You are partially correct. We do not wish to be forced to pay for things we don’t want and don’t use. Government schools for other people’s children, for instance. Or other people’s retirement. Your existence imposes no obligation on me (or anyone else) to provide you with any material benefit. I owe you respect for your rights, which means, I respect your right to live your life as you see fit (so long as you harm no one else in the process). I’d like you to extend the same courtesy to me. Is that really so terrible?
We also believe – perhaps naively – that by advocating a principled objection to taking other people’s property (and denying them their rights) that, perhaps, eventually, enough people will agree with us and that such practices will no longer be acceptable to most people.
Do you take issue with that? If so, why?
Bob,
There are steps to the process.
To simply ‘run for office’ on libertarian principles has been attempted for a couple-three decades. It does not work. Even if the elections were fair, the population does not have the educational background to understand the principles. They function as children, as livestock. Life without the state guiding them is very scary to them. It’s like being six years old without parents. However there are numerous people disgusted with being treated like that. Many of them don’t know there is an alternative. There is another group disgusted with the criminality of government. They don’t know there is an alternative. To make significant change requires getting the alternative thinking out there. Otherwise people will fight for twenty years or more just to get some controlling law repealed or made more permissive while thousands of others were added.
In a 100 years there are less than a handful of major controlling laws on the federal level that have been repealed or made more permissive. The ban on owning gold, home brewing beer/wine making, the repeal of the NMSL. That’s what I can think of.
Your working within the system is wheel spinning nonsense for the most part. Change the people and the system will change of its own accord. That’s how we got into this mess. The people who want this system created the government schools. They changed the character of the people to get the system they wanted. Their company towns failed, so they tried a new approach.
Bob sure is one confused person. It’s too bad he refused to try out thinking. It seems like it’s common for those types of people to treat all kinds of unsupported assumptions as if they were facts.
It was pathetic how he used the roads in NYC as the example for the nation. NYC?
Anyway, I’ve read good things about private roads in other states and experienced Great private roads in my state, even though they are fairly limited.
The home owners associations, as well as farmers, privately own and maintain the roads, it’s always a joy to drive on one, and no toll booths.
I would gladly pay for services I used voluntarily, so his notion that libertarians and such are “democrats that don’t want to pay for anything… ” is not only bizarre, it’s offensive. I imagine that’s why he said it, to be offensive without spending any time thinking. In other words, just your typical Clover.
It’s difficult to imagine a Clover reading online about private roads, such as The Dulles Greenway, or private roads is in the city of North Oaks, Michigan:
Private Roads Work
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/frazier3.html
It’s even more difficult to imagine a Clover picking up a book and reading about private roads:
The Privatization of Roads and Highways.
http://mises.org/daily/3416
reused = refused
Another typo! Mang! So I might have to try out that proof editor that Tor was talking about the other day.
LOL, just go mang! Couldn’t get the pee part embedded because copyright stuff, but this will do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sLB-uMPj27s
One last thought… what form of government do you think that you are participating in when you turn the key and drive, except when on tollways? After all that is what yer little blog is about, isn’t it?
SOCIALISM – you know, when one “parasite” is using your section of road while you use theirs.. Wouldn’t it be just grand if we had capitalist / “free” market roads everywhere? Toll booths every few feet, check out NYC to see how that all works, it’s awesome!!!!
I hit the nail on the head… democrats that don’t want to pay for anything… cheap skates.
May I suggest this article for you? http://www.salon.com/2013/06/04/the_question_libertarians_just_cant_answer/
The thing that made us great in the past and still somewhat now is that we have all forms of government in our country. Case in point – businesses are either communism or a dictatorship depending on the number of owners, as an example.
Some can only see things as nails because they only have a hammer.
Good luck and goodbye… I just hope you are not my neighbor… seriously!
Tom Woods deconstructed that nonsense quite effectively – http://www.tomwoods.com/blog/the-question-libertarians-just-cant-answer/
“The thing that made us great in the past and still somewhat now is that we have all forms of government in our country. Case in point – businesses are either communism or a dictatorship depending on the number of owners, as an example.”
Sure, but I can choose who to work for. Not so when it comes to the state (regardless of which turf soem gang of thugs is lording over).
Bob,
I’m not “participating” in anything as regards government. It forces me to help finance it; it punishes me when it discovers I’ve failed to obey one of its litany of laws. But that’s not “participation” – except in the sense that one “contributes” to Social Security or is a “customer” at the DMV.
Anything the government does that goes beyond keeping the peace is, on its face, illegitimate. That is the sum total of my position – and the thing I have been trying to get across to you and to others.
On roads: The problem we have is that the roads were put in place as a giant socialist program – and we’re stuck with them as they are. This fact does not obviate the underlying critique of socialism (fascism, actually).
Your posts thus far have been incoherent. It’s hard to even know what your specific objection is.
Do you believe “Smith” has an obligation enforceable at gunpoint to “help” educate/feed/clothe the children of “Jones”?
What is your position, exactly?
LOL the ‘what about the roads’ argument. Really Bob?
There’s quite a bit of thought put the roads in libertarian society, you can easily find it and read it if you want.
However, roads are actually pretty well funded. The system is actually reasonably fair and cost is generally proportional to use. It’s not perfect, but it’s far better than most everything else government has taken over. The worst parts being subsidizing trucking and money taken from road taxes for other things. The socialism shows up in other aspects.
Oh btw, that salon article is by yet another lazy statist who couldn’t even bother to read the vast amount of work that’s out there. They don’t think there is an answer because they never looked for one. Start at http://mises.org/
“Why am I somehow obligated to participate in the advance auction of stolen goods (and liberties) that is government?” Because it directly affects you, the other crap that you posted apparently doesn’t, I don’t know what you do in your spare time and I don’t want to know. Feel free to do what you want in your private life as long as it follows some form of your “natural” laws.
Unfortunately for you we don’t have a vending machine that will provide you with your own custom laws that only you have to follow. Wait a minute… I have an idea!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOL a vending machine that… oh never mind it’ll never fly.
Good luck with your feeling of illegitamate government overthrow. PS they they / we have big weapons and since you won’t participate and others play dumbass my guy, your guy games we now have LAWS that permit their use on US. It’s an old magicians trick, watch the shiney thing over there while we take your shit over here.
History! don’t leave home without it!!!
I believe that I have come to the wrong place.. It is obvious that the BS flies and the BSers believe with no room for decent. Enjoy your feelings of helplessness, in fact I suggest you wallo in it, therfore removing any responsibility on your part to do anything about it but complain. We have far more control over our “the government ” than the north koreans but we choose instead to play football politics instead. My dumbass is better than your dumbass…. It doesn’t solve anything, never has. Have any of you complainers ever attended something as simple as your school board meeting? Your city council meeting? Your government (local) does most everything out in public where you can observe and provide input. Run for office locally, it’s fairly cheep to do and you have a fairly high chance of winning since most of us are lazy.
I know.. it’s easier to complain and those meetings conflict with dancing with the stars so you do have a valid excuse for not participating. Carry on complaining on obsecure sites because that’ll eventually fix everything without you doing anything of any real consequence.
I have read nothing here that would make me think any of you have a replacement for the laws that you don’t like. Face it, you like laws that restrain those other bad drivers but you really don’t like them to apply to you. It’s the same everywhere… Most of you think that you are better than average but in reality, aren’t. We are rarely honest with ourselves.
I have no use for places that do nothing but shoot the messenger as some of the commenters have already done. It’s not debate boys and I’m not your chum so go day to you all.
Goodbye! and fuck off
Bob, you really told em. BrentP, love it or leave it, you damn “dancing with the stars” dancing fool you. No one here has ever run a business. We’ve just been picking up manna all our lives. That reminds me, I need to go harvest the money tree. I’ve been dealing with some high placed politicians and bureaucrats and think I’m close to getting some laws passed that will allow me to use my automatic picker on other people’s money trees….sweeeeettt.
That’s not debate, yet again, that’s sarcasm meant to shoot the messenger so the same applies to you…
Bob,
It’s not “my” schoolboard. I want no part of it – including being compelled to “help” finance it. I want you to educate your children as you see fit, using your means… and leave me out of it. The fact that Smith has kids does not impose an obligation enforceable upon Jones to “help” educate (or feed or house) said kids. Jones may freely choose to assist, if he wishes – but to say he must, to compel him to – is an outrage. It is the mugger’s code. The parasite’s prime directive.
As to the rest: If one doesn’t want anything from the government except for it to go away and leave us in peace, there’s no point in attempting to give “input.” Your “input” amounts to trying to get the force that is government directed in some way that seems more satisfactory to you. Well, what if you don’t want the force directed at anyone?
You write:
“Face it, you like laws that restrain those other bad drivers but you really don’t like them to apply to you. ”
Face it, Bob? When did I ever advocate any such thing? I have repeatedly said that all these laws are incompatible with liberty, if they punish people who haven’t actually caused harm to anyone.
I’m happy to discuss any issue with you, but please don’t ask me to argue in defense of something I never said!
WOW! I don’t know how to respond to that other than to say that it was that way in the past and literacy was the realm of only the rich.
“parasites” now I know that I came to the wrong place.
Goodbye eric, it was fun but I don’t see what this accomplishes other than to consume time.
WOW!! WOW! W-O-fucking-W!
So, you’ve moved on to the other standard, ‘you’re not doing enough to work with in the system to change it’. Well Bob, the system is the problem. It’s fundamentally designed this way and what you mention is nothing more than tire spinning mechanisms to make people feel like they have a voice. If you have actually tried for change, real fundamental change, you’d know that.
As an example, the red light cameras have been kept out of the town I live in. The neighboring towns have them. It’s a very minor effect that can be had. Very minor. The system remains the same. You bring up a school board. Do you know what parents do if a guy without children starts discussing the schools? Hint: they say he isn’t qualified because doesn’t have kids.
BTW most everything is done behind closed doors. What’s done in public is often just a formality. Anyone who’s done any sort of work that has public meetings knows this. I know it not only from observation but from doing it. Hell I’ve learned the same techniques to deal with complainers and their public comments. Anyway they don’t go over contracts like Chicago’s parking meter contract in public. It’s too long and detailed. All that was worked out in private.
Like the laws that restrain other bad drivers? Lol. Illinois has a keep right except to pass law. It doesn’t restrain people in the least. The driver who thinks 10 over is fast enough still blocks the passing lane. Of course he thinks the guy doing 15 over is a bad driver and needs to be restrained by the law. What you’re really doing here is projecting your own views on others. It’s how you think. The nature of the law is state power over the law abiding. It needs violators of the law. So much so when there aren’t enough it makes them.
I have no use for places that do nothing but shoot the messenger as some of the commenters have already done. It’s not debate boys and I’m not your chum so go day to you all.
You need to work on your arguments and have something that isn’t so tiresome and old.
Goodbye! and fuck off
Don’t let the door hit you in your fat, dumb Clover ass on the way out.
On another note… This “sovereign citizen” BS is just a way of being a baby.. Most of these fine citizens don’t mind the laws that get them something but hate it when they have to pay. The equivalent is playing a game until it looks like you’ll lose and then throwing a temper tantrum and tossing the game board in defiance, not exactly an adult way of acting.
There is a cost attached to living in a civilized society, if you don’t want to pay it move to another country that doesn’t impose such things. Africa has quite a few locals that fit that bill… ENJOY!
Bob,
Most of us here only oppose laws that conflict with natural law – that is, laws that involve first-use of force against peaceful people. Put another way, absent a victim – an actual person actually harmed in some tangible way – there cannot be a crime, properly speaking. Thus, any enforcement – use of force – against people who’ve caused no one any harm is illegitimate.
This isn’t anarchy. It’s the essence of civilized human interaction.
“Natural law”, now what exactly is that and to whom. I would suggest that it’s literally an undefinable term because one person will see one thing as a “natural law” while some other will say not, especially if the law applies to them in a negative way. Nobody likes to be on the wrong side of the law and everyone would want an exception for themselves and those that they know. This is what is commonly referred to as “rule by man” as opposed to rule by law.
I’m not a big proponent of writing new laws considering the number of assinine laws that exist currently. I’d be more like ly to suggest that we fix the ones that we already have, dump the ones that do only harm and are considered “dumb” by a majority and enforce the rest.
Did you feel wall street’s dick in you ass in the last few years? Gosh why didn’t you do anything about it? And what “natural laws” would apply to the largest ponzi scheme on the planet?
Don’t just do something. stand there…. and bitch.
Sorry eric I don’t buy it. Incrementalism will bring you to the same place eventually.
Natural law is the idea that no individual has a right to use force against another except in response to force used against him; that is, in self-defense.
This one simple law obviates all the others; it renders them irrelevant.
It is pretty disgusting that 500 years after The Enlightenment you still have to state this natural law definition for the mentally retarded public school brats in Amerika. Most people in Amerika remain stupid government-loving brats well into their old age now. Magna Carta was just a big ox cart…Like a Cadillac, I guess.
Agreed, Tom.
It’s very frustrating. To us, natural law is obvious – a basis for human interaction that’s clear and concise and which doesn’t require interpretation by lawyers. No volumes of law books, no endless parsing. Just: Don’t do things that harm others – and if you do harm them (or their property) expect to be held accountable.
Otherwise, live your life – and leave others alone to live theirs.
It’s an idea that “Bob” (and “Gil” and “CNS” and all the other Clovers out there) seem constitutionally unable to grasp.
I suspect the bratty-runt Clover mental retards out there not only had their brains damaged by public school and TV broadcasts but were also abused (physically or emotionally) as children by their parents. These abuses leads to stupidity and violent behavior toward your fellow man. These violent sociopath Clovers want to control/rob you and if your refuse them they want you dead. Natural Law runs counter to their criminal mindset and therefore will always be rejected by these stupid parasite.
There’s definitely something “not right” about them. An inability to see (comprehend/acknowledge) concepts and principles and how these apply to particulars. This, in my experience, is what defines a Clover. It’s not stupidity per se (in the sense of low IQ). It’s a fractured – or not fully developed – consciousness. They can’t reason. And so, they emote.
There is a cost attached to living in a civilized society, if you don’t want to pay it move to another country that doesn’t impose such things.
I keep hearing this mantra and it normally comes from people who don’t produce anything and/or those who have good ideas they would like other people to pay for.
As Bastiat wrote: “Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.”
Your civilized society has people using the government’s monopoly on legal violence to make other people pay for the things they want. Professional sports fans want a new stadium so they have the government tax other people. Somebody who makes money selling weapons has the government enter a war which other people pay for. People who don’t want to pay to educate their children demand their neighbors whom don’t have children or who’s children are grown pay for it. Social engineers who don’t want people of certain demographics living somewhere tax them out of their homes. Developers have government seize people’s property so they can have it. The list of what your civilized society does using violence is endless.
Meanwhile, uncivilized man has not institutionalized violence. He’s honest. A warlord brings in his private army and takes what he wants. There is no question he is a thief. No question about his criminality. It is not veiled in flowery language about it being the ”
cost attached to living in a civilized society”. No illusions about the protection racket.
It is quite possible to structure society on a voluntary non-violent basis. People choose not to because they benefit from the violence or at least think they do. It usually does not benefit them in the overall picture. Many if not most people in this country would be better off if they just paid their own way on everything. The lure of something for nothing and being conditioned into involuntary collectivism is just too strong. The cost of the middlemen alone is enormous.
As to ‘love it or leave it’, the USA was supposed to be for people who wanted the most individual liberty possible. It’s those who wish to live under imposed collectivism or want to steal from their neighbors that should go elsewhere. I suggest those nations in Africa where the warlords are clear and honest about what they are doing, or perhaps North Korea. There are a wide variety of nations on earth to choose from if one wants these things. However only one nation was even in words, supposed to be about individual liberty and that is the U S of A. Even if that was all BS, it’s those who want liberty that are where they are supposed to be.
This stupid little runt believes that stealing someones life and property using gun-and-jail-backed “Laws” is “Civilized”. That is the level of maturity and reasoning of the average Amerikan Fucktard today. America should be renamed to Fucktardia.
America should be renamed to Fucktardia.
A name that its Clover/fucktard majority wouldn’t be able to pronounce or spell.
Ha! Fucktardia.
Fucktardians, or Fucktardicans?
Fucktardican’t’s?
“Fucktardians, or Fucktardicans?”
How about Fucktardicans and Fucktardocrats?
I like liberal Fucktardican’t..LOL
Stupidbraticans?
I can’t help but notice that this discussion has moved to the very profitable but not too criminal discussion of speed / red light cams. Anyone who is paying attention has figured out that these things are nothing more than an ATM machine for the powers that be. They even wrote laws in a lot of states that make them a civil fine rather than the usual criminal fine that would be imposed because there is no accuser to confront in court. My advise in these situations is to NOT pay the fine, since it’s civil not criminal (check your state or Provence). The only thing that can be done to you at that point is punish you with disallowing plate or license renewal. The net effect has already been published. Cities will pull them if the cost of administration is greater than the revenue that they produce, several cities and one state (I think Arizona) have done this already. Leaving the obvious reason laid bare… they are nothing other than ATMs for their operators that have a tendency to cause rear end collisions. The argement that they reduce t boning is not the same as a total reduction in accidents which is not the case. Rear endings tend to rise dramatically while t bonings fall somewhat.
The most obvous thing to do is become an activist against these crappy devices and work to get the laws changed but in the short term resisting by not paying is the only real choice, that is, unless your country rates these as criminal infractions, then you should pay because jail for this type of offense is really not a good option.
Work to fix the laws, it’s your government too…
It’s not “my” government – or “yours.”
It’s the government.
And we each have as much influence over it as the average North Korean has over the government there.
Government is nothing more than the people who control organized violence; in effect, the biggest gang in the land. This gang is not there to “help” you. It is there to control you, to make you work for its financial support – and to die for it (for them, those who control the levers of power) if they deem it necessary.
Unless you’re an adult child, you ought to be past the age of needing a parent to guide you – and scold you.
As far as criminals (the real ones, people who hurt others, steal and so on) they will exist in any society; we have an abundance of them in this country, in spite of all the laws. Getting rid of the laws that criminalize non-criminal actions – i.e., the endless statutory laws that have no victims – will not result in more real criminals cropping up. But it will eliminate the massive criminal enterprise that calls itself “government.”
No.. it’s your government, you just don’t like it and probably refuse to participate.
I own a business or two and I won’t tolerate an employee complaining without providing a solution for their complaints. Where is your solution that doesn’t lead right back to what you are complaining about?
Psychology pretty much indicates that we all have some very basic human flaws. At some level we all wish to control others, some of us are just a bit more honest that others about it.
So what have you done to fix anything that you don’t like in the legal realm? My guess is nothing but feel free to prove me wrong.
How is it “my” government, Bob?
I did not choose it; it was foisted on me. It certainly does not represent me, let alone function with my consent.
My solution? Working toward the day when human beings reject force as the basis for their interactions.
Refusing to participate doesn’t make it “not yours”.
“Working toward the day when human beings reject force as the basis for their interactions” and I want a pink puppy that can fly but I don’t have the details as to how to aquire such a thing and apparently neither do you.
Spell it out in “legal” fine detail, instead of platitudes and perhaps some will take you more seriously.
I don’t participate in cannibalism, child sex rings or other forms of perversion and abuse of others. Why am I somehow obligated to “participate” in the advance auction of stolen goods (and liberties) that is government?
You see, I regard the thing itself as illegitimate. Therefore, “participating” makes as much sense to me as “participating” in the doings of the local mafia – which amounts to the same thing.
Bob, you write:
Spell it out in “legal” fine detail, instead of platitudes and perhaps some will take you more seriously.
I am speaking in philosophical terms. For me, any law that does not conform to natural law is an invalid, illegitimate law.
I see no need for Talmudic parsing.
You either believe a person has a right to be left in peace unless he’s harmed another person or his property – or you do not.
The first step, Bob, is getting people to grasp the fundamental immorality of what goes on today under the auspices of “government.” To get them to reject the poisonous notion that it’s ok to take other people’s stuff – and limit their liberty – for (insert here) “the good of society” or “safety” or “the children.”
Self ownership. You own you – I own me. Neither of us has any claim on the other that’s enforceable using violence. We have an obligation to respect one another’s right to live our lives as we choose, to keep all that we produce, and to be left the hell alone unless we’ve harmed someone else or their property in some objective, clear-cut way.
Is that really so hard to understand?
“I own a business or two and I won’t tolerate an employee complaining without providing a solution for their complaints.”
I’m not your employee, bootlicker. If I were, I’d do as you ask, or tell you to fuck off and find a job elsewhere. That is not an option that the state you worship offers.
“Where is your solution that doesn’t lead right back to what you are complaining about?”
Put your gun down, and we’ll talk.
lberns, he expects the state to have his back, in a one on one, physical sorta way or at least in some technical legal way. If he ever has any run in with them, he’ll be dispelled of that notion quickly.
No, Bob would be dispelled of nothing. He is the type of state worshiping compliant obedient bootlicking fuck head who would think he deserved being herded into a gas chamber. He is the absolute definition of the Stockholm Syndrome.
Is that the best you can do? Fucking amateurs. Go turn in your computer.
Bob’s another hit and run Clover. Notice he never responded to any of the (entirely civil and thoughtfully presented) points I made.
I didn’t bother replying to his last three chain non sequiturs and serial incoherence. I just “clovered” him and moved on.
No lberns, I can’t agree with that. My oldest sister had been a PO, jailer, etc. always taking up for pigs. She was a do-gooder though, wouldn’t hurt anyone and would do way more than any PO I ever heard of. After she witnessed what happened to my wife and I, I really think she just laid down and died. We lived through it and continued on. A friend said last year to me after I’d been for a few hours feeding and watering the hogs in a blizzard and said how grateful I was to have a warm house, electricity and plenty of food instead of like the hogs I was doing everything for I could, he’d said I never saw anybody as resilient as the both of you are. Ok then. I asked my wife, What were we supposed to do, lie down and die? And then I realized that’s almost exactly what happened to my sister, just couldn’t handle the hypocrisy of the entire sheebang. I never operated under those illusions, quite the opposite. It changed the way a lot of my friends looked at things.
“Work to fix the laws, it’s your government too…”
Begging the Question. A statist favorite. Sorry, Bob, merely saying something is so, does not make it so.
So Mr. Peters,
Perhaps we could class action suit for a lot of things with that logic.
A short list:
The gays would have a good one (probably more so in the future).
The pot smokers (although they might be suing to get back a significant portion of their lives spent in jail, it’s obvious that pot will be legal at some point, perhaps all drug users wiil have a suit if the war on drugs goes where it should)
The mixed raced marriges that were either thwarted or worse died for what they wanted to do at the hands of “local LEOS” or ignorant vigilantes
The next obvious one after that would be everyone who drank during prohibition and got caught (they’re mostly dead so perhaps not so big a suit is required)
The indians and indiginous native Americans could concievably hit it big, real big (we might even have to move to fix that one)
The blacks who were slaves, they could make a good case I’d bet. 3/5th now equals one, how did that happen? Suddenly a speeding ticket doesn’t seem so bad…
All were or are still illegal activities or just plain breathing in some respect. I could go on and on but the point is that why 70 or 75 or none for that matter. Because you were affected not some poor sap that you could care less about. There are hundreds of laws that are dumb, stupid, ignorant, whatever you want to call them and occasionally they get repealed. Three felonies a day… it’s a good book that points out something that you just did… laws change but we are all living in an era that makes each and every one of us stinkin law breakers who may in the future be vindicated but not renumerated.
The can of worms that you suggest has no bottom. You knew the law then and you know it now, would you complain if you got a ticket for doing 85 in a 70 mph zone today when perhaps in the future the spped limit goes to 80 or 90? The object lesson here is to work to repeal the law, not complain after someone else has done the heavy lifting.
FWIW – I am no admirer of ANY political party, they all parade idiots around under the guise of intelligent thought.. our beloved kook Ron Paul and his dumbass son are no diifferent. I still visit lew’s site even though I saw the light years ago when the Ron lovefest allowed me to see the other side of his mouth moving. He’s a stinkin politician as well and should be treated as such.. a liar like the rest of them, and he has told some whoppers. The dems have their idiots too but the repugs take the knuckle dragger crown to a whole new level (Palin – fucking moron flame thrower, Akin – I have no idea how a woman works internally but I want to regulate it, Buchman – welcome to the old testament where ignorance abounds, Yeah – less government unless you are talking about sticking you nose into my private life) and sadly the libertarians are siding with them at the moment. On that note, something I noticed a while back, Libertarians appear to be Democrats that don’t want to pay for anything. Cheap skates…. But not to be out done by the tea partiers, now there’s a group of really big thinkers!!!!!!!!!!!!
Just imagine living a thousand years ago or so living like you do today… your butt would be in jail for so many things, if not just plain dead. Pick a time and a law, it’s always been the same, there truly is nothing new under the sun with regard to law, just a new interpretation of some activity.
In europe “Liberals” are considered republicans of the sorts just in case you have spent too much time staring at our own flawed system and it’s ignorant politicians.. Liber…. tarians, that group is half way there in name alone..
I’d be interested in what you think of this…
Bob
To be fair, I was replying to this from the Lew Rockwell site.
Bob,
The point of the article was to demonstrate the fundamental hypocrisy of speed limits – and the vile tactics of corporate cartels that use the power of the state to force people to hand over money to them.
All the things you mention are demonstrable wrongs.
The thing to take from this is to acknowledge the principle that it’s never right to abuse people – and all the things you’ve listed are examples of abuse, whether they were legal at the time or not.
I am not a defender of Republicans – or Democrats. I am an advocate for human liberty – and an opponent of all forms of authoritarianism, of which the Democrats and Republicans are two examples. I don’t really care why you (speaking metaphorically) want to hassle/cage/fine/control/kill me. All I care about is that you want to hassle/cage/fine/control/kill me.
There is only one instance when such things are permissible: When I have caused you harm, either your person or your property. Then – and only then – do you have a moral right to use force against me. Otherwise…
Live – and let live.
Voluntary, peaceful cooperation.
As opposed to: Forcing other people to do what you want – and having them do the same to you. Coercion, violence – standardized and formalized through “the law.”
Pick a law, almost any law and you’ll find hypocracy and corporate indulgence. The closer to today that they were enacted the more likely since we now have shitty little outfits like “freedom” (as if) works, the us chamber of commerce or ALEC writing them for our elected fund raiser friends in politics.
The only way to put and end to this is taking the money out of politics but I, in this case, don’t have an answer since it requires the very same beneficiaries to enact the laws that would take away their very own punch bowl.
You may be an outstanding adult citizen but a lot of us aren’t and require the “paddle” so to speak. How do we separate the good from the bad?
There are only two real reasons for conflict and one is usually a cover for the other.. Economics (resources, your shit is mine) and idology (religion, polotics). The latter is usually the cover for the former, did anyone notice this lately? anyone anyone??? I give you BS wars in a lot of places that we the people have cheered on ignorantly. Football politics!
It’s just the price we have to pay to live in a civilized society. That’s what folks like you keep telling me. That if I don’t like it I have to give up everything I own and move to some 4th world country and live in some inhospitable environment. So love it or leave it Bob. If you want to change it, get on the field and play football. Why aren’t you doing more?
See Bob, your tired old arguments can be turned on you.
Eric,
You need to throw your drivers license in the woods, that’s what gives the traffic court jurisdiction to apply the traffic code.
If the citing officer does not show up in court (the court clerk will advise if you need a subpoena), you move for a dismissal based on the States failure to prove it’s case. If the officer appears, fill out an affidavit of license signature revocation and present it to the judge before discussing the merits of the case. Demand a dismissal because you are not a licensed driver.
If you need insurance, apply for another license.
Courts of limited jurisdiction are limited to those who have a license. Traveling on a right of way is a right – if you are engaged in commerce, it’s a privilege.
Thanks for that KO. “Driving” under all law dictionaries is a paid occupation, which is a privilege on public roads, requiring a licence. “Travelling” is a right. The courts and just about everyone have been brainwashed, if not been in collusion, to see that any automobile activity as a “licensed” one.
That leaves one thing – is the driver’s license a proper contract? No.
Contracts are null and void if full disclosure isn’t provided. They didn’t tell you the above – they lied and said to use a car on the road you need a license. See here:
http://www.lawfulpath.com/ref/DLbrief.shtml
Hi KO,
I’m familiar with (and agree) with all this – as a matter of principle. In practice, though, it’s not viable. Because if they catch you without a license, they will arrest/cage you. Leaving aside the unpleasantness of that, who has the time to sit in jail/go to court constantly over this? And if you drive around without a license – in a car without plates (“sovereign citizen”/right to travel) you will constantly be stopped/harassed/arrested/caged/fighting in court.
G’day Eric. Eventually, if you manage to get the proper paperwork from a judge they’ll leave you alone. I might have mentioned Charlie Sprinkle to you before (YouTube). As for me, I love the chase and love to see them fail. If I need to, I’ll chuck a lien on them too.
Like I said eric, you and your nutbags want to end up as road pizzas that’s your business. How many others have to die because of your recklessness??? But you dont care. Your problem is you cant stand having to share the road with others.
OHS, a song just came on my Zen that reminded me of you, 19th Nervous Breakdown. Just so you don’t have to search, it’s a Rolling Stones song about people like you on the 40 Licks album.
Actually Ol’ Hickey Licker, you’ll find many “motor-heads” (not meat-heads; don’t judge others based on your own character defects) are not reckless drivers. Quite the contrary, the reason we’re still here and yet retain our licenses is because we are careful and skillful. I don’t see too many “road pizzas” out this way (other than deceased wildlife). But I do see a lot of people “speeding” and usually quite safely. If it’s any indication, I often get passed and I’ve had coworkers (that sound a lot like you) derisively tell me “you drive like grandma” when I was running 5+ over. Technically I was “speeding” but they were passing me and giving me crap about that. Go figure. Must be some of your kin.
On more than one occasion I’ve had close calls with “speeders”…driving cop cars. Here’s to your “highly trained” paid professionals and their idea of “equal protection under the law.” One Deputy Dumbass in Isle of Wight County, Virginia nearly hit me head-on running well over the speed limit, while he was passing on a blind curve at night. He cut on his wig-wag lights and siren a couple of hundred feet away. If I hadn’t run in the ditch to avoid him we’d both have probably died. But you can rest assured “officially” it would have been my fault even though he was in my lane. But you’d probably have questioned if I “needed” to be traveling in the first place, wouldn’t you?
I think you’d find that if the speed limits and traffic controls were minimized or outright eliminated, most people would drive with a great deal more caution than they do now. Eliminating traffic controls in some European towns has alread proven this to be the case. But you wouldn’t know about that would you? And after all, them’s all furriners anyhow, right? Open your eyes, disconnect your brain from your emotions and do a little critical thinking for once in your life. Who knows? You may learn something and like it.
I usually drive the speed limit just for fear of the ticket, sometimes 5+ over on cruise control.
I have a similar story to tell about being nearly being made a pizza while being a pedestrian. It was 10 PM at night and I decided to cross the road to a jogging trail. And no crosswalk for miles. That night for some odd reason I ran as quickly as I could across the road, and by the time my back heel had left the outer margin of the road. A policeman came flying over the hill doing about 80mph in a 30mph zone. I surely would have been wiped out and made into a pizza as Hickory keeps alleging but it was pure insanity that a policeman would be driving that fast in a residential area. Nobody and I mean nobody should have been driving over a hill (blind spot) in a residential area going 80mph. Not even an emergency would justify such action. Pure egotistical and stupid f’er.
I’m imagining he was driving like a mad man for no official reason as they always do. When we get killed its never the fault of arrogant badge wearing thugs. But whenever a regular abuser does the same thing, well society and freedom has to go to prison with the offender.
I never had much of car to speed when younger. And I suppose it probably kept me alive. This I believe is why young people are made poor in the beginning of life so they can’t go buy a rocket too young in the learning curve. When Montana went back to daytime reasonable and prudent law in the mid 90’s I did manage to get a new mustang up to 130 mph. It was rather scary speed for me actually. Though at those speeds you can make distances equivalent to airplanes. But then again it was the same feeling I had when they bumped up the speed from 55mph to 75mph. Having my feet bound to keep them dwarfed, 75mph seemed almost insanely fast initially. Nowdays, its like what the big deal. I imagine with proper working gear and car along with long decent straight roadways 130mph would be very reasonable. First is getting out of the purposeful mental block that you are crazy for doing speeds faster than stated. But probably I’d still not do 130mph in Montana on curvy roads ;). Personally I’m ok with reasonable and prudent, but to be honest I’m not sure I’d want an inexperienced student driver doing that at 17-19. It just seems to me that young people at times are a little to over confident on their skills. Reflexes get slower with age, but when you live long enough to know how to survive your odds of getting really old and shitting your britches in a senior home go to high probability just because of learned lessons of the past.
Hot Rod
to=too
Yeah I know I do that a lot.
Hot Rod
HotRod, wish I had half the driving skills I possessed at 19. I was a fiend, could race anything that moved and do it well. But I lived it, breathed it, slept it, my whole life. I wanted to drive what is now F-1 badly. All my heroes died there. Too bad they couldn’t understand “roll bar, seat belt”. I think I could have made the cut too. And I don’t shit my britches…and never have.
Well, O’l Hickory, how do you account for the fact that I haven’t so much as scuffed a fender in decades? Am I just that lucky?
Meanwhile in Germany people are driving 100mph plus without issue. In fact, their system, which concentrates on preventing collisions with disciplined driving has resulted in their limited access highway system being safer than the US system for many years now.
I read an article a few years ago I think was in Autoweek or what I refer to as Auto-bi-week you pay a weekly price for(not after that crap) that started out addressing the huge amounts accidents, bad ones, on the Autobahn. The problem as I saw it though referred to all the other roads in Germany and focused almost primarily on the roads in France….duh?, France? So how did we get here? The author mixed and matched data from all over Europe so it meant nothing at all. Oh yeah, horrific crashes on the Autobahn and horrific crashes every day involving hundreds of vehicles on American roads and nobody was moving fast at all, in fact, just the opposite was true most of the time. Big pile-ups under bad weather when people were going slow but any speed in that weather is really dangerous. Show me anything that will stop ‘quickly’ on ice..please….I’d like to know.
That’s what they do. Germany, having been around awhile, has a lot of secondary roads that predate the automobile. Thus their surface street safety isn’t that great. But it’s not because of speed, it’s because they are driving on what used to be the routes of a cart paths or something. Which by the way, thanks to the average driver competence flow better than modern arterial roads here in USA. Anyway they mix that factor in to try and say speed kills.
Another trick they use is to use very old data. Data from before cars in europe had modern crash safety equipment but cars in the USA did. Again this had really nothing to do with speed, but rather the crash safety of the cars had diverged. When they converged the autobahn ended up 20+ mph faster and safer.
Then there was Montana. 55 NMSL gone, R&P in. Fatalities dropped to record highs. Then R&P was gone and 70mph was in fatalities raced back up. All I can figure is that removing the speed limit increases lane discipline. The more absurdly low the speed limit the worse the lane discipline IME.
Oh yeh BrentP, how many times have you seen Autobahn crashes in those small stretches they have reduced speed limits because of people coming onto the road with farm equipment, and to this very day, quite often animal powered carts and wagons? Not often and that is a fact…cause they’re really putting the screw to people who speed through these areas(the new Germany, much like the new US). It’s a pain and sometimes unnoticed if you haven’t traveled a road before(and esp. don’t read the language)and don’t notice the “mules and tractors” “next 8 miles” traffic sign. I live where tractors are replete and to think of our interstate highways as being dangerous because of ag. equipment is ludicrous. I can’t imagine any way to possibly get tractors on the surface of any 4 lane highways, just ain’t done. I see 8 year old kids driving 30,000 # 4WD tractors and sometimes pulling huge implements. Now mostly, their dads do the tractor driving but occasionally, they need to let the kid take it on since someone has to make a 120-150 mile roundtrip for parts and supples and while you’d probably send your ten year old and definitely your twelve year old who’s been driving for 7 years or so, on the trip, you know he’d get hassled. I just realized I was twelve and my buddy 11 when we started sneaking the pickups out on the week-ends our parents were gone and going to a town 60 miles away, with lots of interstate highway driving. Naw, we weren’t on business, we were in on the ground floor of model racing. We had some wicked wire frame, 6 V motors running those hot 12+ V tracks and I still have one of the first ever Red Seethrough speed/brake controllers, a real technological breakthrough at the time. Come around that last high speed corner and nail it and that tire compound you cooked up took effect and the car literally jumps into the air, flies across the room and smacks the wall hard. Nobody back then would pad their bad curves(walls), it was a man kind of thing.
OHS (I’m gonna call you Occupational Health and Saaaafety), whatever people do on the road they’re destined to do. Either too fast around a tight bend – even though the speed limit is faster than the bend can accommodate – is their screw up and speed limits can’t do a damn thing about it. If they want to weave in and out of traffic at high speed, limits can’t do jack shit about that either. The only thing that is truly LAWFUL, is that they be left to travel unencumbered as is their RIGHT to do so until they do actual harm, or if their behaviour displays obvious inferior control of the vehicle.
The statistics prove that globally, the road toll was naturally reducing itself over the decades simply because of improved road and vehicle design (including seatbelts fitted to cars) – UNTIL the advent of speed radar, then cameras and ever tighter enforcement. That’s when the road toll began to level out, if not climb again until the advent of airbags and stability controls. Speed enforcement had a proven negative impact in the toll.
The fact that the toll continues to decline thanks to vehicular technology is used by enforcement to say that their enforcement is working. What’s proven is that’s not just a lie, but if their enforcement wasn’t there to interfere in the natural toll decline, many more lives would have been saved. Are you disgusted by their tactics yet – or better still – disgusted in yourself for believing the fraud?
Rev, don’t fool yourself, highway death rates fall with GDP, every time. We’ve been in such an economic shithouse the rates have been falling for years now but only because people can’t afford those close to home trips where accident rates are much higher. “Statistics” say you’re most likely to have an accident a mile or less of your house. Sure, so many, and a huge majority, don’t travel further from home than that in a day. Money is tight, people don’t feel they “need” as much and can suddenly find someone to split the cost of traveling with. Overall miles stay where they are because of freight mainly. Surely safety devices have some influence but not to the degree the state would have you believe.
You’re right Eight. that’s just another of the myriad factors in the road toll statistics. Maybe I should have included that but if I wrote the entire list, I’d be here all day 😉
Further on that note OHSaaaafety, proponents of speed limits, cams and the resultant extotion will only use “road toll” figures because it’s the only curve that’s declining because of improved vehicular design. They can hide their lie within it and proclaim whatever they want.
“Crash” figures, however, are always on the rise, simply because there are more people on the roads and more of them staring at their defacto “saaaafety” needle in panic mode trying not to get booked over an arbitrary number. How you don’t understand this is beyond me. I’ve been nice to you at this point. Don’t let me call you “85” RE: Alien 3. You simply have no understanding of cause and effect. How you expect an arbitrary number on a pole (ever declining) to saaaave you or anyone is sheer ignorance of the facts and reality.
LOL. That’s funny. Why don’t you take that to the Tonight Show and let Leno take a look at it?
Old Hickory Switch, Gil, CNS, and all the other Clovers, they are all the spawn of the likes of Inspector Javert,in the novel and film, Les Misérables. I feel sorry for them. In fact, I pity them.
Downshift, I feel the same way and view their writings(sic)as something that will change as they’re able to grasp the concept of simple rules and no rulers. Large, complex “rules of law” are made for no other reason than to make criminals out of great many more people. I give you the IRS tax code as one example and the federal govt. ever-changing, ever-growing criminal code as another along with the same thing happening in state, county and local govts. also.
Why dont we just get rid of all speed limits entirely??? That way, you and all your lunatic friends can speed all they want to, since youre all in such a big damn hurry all the time. Eventually, you’ll all become road pizzas and the rest of us will be much safer when youre off the road. Not to mention much saner without you meat-heads riding bumpers everywhere.
It’s an excellent idea, O’l Hickory.
But I doubt you really support leaving people free to exercise their own judgment – and be held accountable only for any errors of judgment that lead to injury. Not for breaking “the law.”
I’m certain that you froth and fulminate whenever you see a “speeder” – even if they’ve caused neither you nor any other driver any injury.
Am I right?
I wonder if this guy is a retired traffic cop. The only thing that seems to prick his ire enough to make him come and chum the discussion threads with his verbal vomit is when you write about driving freedom. That, or in his younger years he was a drivetard who got his ass handed to him in tickets and insurance rape and figures everyone else needs to suffer the same oppressive control he does because of it.
liberranter wrote, “I wonder if this guy is a retired traffic cop. ”
He is of a certain kind, that’s for sure.
Pardon my repeat:
Old Hickory Switch, Gil, CNS, and all the other Clovers, they are all the spawn of the likes of Inspector Javert,in the novel and film, Les Misérables. I feel sorry for them. In fact, I pity them.
OHS, that’s hilarious. I ordered a CM Escort and found I’d have to wait 3 months in 1980. I had it by spring and spent 6 glorious years traveling at any speed I wanted since instant on radar only came into use in 1987. I had a job where I hauled communication gear for a fiber optics installing company in my personal highly modified El Camino. Get a call to pick up in Houston, 430 miles from me and I’d be there in about 6 hours and then head to NM or Kansas and be there in a short while. I had the highest rated speed tire they made, some great Pirelli’s. Double nickel drivers of which there weren’t a great many in Tx. were the most dangerous thing on the road. I got used to closing at over 70mph faster than they were. I’d probably run over them today but I wouldn’t drive that fast since my old reflexes aren’t what they used to be. It’s called working with what you have and some people just never realize how they could drive and others never realize how bad they are, just human nature. It’s simply amazing what you can find out by looking in your rear-view now and then, like every 3 seconds or so. I’d flash my headlamps and everybody with half a brain would move over. It’s actually against the law in some countries to not observe a flash for pulling over or used to be, probably still is in Germany where THEY KNOW HOW TO DRIVE.
Yes get rid of them. People here would quickly learn how to drive as people do in Germany. Politely instead of as a bunch of self-centered control freaks.
You know what would happen if all the speed limit signs vanished from the interstates?
The first day or week or so nothing.
Then slowly over time people would start keeping right except to pass.
The speed distribution would normalize somewhat higher than it was.
That’s it.
BrentP wrote, “Then slowly over time people would start keeping right except to pass.”
No doubt about that!
I get a smile every time I see that happen nowadays. It seems like it’s been happening more too. The cops like to sit in the parking lot of a city park or swimming pool and watch their CCTV cameras while they yak on their cell phones, so traffic has been going a bit faster than it used to when the price of gas was lower and cops spent more time in traffic intimidating people with their presence to slow down.
Even on the Interstate it seems like there’s less of a police presence so traffic goes faster and people stay to the right except to pass. It’s almost wonderful to behold.
In both instances, the city streets and on the Interstate, bewildered looking Clovers really stand out as the oblivious know-nothings they are.
Agreed. Any time there’s police presence it causes the clovers no end of grief. They get distracted, flustered and often get themselves pulled over in desperate attempts to be the perfect puppet. Distractions = danger. I suggest get the cops off the road first, then the clovers will eventually follow by driving wheels-up into a ditch somewhere as they invariably do anyway. All the better for the rest of us.
Clover,
What, exactly, is wrong with slower traffic yielding to faster traffic?
It makes sense, it’s an act of common courtesy, and it doesn’t put Clover at the center of the universe. Those are three BIG things that Clover thinks are wrong with it.
That’s pretty much it, isn’t it?
There’s no reaching them. It’s like trying to explain geometry to a duck.
Fucktardican ducometry?
Clover, I dream of the day I can put a powerful laser on my car so I can vaporize any clovers like yourself off of the road, so I can get where I want to go the same day I started out, not several years down the road. Such a lovely dream!!!!
Now, here’s the thing – the basis for my demand (and perhaps, yours) for a refund – plus interest – for all the money taken from me at gunpoint during the NMSL years: It is objectively provable that all the tickets issued for “speeding” – that is, driving faster than 55 – were just state-authorized shakedowns that had nothing – absolutely nothing – to do with “safety.”
In principle I absolutely support this. Unfortunately, in fact, I couldn’t, and for one very simple reason – the only way to make it happen will be to mulct taxpayers for the monies needed, something that I just couldn’t stomach given my approval to.
Ideally, the solution would be to hit the wallets (or estates) of the bozo politicians who dreamed this bullshit up and rammed it down our throats forty years ago. Unfortunately, most of said bozos “earned” their money by robbing the taxpaying citizenry, so robbing from them (or the estates of those who’ve taken dirt naps and are roasting in hell) wouldn’t really be a practical or moral option either.
Maybe the best compromise would be a moratorium on all federal gasoline/transportation/highway taxes (anything funding the federal highway and transportation bureaucracy) for, say, two years, enough to “pay back” all of the money stolen over a twenty-year period. NOT an ideal solution (as if there is one) by any means, and certainly not the ultimate goal (to abolish any federal connection to transportation), but maybe the only workable solution that comes close to respecting the NAP and private property rights.
Maybe it’s not fair to other current taxpayers to demand retribution from the gunverment. But that does not apply to the privately owned insurance companies that KNEW they were lying about the safety of the issue.
The biggest idiocy is how we do it in places where we have snow such as here in Michigan.
The legal limit is 55 on surface streets between towns, in town the speed is anywhere from 25 to 45. Highway speed is 65 to 70mph depending how far away you are from a major city etc.
Now if it is currently snowing or recently has snowed and the plow trucks have not come though yet you will see people still trying to do the posted speed! They go flying into the ditch and then get mad because “I was doing a safe speed and look what happened!”
Sorry, no. Listen “Clover Bud”, you drive at a safe speed depending on ROAD CONDITIONS.
Did it just start raining or sprinkling? Slow down
Is the road wet? Slow down.
Is there a big puddle? – slow down
Are you driving sports car with fat wide tires in the rain? slow down!
Did it just start snowing? – slow down
is the snow sticking to the road? SLOW DOWN
Is it foggy? slowdown and make sure the LIGHTS ARE ON
Is it dark? Slow down
Is the sun overhead, the road baked dry, and it rained really good a few days ago? Go whatever speed you like on the freeway up to 150mph!
There is a reason why semi’s are supposed to go 55 and you are supposed to 70.
So you don’t hang out beside a big truck that is 100 times mass of the vehicle you are driving. Do NOT creep past a truck on the free way! What if he blows a tire?! (You’ll get side swiped or knocked off the road.)
Sorry, no. Listen “Clover Bud”, you drive at a safe speed depending on ROAD CONDITIONS.
The fact that people actually have to be TAUGHT this bit of “common” sense is a good indication that they shouldn’t be driving in the first place.
“drive at a safe speed depending on ROAD CONDITIONS.” That’s what I was taught! It’s no different than flying an airplane, it’s up to the pilot to decide what’s the best thing to do, according to conditions and operator skill.
That was then, this is now.
The Lowest Common Denominator rules these days, and independent thought, is thrown out the window.
Clovers have been taught (brainwashed) into thinking the speed limit is safe, regardless of conditions. It’s all the fault of the gubberment lies proclaiming “speed kills”. Notably, most clovers can’t handle the calculation required to differentiate “speed limit” and “for the conditions”.
In any case, because of this manipulation the gubberment liars need to be sued for providing the false information that the speed limit is safe.
The other scam is for state politicians to give their friends the sole source for “re-education” on safe driving and that reduces the insurance grab. Take a “re-education driving” class from their friend and reduce your points so you don’t have to pay such a big chunk to the insurance company. I did this once and finished in less than five minutes, the girl running the re-education class said I couldn’t finish that fast so it didn’t count. I asked for the boss’s (the politician’s good buddy) opinion and he didn’t care how long it took me to do the course as long as he got his money.
What’s that cop doing to Sammy? And is that the cop from The Village People?
Looks NSFW to me!
At least the cop in the video doesn’t have that buzz-cut Officer 82nd Airborne look that so many cops have now!
Which makes me wonder if he’s a real cop.
Shazaam don’t fear the doom. Look at it as a big castor oil enema. If you are not easily scared look up Russia’s “Satan” ICBM. The biggest weapon of its kind ever built. If they really have one of these parked in Cuba it will be over quick. This is why you don’t let common gutter street agitators who have had everything handed to them and all the skids greased no where near the levers of power.
The thing that’s so psychotically criminal about that drive 55, is that people still died, probably statistically just as many as when it was 70, in crashes caused by people who were doing 55 or less! Countries across the world – when the figures are HONESTLY tested and applied – show that the VAST majority of crashes occur due to inattention or failure to give way (Aussie for yield). Proud cops always get their lying mugs on the TV proclaiming “..we’re investigating as to whether speed was a factor..”.
OF COURSE it’s a factor – parked cars don’t crash you fecking PIG! Well, he’s only being told to take that line by those that pay him.
But that speed being a “factor” is to satisfy the mouth-breathing clovers so they feel guilt when they get fined so they pay up. The rest of us know better. Speed is only a valid “cause” of around 2% of crashes – and that figure IS from those honest studies, NOT from the lying faces of those that parrot “speed kills”. I wonder how much they paid the chicken little that though up that line?
Yeh – too much!
You can be booked for inattention if you stare at your tacho or temp gauge too long, but you can do that all day to your speedo and get away with it. When are people going to learn that the speedo isn’t a defacto instrument of safety that can foretell impending doom? Never, if gubberment has its way and continues with the “speed kills” fraud.
Many countries report that where speed cameras have been removed, the reduction in crashes are immediate. This should also occur for red light cams, where nowadays people panic-brake to avoid going through the yellow.
Certain states and counties have been caught reducing the yellow time to increase revenue. People have noticed this and cause nose-tail crashes to avoid fines. Most truckies understand this problem because it’s mostly them that can’t stop for panic-brake clover. I should know, I drove Army trucks for a time and coulda flattened plenty.
Roadside speed traps are a similar problem. These days, even if the car on the side of the road has his bonnet up, people up front panic-brake as if it were a mobile camera and cause nose-tail crashes that wouldn’t otherwise have happened.
Otherwise safe drivers are either unable to see the impending crash because they’re staring at their defacto “safety” needle, or they get thoroughly bored and fall asleep behind the wheel, killing everyone in a head-on into the other lane because a double-yellow isn’t a concrete wall.
It’s a farce, a fraud and a crime against humanity for the loss of licences, and thereby jobs, livelihood and LIVES for the sake of a dollar in the gravy train called “speed kills”.
It’s a fact – a sad and inhumane one.
“speed kills” is sold on the survivability of collisions. Instead of preventing collisions the aim is to make them survivable. Seems backwards to me. It’s how many people are conditioned to think across the globe and it goes into many other areas. For instance instead of examining a foreign policy which naturally angers people, label them crazy and restrict people in general. Don’t look at what causes cancer, demand a cure. Don’t look at the drugs people are taking when they go on a shooting rampage, ban guns. It goes on and on and on in every aspect of life in this time period. It’s about treating symptoms at best instead of doing proper root cause analysis.
It’s the illogical approach to driving that allowed me to see the same things elsewhere.
The conditioning I believe is deliberate and so is taking advantage of it. The people in government and close to it know the scams they are running. The confidence game they are working. They know collisions are increasing for red light cameras. In Chicago the use a definition of intersection that is from curb line to curb line. Thus, when sally soccer mom plows into the back of someone who stopped quickly to avoid a red light ticket it doesn’t count as an intersection related crash. Now red light cameras are safe. Look into anything, it is the same basic scam being run.
I don’t understand why people can’t see it. All it takes is to be able to see the scam in one area and then recognize the parallels. Perhaps its the blindness caused by politics as a team sport. I’ve become very cynical about it all.
One of the statements made about the whole “speed kills” BS by an otherwise generally insufferable Neocon talk radio host in the Baltimore-Washington area where I lived years ago was the following (I’m paraphrasing here, but the gist of what he said is accurate in the statement below), which has become my main point of refutation whenever anyone (even coptards) bring it up:
“No, SPEED does NOT kill; RECKLESS DRIVING kills. These are NOT one and the same. You could be driving 100 MPH with the flow of traffic, evenly spaced and pacing with the cars around you, or driving that same speed on a deserted highway and thus be driving in a perfectly safe manner, posing no danger whatsoever to yourself or others around you.
“On the other hand, if your are weaving in and out of traffic at 60 MPH, traffic that is crawling along at 25, or if you are unable to control your vehicle within the flow of traffic, or are driving in an aggressive manner that results in near collisions with other drivers, your are putting yourself and others in clear and obvious danger.”
It really is that simple, folks.
How many times, Clover, will it be necessary to point out the difference between pointing a weapon in the direction of other people and driving a car faster than a number posted on a sign?
Are you that dense?
Who said shooting a gun at people? Shooting a gun vertically is pretty much harmless. Why should people be debarred from guns per se? If a person wants to shoot at rat in an alley then so be it. However it’s simple fact that vehicles are much more deadly than guns. If some guy deliberately plows into a crowd with a pick-up truck at high speed then he’ll cause more deaths and injuries than had he used a firearm yet he would’ve had little restriction obtaining that truck than a gun.
Mmm, no pleasing some people!
It was daft to lower the speed limit but now you seem to be complaining they’ve raised it again and want them punished, by giving you taxpayer’s money, on the basis you didn’t follow the rules back then?
I fully agree with raising the limits, in fact I think modern cars are quite capable of 100 mph safely. However if the state actually DOES do something sensible, let’s not kick them in the face for doing it?
They should have done the safe and sensible thing of leaving well enough alone in the first place Alan, rather than lie about it and conduct fraud on a massive scale. Of course that money will be taxpayers’, but it’s better spent by the people that were wronged (millions of them – many more than once) than be wasted once again by gubberment on yet further schemes to enrich and empower themselves 😉
Alan –
Seriously?
Is it possible you missed the point made by the article about the hypocrisy, dishonestly – and theft – that characterizes government’s actions?
Further:
If 55 was silly – and it was wrong to punish people for driving faster – doesn’t the same apply to current speed limits? What makes them holy writ? They’re “the law,” yes. But so was 55. The question is: Why should a person be punished merely and solely because he drove “x” mph? Driving faster than a number on a sign is not the same thing as driving dangerously. This is an obvious observation – one that mot people seem to agree with implicitly, given that most people “speed” routinely. Are most people really that flippant with their own “safety” – and that of others? Of course not. Speed limits – as such – are nothing more than a number on a sign. Arbitrary, man-made law. People – most people – recognize (as evidenced by their own driving) that it’s reasonable to go faster.
How fast is reasonable? That varies according to the driver, his skill, the car he’s driving, the road and conditions.
Speed limits are utterly arbitrary. And almost always, dumbed-down to the point of absurdity for the sole purpose of providing a pretext to take money from people on the basis of a manufactured “offense.”
Speed limits are utterly arbitrary. And almost always, dumbed-down to the point of absurdity for the sole purpose of providing a pretext to take money from people on the basis of a manufactured “offense.”
EXACTLY. That’s really all that needs to be said on the subject – provided that the discussion is with people who know how to reason and think critically. Unfortunately, as we all pretty well know, such people are clearly in the minority.
Whenever I bring up the above-quoted point with otherwise generally intelligent people, most of them instantly revert to Clover mode. Their responses to the point are usually something along the lines of one of the following:
– “But if there were no speed limits, everybody would drive like a maniac and there would be
carnage all over the roads.” (TRANSLATION: All human beings are inherently selfish animals
who would slaughter each other if it weren’t for The Law [TM] to check their basest impulses.)
– “People ‘don’t NEED’ [yes, they actually use the world “need”] to drive that fast.” (TRANSLATION:
Everyone else needs to drive at an arbitrary speed that I’m comfortable with,
because, well, anything faster than that scares me and because MY saaaaaafety and comfort
are paramount, what I say should be what goes.)
– “Speeding wastes precious gasoline [a provably false statement, something to which anybody
who has ever watched their fuel gauge while driving in slow traffic can readily attest].”
(TRANSLATION: Petroleum-based products like gasoline, which comes out of the earth, are a
public good that belongs to EVERYBODY. Even though you’re paying for it out of your own
pocket with your own money, it isn’t really “yours,” it’s EVERYBODY’S [think: water rationing
during a so-called “drought”]).
And then this whopper:
– “But the experts at the NTSB must know what they’re talking about. After all, they didn’t
get their jobs by not knowing anything about what they’re talking about.”
This is the point where I realize that further conversation is pointless and just walk away.
The primary argument is that the faster you go the farther you travel during your reaction time, the longer the braking distance., the greater stress placed on the brakes, wheels and steering during evasive actions.
The old clover crap that a car is going to break if it is used at over 1/10th it’s design capabilities. laff. It’s not going to break at 10/10ths. That’s how it was tested by the automakers.
Yes, Clover.
But there are other factors, too. Such as the skill of the driver, his capacity to react, his precautions (such as increasing following distance) all of which mitigate speed.
But your ilk fetishistically obsesses on speeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed. Oh, no! He’s driving too faaaaaaassssssssssssssst!
Maybe commercial jets should slow down, too.
After all, it’d be so much “safer.”
Gil, don’t tell anyone, especially yourself, but speed limits in Tx aren’t the rule of law. Shh. They’re there as a suggestion of what is a prudent speed but you can be fined for speeding by going slower than the posted limit and going faster than that speed is not necessarily “unlawful”. Of course the whole system is biased so merely telling a trooper or other cop you were driving according to conditions when your 20mph above the posted speed limit will generally get you a ticket anyway, but it won’t stand up in court. Yeh, it’s a hassle but it beats having the speed limit being looked at as a carved in stone “limit” simply because “it’s the law”. If you go to court you’ll hardly ever have an officer show to defend his actions although the public is never told this.
Gil, whose primary argument? I don’t see it in the preceding posts. Ohhhh…I see… you are engaging in anal extraction for your source material again, aren’t you? Carried to its logical conclusion reaction time, mechanical stresses and speed wouldn’t be much of a factor if everyone would just stay home or walk to their destination, right? Of course bicycles would be a better option if there were no motor vehicles on the road…except of course government limos and cop cars. Plus a system like this would conserve fuel, it would be good for the environment and greatly improve Amerikans’ physical fitness thereby reducing obesity and type II diabetes.
In fact strictly limiting the ownership of motorized conveyances, firearms and having your “intellectual superiors” in the gun-vernment bureaucracy control your every move would lead us into a great rainbow utopia where we all eat recycled food and our energy comes from unicorn farts. Such a place already exists Gil. It’s called North Korea. You should go there and wallow in their wonderful organically grown, locked down surveillance culture where everyone is equal (except the state officials) . Equally screwed that is. Meanwhile, we’ll keep our multiple motor vehicles, coal fired electricity, air conditioning, firearms and high quality protein, all the while working to reduce gun-vernment and spread Liberty. How’s that gun confiscation thing working for you “down
I’ll grant you that individual Liberty can be messy Gil. But not nearly as messy as the 150 – 200 million dead at the hands of the state in the 20th century alone. Let’s not mention the maiming, suicides, cancers and birth defects (know what DU is Gil?). No individual “speeding” or even with an “assault weapon” can hold a candle to the carnage wrought by the state in 24 hours. So look at it your beloved collective or “society” like a forest and the individual as a tree. Without individual trees there is no forest. Without individuals there is no society, so the individual is in fact the most important element and his rights are the what the framers attempted to protect with the Bill of Rights. Of course the mitigation of that protection is brought to us by people like you.
The collective, the state, cannot ever successfully manage “society” because each sentient individual will invariably find loopholes in the “law”, blind spots in the surveillance net and even buy off corrupt officials if necessary, in spite of any statutory and administrative controls. The state will invariably respond with their own brand of lawlessness favoring those that are “connected” at the expense of the rest of us. So has it always been and so shall it ever be, because human nature does not change. And governments are made up of like minded humans (i.e. statists) who are often corrupt.
The answer Gil is more individual freedom; i.e. less laws, less state control and less taxes. Will it be a panacea for all human failings? Will crime go away? Hardly. But it would provide less of a breeding ground for institutionalized corruption, imperial hegemony and perpetual warfare. And if you can’t see the benefit in that then you really are a hopeless case.
That should have read: “How’s that gun confiscation thing working for you “down under”? Did your violent crime rate go down? No? Can you say “home invasions”? More laws, more individual control, in other words more government, and the situation is worse and your police don’t know what to do about it? Explain that to us Gil.
Gil, you’re way off on gun statistics but I didn’t expect more. Tx. own gun crime chart shows a marked and rapidly declining number of deaths from gun crimes since its CC law went into effect in ’93. Every single state to enact laws such as these has seen a large decline in gun crime and violent crime as well as overall violent crime. People tend not to get beat to death when they have a gun to defend themselves with. You should read Glenn Beck’s book on people control, er, uh, gun control.
Actually Gil, you need to read the Wright – Rossi study commissioned by none other than Teddy Kennedy. The gun control crowd tried to “sanitize” the results because the truth came from the mouths of the “handgun and shotgun predators” themselves. Here: http://www.readytodefend.com/index.php?main_page=page&id=11 The fact is Gil, violent criminals are predators. Just like predators in the wild, if they run into dangerous prey they may be injured or even killed. They know this and avoid dangerous prey. You might walk up to me on the street, seeing that you are bigger and stronger than I am and start threatening me for my property. If I pull out my cell phone to dial 911, you may very well take it away and beat me up. If I manage to complete the call, you will probably still beat me up and take my property before the police can respond, if they even do. But if you threaten me and I pull out a .45 and point it at your pelvic arch, you will do one of three things, either (a) become immediately compliant and do what I tell you, (b) run away as fast as you can or (c) you drop in your own footprint faster than World Trade Center Building 7.
So spew all the bovine hyperbole you like, but I know for a fact that hardened criminals fear armed victims and will go elsewhere if they believe their prey is dangerous to them. As to your statement that “the crime rate has generally gone down” [in Australia], in a word, NO. The Australian *murder* rate went down 31.9% from 1995 to 2007. But here in the USSA our murder rate also dropped 31.7% in the same period without a gun “buy back” (i.e. confiscation) program. Rape “down under” for the same period was up 29.9% and overall violent crime in Australia rose 42.2%. Does that prove that taking private firearms away made crime go up? Certainly not. But it does prove that gun control is a flawed public policy, at best, for reducing violent crime. Try to get your facts straight and start your brain before engaging your keyboard in the future Gil.
Try to keep in mind that the Interstate system was designed in the 1950’s to be safe for 50’s era cars to drive at an average speed of 70. Of course there are individual nuances of conditions that vary the maximum safe speed, primarily, as mentioned, the traffic density from 6-9am and 3-6 pm. And when I say density, I’m not just talking about the cars. I mean between the ears of all the Clovers and other assorted idiots out there.
Hi PtB,
The whole idea of punishing people solely because they’ve driven faster than “x” – whatever the number happens to be – is an idea that deserves to be thrown in the woods.
Some people are a menace at 25 MPH; others handle their vehicles with great skill at 100-plus.
If you cause an accident/injury then you should be held accountable. But not before. And not until.
This is a hard thing for many people to accept – in part because they’re operating on a false premise: The notion that pre-emptive punishment eliminates risk (and injury to persons/property). Of course, it does not. Is it even necessary to mention that injury to persons/property abounds, in spite of all the laws? Some (Clover) will respond: But there’s less injury to persons/property as a result of all this pre-emptive punishment. Yet they miss the obvious – the enormous – injury done to innocent people who’ve harmed no one, on the basis that they might. Think of the millions of at-gunpoint traffic stops that happen every year; the hundreds of millions in fines extorted at gunpoint. The loss of our civil liberties. The vitiation of our right to travel unmolested. All in the name of “preventing” hypothetical injury/damage that might – might! – occur as a result of “speeding” and so on.
I routinely run my sport bike up to about 160 on a nice straight stretch, about a mile from the turn off to our place. I’ve never harmed a soul. Yet, if some lurking oinker saw me doing this, he’d pursue me with ferocity and – assuming he could catch me – arrest and cage me at gunpoint, have my vehicle impounded and heap all sorts of charges upon me.
Again: Who has been harmed? Where is the victim of my actions?
But someone might have been hurt!
Well, yes, I suppose. “Someone” might also be beating his wife right now. It does not warrant punishing an actual someone unless that someone is actually beating his wife. That is, actually causing harm to another person. Most people would agree – when it comes to the wife beater. They would not endorse treating all men as presumptive wife beaters – punishing them because some among them might be a wife beater. And yet, they endorse punishing “speeders” – not for any actual harm they’ve done, but because (as these people see it) “someone” might get hurt. The actual actions of the actual person are irrelevant. What is relevant – as these people see it – is the theoretical possibility. That alone is enough to warrant punishment in the absence of a victim. In the absence, that is, of any crime – properly speaking.
As I heard it, it’s not so a 1950s car could travel safely at 70mph, it’s so that a package on the ‘shelf’ behind the rear seats under the back window of a 1950s car would not become dislodged under normal driving. So basically they were designed to make 70mph in 1950s barge of a car to be boring and comfortable as opposed to merely just safe.
The reason there is distracted driving in the USA is because driving is made to be boring by the same people that want to punish those who become distracted.
In a perfect world, I would advocate getting rid of speed limit on interstate or empty state highways. There is no engineering justification for them. The manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices stated that in order to post a speed limit, a speed study was required and it should be posted at the 85th percentile speed. The 85 th percentile is typically the speed where the accident involvement rate is the lowest.
In this imperfect world, if you are going to post a speed limit, this is where they should be set. In a better society, state legislatures would defer to traffic engineers to set proper speed limits if they were required. The 85th percentile is the best compromise between public safety and efficiency (arguably).
The early speed limits in the US, after WW2 were set by legislatures that applied sound engineering principles. Beginning in the middle 1960s, things became political as fatality rates were increasing and politicians began listening to activists.
Between 1969 and 1972, several papers were being written during the Nixon Administration that suggested lowering highway speed limits. In June, 1973, 4 months before the Arab oil embargo, the Nixon Administration began suggesting that states lower their speed limits to save energy. None bit until the embargo began on October 16, 1973. By 1974, the die was cast. Congress passed the 55 mph speed limit, but I digress. In 1987, after years of fighting, congress relented to a vocal minority who were plain sick and tired of 55 mph speed limits by allowing states to increase limits to 65 mph on rural interstate type highways. In a twist of fate and the hard work of Gail Morrison, the National Motorists Association and its members, congress relented and repealed the law entirely. It was back to states rights.
Today’s situation is far from perfect, and I still think I need a refund for all the BS that took place, but more and more states are increasing state speed limits every day. It is more a cynical ploy to placate voters, but I’ll take what I can get.
Between 1981 and 1995, I received 14 speeding tickets. Between 1996 and 2013, I received 9. I drive approximately the same speed during the day as I did then. Things are a lot better. My driving didn’t change, the speed limits did.
Speed limits are arbitrary, but they are higher. They are not as high as they should be, but I’ll take what I can get.
I am hoping that Governor Quinn signs the 70 mph bill in Illinois and that more states file for speed limit increases next year (if we survive that long). I am hoping some day that a state will completely dispose of speed limits on interstate type highways at the very least. That might be a pipe dream as they say.
Hey SR, there’s a damn good reason for speed limits, the state’s cash cow. One trooper makes more money for the state than several of his superiors who basically do nothing. Texans just speed, a given and for good reason, it’s a hell of a long way from point A to point B. And that’s just one of the many states you can apply this to. I grew up driving well in excess of 100mph just going on vacation, no big deal, and everybody(big, extended family with lots of vehicles and even pickups later when Chevy would put the high speed in them) would be driving that speed….and we’re talking the 50’s. Every heavy HP car of all makes was nearly always the best seller in Tx. I will do the Santa Teresa NM stint to Shreveport but I won’t be in good character when I get there. At one time I wouldn’t think twice about it but it’s too much now.
Here is one for you all including 8, eric, downshift, brentp, etc. How come they decided it safe to raise the limit back up to 75mph? Since I believe Aaron Russo story that the elite like Rockefellers decided women suffrage. Is it possible that the elite decided that more work could get done if the limit was raised back to 75mph? It seems plausible that the 55mph law worked against the elites desire to milk us for all we could produce? And if it was a push by the authoritarians in charge, how do we persuade them to take that law and raise it again?
Hot Rod
I suppose the reason I did the 130mph in mid nineties isn’t because of the defacto “reasonable and prudent” speed limit, but rather I heard that at that time Montana highway patrol went back to their 60’s model of not cruising the highways except at nightime. Back then the general rule was that you could go as fast as you like in the daytime but as soon as the headlights came on you’d better be going 65mph.
Which brings me to a point which is that reasonable and prudent is really not a good speed limit law though people in Montana at the time loved it. That is because its up to the officer and not the driver to decide what is “reasonable and prudent”. Given a choice of patrolling I’d rather have a speed limit that is defined so that they can’t make money off of their own judgement. The libertarian in me would be open to a speed limit. And before you consider I’m a “clover” how about I propose a minimum speed limit law? That would definitely remove the argument of officer and executive definitions of speeding, while still allow reasonable judgment.
Me myself I’m not a speeder and probably wouldn’t be doing anything much faster simply because I’m not in a hurry. But that is what the right lane is for anyway. If you can do faster and not hit me from behind in the right lane and be prepared for some passing traffic a bit slower in the left lane I’d say go for it.
Hot Rod
The simplest way to address this vis-a-vis Libertarian ideals is to leave people unmolested unless – and until – they cause injury/damage.
It’s impossible to say definitively that my driving was “unsafe” unless you can point to loss of control that resulted in a wreck (injury/damage). It’s just your opinion. And mine’s as valid as yours. (Not personalizing this, by the way; I’m just trying to make a general point.)
On the other hand, it’s impossible to say my driving wasn’t unsafe if I do wreck.
It’s a clear-cut, objective – and thus, fair – standard.
I’m sick of being punished for someone else’s opinion about what “might” have happened but (so far) hasn’t actually happened.
HR, have you ever read “American Autobahn” by Mark Rask?
Essentially the scam of the NMSL was becoming unglued. The NMSL required states show they were enforcing it and people were obeying it. It just became impossible to keep the books cooked. Remember this was tied to highway fund money, in other words if the scam failed a lot of people would be out of their government contracts, kickbacks, etc and so forth. Then add lobbying pressure from the NMA. Essentially getting rid of the NMSL served the politicians more than keeping it.
Also government lost no power in getting rid of it. The feds still can make a national speed limit if they want to and government still sets speed limits. It’s much like allowing gay marriage. The state doesn’t lose any power, it simply becomes more permissive. It still can say who can marry who.
BrentP I think you are exactly right. The point was that by setting federal limit laws the federal government was able to show it had the power and precedent for later stages of centralization. What you said made sense about the lobbying being tied to the limits being enforced and that being broken the lobbyist found much more seductive ways to make money. Though it seems to me that they could have just re-written how the law was to be enforced and retained the 55mph law. Then it probably became a point that the song “I can’t drive 55” by van halen probably showed that the popular resentment was getting pretty hard to quell. And their were several states that were challenging the constitutionality of it in the Supreme Court. Not that the Surpremist federal court for federal government would ever clip the wings of itself.
I do want to make it clear that I’m not advocating that even in if the elite are in control back scenes that I’m begging for a dog treat or to be thrown a bone by my previous statement. It was purely a speculative thought that somehow someone higher up was involved with vetoing it because it was crimping their total economic power.
Overall your theory seems the most straight forward.
Now that its been made clear by our ally Snowden ex NSA that indeed nothing is anonymous on here its probably just as well we all have facebook pages? I figured I was already on their watch list as some of my articles of business seemed to get confiscated by Homeland Security some time back. I hope you all have printers you can use with the stolen merchandise you took from me. Which means that I probably have peaked their interest if true, and it probably means the same of all of you. At least USPS fessed up that is where the items disappeared before changing their story on further inquiry by myself.
Ok Homeland Insecurity you got me all figured out. I was planning to convice all my friends and family how we really don’t need you (peacefully). And you know what I’m still going to do that. And you spooks are going to loose. Now please do me a favor and move the hell out of my country before we kick your unconstitutional asses out of it into the ocean. I must admit that is exactly what needs to be said. Want to know why it says in the bible that the fearful can’t go to heaven? And a man can’t have two masters? I think all of you on here know exactly why that clouds the judgment of good men of stopping evil control freaks of demons we call the beasts (governments). There is going to be hell to be paid by the governments that go to war with God’s saints. Better they not been born then cross the sons of God and brothers and sisters of Yeshua.
God Bless Snowden, Manning, and Assange. Killing and torturing the saints of God is not a very good profession, you have a lifetime and we will have eternity to see who is right. Very well then.
Hot Rod
Morning, HR!
No doubt, it’s immaterial whether we post here or on FauxBook as far as government perusing what we write. But why help Zuckerburga and co? Throw it in the Woods!
Like I said elsewhere, Hot Rod, they raised the speed limits to appear to be in control. Everyone was ignoring them, so they had to do something.
I could be wrong, but that’s how it appears to me.
It’s quite possible, the elite decided that more work could get done if the limit was raised back to 75mph. But I’m not so sure they care about that.
As to your question, “how do we persuade them to take that law and raise it again? ”
I’d say: by ignoring them and just do it. I’d also say: it’s inevitable, people will push the boundaries when they think it’s ok to do so.
Also, 130 m.p.h.? That’s pretty dang fast! In fact, it’s five miles an hour faster than I’ve ever been. … It was a cool Summer night with a full moon on an open stretch of empty hyway in a Celica, and it was pure joy.
I am hoping that Governor Quinn signs the 70 mph bill in Illinois and that more states file for speed limit increases next year (if we survive that long). I am hoping some day that a state will completely dispose of speed limits on interstate type highways at the very least. That might be a pipe dream as they say.
I don’t see Quimby allowing 70mph. 70mph still isn’t even realistic. Flat straight IL rural interstate should be derestricted. That would be pretty much the entire state that isn’t near Chicago. 75mph might be ok for the Dan Ryan and the Calumet (now Bishop Ford). Downtown 60-65ish. It gets kinda scary with the left hand ramps and bad drivers to go more than 60 much of the time. Before the economic meltdown the Edens would run at 80mph. I-57 could be 75-80. I’ve been on I294 where at times doing 90mph meant being the slowest around, but that was years ago. People drive slower now, but 85ish is probably where the I294 speed limit should be given real life traffic speeds outside congestion.
I agree, it’s better – don;t get me wrong.
But it’s still pretty bad. Fines are much higher now – and in some states (VA), the legal speed limit is very close to statutory “reckless” driving – for which you will be hit with massive fines and other punishments. In Va, the highway limit is 70 – but “reckless” is defined as 80 MPH or more. So, on a highway with a limit of 70 MPH (I-81, for example) a majority of the traffic is technically operating at (or nearly at) “reckless” speed, as defined by statute.
I think its okay to kick the state in the face whenever, for whatever.
Agreed.
Alan wrote, “if the state actually DOES do something sensible” – As if! They didn’t have a choice, no one was paying any attention to them so they changed their stance to appear as if they were in control.
With other things you’ve written, all that should earn you a gold star clover , imho,
We don’t want them punished, by giving us taxpayer’s money, we just want our money back.
Is that so hard to understand?
You are today’s version of Inspector Javert.
How sickening.
You should be embarrassed for your position,… if you were a normal person.
Yes! I’d like a refund. With interest – and punitive damages, too!
Please enter that thought into my national record, for the record:
“Here is a video of Representative Maxine Waters explaining that President Obama has put together a database that “…will have information about everything on every individual in ways that it’s never been done before.” …”
http://blog.independent.org/2013/06/11/president-obamas-database-information-on-everyone/comment-page-1/#comment-758371
Man wants NSA to provide phone records to help his bank robbery court case:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/06/13/Bank-robber-NSA-records
His odds of the feds helping out with his request are slim to none and slim just left town.
Hopefully I am wrong and they will help him, especially if it helps prove him innocent.
I should explain the Aussie vernacular “Buckley’s” that we’ve used for generations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley%27s_chance
Your original assessment is spot on. There is exactly ZE-RO chance that the Feds, via the NSA, are going to furnish this man with such information to support his case. To do so would “compromise ‘National Security'[TM].” You see, even though everybody and their brother knows what the NSA is and what it does (and having spent several active duty military years inside that place, I can tell you without reservation that it is a very much less impressive and omnipotent place than it’s made out to be by the news media and Hollywood), TPTB are still living in 1952, the year the Puzzle Palace was established. They are still PRETENDING that the place doesn’t exist. Therefore, because there’s “No Such Agency,” there is no data for them to furnish.
In my best legal terminology he’s got precisely 3 chances – buckley’s, fuckall and none.
“Buckley’s” – never heard of that one. Is that an Aussie term, by chance?
“Fuck-all” is, sadly, a very much underutilized and under-appreciated term here in America. I’m one of the few I know who uses it regularly (but then again, I spent too much liaison time years ago with the Royal Navy, so I guess that explains it).
Electric Wizard Funeralopolis
Funeral planet, dead black asteroid
Mausoleum, this world is a tomb
Human zombies, staring blank faces
No reason to live, dead in the womb
Death shroud existence, slave for a pittance
Condemned to die before I could breathe
Millions are screaming, the dead are still living
This Earth has died yet no one has seen
Funeralopolis
I don’t care, this world means nothing
Life has no meaning, my feelings are numb
Faceless masses filed like gravestones
Sacrificed for the glory of one
Funerary cities, flesh press factories
Corporate maggots feed on the carrion
Funeralopolis, grey morgue apocalypse
Black clouds form to block out the sun
Funeral planet, dead black asteroid
Mausoleum, this world is a tomb
Human zombies, staring blank faces
No reason to live, dead in the womb
Funeralopolis
Planet of the dead
Funeralopolis
Planet of the dead
Death shroud existence, slave for a pittance
Condemned to die before I could breathe
Millions are screaming, the dead are still living
This Earth has died yet no one has seen
Funeralopolis
Planet of the dead
Funeralopolis
Planet of the dead
Funeralopolis
Funeralopolis
Nuclear warheads ready to strike
This world is so fucked, let’s end it tonight
Nuclear warheads ready to strike
This world is so fucked, let’s end it tonight
Nuclear warheads ready to strike
This world is so fucked, let’s end it tonight
Nuclear warheads ready to strike
This world is so fucked, let’s end it tonight
Nuclear warheads ready to strike
This world is so fucked, let’s end it tonight
Nuclear warheads ready to strike
This world is so fucked, let’s end it tonight
Nuclear warheads ready to strike
This world is so fucked, let’s end it tonight
Fuck
Erm…. I’d careful about what you are wishing for..
It appears that O-Bomb-Ya is trying a “wag-the-dog” in Syria….. They’ve very conveniently discovered Sarin gas there. And amazingly enough, positively identified it as well. And that positive identification of Sarin gas was made in record time and in the nick of time as well!!! (for the embattled O-Bomb-Ya anyway)
El presidente can’t handle all the truth / scandals perhaps.
I like how Texas does it. People are going to go 80mph and lameass clovers who have no business driving in the first place get over in the breakdown land and hope you don’t get ran over.
Also when you reach a certain advanced age it should no more license for you time. Time and gravity will catch up with all of us so it will be some of that glorious equality.
fading, I can only guess you don’t drive the roads posted 85mph. If you did you’d find out the moment you tried to enter traffic that 85 was going to be iffy and you needed to move out past the slow trucks who can’t do 90..quickly. It ain’t no place for the faint of heart. You can drive 70 on these highways as long as you stay in the far right lane and try to stand out in your slowness but going 60 is absolutely asking to get killed and kill someone else since the closing speed is so great from the drivers doing 90 and the one doing 60. It’s the speed differential that matters much more than speed alone. I almost never see an accident in those high speed zones.
Hi FB,
Be careful about advocating group guilt (and punishment). Not all older drivers are incompetent drivers. Some older drivers are much more competent behind the wheel than much younger drivers, too. Age – as such – is not a legitimate excuse to impose special punishments on anyone. So long as your actual driving isn’t causing a problem I don’t care whether the driver is 14 or 94.
Do you?
Some older drivers are much more competent behind the wheel than much younger drivers, too.
Yep. That’s probably largely due to the fact that they’ve been driving for most of their adult lives in cars that weren’t built for idiots, cars larded with saaaaaaaaaaaaaafety features that have dumbed driving down to the point of breeding carelessness and complacency.
I disagree with the nolicensefor you time. I have seen and work with many seniors still driving trucks and passing their CDL tests. On the other hand, I have seen 30somethings not capable of driving anything faster than a golf cart.
many drivers of all ages contribute to auto accidents people who want to bar senior citizens from driving may simply want to kill them. if you are prohibited from driving at any age because of the particular age it is time to reconsider their treatment of their actions generally.
Back in 1974, when they first instituted the 55 MPH limit, there were already 23 states with maximum speeds at or below 55, and another 10 with night time speeds of 55 or lower. In fact, many more states only allowed speeds in excess of 55 on Interstate highways–the regular highways were posted for lower speeds already. I do not recall the exact statistics, but the facts were, and still are, that if you were to totally ignore the accidents on Interstates where the speed limit was above 55 MPH, the change would be so insignificant as to be a rounding error. Urban interstates already had limits of 55, and sometimes lower. According to the National Safety Counsel, The largest number of traffic deaths occur between 6 and 9 AM, and again between 3 and 6 PM, on week days. RUSH HOUR!! In urban areas. Where you couldn’t go 55 anyway. Traffic deaths track exactly the economy–when the economy goes to pot, traffic deaths drop, too. 6-9 AM, 3-6 PM, weekdays. People going to and from work is when most get killed in traffic accidents. This makes sense–if people are not working they are not on the road between 6-9, and 3-6, so they are not getting killed.
This is different from the highest “rate” of traffic deaths. That occurs between 1-3 AM Saturday and Sunday Morning. Darned few people are on the road then, and when the bars close, and all those late night partyers hit the street, a few of them getting killed makes the rate really jump.
Figures may not lie, but liars can figure.
Nice to see you letting some of the clover comments make it through lately. I can’t stand them so much I generally avoid them in life and on the web when possible, so it gets to be a bit of an echo chamber for me. Glad to be reminded of their idiocy and why I can’t stand them from time to time.
Great post as always. I have a lady friend in New York dealing with a 20 MPH over ticket right now and all that comes along with it. As others were passing her and she gets pulled over. The only person doing anything reckless that day was the piece of trash cop endangering everyone by disrupting the flow of traffic so abrubtly, often times with their mere presence even if they aren’t extorting someone in particular.
The NMSL is still alive and well in some parts of the country.
Illinois in order to make more money and to fund traffic lawyers has dramatically increased the penalties for 30 and 40mph over. They now have possible jail time associated with them. That’s right, on a 55mph PSL interstate where most everyone is doing 65-75mph one can face life altering penalties for merely doing 85mph to make a safe merge.
The safe way to merge on to a limited access highway is to be going faster than the flow speed, most non-clovers know this by experience that it is easier to time a gap and adjust speed downward than it is to adjust speed upwards.
Even with merging aside, common traffic speeds can hover at 25-30 over at times. I’ve experienced it first hand.
Then there is VA, which Eric knows well, which retains a default 80 mph is reckless, when that could be only 5 or 10 over with the post-NMSL speed limits.
Perhaps it’s time to start expressing speed in hexidecimal to break this fasination with certain base ten numbers.
“Then there is VA, which Eric knows well, which retains a default 80 mph is reckless, when that could be only 5 or 10 over with the post-NMSL speed limits. ”
Absolutely.
Just yesterday, I drove up to Northern Va on I-81, where the speed limit is (once again) 70. Virtually every car was doing 75-80, just a few MPH above the limit. Yet, as you point out, this (80 MPH or more) is statutory “reckless” driving. A serious offense that carries with it severe consequences – including possible loss of license, six DMV demerit points, huge fines and almost-guaranteed doubling of your current insurance premium.
Over… nothing. Literally. Nothing, at least, that any sane person would describe as “reckless” driving.
“torched speed cams in england”
Put this in google and see the articles you get. There was a site that had hundreds of pics of destroyed scameras in the UK, but it has been removed. Probably by the pommie thought police. That’s the best solution to these fraud devices.
We’ve had some cams being shot out. It needs to happen more often. Lots of cams have been removed from pommie roads recently and the reports are actually reduced crashes.
What really needs to happen is for everyone to remove their number plates collectively – rendering speed and red light revenue devices useless. But I can’t see the clovers doing that. There just needs to be enough of an outcry.
Imagine if enough people stopped paying their fines. They’d get the obligatory 28 days grace, but in that 28 days many thousands of fines are issued only to go unpaid as well. It would only take a couple of months and the system would be broken. They can’t jail us all for having done no harm to anyone in the first place.
Instead of that, imagine everyone began contesting every fine they get. The backlog in the courts would be huge in no time and that would be the end of the corruption. Trouble is, clovers are to brainless, gutless and statist to take any initiative in this regard. But it only takes enough straws to break the camel’s back.
Rev, another solution might be the clear license plate covers that you don’t even notice since when you’re at ground level the plate is visible but from high above it’s not. I’d have one in a second if I ever had to traverse camera radar. I don’t remember who makes them but they’re advertised in many mags.
I’ve seen a few versions of those Eight, but most of them are too obvious. We all know that cops will pull us up for anything and they make it up as they go along. My plastic plate covers are clear but they have half millimetre thick lines across them (like rear window demister), as purchased. One cop tried to say that lines weren’t allowed at all and booked me for obscured plate. Although I didn’t let on at the time that he was heading for a day in the courts, I made photos and got manufacturer documentation. His day in court ended with a thud and the judge wasn’t happy with him. Printed on them is the Australian Standards number proving them to be authorised for use and my photos showed no obscuration at all.
Some time ago I’d thought of using door lock solenoids. Put hinges on the inside bottom of your plates and a pushrod at the top. A push of the button flips them down and another flips them back up. It’s not automatic so you need to know where the camera is.
Something that might also work is liquid crystal plate covers. Push a button and it provides current to the plate cover, aligns the crystals and obscures the plate, like a big calculator screen.
One thing I used to do when I travelled regularly over an hour to my brother’s place, I’d take down the plate number of a mobile speed cam (or any clover that gave me grief), print it up on my computer and put the paper between my plate and the clear cover. Then I’d go through every cam as fast as possible on my way to my brother’s. Although my car is somewhat distinctive, there’s nothing on it (such as an “oakley” sticker for example) that sets it apart from any other car like it. The cam operators don’t care so long as there’s a number to book and they don’t check that the car isn’t the registered type compared to the number. It’s all fully automated. Imagine a mobile cam operator getting huge speeding fines and automatic licence suspensions in the mail! It’d be a simple matter for him to prove it’s not his car, but the amount of fecking around is massive, since the very system he works for is designed to be a one way street for guilt and money.
Rev, the judge was pissed just because he had to give you a bye. Good show for making out he was pissed at the cop though. I’ve wanted and could have built many times over a rotating plate like 007 had but it seems a great deal of trouble. Back in my wild days pure speed was my blur factor and there wasn’t a cop car in the world who could catch me…..I miss that but wouldn’t want to go back to that beast I drove to do it. Of course now you don’t have to have a screaming engine to have a couple hundred more HP than the cops and driving, shit, driving is the easy part, never saw a cop one who could even come close. I almost let a local HP patrol drive my car but figured he’d blow the engine on purpose. He’d certainly put in enough time watching the rapidly dwindling rear of my car to understand it though. I remember once stopping at the local repair shop to speak with the owner about something. I had noticed the Black and White had been in there nearly every day for two weeks, thought he might be having Mopar two-way radio problems, famous for that. The owner said Naw Brent, he’s just been trying to catch you. Good luck with that.
Thanks Eight, but he was pissed at the cop somewhat for wasting his time and failing the booking because the standards number was printed on the cover itself, but the cop wanted an easy booking and likely the judge wanted a quick “guilty” to reap more benefits.
Judges are incredibly lazy. They start “work” at 10am, run until they need a hit of pot or something, stop for a 2 hour lunch and go until 4pm. It’s rare they ever want a not guilty plea. Prosecutor’s are the same. All they look for is the slightest sign of guilt to build on, regardless if it’s truth or not.
I’ve seen prosecutors plenty of times try to threaten people into pleading guilty saying they will help them appeal for a lighter sentence or reduced fine etc. The lazy pricks just want an easy case. Every time they tried that shit on me I just tell them that’s up to the judge to decide.
After all the years of going to the local court just to observe their antics and winning a few cases myself, most of the cops there got to know me. Needless to say they even started snooping around my place waiting to pounce – one of the main reasons I moved 4 hours away from there.
I’m now in a country town and the cops don’t know me yet, but I figure it’s just a matter of time.
Here in Vegas, a handout of some dollar store screwdrivers and a bounty placed on license plates, street signs, cameras, and so on would quickly work wonders. Lots of FSA folks ready to serve.
Clovers love to comply, spread the word that folks taking their plates are metal recyclers and that they’re doing it to provide for their children, and the rats won’t even make a squeak.
Street Signs Destroyed By Pole Dancers
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/newzealand/9404669/Traffic-signs-in-New-Zealand-destroyed-by-prostitutes-performing-stunts.html
Best Way to Destroy a Speed Camera
http://www.visordown.com/forum/general/whats-the-best-way-to-destroy-a-speed-camera/84340.html
USSA Cig Smugglers make $10 Bil a year
Join them make $$ and honor the Founders
Per Pack Excise Tax Price
0.43 Alabama 2.00 Alaska
2.00 Arizona 1.15 Arkansas
0.87 California 0.84 Colorado
3.40 Connecticut 1.60 Delaware
1.34 Florida 0.37 Georgia
3.20 Hawaii 0.57 Idaho
1.98 Illinois 1.00 Indiana
1.36 Iowa 0.79 Kansas
0.60 Kentucky 0.36 Louisiana
2.00 Maine 2.00 Maryland
2.51 Massachusetts 2.00 Michigan
2.83 Minnesota 0.68 Mississippi
0.17 Missouri 1.70 Montana
0.64 Nebraska 0.80 Nevada
1.68 New Hampshire 2.70 New Jersey
1.66 New Mexico 4.35 New York
0.45 North Carolina 0.44 North Dakota
1.25 Ohio 1.03 Oklahoma
1.18 Oregon 1.60 Pennsylvania
3.50 Rhode Island 0.57 South Carolina
1.53 South Dakota 0.62 Tennessee
1.41 Texas 1.70 Utah
2.62 Vermont 0.30 Virginia
3.03 Washington 0.55 West Virginia
2.52 Wisconsin 0.60 Wyoming
2.50 Dist. of Columbia
The smuggling arbitrage opportunity also includes: differing sales tax rates, liquor rates, gas tax rates, finders $ for gambling, $ fees for companionship, $ for advice on passing inspections.
http://www.havocscope.com/tag/cigarette-smuggling/
Accuse all state lackeys of being narcs, spies, snoops, leeches, vermin, scum, and on and on. Take a bite out of their crime. Be Citizen Unfriendly, here to unnerve and infect.
Be an Impuritan, and salt the game of all these moralistic phonies and con artists. Go into Hannibal Lector mindfuck mode around pigs, make up outrageous stories about yourself and everyone else, make up things you saw his wife and kids doing,
Let him in on all kinds of terrible secrets and apocalyptic events on the horizon.
All Tax Teat Sucking women are fat ugly shriveled subhuman whores, make them aware of this and much more. Encourage them to quit. Correct their mistakes, show them their stupidity and inferiority. Ask them if they’re expecting. Pretend you think they’re a sir. Make them uncomfortable and unwelcome, which should be their new normal.
Double down on these pommie quisling Hog Heroes. Are they black, Mexican, Chinese, metrosexuals, you know the slurs, put them all to good use. Oinking noises are great. They’re not men but effeminate bitch lackeys of the state. They should quit immediately. You’re from where, oh only steers and queers come from there. Oh your one of those, every one of those I’ve met are assholes. They are neutered tax feeding cattle. Middle East, Russia, China, many in these countries are well versed in letting cunt mangina men of the realm know of their cuntliness. They are lepers outside of civil society, take all your aggressions and dissatisfactions out on them without mercy.
You see someone in a state costume, cut in front of them in line. Take your sweet time if you’re in front of them. If they drive a porkmobile, crowd their doors in the spot next to them. Give them healthy heapings of shit and encourages others to do the same.
The problem with destroying cameras is that it is illegal. Don’t get me wrong, I have no issue with breaking ridiculous laws that serve no real purpose other than to generate government revenue and are likely even unconstitutional.
The bigger issue is that for every way you can think of to destroy these monsters, there are two ways you can be caught doing it. Here are just a few:
1. In a large number of crimes in which the suspect is caught, the police just happen by. Bad timing.
2. Ditto for some nosy-body bastard who will rat you out. Don’t underestimate the number of “follow the law” idiots that exist.
3. If you are carrying a cell phone….boom. Your “ping” can give you away.
4. Here on Long Island, using the Southern Parkway as an example, from the stretch where I enter the highway until I exit, some 17 exits, there is NOT ONE exit in which you can get on and get off without being picked up on camera. Hence, if they check the plates of the vehicles that pass camera 1 and notice that it took you a long time to pass camera 2….busted.
5. Thermite, who someone suggested, while presently legal (so stock up America, while you can), would likely garner you a “terrorist” label rather than just a run-of-the-mill vandal.
6. Your EZ Pass can rat you out
7. Ditto your Satellite radio, “Onstar” and a host of other auto- generated electronics. BTW, I explained to my daughter that I would bet my life that on-board electronics WILL result in mail-in tickets during my lifetime and I am fast approaching 50, thus I have more time in the rear-view mirror than the windshield.
8. I am certain there are MANY others I haven’t mentioned, or even thought of and believe me, I think of doing it daily, but the risks far outweigh the benefits.
I explained to my college-attending daughter that that nice lady “Flo” dressed in all-white in the “Progressive” insurance commercial just wants you to use that little device that can “determine how much you can save” (yeah, right) is a freedom thief and an enemy of the People. Enemy is indeed a very strong word, but anyone who facilitates the theft of any freedom at all is my enemy. Period.
Some years ago, The western highway out of Melbourne – typically littered with speed cams the whole way – was under severe scrutiny for the cams being inaccurate. A legendary case was set when an old Datsun 120Y was alleged to have been doing 160k’s (or 180 – can’t remember). However, when this “crime” was contested it was discovered the car couldn’t get anywhere close to the alleged speed.
Eventually, after some years and thousands of complaints (yeh – it took THAT long) the cameras were shut down. Anybody who was fined on the western highway was refunded. Get this – a blanket $850 each! I was only fined once and never paid it. So I really got my money’s worth on that one.
Although they’ll try a fight to the death, it shows that if enough people collectively try to change something, it can happen.
I agree entirely. A class-action lawsuit, refunds adjusted to today’s dollars, plus 10% interest….to be paid back out of the pockets of the State, the Insurance Mafia AND the damn Clovers themselves…
Ten percent my butt….maybe per year for the last decade and half that for the rest of the years. I’m speaking “old” money, early 70’s that’s worth 4 times what it is now, actually, probably a great deal more than that since wages have fallen steadily since 1970.
Exactly – in adjusted dollars. Plus damages. Then we want to see all those fraudsters in jail. After all, we wouldn’t let real criminals go would we?
let ciminals go? Of course not, they’ve taught us well. But their crimes are real, theft of the intended sort….if their law can allow “intent”.
Out of the pockets of the State?
In that case, just pull money out of your right pocket and stick it in your left. We need to accept that any money extracted from us by the state is gone, and count it as the price we pay for complacency. All of us should have jumped up years ago and beat down the state. We didn’t, so we must live with the consequences. Lesson learned. Let’s not do that again.