Oregon – home of things uber trendy – has become the first state to begin dunning motorists by the mile rather than by the gallon.
The “pilot” program begins July 1 — and will be implemented by the Oregon DOT in partnership with something called Sanef ITS Technologies America and Intelligent Mechatronic Systems. Sounds a lot like Cyberdyne Systems from the Terminator movies, doesn’t it? And the similarities run a lot deeper than that.
To make this work (for Uncle) your car must be fitted with some type of real-time monitoring device that keeps track of your mileage and reports it to Uncle (well, his helpers) who will then either send you a bill or perhaps automatically debit your account.
Kind of like federal tax withholding on wheels.
In Oregon, this means a little widget like the one you may have seen the white-coated Progressive Insurance Lady hawking. It plugs into the Onboard Diagnostics (OBD) port that all cars manufactured since the mid-1990s have. Then ties into your car’s computer, where the data about your mileage and (cue Darth Sideous voice) many other things are stored. Including your speed, rate of acceleration, whether you’re wearing a seatbelt.
You probably can see where that’s headed.
In addition, the device has the ability to act as a locator beacon – relaying data about where you are, where you’re headed. And, of course, where you’ve been.
We’re talking send and receive capability here, too. If they can upload your mileage (and other data) they can also transmit instructions to your car’s computer to shut ‘er down – as punishment for not having paid a traffic ticket, for instance.
Or just because they can.
Uncle and his acolytes are big fans of just because they can.
Keep in mind that this wasn’t put to a vote. It was simply decided. (You Chimp fans out there, take note. You bear a heavy burden of guilt for cheering “decidership” at the national level, which made it increasingly acceptable at the state level.) No one elected the “Flos” within the Oregon DOT; like the EPA (and the NHTSA) they legislate and decree regardless. So much for “consent of the governed,” which can’t be said with a straight face these days by any person not a blithering idiot (or a partei ideologue).
Anyhow, the point is this vehicular eTyranny is going to spread. Oregon is merely a kind of Beta testing ground. Other states will follow. The feds will “incentivize” the recalcitrant. Within five years, it will be a nationwide regime. And then they will argue that owners of cars built before OBD – which do not have the ability to “plug in” (and be monitored/taxed) aren’t “paying their fair share.” These older car owners will then be told their cars must be retrofitted with the necessary electronics or taken off the road.
If you can’t feel this coming in your bones by now, I can’t help you.
And you can thank (ironically enough) the government’s fuel economy fatwas and its pushing of hybrid and electric vehicle technology for all of it. Remember when we were soothed that such things would be good things because they’d save us money? Fewer fill-ups! Go farther, spend less to get there! Well, instead of being chokeholded by ExxonMobil, we’re going to be chokeholded by Uncle. Who is pissed because he’s been shorted, as he sees it.
The increasingly fuel-efficient fleet is using less gas, which means less gas tax collected. This is bad. Less tax extracted being always bad.
So, the argument goes, there must be a way to rebalance the scales (in Uncle’s favor). That way is taxing ’em by the mile.
And so, here we are.
But they had to have foreseen this. The reduced revenue stream from the motor fuels taxes as a result of – wait for it – cars that use less fuel.
Which begs a question, or at least makes one wonder… .
Could it have been the object of the exercise all along? To use a “lateral” to get the populace to accept having their driving electronically kept track of? To end-run the pesky resistance of a certain segment of the population to driving cars without OBD ports, computers and “black box” data recording capability?
Could Uncle and his acolytes be that clever?
I think so, yes.
As has been observed before, when alleged “stupidity” always (always!) seems to trend in one direction, it implies something other than stupidity. The stupid are all over the place.
The smart traject consistently.
This, then, is merely another brick in the wall. Driving – and the ownership of a car – has long been a conditional privilege. No longer a right. This business will simply make it more so. Uncle (and Flo) will be riding shotgun henceforth. But it’s merely the capstone, a fait accompli.
Unless you drive a really old car – pre-1970s – you already drive the kind of car they want you to drive. With the features and equipment they insist you’ll have. You are no longer allowed to have the kind of car you want.
Not for decades.
The driver’s license, meanwhile, has become a “real” ID… your internal passport, without which you become an unperson right now (unable to travel by airplane, car or train) and perhaps much worse down the line.
The net cinches tighter.
I read recently that something on the order of one-third of all young people in the 16-25 demographic have never had a driver’s license and don’t want one, either. They appear to have done the math. Cars – driving – it’s not what it once was. It used to be about freedom – about fun. Now it’s about being controlled and dunned.
No wonder the love affair is headed for divorce court.
If you value independent media, please support independent media. We depend on you to keep the wheels turning!
Our donate button is here.
If you prefer to avoid PayPal, our mailing address is:
EPautos
721 Hummingbird Lane SE
Copper Hill, VA 24079
PS: EPautos stickers are free to those who sign up for a $5 or more monthly recurring donation to support EPautos, or for a one-time donation of $10 or more. (Please be sure to tell us you want a sticker – and also, provide an address, so we know where to mail the thing!)
For those of us who are serious about ending Fractional Reserve Banking, it is critical we understand what we’re dealing with, otherwise we won’t succeed.
1- TODAY’S GLOBAL DEBT CRISIS WOULDN’T EXIST if banks were not allowed to use Fractional Reserve Banking.
2- SOMEBODY IS BENEFITING FROM IT “BIG TIME” and control countries like puppets using debt as the weapon.
3- THEY WON’T RELINQUISH POWER by just rolling over when we try to end their pillaging system. They’ll fight and they’ll do it using ANY means. We’re talking about immense power and wealth in the TRILLIONS of dollars.
4- FRACTIONAL RESERVE MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE TO AVOID A DEBT CRUNCH because it is inherent in the system. The more an economy grows, the more it needs money, and since the only way money can exist is IN DEBT, the bigger the economy, the bigger the debts.
5- IN TODAY’S MONEY SYSTEM, THE CURRENCY TO PAY THE INTEREST IS NEVER CREATED, therefore there is ALWAYS more debts in the economy than money to pay them with. This is why it is a fraud. It puts everyone to scramble for the scarce cash to pay back our debts.
6- FRACTIONAL RESERVE IS A PONZI SCHEME because it is unsustainable on its own, and requires an unending source of new outside “victims” to join the DEBTORS in order to keep it from falling.
7- ELECTED GOVERNMENTS HAVE BECOME MERE ADMINISTRATORS for the bond holders who pressure them to extract wealth from the producers in the Real Economy, the entrepreneurs, the workers and their governments.
8- ALL DEBTS THAT COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED IF GOVERNMENTS HAD CREATED THEIR OWN MONEY INTEREST-FREE, SHOULD BE DECLARED FALSE AND NON-REDEEMABLE. It is a no-brainer to see the obvious.
WE’VE BEEN HAD, but we are waking up now and we can see THE TRUTH, so let’s act on it. They have the police, the army, the judicial systems and politicians corrupted, but we are armed with THE TRUTH that will disarm enough military and policemen to bring them into our camp of the people, of humanity, of the future, of civilization, of REASON!!!
Etniks, you’ve been drinking the Ellen Brown koolaid, haven’t you.
In point 4 you say, “The more an economy grows, the more it needs money.” No, for nearly 150 years the US provided for a rapidly growing economy by allowing prices to fall. The only ‘extra’ money provided was through the mining of gold and silver.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree that the fractional reserve system is evil. But allowing Congress to create fiat money is just as evil. Why? Because it destroys the value of savings. That’s why Joe Sixpack and all his neighbors are now in the stock market, courtesy of their 401Ks. And when the next bubble blows, it won’t be yogurt hitting the fan, but it will be organic and smelly.
Ellen Brown (age 69) is an American author, political candidate, attorney, public speaker, and advocate of alternative medicine and financial reform.
She is the founder and president of the Public Banking Institute, a think tank devoted to the creation of publicly run banks. Ellen ran unsuccessfully for California Treasurer in 2014.
A bloodsucking crony lawyer who wants to be a taxfeeder. Lots of help she’ll be to anyone.
A skilled writer, she’s does a useful job raising awareness about the way the banking system presently controls our money supply, but there’s little point discussing it without having a solution that fundamentally addresses the systemic problems.
Her ideas still leave us all stuck in a web of debt. Breaking free from that web requires more than merely changing spiders – we’re gonna have to break the web.
Actually Tor,
Ellen Brown wrote another book called “The Public Bank Solution, from Austerity to Prosperity” http://www.amazon.com/The-Public-Bank-Solution-Prosperity/dp/0983330867 where she argues that while money still would be made in debt, the interest would be owed to ourselves.
While I still prefer to completely brake away from Debt-Based money, her idea is one step on the right direction.
One of the causes for the fast growing Chinese economy is that all its banks are PUBLIC and they are forbidden to engage in derivatives, so all interest is poured back into the economy instead of being diverted by banksters to gamble all over the world as Western banks do.
The issue is coming to a head because every week it seems there’s a new video, book or article revealing more of this huge scam that permeates our lives deeply.
It was about time more people paid attention to this critical issue.
The energy monopoly as the food control a few big corporations like Monsanto are applying is part of an elaborate plan to further control the masses they see as THEIR right to govern and live from.
PHILLIP there are many decentralized ways to still have the capacity to trade with each other, as Thomas Greco in his book The End of Money and The Future of Civilization explains. http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Money-Future-Civilization/dp/1603580786
Another great book written by David Graeber called – DEBT: The First 5000 Years – also explores the roots of money and since he’s an anthropologist he discovered many interesting issues like Barter was never really an “established” system because it is too impractical, but other no-money systems actually worked well for centuries as used by the Phoenicians in the Mediterranean with a credit exchange system with no money used as such, only an agreement to a value unit.
Karen Hudes is suggesting an array of local currencies as a solution, controlled by the users, no governments. http://mindetox.com/saving_the_world_from_the_banking_cartel.html
Karen Hudes, World Bank Insider, claims 2nd Species Rules the World.
Karen Hudes was Senior Councilor at the World Bank when she blew the whistle on instances of major corruption in the system and was fired.
Karen Hudes: Either We Take Back Our Gold, Our Legality, or We’ll Have WWIII.
Phillip
The fact the US has had the “reserve currency” of the world has allowed it to “print” beyond its national needs because trillions of that money has been packed up in many countries’ reserves around the world.
So the fact the US economy grew a lot in those years you mention does not mean the bigger the economy, the more money, the more debt is not the case, what it does is export the inflation and all the consequences of too much money growth is shared by the whole world.
This is why the end of this abuse is here now with the Chinese taking over as seen by the avalanche of countries joining the Chinese Asian Investment Bank , even after the US had pressured all its “allies” not to do it.
The US influence has been weakening while the Chinese have been growing as explained in many articles:
http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/News.php/2015/03/18/us-warns-allies-not-to-join-china-led-de
http://www.dawn.com/news/1140139/china-20-other-countries-initiate-new-asian-bank
http://rt.com/business/249029-china-bank-new-members/
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2015/04/15/China-accepts-57-founding-members-for-new-Asian-Infrastructure-Investment-Bank/6071429103735/
I’m talking about the 100-150 years BEFORE Fire Island. When the US had ‘currency,’ but it was exchangeable at any bank for “money” meaning gold or silver.
Currency in and of itself is not a problem. It originated as warehouse receipts for real money that was being stored in a bank for convenience. Then some corrupt banksters decided that they did not need to keep enough gold to redeem all the receipts they had issued, because the odds of everyone requesting redemption at the same time were slim. Thus was born the evil of fractional reserve banking. Then the central banks sprang up and got the practice legalized/’legitimized.’ And the rest, as they say, is history.
TO UNDERSTAND THE ISSUE OF ELECTRIC VEHICLES, WE HAVE TO UNDERSTAND THE ISSUE OF ELECTRIC STORAGE AND BATTERIES.
Electric motors are by design much simpler and powerful than Internal Combustion Engines. They last longer, are easier to repair and cheaper to manufacture, so why don’t we have a choice fleet to choose from? BECAUSE OF THE ELECTRIC BATTERY’S ANCIENT TECHNOLOGY!!
Anyone who watched the film “Who Killed the Electric Car”? noticed the revealing fact of the partnership between GM and the older inventor who had developed a much better battery. It all looked fine but then GM decided to recall all of its EV1 electric vehicles to destroy them, AND THE BATTERY PARTNERSHIP? YES, GM then SOLD the patents of it to….. YES An OIL Corporation that NEVER USED IT and simply disappear it!!!!!
THIS IS THE CRUX OF THE MATTER. The original cars a hundred years ago were mostly ELECTRIC because of their convenience (gas engines had to be cranked up and were smelly with smoke) but then ROCKEFELLER decided FOR US it was better if he developed a MONOPOLY on energy by forcing everyone to use his oil product to get rich.
Since then ALL Electric Storage has been SUPPRESSED because Oil corporations know the price of their product will ditch badly if cars started to move into electricity, a much cleaner, smooth, quiet technology and cheaper to manufacture and maintain.
Another issue that came out in the film, is the fact the auto industry would loose billions of dollars in maintaining cars, because electric vehicles would require so much less repairs and maintenance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsJAlrYjGz8
ETNIKS – what you say MAY be true, I have no idea and doubt very much you can prove it. But it is irrelevant to the issue of electric cars as we have been discussing them on this blog. With the currently available battery technology, EVs are NOT practical for most people in most situations. A few are sold, but only at prices subsidized by the nanny gunvermin.
PHILLIP THE BRUCE It is clear you haven’t watched the film “Who killed the Electric car” where GM got a partner inventor with a new battery design for longer range and quick recharge, which GM then SOLD to an OIL COMPANY and was never used.
The same is the case of a Texas company that according to the patent submission, designed an electric storage device that is ten times smaller and lighter than a regular battery, but holds ten times more electricity and recharges in 5 minutes.
This company was purchased a few years ago by a huge weapon’s corporation and we have never seen the device being marketed.
I knew about this device because I was waiting for a Canadian electric car to get the storage device, and what ended up happening is the car factory closed and the Texas company was absorbed and the device suppressed.
You can make the conclusions you like, but if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it is a duck.
Etnicks,
I’ve been a working car journalist for more than 20 years. I actually drove the EV1/Impact.
Did you?
Or did you just watch a movie?
No offense intended.
Here’s the straight dope, from a journalist who drove the car extensively and who (unlike Ed Begley and Al Gore) won’t sugarcoat the truth about the car:
It was interesting, but its limited range (70 or so miles, under optimal conditions – warm, daylight) and lengthy recharge times and very high cost (over $30k in mid-late 1990s dollars) made it functionally and economically not viable as a mass market car or even a niche/specialty car.
It was only offered (lease; that is, at a loss) in warm states like Ca and AZ because the performance (range) declined by a third or more in cold conditions. Running accessories such as the AC/heater and lights further reduced the range.
Celebrities of the Ed Begley variety rarely mention these facts.
Now, for a few people – who commute fixed/short distances and have the time (and access) to hook up for a recharge session in between… sure, maybe. If they’re wealthy enough to be willing to spend $30k-plus on a car that is less cost-efficient to own and operate than a $15k economy car.
But there are not many such. And that is why electric cars haven’t sold – and never will sell – without massive subsidies. And even then, they’re still money-losers.
Facts.
As far as your conspiracy theory: The economic incentives for a viable high-performance battery that could provide range and performance comparable to that of a conventional IC car for about the same or less money as an otherwise equivalent IC car are freakin’ titanic. There are billions to be made. You really think it’s feasible to “suppress” such technology given this?
I don’t.
In any event, as per my earlier post, what you and I believe is immaterial.
What do we know?
Well, we know that the performance/economics of every electric car made so far suck.
We know that the available battery technology is too expensive, too functionally limited, to be mass market viable.
Right?
If you disagree, I’m open to persuasion.
But stick to facts, ok?
Erick, You are making my point!! The shortcomings of that EV1 are closely related to the inadequate energy storage of the vehicle.
Once we have the proper storage then electric motors will overcome easily the Internal Combustion Engine, and the Oil producers clearly know it. It makes a lot of sense to use electric instead of gas. It’s much cleaner, quiet and smooth requiring way less maintenance.
You go into a lengthy unnecessary explanations as to why your experience with the EV1 was not satisfactory, because I know it all, and that’s not the issue we’re talking about. The issue is electric motors are superior to gas engines, and the ONLY obstacle to dumping oil based engines is the electric storage.
You may think you “Know” about this issue, but the Corporate Media is controlled by the profits motivation and Oil and the car industry are Big spending in ads in it, so the Media doesn’t want to rock the boat of their revenue by exposing them as the crooks they are.
Etniks – you are arguing against yourself. First you say GM recalled and destroyed all the EV1s and sold the battery technology. Then you say they were no good because the batteries were no good.
No one here, least of all Eric, has argued that IC engines are superior to electric motors – only that electrics are NOT PRACTICAL due to storage limitations.
PHILLIP your problem is you’re more concerned with arguing than with understanding the issue.
It is ridiculous to say I am arguing with myself!
THE ISSUE IS THE TECHNOLOGY TO MAKE ELECTRIC CARS VIABLE IS BEING SUPPRESSED!!
Of course I have to agree the EV1 had THIS problem and that’s why it didn’t succeed as a business, so your point shows you really haven’t grasped the problem and my position.
Get off your childish “win an argument” approach and start to be serious.
It would be easier to be serious if you were not contradicting yourself. Go back and reread your previous posts and see if you can figure out what I mean.
I don’t have to go back anywhere to see what I’m saying. Just because you’re too dumb to understand what I’m saying, it doesn’t mean I failed to express myself.
The EV1 failed because the new battery was never produced and installed. We don’t even know if that particular battery would have solved the issue, but there are other instances where a capacitor was invented and a large weapons corporation bought it and shelved it, as is the case of the Texas company only 3 years ago.
Listen, you can believe whatever you want to and I don’t care to deal anymore with the likes of you who merely wants to “win” some argument.
Etniks,
You write: “Once we have the proper storage …”
Yes. Exactly. Have I argued otherwise?
But the problem is battery technology is not there yet – and may never be.
I know, I know. You watched a movie…
But I need more than that.
Eric – it sounds like you read Etniks’ first post like I did, that the EV1 was a good car that got sabotaged. But when you claimed first hand knowledge that that was NOT true, he started backpedaling.
That movie he talks about MAY be true. But we can’t just accept it at face value.
I have no problem w/conspiracies, per se, but give us hard evidence.
Hi Phillip,
Yup!
The EV1 was very similar to the original Honda Insight hybrid, in terms of physical layout/size, etc. But the Insight – being a hybrid – was actually viable as a commuter car, even a primary car for someone single/without kids. It got – IIRC – about 60 MPG and range was a non-issue because it was a hybrid.
The EV1, on the other hand, was a pure electric car and its limited range/long recharge times crippled it as a viable primary car for most people.
Etnik believes it would have succeeded had the battery-related issues been addressed – and I agree (assuming the cost was not ridiculous).
But where we part ways is over his insistence that the battery-related issues were addressed but that the technology was suppressed by “big oil” and GM and so on…
Backpedaling because Eric mentioned he had driven the EV1? You think you’re Sherlock Holmes now?
I couldn’t care less who drove the EV1 and it doesn’t change a thing in my argument, because I NEVER SAID the EV1 WAS A GOOD CAR!!! What I said is that an OIL corporation PURCHASED the Battery invention and then shelved it, never used it.
No wonder you can’t understand my position!! You read but lack comprehension.
MY POINT IS WITH SUPPRESSION OF ELECTRIC STORAGE TECHNOLOGY!!!
Backpedaling because Eric mentioned he had driven the EV1? You think you’re Sherlock Holmes now?
I couldn’t care less who drove the EV1 and it doesn’t change a thing in my argument, because I NEVER SAID the EV1 WAS A GOOD CAR!!! What I said is that an OIL corporation PURCHASED the Battery invention and then shelved it, never used it.
No wonder you can’t understand my position!! You read but lack comprehension.
MY POINT IS WITH SUPPRESSION OF ELECTRIC STORAGE TECHNOLOGY!!!
That’s very easy to prove. Look up the patent number and the assignment history. There’s a paper trail for that sort of thing. Show it and I’ll believe you.
Etniks,
You’ve made the claim – now please, back it up with evidence. Not a movie, not actors making claims. Actual evidence that “an OIL corporation PURCHASED the Battery invention and then shelved it, never used it.”
Eric
THIS IS MY POINT. The electric storage unit has been left outside the market in order to keep electric motors outside motor vehicles.
Why would an Oil corporation buy a new battery invention and then shelve it and never use it? To me it is PROOF enough it is being SUPPRESSED, but what you want is some sort of recording or a video of oil executives ordering the device being kept out. If that’s what you want, grab a good seat because it will never come, unless we get another whistleblower like Snowden, but Obama has been so horrendous with them, many prefer to keep quiet.
Etniks,
You are free to believe whatever you like but when you assert something as fact, the obligation is on you to back that up with more than just your say-so.
Look: I am suspicious about the Warren Report; I am inclined to believe that Earth may have been visited by intelligent aliens at some point in the past. But I never assert as fact that I know who killed JFK or that intelligent aliens have visited the Earth.
Do you comprehend?
If you want to win an argument, then present facts. Not your beliefs.
My intention is not to “win an argument” but to enhance other people’s awareness to eventually end the corruption that is keeping us enslaved to a few crooks.
If the “proof” I am offering to you is not enough to convince you, then there’s nothing I can do for you.
The reason Fractional Reserve Banking has become the main form of enslavement on humanity is because of a lack of comprehension in how it is applied. I’m amazed at how millions of “intelligent” CEO’s and business owners, politicians, academics and intellectuals have been duped for hundreds of years to accept such a blatant form of theft, and yet there it is, we all have been had and still we’re caught in the net as a society as long as we still keep using the Debt-Based currency we use. Even in the middle of a Global Debt Crisis, still people “can’t see it” and the banksters keep on laughing convinced we are as dumb, as farmers see their flocks behaving predictably producing milk and meat for their profits $$$
Perhaps it is because people keep on demanding more “proof” that the enslaving system keeps on catching us.
This energy scam is peanuts compared to the currency scam we’re enduring.
Some links to explain in more detail what I’m stating.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrKV6bfqOck&feature=player_embedded
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB5LK-jihgk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iBSBVew-3Y
http://vimeo.com/3843038
http://www.positivemoney.org/2013/04/video-from-the-conference-fixing-the-banking-system-for-good/
Etniks,
I understand fractional reserve banking; but that’s neither here nor there as regards whether battery technology has been suppressed.
Look: I’ve been a working car journalist for a long damned time (more than 20 years). I am a very mechanically minded person, too. I rebuild engines, understand the engineering principles. What I am getting at is that I have a pretty strong background in the field – professionally and otherwise. I’ve not seen any evidence that battery technology has been suppressed. Just (as in the movie) innuendo and conjecture.
You keep asserting that the technology has been suppressed. Ok, fine.
How is this different from my asserting that the Biavians (see here: http://www.rileymartin.com/ ) are real and have been directing human affairs from behind the scenes for centuries?
ETNIKS, I keep hearing about suppressed technology. There are only two ways to accomplish this patents and trade secrets.
Patents have a public paper trail. Trade secrets are kept by people.
A revolutionary technology suppressed as a trade secret doesn’t work too well. The monetary incentive is very great to leak it. Even with non-disclosure agreements it would be difficult to contain. It’s much easier to contain stuff you’re selling on the market but stuff you’re not selling? very difficult. If it is something embarrassing to admit that’s been kept secret like a battery powered automobile then there’s no reason for someone even if they signed a non-disclosure agreement from making it. The company he used to work for would have face public embarrassment to bring a lawsuit. They would have to answer uncomfortable questions of why they suppressed it.
But with trade secrets we never ever know about it at all if it is successful.
So show me the paper trail. Patents, contracts, purchases of companies and assets even with trade secrets involved have a paper trail. Show me the whistle blowers. It doesn’t exist because there’s no suppressed technology here.
Now if you want to talk hidden military technology, that’s something entirely different. But that’s not what you were saying.
ERIC
You last posts come without a Reply button, so here I answer your post that starts with:
” eric
April 24, 2015 at 10:13 am
Etniks,
I understand fractional reserve banking; but that’s neither here nor…..”
Yes I understand we all have different levels of “proof recognition” and yours is different to mine. Otherwise religions would be out of business, so I understand your position and today I am driving away to California a thousand miles away and don’t have the time to comply with more data on the “proof”.
I will probably be out of range from the Internet for a while.
Why do you speak using the term “we?” You are not part of today’s corporate oil crony cartel. You buy an IC car or you don’t.
You will not be a part of tomorrow’s overpriced clean coal electric car non-profit authority cartel either. You’ll buy a far more expensive clean-coal battery-powered car or not. You’ll have no more power in either case. Don’t be a sucker for these political snake-oil salesman.
I can see the thievery just fine using Rand, Mencken, Rothbard, Mises, Hayek, GMU, alternate media, and many other ways. It never hurts to see things in yet another way, but I’m not especially impressed with any of this new-fangled populist economics cheerleading.
Yes you can disappear a country. There is no UK. It’s just a hallucinated community with bloodied costumes and ruthless LARPing and moldy old flags and maggoty old relics. I’d like to throw it all in a great big pile and set every piece of it on fire.
Positive Money is a community of 40,000 people on facebook right now. Not much bigger than this website probably. Just better connected and organized.
To the degree electric cars are free market I support them. In whatever degree they are being coercively imposed on me, I abhor them.
The Money Game
http://www.rense.com/general9/scam.htm
History Of ‘New Energy’ Invention Suppression Cases
http://www.rense.com/general72/oinvent.htm
There is no UK? well I think there is no TOR and all the noise you make is nonexistant.
That’s the spirit!
Does the government exist? Stefan Molyneux resident of Canada/UK
You follow Molyneux? He’s an elaborate sophist who can convince himself of anything.
It figures your “position” or lack of.
Etniks,
Insults are the last resort of someone who lacks a compelling argument.
I am open to the idea that battery technology has been suppressed. But I am not going to accept it as true absent proof.
Do you find that unreasonable?
Thank you for the links!!
The Money Game
http://www.rense.com/general9/scam.htm
History Of ‘New Energy’ Invention Suppression Cases
http://www.rense.com/general72/oinvent.htm
Etniks,
I’ve reviewed the article (second link)… more hearsay, nothing more. No evidence, no facts. Just a litany of stories about so and so encountering thugs who threatened him if he did not drop/hand over his invention. Segues about the British Royals… oy vey. The “100 MPG” 1970 Ford running on gas fumes is in there, too. And all the engineers at all the major automakers dare not reproduce this astounding miracle less they be disappeared…
And they ask my why I drink….
Anything is possible, maybe film-maker Chris Paine has an inside source with information others aren’t privy to. Maybe all this time, we’ve just needed to watch documentaries financed by Sony and narrated by Tom Hanks to learn the truth.
Here’s the film makers’ background:
Paine studied acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse, with classmates Dylan McDermott, Allison Janney and screenwriter Steve Rogers. He studied film at New York University and Stanford University with the documentarian John Else. He graduated from Colgate University in 1983.
Paine co-founded Counterspill an online project about non-renewable energy disasters. He serves on the board of directors for Friends of the Earth, the Coalition for Clean Air, and the Black Rock Arts Foundation.
Paine sounds like yet another rent-seeking Al-Gore millionaire douchebag, using actors to make emotional pleas, and making millions off the environmentalist scam.
Who killed the electric car?
Revenge of the electric car
Quack. Quack. These ducks are waddling all the way to the bank.
ETNIKS, what you say is true. At the same time the EV 1’s were collected and destroyed, Toyota had a plethora of new vehicles, hybrids and electrics that had just been delivered to dealers. They were all loaded up and hauled to a ship that couldn’t be seen from land on the Ca. coast. They were off-loaded and run through the same shredder as the EV 1. The ship left for China and that’s almost the end of the story.
The GM’s partner in developing a new battery were elderly people. GM offered them an unknown sum for their company, their employees and all technical and physical inventory. Employees signed a non-disclosure agreement and fired. The company was shuttered and the revolutionary new battery they’d developed was never seen again.
I find it interesting that a year ago China updated their electric bus fleet to a new capacitor storage system that allowed them to run several times as long as the old capacitor. Anyone speak Chinese and want to go find out what their capacitor secret is? Just don’t tell anyone involved in the scam that killed the EV 1.
Hi Eight,
I’m not buying it…. I was reporting on/covering the industry back then. So I had a ringside seat. I’ve heard lots of speculation and innuendo… but where’s the beef about this suppressed technology? Why hasn’t Tesla (for one) run with it?
Or anyone?
There are billions to be made off a viable electric car. I simply don’t believe it would be possible to suppress a viable battery design.
And as I wrote previously, what we believe or suspect is not (as such, absent facts) proof of anything.
Hell, I personally do believe intelligent aliens have visited the Earth – in the past and within recent times.
But do I know so? Can I prove it?
No, I can’t… so – no matter how much I believe – it’s just my belief, my opinion….
Same goes for this “supressed technology” battery business.
GM junked the cars because they were junk. They did not want to have to support them (make service parts, honor warranty coverage) and knew they’d never sell at a profit (hence the lease giveaways) and so time to throw ’em in the woods.
eric, are you implying I might not have a good handle on this sitting in west Tx. at a computer?
It does make a good conspiracy theory and a great sittin round the fire drinking story.
I have been keeping up with the China bus system for the last few years. They seem to be ahead of the curve using a capacitance system instead of what we think of as a battery. Then again, you can open a capacitor and find a very similar compound to a battery inside.
It doesn’t take a huge amount of imagination to believe that lines carved in the earth untold centuries ago that can only be seen from several miles above them probably weren’t made in advance for the aircraft and satellites we have now….or that ancient drawings and heiroglyphics depicting a close resemblance to the suits of astronauts were happenstance.
Hi Eight,
Heck, I am inclined to believe many things! But I need facts – things that can’t be argued but just are – before I will assert something as being true.
Etniks hasn’t put forward a single fact to support his conjecture. Is it possible someone developed an amazing technology that’s been swept under the rug somehow? Sure, certainly. (I have strong suspicions, as an aside, that precisely that happened in the aftermath of WWII; that the Germans ginned up something very, very radical in aviation – and otherwise… but that’s another story).
What I object to – that is, what I will not accept at face value – are the claims made by Etnik absent evidence; that is, absent more than assertion and conjecture. Which seems to be all he’s got…
eric, I’m an “only believe in what can be proved” kinda guy but I also don’t believe anything, necessarily, that comes from a huge, govt. supported corporation, GM, GE, Ford, Westinghouse, GD and the list goes on and on.
As for the stuff American Biker spews it’s easy to tell that much is simply rebel rousing for their own good. I found the entire pronouncement duplicitous. Whether any politician or bureaucrat is considering such steps is anyone’s guess. While it doesn’t seem likely any state will mandate six speed transmissions stranger things have happened.
As an example, a clover woman politician is pushing a bill to deny trans-gendered people the right to use their choice of public bathrooms in this state. Inevitably, if passed, business owners would simply make unisex bathrooms to avoid being punished by such a stupid law. Another stupid politician’s boondoggle.
Hi Eight,
Yeah… have to wonder about the agenda.. those American Biker guys ought to know this is absurd in the extreme. Bikes are not cars; their engines have very different power bands/operating characteristics. How many street car engines spin to 12,000-plus RPM?
Even a full-dress cruiser is more fuel efficient at 75-80 than probably 85-90 percent of cars on the road for the simple reason that even a full-dress cruiser maybe weighs 1,000 pounds or so… whereas the lightest cars on the market right now weigh twice that and then some, easily.
America Biker inevitably catches me going to the liquor store if I’m not trucking. They are clovers themselves. They simply want to foment something that will contribute to their coffers. This isn’t the first ridiculous story they’ve spewed.
I have noticed in the last several years bikers are getting fewer and fewer on the highways of this state, to a degree it’s easily noticeable. I don’t think it’s anything other than a failing economy.
A while back I asked how to find a used bike and many people on this site responded nicely and informatively. I then went to the sites they recommended and it was almost totally very new, expensive bikes, almost all Harley’s and you could tell by the pics in front of houses that were worth not a great deal more than the bike. Often it’s evident that these people either were never bikers, had a brief great salary or something similar. The prices of the bikes are so high you realize they’re simply trying to get out from under the debt and not uncommonly, they even say this outright. Great bike(a year old), take up payments. I don’t see this as anything but bad news.
Hi Eight,
On bikes: The Harley World is very different from the Japanese World. $10-14k or so will buy you a top of the line Japanese sport bike, brand new. About $8k or so is sufficient to buy a very respectable 650-750 cc middleweight. Harleys start around $10k – and it’s easy to spend $25-30k on one fully dressed. This puts them in a different orbit.
In my area, at least, one can still find very nice condition used Japanese “standards” and middleweight touring/cruising bikes for in the ballpark of $3,500-$7,000 o so.
eric, my comment wasn’t so much about bikes as the economy. While the oil field WAS booming, the bloom is off the rose. There are a great many jobs that need to be filled but they’re not for the average person who’s looking.
Very few will write that number down, Drivers Needed or call up a construction company or many other industries that are holding their own right now. We have a huge number of people who are employable but no suitable jobs. Most people aren’t capable of being IT managers, one of the main job openings I see.
A large amount of people should do some creative writing when it comes to a resume’. Or get someone to do it for them(preferable for most people since the way it’s presented is half the qualification.
My real point is the economic reality you see when looking for a used bike. And now bikes are being sold like cars, 0 down and 8 years to pay it off, a few years more than the bike will likely survive. Same with cars too.
I know 2 17 year old girls who got some family member to buy them a car recently. Neither had licenses nor knew how to drive. They both wrecked their cars the first week they drove them, actually, didn’t even make a week. Insurance pays to have the cars fixed, the family member is assured of getting some bad credit from it and the dealers get to sell the car again, maybe with new paint and better looking than ever. Autos and an illegal Wall Street along with the complicit Fed iare the only industries really doing well, except for transportation and that’s always a small profit margin biz.
Housing is fairly non-existent but people who rent are making record profits.
This is not the sign of a healthy country.
Hey, I’d like to have a Brand New pickup. Come on down and we’ll fix you up. We have many people who’ll loan you the money if your credit isn’t so great and if you simply have Bad credit. I hear this crap all the time on the radio.
Agree with you, Eight.
In my area, the real estate market is showing signs of serious rot. Nothing sells. Houses just sit for months – years – with the “for sale” sign out in front… eventually, the grass starts to grow long.
I’ve also noticed a lot of my neighbors timbering their land all of a sudden.. a sure sign of trouble. Denuding your acreage (and thereby, ruining its aesthetic appeal for at least the next 20 years) to raise some quick cash… it’s bad news, amigo.
It’s bunk.
The EV1 like the Chrysler turbine car was a field test. Field test units are destroyed and a few are archived. It’s like that with every product where field testing is done. Doesn’t matter what it is.
Battery and capacitor buses are old news. Nothing special. The systems work because a bus provides the platform size and usage profiles required. The ultra capacitor bus exploits the fact that buses follow a route with frequent stops. The capacitors charge quickly so the bus can be charged where it stops. These capacitor systems would leave the average american driver stranded some where.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capa_vehicle
It amazes me what facts get a person labeled a kook but easily refuted nonsense about the EV1, street cars, and the ford pinto is considered socially acceptable to believe.
Etniks – You are correct that I have not watched “Who killed the Electric car.” Neither have I watch “An Inconvenient Truth” – although from what I have heard about it, it would have been more accurately titled “A Convenient Untruth.”
A movie is no more necessarily true than a newscast or a blog post. Documentation is needed.
Most of the EPAutos readers have no problem with conspiracy theories. But we are much more interested in conspiracy facts.
Hi Etniks,
I can only say this: I actually drove the EV1 when it was new. Same problems that electric cars have today: Limited range, long recharge times.
The claim that battery technology has been suppressed requires proof – otherwise, it’s of a piece with claims that there are Gray Aliens living under Denver’s new airport.
Personally, I doubt such technology has been suppressed because I doubt such is possible. I consider this an urban myth – along with the 200 MG carburetor.
I really have no respect on your “belief” if it’s possible or not to suppress such technology. When the stakes are so horrendously high as Oil use is, with whole countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia and Venezuela just to name a few needing the price to be high, and the huge concern of the very powerful Oil corporations, do you think they would let a new electric storage device to collapse their business or economy?
OF COURSE NOT.
If you are fool enough to expect “proof” in order to understand suppression has been happening, then you have little understanding of how “Big Brother” really works.
I really have no comprehension on your horrendous millennial generation English. I guess I am fool enough to expect you’ll clarify what I’m needing since the stakes are so high.
Really, this is an older crowd here, and I doubt I’m the only one who is unable to grok what it is specifically you’re getting at. Please translate this for us.
TOR LIBERTARIAN So you state this is an “older” crowd here? By the naivete I encounter I’m not sure at my 67 years of age if to believe I am in my age group here.
To be fair it’s been only about 12 years since I happened to discover for the first time in my life doing business how we have been screwed up royally by the Fractional Reserve Banking charade imposed on us by a banking cartel that coerces our “elected” politicians and turns them into their puppets. It has forced me to question absolutely everything I have come to believe was “reality” since I was born.
I know it is a different subject but the fact we ALL have been fooled Big Time by a mere few hundred people for at least 300 years, stealing our hard earned money by the use of it, it’s astonishing so many smart people, as I’m sure several of you are, we have been taken like children.
I’m sorry Tor to bring this issue to you because if you had a hard time understanding the energy scam we’re suffering, this other currency issue is going to crack your mind as it did mine when I first encountered it years ago.
But we’re lucky because this issue is finally coming out in the alternative Media with whistleblowers from the World Bank and other organizations, with many films and articles and books beginning to present the scam more clearly and loudly. In fact a group of young guys and ladies called “Positive Money” is openly asking for the repeal of the current fraudulent Debt-Based money system for another “sovereign” money system in London. Actually Iceland has announced they are planning in establishing their currency in those lines and now refuse to be part of the Euro. They are doing this after they had a couple of referendums to refuse accepting the debts of some crooked banksters, for then jail them and taken to court their own Prime Minister.
Erick can you “prove” Too Big to Fail is real? or merely an slogan to steal TRILLIONS of dollars from hundreds of millions of people in the planet?
In any case, my point is the so-called reality you all may think is “solid” from using it for many decades since you were born, is actually more of a cultural aspect of your upbringing to give you a sense of belonging to avoid uncertainty and a feeling of unease.
As Canadian James Corbett explains from his home in Japan, the term “conspiracy theory” invented by the CIA during the JFK assassination resulting from an obvious whitewash by the Warren Commission, today is used constantly by those like Zbigniew Brzezinski who feels HE CAN speculate freely while everybody else is a “conspiracy theorist”.
It doesn’t mean of course that everything goes, whatever it is the “theory” but at least I’d expect anyone who is serious about finding the truth, to be more humble when taking the absolute St Thomas position Erick takes regarding “proof”. Erick’s Market Fundamentalism is not serving him well as it didn’t Greenspan when he blindly followed Rand’s nonsense without realizing that poor woman was suffering from severe bureaucratic trauma in her past life in the Soviet Union. Greenspan’s “fundamentalism” affected the whole planet with this nonsense about the “market’s invisible hand” BS.
Erick states there’s lots of profit to be made from a better electric storage unit, therefore if it was possible someone would already have market it, and even asked why Tesla himself didn’t do it, showing how little he knows about Tesla, his story with JP Morgan and Thomas Edison. Erick’s ability to understand Tesla is weak since Tesla was completely non-market oriented and was too naive to understand people like Erick or JP Morgan either, and this was his undoing because all he wanted was to give the world an incredible gift of freely available energy drawn from the space surrounding us, and people like Erick can’t fathom such a thing without being stuck in “making a buck” with it because of his fanaticism with the Market Fundamentalism.
When the telephone wanted to enter the market it had to battle with Western Union’s well established telegraph, and it took many years to finally remove the obstacle. But this “business” of Oil is way bigger than battling a single monopoly company, but many countries’ interests PLUS huge Oil companies managed by GREEDY fanatics.
Erick your are too naive to think that because someone can make “Billions” with a device, it is not affecting Trillions being made with the absence of that device, and will trigger an immediate response to suppress it.
As far as I know there has never been a photo of an atom and yet we accept “proof” it exists and even have images of how it should look like, by merely studying the symptoms of its existence.
Even following the “capitalist’s rationale” this should make sense a simple electric device could be the undoing of such a giant business conducted by too many powerful people worth trillions.
Hey ETNIKS,
I was able to track down “positive money” and look into it. Are you of the opinion the UK is worth keeping and that joining the Social Credit monetary reform movement is a worthwhile endeavour?
Are you a fan of C.H. Douglas, Michael Rowbotham, and Ben Dyson?
What Is Money?
How Money is Made / Created: Ben Dyson Explains the Debt Crisis
Positive Money is a movement to democratise money and banking so that it works for society and not against it.
http://www.positivemoney.org/about/
Positive Money Blog
http://www.positivemoney.org/blog/
Can money be a force for good? – Fran Boait
https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/fran-boait/can-money-be-force-for-good
TOR I’m not sure what are your questions? Is the UK worth “keeping”? You mean there is a choice to disappear a whole country or keep it?
I’ve been in contact with Ben Dyson regarding this issue of Money Creation because I am deeply disturbed by the huge robbery taking place as we speak, and most people are unaware of this important fact, affecting our social and individual lives.
Ellen Brown also wrote a couple of books explaining the scam and the possible solution. 1-The Web of Debt” and “The Public Bank Solution” http://www.webofdebt.com/
Also I have met Thomas Greco who wrote the best book on the subject called “The End of Money and the Future of Civilization” where he describes the problem and the many solutions to it.
I have also read “DEBT: The First 5,000 Years” by David Graeber and anthropologist whose parameters are much wider than an economists.
Once you understand the extent of the robbery and the control these crooks have on our economic life, the shock is huge and all you want to do is tell anyone you can how a Pick Pocket’s hand is deep into their wallet.
It’s as if someone found a way to charge us for breathing, which is something critical for our living (like money is to survive) and are doing it by controlling our perception of it hiding it out in “complex” financial “formulas”.
I include some WARNINGS we got from the past:
“The study of Money, is one in which complexity is used
to evade truth, not to reveal it”
John Kenneth Galbraith
Economist
“There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation,
One is by the sword. The other is by Debt”
John Adams
“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
Henry Ford
“Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as it’s most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talk of sovereignty of Parliament and of democracy is idle and futile…Once a nation parts with the control of it’s credit it matters not who makes the laws…Usury once in control will wreck any nation.”
MacKenzie King,
Canadian Prime Minister
“Each and every time a bank makes a loan, new bank credit is created, -new deposits- brand new money”
Graham F. Towers
Governor, Bank of Canada
“The process by which Banks create money is so simple, that the mind is repelled”
John Kenneth Galbraith
Economist
“If you want to remain slaves of the bankers and pay for the costs of your own slavery, let them continue to create money and control the nation’s credit”
Sir Josiah Stamp
1880-1941 Former Director Bank of England
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies…
If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency, the banks and corporations that will grow around them, will deprive the people of their property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered”
Thomas Jefferson
1743-1826
“Permit me to issue and contro the money of a Nation,
and I care not who makes its laws.
-Mayer Anselm Rothschild
Banker
I forgot to include Thomas website, here it is:
http://beyondmoney.net/the-end-of-money-and-the-future-of-civilization/
Etniks – You are correct that allowing banks to issue debt based ‘money’ is a problem. But how is Ellen Brown’s desire to have Congress create money out of thin air any better? At least w/debt based money, default on the debt actually reduces the money supply. This is Deflation.
Those of us who believe in capitalism and free markets say banks should only be ‘storehouses’ of money, which should be some item of actual value rather than just declared to have value by the gunvermin.
Our current FRNs (and related computer entries) have value only because other ‘suckers’ will accept them in payment.
“Belief” is neither here nor there, Etnicks.
Nor whether you respect my “belief.” Or I yours.
If I told you I believed UFOs exist, does that mean they exist? Are you obliged to take my belief as evidentiary proof of the existence of UFOs? And if you decline to believe in my UFOs, does that make you a fool? A tool?
Look: If someone makes an assertion, the burden is on them to back it up.
Show me something. Not conjecture about “suppressed technology.” Show me some factual, tangible, objective evidence that this is so.
I respect facts.
So far, you’ve not presented a single one.
Does this mean I’m not open to the possibility that better battery technology may exist? Of course not.
It’s certainly possible.
There may be Alien Grays, too.
It’s interesting to consider the possibility. But until you can present proof, please ease off with the certainty, ok?
eric, I’m not trying to change the subject but I heard something on American Biker Roadshow yesterday that will concern bikers a great deal. Many states have raised the PSL and are continuing to do so with all of the western states from southern to northern, less the west coast have raised or are about to raise speeds. Some have already gone to 80 mph and others are considering 85mph as is Tx. latest toll road. So now some legislation is being proposed to require bikers to have 6 speed transmissions and some will require bikers to add an OD unit if passed.
It doesn’t take a genius to see where this comes from…..as if the fuel used by bikes is significant in any way. But it is to clovers who don’t ride(and probably envy hell out of those that do, hence the need to control those that are just having too much fun((shades of Commander Cody)) as they see it).
Hi Eight,
I’ll look into it… but some initial thoughts:
Very few bikes get less than 40-something MPG as it stands – and this includes high-performance sport bikes. Many bikes in the 250-600 CC range get 60 MPG or even more. So, they already are much more fuel efficient than virtually any car.
Even my ancient ’83 Honda GL650 (which has a five-speed box) gets 55-60 MPG, including highway riding.
It’s interesting you keep insisting in talking about ET’s because there is a lot of noise in the alternative Media, they are here already, but who knows if that’s a fact.
You don’t have to go to those speculations to understand plain human greed, as being applied by banksters, politicians, the judicial system and Market Fundamentalists like yourself.
If there should be something clear today, is how this BS of the “invisible hand” of the “market” has brought us to the global debt crisis threatening us all with a nuclear Third World War to destroy all civilization, while our “leaders”, political and economical go and hide within their underground cities they have ready, stupidly imagining they can survive and eventually come out to enjoy a much reduced world population and a happy feudalist-style kingdom.
As it is we either end with this capitalist nonsense, or it will end with humanity. Greed can never be the bases of any social system, whatever it is.
Here there are some links that will illustrate what I’m saying:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrKV6bfqOck&feature=player_embedded
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB5LK-jihgk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTj9AcwkaKM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iBSBVew-3Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkQN4EVBXuw
http://www.naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=26C7E7971AD40C08F7F9732C42CD0ECB
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq9yjt_JbWs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gKX9TWRyfs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61hVCTRFtpQ
I understand greed, Etniks. And the desire to control others.
But that’s not proof or even evidence of technology having been suppressed… or have I missed something?
You disparage capitalism – which troubles me, if by capitalism you mean free exchange. The system we’re living under is coercive and authoritarian – and thus, not capitalism.
If, as you believe, technology has been suppressed then it has been done via coercion.
Don’t blame capitalism for that.
Blame coercion!
Don’t you see. You just have to tell the ruling class to STOP ABUSING us in a VERY FIRM VOICE. It’s the caps lock that makes it happen.
Fran Boait : the Money scam
We’re already oppressed by the military industrial complex. Crony capitalists. Local mafias and cartels. Authoritarian governments. Treaties and international organizations filled with bureaucrats from every nation beyond our influence.
The solution ETNIKS envisions, is a whole new level of coercion. The Non-Profit Positive Money UK organization.
If we just submit to The Friends of the Earth and the Share Action for Responsible Investment, and many other Non Profits, everything will work out for us. The trick is to empower the right sort to hold life and death power over us for our own good.
We’ll finally be free by hiring more responsive coercive organizations to coerce everybody in a more benevolent and human-focused manner. At least that’s what I get out of all of this.
Fran Boait
https://twitter.com/franboait
I seriously doubt anyone alive in the usa today has ever experienced a free market or capitalism. A regulated market is not free and regulated markets are not true capitalism. IOWs, government kills everything it touches. Just my two pre-1982 cents worth.
Mike
There are plenty of other uses for oil, the price may go down, but the market will not tank, especially immediately, if viable EVs come on the market.
PHILLIP The “market won’t tank” but the damage will be bad enough for whole countries suffer a shock, and oil corporations to be affected negatively., and they will do anything to avoid that scenario, even murder if necessary. When there’s Trillions at stake, a few deaths are nothing to these psychopaths.
Do you have any tangible evidence like a list of battery patents owned by Big Oil, or any data showing the revolutionary capability of this suppressed battery technology?
ETNIKS, you make a good point and working in the patch, I can see big oil trying to hold their own. About a month or a bit more ago, Forbes interviewed the CEO of Chevron who said we’ll likely see the price of oil continue to vacillate about where it is not for the next year. He also said the majors were in good shape with plenty of profits in hand.
Something else you might want to consider is the amount of refined oil that’s been cut in the last couple years by all the refineries in this country. I believe it’s along the lines of 155 million barrels per day. That’s a great deal of oil. Many things probably contribute to less consumption with a failing economy being the largest reason.
You’d never know it to see the huge amount of traffic in Tx. but in the last six months you only need to travel the hiways and lease roads as I do to see a marked difference.
My company does a great deal of work for pipeline companies building infrastructure and we’ve seen a large decrease. One pipeline employee a bit higher up the food chain than most told me the work we’d done in the last year was probably not the last for that particular pipeline and they’d most likely have to build more to make a loop to use storage facilities just built recently for other fields that are tied in with it. It seems they can’t haul oil off fast enough. Judging by the amount of ads by oil hauling companies for truck drivers I hear every day, I’d say they want to haul more than they can get drivers for and without demand, those wells producing that oil would simply be timed back to a point they didn’t produce nearly as much. The fact that oil haulers are showing more new rigs on the road leads me to believe there is a market somewhere. I’d be more comfortable if the price would reach at least $120/barrel so that exploration which fell off drastically last winter would put all those rigs back to work. But I see this more as a state of the union economically than anything else.
I’m not speculating about most of this. I was driving by the yards in Midland and Odessa every week during a period late last year when rigs were stacking up more every day. And these days one drilling rig represents half of dozen from former years. Drilling at a rate of 130′ per hour vs that much per shift 20 years ago is another factor as is the fact that one rig will drill 6 wells from the same location. This isn’t my opinion, simply fact.
The uses of oil grow every day though so reduced fuel needs aren’t always a death knell and the fact that some major transporters have built a large number of supertankers that can haul oil to the rest of the world is indicative of what is going on.
One of the largest problems with oil exploration and production is Saudi Arabia who has easy to reach oil in huge quantities, a relatively few owners of it all and slave labor to use. A common problem in the middle east for other counties is the slave labor and the fact they could sell oil for single digits per barrel and be filthy rich. Other countries have to pay their laborers.
I suggest anyone interested in staying informed to some degree subscribe to industry e-letters such as Rig Zone and the like.
I am aware Oil is still an important product used in many fields, but transportation has been the bedrock of its business, and its price will go down considerably once vehicles stop using it as it will happen once they let electric cars to be fully serviced by the new technology to store electricity.
It is amazing we’re using in a hundred years an oil product that took thousands of years for nature to produce. How can that be “capital efficient” ?
The point is we’ll use it all in decades by the extent we use it today, and then what? So why don;t we try something else? But those making money out of oil are too stupid and greedy to care for what will happen 5 years down the road, and much less what happens after they die.
soft tissue injuries
whiplash pain
ASIA learning
nerve damage, 3 types of nerves
nerve injury
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerve_injury
The Muslim Wheel of Domestic Violence When it’s feminist muslim science. You know it must be awesome.
http://projectsakinah.org/Family-Violence/Understanding-Abuse/The-Muslim-Wheel-of-Domestic-Violence
The Muslim Wheel of Domestic Violence was developed by Sr. Sharifa Alkhateeb. It conveys some of the ways religion can be distorted to justify abuse against women and children in the family context. It is an adaptation of the Power and Control Wheel developed by the Domestic Abuse Project of Duluth, Minnesota.
I look forward to hearing Mizz Doctor’s report on how well this is received in the Middle East.
I’m browsing this site using a feminist muslim developed web-browser. It’s awesome, the coding skills of such righteous judeo-christian-muslim babes of color. I tip my hijab to all such theocratic wunderkinds.
Tax per megabyte cometh.
Obama’s handwritten note to Reddit useful idiots for helping him nationalize the internet.
FCC votes to nationalize the internet
4 heroes killed by crowd after police beat a woman in the street.
Life Ain’t Easy For A Boy From The Soo
I’ve spent a lot of time being angry about the way I had to import myself from the land of maple leaves, to the land of broad stripes and broad stars. It truly was a perilous flight.
I’ve suppressed most of the ramparts I watched. And that time I teleported from an alternate non-english universe to this english one. Which is weird, because it was the other universe that was officially part of the english kingdom system.
If you believe hard enough, you were always at war with north virginia territories and had always been at peace here in the fifty shades of gray south virginia territories.
The two soos can beat as one and you can repeat over and over what’s legal to be real, until 2 +2 really does equal 5 when your life depends on it. Just the two of us. Me and I. I still see the crystal raindrops fall and the beauty of it all. When the new me spends some time with the old me who has now become you.
I know all about having a strawman. More than one in points of fact. And tinman. And cowardly lying. And yellow brick roads I’ve had to follow to meet the whizzer and kill the whizzer on the road when I met the whizzer. I had to off the whizzer, and as he lay dying, I found that he was me.
Well, I grew up quick and I grew up mean, My fist got hard and my wits got keen, I’d roam from town to town to hide my shame.
But I made a vow to the moon and stars, That I’d run those honky-tonks and bars, and rule this awful land that gave me this awful name.
When should you hit a woman?
…anytime you need to hit anyone in self defense, that’s when. To imagine that someone gets a pass for aggression due to the type of genitalia they have is inconsistent and hurts everyone- attacker and victim, alike.
You are never obligated to defend yourself with violence, but on the other hand, you are also never obligated to sit back and take it. Not from anyone, ever.
I have never bought into this “never hit a woman” nonsense. Yet, I have refrained from hitting a woman a couple of times it was justified. Simply because I knew “the law” wouldn’t have been on my side due to a total lack of witnesses. I’m not proud of that fact. There is nothing noble about allowing yourself to be hit while doing nothing to defend yourself.
When my second marriage was getting really bad, my (newly psychotic) wife would occasionally slap me and dare me to do something about it. I did- I got away. But I would have been right to have punched her, and am somewhat ashamed that I didn’t. You and I both know I would have been arrested for defending myself, since her aggression happened in the privacy of our home. It doesn’t matter, though. As the aggressor she deserved to be defended against with whatever amount of violence it took to stop the attack.
Refusing to hit her could also be seen as a form of self defense- defense against insane “laws” and bigotry. Choosing one violation to avoid a potentially worse one.
So, no, I have never hit a woman, but I will never condemn someone who hits an aggressor of any sex. Sometimes it is simply the right thing to do. If that offends you, well, suck it up, Buttercup.
[Copy pasted from Kent McManigal’s Hooligan Libertarian Site]
My father never told me not to hit a woman. What he said was “Never hit a lady.” If she started it, she ain’t no lady.
– Studies show 71% of “domestic abuse events” are initiated by women. (of course mainstream science in the English language is polluted with statist power narratives. I don’t trust such a construct as – domestic abuse. It’s dubious to me, those who assert a general case can be extracted from some large population of individual cases.)
Social science in general proceeds from the wrong premise that institutions and societal norms are of paramount importance in any incident of spousal violence.
In a just, voluntaryist, society, what is relevant is only the parties involved in the event and maybe those organically connected to the parties. It is irrelevant to science what’s “right” for the collective, and things of that nature. Things that are characterized to support a “one-size-fits-all” iron law that cudgels by brute force every shape of peg into the state’s preferred round-hole solution.
– – –
There has been a great deal of discussion lately about “rape culture” and how women are somehow being oppressed by men in some elusive grand scheme known as “the patriarchy”. It really seems to be the overwhelming narrative in any discussion pertaining to gender. To hear some people tell it, men are just given free run to do as they please and take what they want from women, without consequence. This is baffling to me because my experience as a man has been anything but privileged, especially as it pertains to my dealings with the State.
I’ve got a number of such dealings which I hope to outline in a lengthy future article, but given some recent headlines, I thought it would be timely to release this particular story by itself. I was the victim of a false rape allegation.
In the early years of the previous decade, I sold drugs for a living. I rented a room from a friend and business associate, and by that I mean, I lived in a drug house. Marijuana was the bread and butter, but admittedly, we dabbled in other drugs when opportunity arose.
Selling drugs plugs one into a community of people which in some considerable part have serious issues, not the least of which includes sexual deviancy. On a not so irregular basis, we were involved in gang bangs, orgies, and partner swaps. I’m neither proud nor ashamed of this, it just was.
One day, my friend brought home a woman who none of us had met before. He had unprotected sex with her, and then left her at the house and went to go meet his girlfriend.
We were sitting in the den, me, her, and my other roommate. We were talking about whatever happened to be on the television at the time, and I steered the conversation to sex. She was all too happy to take it in that direction, and after a few minutes my other roommate took the hint and went upstairs.
I stood up, took out my dick from a few feet away, and she motioned for me to come toward her. I obeyed her command, and she took me into her mouth.
After a few seconds of deep throating me, she said “slap me” and again, I obeyed, with a tap on her cheek. She took me back into her mouth for a few more seconds and then repeated “Slap me!” and I repeated the same tap on the cheek. She looked at me as if I had insulted her and said louder “Slap me!” so I again obeyed, this time with a firmer hand. She took me into her mouth again, this time with a great deal more enthusiasm for a minute or two before repeating her command, “SLAP ME!” and I slapped her even firmer than before, but this wasn’t good enough. “I said fuckin slap me!” she yelled. So I wound up my hand all the way to my side, and smacked her across the face with an open hand quite hard. Her head jerked, she went from leaning toward me to having her back against the couch. Then she got up and said “Let’s go to your room”.
Again I obeyed. We went to my room, I sat down in a chair, and she took me back into her mouth. After a few minutes she said “don’t cum in my mouth”. This time I did not obey. As I climaxed, she backed away, quite upset that I had not done as she commanded. I was also quite upset, because there was now cum all over my shirt. We argued for a moment, but both apologized and decided to act like it never happened. We went back downstairs and watched television.
At some point she told me my roommate, let’s call him Joe, was her boyfriend, and that I better not tell him what happened. I informed her that “Joe” was out fucking his actual girlfriend, that she had no such status, and that I wasn’t about to lie to my friend in any case. This rather upset her. She had been drinking, and wasn’t into rationality at this point, so she threw her bottle of tequila across the room. She knocked over a lamp and said “you forced me!” I stood silent, stunned, and terrified.
Let me acknowledge that some of what I’ve done here wasn’t nice. Particularly the act of cumming in her mouth after she specifically asked me not to, was completely unacceptable. I’m not proud of what I’m admitting here, but I hardly think that having an orgasm during the course of a voluntary sex act amounts to rape.
She yelled again “You forced me!” and I said “Are you out of your fucking mind? Get the fuck out of here!”.
She ran for the door, went outside, and slipped on the ice. She picked herself up, ran across the street, and called 911.
A little while later, police showed up at our drug den, claiming a woman complained about being assaulted by men at our house. Our careers having taught us better than to talk to police, we kept our mouths shut, with the exception of my asking if I could leave. I was informed that I was being detained as part of a criminal investigation. This went on for several hours, with a police officer standing outside my bedroom door unwilling to give me any further information.
The woman eventually confessed that the sexual contact with both of us was consensual, the police officer left, and we drank ourselves unconscious to deal with the stress induced by the ordeal. Had she not confessed, police would have found his DNA in her vagina, and mine in her mouth. Combined with bruises from her slip on the ice, and our reputation as drug dealers, I’d likely still be in prison today if she had followed through on her lies.
Unfortunately, my story is far from unique. This kind of thing happens to better men than I every single day. Better men than I are in prison on flimsier evidence as we speak. Better men than I have been raped in prison over less. Better men than I have died over it, and it needs to stop.
Recent high profile cases have come out of the University of Virginia, and Columbia University, where stories that became media sensations turned out to be completely bogus. Even after the UVA story was proven bogus, the Washington Post published an article saying all rape claims should be believed by default. During the Grammy’s last night, Barack Obama aired a PSA repeating blatantly false statistics on rape, in hopes of further diminishing the standard of evidence in rape cases.
We don’t live in a rape culture, we live in a rape accusation culture. We live in a society where victimhood is incentivized. Where alleged victims are put on pedestals and above scrutiny, just for having made a claim, even with no evidence. To question them is to be put into the same class as a rapist.
My accuser confessed she lied. She was not prosecuted or punished in any way. Unfortunately, that is entirely too common. Women accuse men of rape, subject them to decades in prison, and even when they are proven to have made it all up, nothing happens to them. There is no legal deterrent to false rape accusations whatsoever, yet plenty of incentive to make them. With the rules of the system set in such a fashion, it should come as no surprise that false accusations happen all the time.
[Everything below the – – – was copy pasted from Christopher Cantwell’s AA&A website]
Just a short note, as a woman, I completely agree with you! It is never, ever OK to abuse/hit someone. WALK AWAY, before the law arrests you for defending yourself not matter how Righteous the hit back is.(male or female).
If you leave (the house), that’s abandonment.
If you refuse to talk to her and walk away, that’s abuse.
If she hits you, it’s a joke.
If you protect yourself, you go to jail.
Tell me how we’re “equal” again?
Left out: If she hits you, it’s because you deserve it.
And “if you protect yourself” means, hold your arms up to fend off a knife attack, stand there bleeding in front of the cops, and she doesn’t ahve a mark on her – welcome to “Primary Agressor” laws and the “Duluth Model” of domestic violence.
Women aren’t behind such nonsense as they’re being your equal. That kind of complex nonsense requires the dedication and singular focus of the male mind. A great hive of male minds in fact.
Generally, women pick and choose from what’s been made available to them. Women who’ve grown accustomed to inhuman schemes are a devastating effect of social authoritarianism, but they are not the cause of the problem.
Feminist equality was invented in 1673 by a man. It was subsequently expanded upon and propagated by a large number of other men
The Enlightenment figure François Poulain de la Barre invented modern feminism in the late 1600s. A dropout from theology studies at the Sorbonne, Poulain embraced the philosophy of Descartes, and became convinced of the injustice and absurdity of the subjection of women.
He assembled an entirely original social philosophy. His writings challenging male supremacy and his texts advocating gender and racial equality are the most radically egalitarian texts to appear in Europe before the French Revolution.
Poulain’s ideas of rational Christianity, and of the social and political implications of Descartes’s philosophy. Pioneered today’s ideas about equality that still influence and shape humankind to this day.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/francois-barre/ François Poulain de la Barre
Prior to Poulain and the enlightenment, most of those who discussed the natural abilities of women and their appropriate status in civil society or the churches, in the early modern period, appealed to two authorities: the Bible, and writings of authoritative authors (including ancient philosophers).
One guiding principle of Poulain’s thesis was his rejection of all such authorities (including revelation), and his reliance on reason or experience alone to decide questions about sexual equality.
His second epistemological contribution was to identify custom or tradition, as a social reality, as one of the main sources of beliefs that were generally held about women.
Thirdly, he suggested that self-interest on the part of men was a significant contributing factor to men’s beliefs about women. ‘Thus, everything men said about women should be suspect, because they are both judges and litigants’.
Poulain borrowed from Cartesians of the 1670s the idea that many common beliefs are ‘prejudices’. i.e., ‘judgments made about things without having examined them’
He also shared Descartes’ objections to scholastic styles of explanation.
Poulain applied both reservations to scholastic explanations of women’s alleged inferiority and asked: (1) was it factually true, or a mere prejudice, that women’s natural abilities were inferior to those of men? (2) whatever answer is given to (1), could the reality of women’s status in society be explained by reference to women’s nature?
Opponents of equality assumed a factual thesis about the alleged lack of natural ability on the part of women. In response to this, Poulain argued that there was no evidence to show that, apart from bodily functions associated with procreation, women’s bodies are different to those of men in any way that was relevant to the offices and functions in society from which they were excluded.
Secondly, the tradition on which most philosophers and Christian theologians in the early modern period relied concluded that ‘the mind has no sex’ , and that there was therefore no difference between the minds of men and women.
In principle, women were mentally and bodily as capable as men of exercising all the leadership positions from which they had been traditionally excluded, including those of professors, judges, and even ecclesiastical offices reserved for men.
Tor, I hit a woman, more than once trying to defend a friend who was defenseless from a very large, psychotically strong woman with a 6″ Buck knife intent on killing him and then turned that on me. Her arms were longer, esp with a 6″ knife and i was scared shitless. My ONLY regret was not having a gun. Of course if I had shot her, I would have been fried even back then. It would have been a 3 S situation had I wanted to live.
Eight,
Glad you got out of that situation as well as you did. In cases of self-defense, I think you have a right to do whatever seems best at the time. Including beating a woman until she’s unconscious. Shooting her. Whatever is needed. Anyone who claims there can be some kind of parliamentarian rules to a life and death scuffle have no idea what they’re talking about.
Couple of years back, I had sold a computer to a gal who was renting from me, and I was setting it up for her and about to leave. Then her roommate/slash girlfriend I guess came home and launches into an argument about some such. This big sista is livid about I know not what. Then some how, all the sudden I’m being yelled at, and accused of being in the unit for shady purposes, and the first gal is real meek and can hardly get a word out and the big chimp is fixing to rip a face off pretty soon.
The second gal is a big strapping angry dark skin African type, you know the ones that for all intents and purposes have the strength and bearing of a man. She’s somehow managed to get a kitchen knife into her hand, while I was just slackjawing it. I had just been watching the whole Jerry Springer thing go down, but foolishly without sensing any danger. I foolishly had not a clue that I was to be a part of this simian drama.
I must have stood for ten or fifteen minutes just listening to a long incoherent harangue in ebonics about her baby mama. Trying not to notice the knife so as not to further enrage anyone. Somehow the first girl had a baby, and the big second girl was the father, I have no idea what was going on. I’m the kind of guy that collects cash, and doesn’t want to know anything about anybody. For the life of me, I wouldn’t recognize either of these two if they were back in the room with me right now both wielding some cutlery.
So Black Betty, she ended up running out of steam, and in the end I just kind of walked out of there like nothing had happened. The girl that had bought the computer mostly just sitting there while the big one chimped out in a subdued manner as I drove off.
Never spoke a word of any of this, but a few days later, all three units in that old post WWII slab ranch, and all three of them had notices to vacate because I suddenly decided to renovate that whole sorry building. For no related reason of course.
As in any so-called crime, I keep everything to myself and look at what I could have done in hindsight. Which was a lot, I should never had put myself in the situation in the first place. Live and learn, is my motto anyway. You’re not a victim, if you could have avoided the problem in the first place, is how i see it.
Maybe others look down at me as some kind of scumbag slum lord, but the slums seem one of the few places left where you can still exercise some rights to your property. I’ll take these simpleton chimp hoods where nobody knows your name over any of your so-called nice neighborhoods.
In somewhere upscale, you end up with a complaint for who knows how many different reasons. Any one of your so called neighbors can anonymously narc you out, and you have no recourse but to comply or pay a huge fine or worse.
You’re sitting there in a battery cage, plucked like Stalin’s chicken and waiting nakedly for him to come take your eggs and hatch how ever much he demands of you since everything is in order, and there’s no hiding anything from anybody.
If you want to own a million dollar prison cell and private prison yard, have at it, but not me. In America, somewhere out in the woods or deep in the concrete jungle are the only places left where you can still be semi-free.
In Vegas metro, you can wake up to the sound of roosters right in the city, you don’t even have to cross the border into Mexico, you can experience a bit of Tijuana right here far removed from the Sinaloa cartels and friends. If you do it right, you can have the best of the first, second, and third worlds, all in one place.
Tor, If I have to leave the sticks, some place like that would be my second choice. If the name were changed in the city my SIl resides to Yuppieville, everybody there would just laugh and not yes. Before being over-ruled by the Supremes this summer, the had those breed specific dog laws and CJ wouldn’t be welcome even though he’s a sweetheart and loves everybody. He’d be ok where you are. I Might be.
Kids behave or Bangalore India police will be called
http://www.bangaloremirror.com/bangalore/cover-story/Kids-behave-in-school-or-the-police-will-be-called/articleshow/46568428.cms?
Mandatory biometric registry for all Pakistan cell phone accounts continues
http://mobileidworld.com/biometric-registry-for-cell-phone-users-continues-in-pakistan-2272/
Afghani Govt workers to be paid on their biometrically verified cell phone
http://mobileidworld.com/afghani-government-workers-to-be-paid-via-biometrics-3125/
Indonesian Police take to facebook to demand parents immediately report any T-shirts they see with cartoons of pandas having sex
http://jakarta.coconuts.co/2015/02/19/indonesian-police-ask-public-help-prevent-sale-panda-sex-kids-clothes
It occurs to me…
Maybe there IS some “conspiracy” of sorts, and they just ran out of countries ripe for test runs of various techniques and technology combinations…?
E.G., americans, even those not aware, are too jumpy to actually accept RFID chips and universal biometric ID?
So run that scheme in another country….
Allow unfettered migration….
As the population changes, as there is miscegenation (blurring genetic lines), as the technologies mature elsewhere (and here, depending on the tehnique & technology), it gets pored across geographic lines, and inserted into our lives universally, over time.
Which brings us back to the same ol’….
Because ultimately, it’s us or them…
Roosh V looks to be a rich spoiled brat Diaspora Persian living in Poland. Of course you can bang women around the world if you’re a freespending trust fund douche. Here’s his tweet:
Roosh @rooshv · Mar 17
My dad said he can hook me up with a semi-arranged marriage if I go to Iran. Is it hard to learn Farsi? I will help my people survive.
Roosh V Community Beliefs /My Response.
6. Elimination of traditional sex roles and the promotion of unlimited mating choice in women unleashes their promiscuity and other negative behaviors that block family formation.
Why is promiscuity negative. What concern of yours is it how many families form. Different women have different value hierarchies. You’re free to pursue “loose” women and enjoy them. And your also free to bond with “family forming” women and build a household with them. Some men have found you can do both, if you can shoot and shut up about it.
7. Socialism, feminism, cultural Marxism, and social justice warriorism aim to destroy the family unit, decrease the fertility rate, and impoverish the state through large welfare entitlements.
Impoverish the state. Who gives a fuck about the state. Of what benefit is it to you, the longevity and health of the state, I ask you. One portion of the state is attacking a differing portion of the state. Great. What kind of bootlicking authoritarian snuggler must you be to care about the heath of your assigned state in the first place.
I’m mystified by Germans who look up to muslims and turks. And to Americans who look up to Persians PUAs. Must be the money, and assigning false worth to idiocies that would never work if not for the wasting of piles of money like a drunken fool in the first place.
Cattle passport
Farmer forced to slaughter bullock when can’t prove time of birth
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/agriculture/farming/8085923/Farmer-condemns-cattle-passport-rules-over-bullocks-slaughter.html
Regulations mean all British cattle must be granted a ‘cattle passport’ within 27 days of being born.
However Mr Guy missed the animal’s arrival in Spring 2008 because he was nursing his wife during a bout of pneumonia while also looking after his terminally ill mother-in-law.
Only six months later did he notice that a member of the herd on his vast farm was not wearing the requisite ear tag to show it had been registered.
The savage masquerading as the wild man
I think of men like Clarkson as, culturally speaking, the enemies of men because they sell out their sex by playing an easy and self-serving game for which many other men end up being penalised. Without such males, radical feminism would have a harder job purveying the kinds of untruths it has succeeded in making axiomatic in our culture. The young man of today, seeking a model for the path forward, is confronted by a pseudo divide between the New Man and the Macho Man – terms corresponding approximately to Bly’s notions of the Savage and the Wild. Hence, at the point of entry into manhood, males are led to believe they must choose between troglodyte and wuss.
Feminism, in its obsession with the phantom enemy “patriarchy”, long ago launched a tactical war against masculinity, though not against the macho man – instead sneakily trading off a confusion between the two concepts of human adult maleness. It’s the strong “silent” Wild Man who represents the real threat to the agenda to utterly wussify society and silence for good the voice of fatherhood in the world.
Jeremy Clarkson is a Savage Man who offers no threat to this agenda. On the contrary, by influencing and misleading young men into thinking loutishness or sexual incontinence are the ways of the “real man”, the antics and pronouncements of such figures serve to vindicate the “toxic masculinity” thesis so vital to the noxious radical feminist agenda.
So is voting to tax by mile, rather than tax fuel immoral? What is the nature of voting in its essence?
How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I’ve heard it answered that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.
There are two principal demands that governments make upon its victims and fans: pay your taxes and vote. (Of course, there are many other “demands,” such as military service, send your children to school, have a drivers license, etc., but many of these are ancillary to the primary means of government survival, which is the collection of taxes.)
Now, of these two principal demands, taxation carries criminal sanctions: Pay your money or we imprison your body and/or confiscate your property. However, as yet in most nations of the world, failure to vote in government elections carries no penalty.
Governments, like all other hierarchical institutions, depend upon the cooperation and, at least, the tacit consent of those over whom they exercise power. In other words, government soldiers and police can force people to do things they don’t want to do, but in the long run–in the face of adamant opposition–such coercion is either too expensive or too futile to accomplish its goals of subjugating entire populations.
It is far simpler to motivate people to do what you want them to do, rather than forcing them to do it by pointing guns at them all the time. You can build a throne with bayonets, but you can’t sit on it long.
Educating generations of parents and children in government schools and teaching them to be patriotic and support their government in political elections is one of the fundamental ways governments garner public support.
Citizens are taught that it is both their right and duty to vote. But all this is done with an ulterior motive in mind. Participation is an instrument of government conquest because it encourages people to give their consent to being governed . Deeply embedded in people’s sense of fair play is the principle that those who play the game must accept the outcome.
Those who participate in politics are similarly committed, even if they are consistently on the losing side. Why do politicians plead with everyone to get out and vote? Because voting is the simplest and easiest form of participation and supporting the state by masses of people. Even though it is minimal participation, it is sufficient to commit all voters to being governed, regardless of who wins.
Not voting in government elections is one way of refusing to participate; of refusing to consent to government rule over your life. Non-voting may be seen as an act of personal secession, of exposing the myth behind “government by consent.” There are many reasons, both moral and practical, for choosing “not to vote.”
Truth does not depend upon a majority vote. Two plus two equals four regardless of how many people vote that it equals five.
Individuals have rights which do not depend on the outcome of elections. Majorities of voters cannot vote away the rights of a single individual or groups of individuals.
Voting is implicitly a coercive act because it lends support to a compulsory government.
Voting reinforces the legitimacy of the state because the participation of the voters makes it appear that they approve of their government.
There are ways of opposing the state, other than by voting “against” the incumbents. (And remember, even if the opposition politicians are the lesser of two evils, they are still evil.) Such non-political methods as civil disobedience, non-violent resistance, home schooling, bettering one’s self, and improving one’s own understanding of voluntaryism all go far in robbing the government of its much sought after legitimacy.
All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon . . . . Even voting for the right thing is doing nothing for it. So whatever you do, don’t play the government’s game. Don’t vote. Do something for the right.
State legitimacy will only be destroyed when sufficient numbers of people come to view government actions in the same moral light as that of the individual. If this moral leveling is not brought about, if this delegitimization is not accomplished, then violent revolution must inevitably fail, even if it were successful in battle. The destruction of State legitimacy must precede the advent of violent revolution, and when that has occurred, violent revolution will be unnecessary.
Libertarians should oppose the vote in principle – they should oppose the mechanism by which political sanctification occurs. Political power is legitimized through the electoral process. The present voting system is based on the premise that fundamental rights can be gained or surrendered depending on the vote total. Libertarians must oppose this unconscionable process. We must oppose the political process itself–the mechanism whereby some persons gain unjust (but legitimized) power…
Even in Germany before WWII, I would still refuse to vote against Hitler. Why? Because the essential problem is not Hitler, but the institutional framework that allows a Hitler to grasp a monopoly on power. Without the state to back him up and an election to give him legitimized power, Hitler would have been–at most–the leader of some ragged thugs who mugged people in back alleys.
Voting for or against Hitler would only strengthen the institutional framework
that produced him.
As Thomas DiLorenzo once wrote, Be Patriotic: Don’t Vote
The Gun Control Movement is Learning How to Win
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/11/the-gun-control-movement-is-learning-how-to-win/382407/
(I’m just presenting this as I found it…)
In Washington state, advocates passed some straightforward controls—by bypassing politicians terrified of the NRA and going straight to voters.
It’s been a rule of American politics for two decades that the gun lobby always wins. It wins in Congress, it wins in the state legislatures, it wins in the courts.
Not even the Sandy Hook massacre could shake its power: President Obama couldn’t even get a vote on new gun-safety measures, let alone enact them.
Instead, in 2014, the right to carry a weapon in public became law in the last holdout state, Illinois. Concealed carry is now the land of the land from sea to sea.
How the Gun-Control Movement Got Smart…
Last night, the voters of Washington state broke the rule. They adopted by a nearly 60 percent margin Initiative 594, a measure extending background checks to all weapons sales and transfers, with exceptions only for transfers between family members and temporary loans for sporting or self-defense purposes.
Initiative 594 discovered a way to bypass the state legislature to lay a gun-control measure directly before the voting public. Yesterday’s vote confirmed: The polls were right. If you ask them, the voters will approve gun restrictions.
Initiative 594 is a complex piece of legislation. Its text fills 18 pages, many of them technical changes to existing state statutes. Pages 2 through 6 are filled with a series of definitions to make the reader’s eyes glaze over.
That didn’t stop voters. Neither did the presence on the ballot of a competition measure that actually relaxed background checks beyond even their present gelatinous condition. Washington voters passed this gun measure even as they reelected a Republican governing majority to their state Senate.
This rare retreat by the NRA sets an example of how gun safety might be extended state-by-state in the years ahead. The initiative’s effect is modest and compelling. Subject to a few carefully delineated exceptions (gifts between family members, loans of firearms to a person in imminent danger of bodily harm, genuine antiques that use ammunition no longer commercially sold, and so forth), any sale or transfer of any weapon must comply with the same terms and conditions that apply to a sale by a licensed gun dealer. In other words: no more gun show loophole.
Gun shows may continue. Non-licensed vendors may continue to offer guns at gun shows. But if a non-licensed vendor finds a buyer, vendor and buyer must proceed to a licensed gun dealer and submit the buyer’s name for a background check before the sale can be legally completed.
When Michael Bloomberg and other deep-pocketed donors pledged themselves to gun reform, some observers imagined that he and they would waste their resources besieging the NRA on battlefields of the NRA’s choosing: state legislatures where intensely committed minorities can thwart even large-but-less-engaged majorities.
The success of 594 in Washington shows the way to a very different political contest, in which majorities can make themselves felt over and against small pressure groups.
Look for more such initiatives in 2016—a year when, with a president on the ballot, the electorate will be both larger and less conservative than in 2014.
594 is not the turning of the tide, of course. But it’s a harbinger of a possible new politics of guns, in which the nation’s gun rules will no longer be written by a fanatical and fearful minority of a minority.
—-
Highest rated comment out of 1200 comments
4 months ago
The biggest upset in Governor’s races yesterday was in Blue State Maryland where businessman Larry Hogan upset Lt. Governor Brown. A major The author of this article is dreaming.
– – –
How can I benefit from all this effort, I wonder. Assuming its better than nothing to spend all this time and resources fighting tyranny with their own system, how can I be part of it without wasting my limited time?
If there is a way, I’d be interested. But how does one fight unlimited political battles, especially when fiat currency billionaires can waltz in and outspend everyone many times over?
Because at $2/bullet, they lose more than it’s worth.
STOP PLAYING THEIR GAME, and it’s all over.
We’re accepting their definition of “Problem,” “Solution(A),” and “Solution(B).” Neither solution addresses the problem, and that is “by design.”
There IS the problem of necessary training, and anticipating their reaction – which means, they’ll work to limit access, armor vehicles, drone-attack us, and perform more random roadside searches, using asset forfeiture as an easy loophole (IE, you’re going to the range, as you do every week, and you have nothing to do with the actual attacks. However, the piggies manufacture an excuse to pull you over, then use asset forfeiture to take your gun. Legally owned, not used in a crime, properly secured – but you lose the gun because it MIGHT have been used in a crime, even though the serial number indicates it wasn’t. It’s for “your safety” that we disarm you, the law-abiding, so the sniper can be caught….)
Do you want to wait to resist the boot of tyranny until it has landed firmy in your face?
Q.V. films Shenandoah, the Patriot (who is a pussy until it affects him personally.)
Also, Q.V. “Age of apocalypse” storyline in the Marvel universe, where Apocalypse took over half the world for Mutants, and found when he decided to take over the other half, that he’d strengthened the sheep as well, and that world was left a smoldering ruin.
Summary is, we’ve allowed the evil to live, organize, subvert and corrupt us, and we never challenge it to open, objective combat. We always engage it on its own plane, where its subversion and lies are strongest.
We are coming OUT of a moral time, and passing through a time of wealth, also in its decline. The morality decayed slightly faster; the wealth was accumulated when morality was stronger, then it was passed to the next generation, and then – with the morality debased and decayed – the currency was doubly debased (inflation, devaluation, and price increases, with stagnant “real” wages) – NOW we lack the moral standing, backbone, whatever, to call a spade a spade – to knuckle down and do what’s needed.
“They” (by their very nature) are playing 3-dimensional chess, and taking our pieces – while we are playing a friendly game of chinese Checkers (no loss of pieces)…
If you have 200 hydra heads attacking, and you are one individual, it is difficult (impossible?) to deal with. Each of those heads is, in fact, a full hydra. We only THINK it’s a single beast.
Hence, “Join or die.” We need to group together to beat the “other” group. 😛 sick as that is.
But we form a coalition, or THEY steamroll us one at a time. It’s NOT. NEW. This is 1776, all over again – and I referenced Shenandoah for a reason: He was a Quaker, IIRC, a Pacifist, and thus wanted to stay out of the war. (Further, he doesn’t join in the war, thus making it very different from The Patriot.)
Gentlemen, the war is coming, the question is WHEN, and what will we lose, and how badly will we be beaten? “They” are firing one after another after another VOLLEY of shots across our bows; we, in our one-man dinghies, refuse to acknowledge this reality. We either join together into a Man-O-War (galleon, warship) so we can return fire – or we get shot to pieces, one at a time, and whether we are innocent or guilty is meaningless.
They are attacking us. Have been for years.
I know you’re tired of eharing it – but where is the line, for you? (Don’t answer, it’s rhetorical, and answering might be incriminating… 😛 )
But we need to stop typing, and start doing, and I don’t have a CLUE how to do it right – but we’re at the point where WRONG will trump “do nothing.”
Our devices are tracking us, and we are seeing people being chipped overseas. We’re seeing biometric technologies and IDs implemented overseas – but the tracking is being started here. THEY are ironing out issues in infrastructure and control over here, while they iron out the methodologies of REAL ID (biometrics) over there, and surveillance over there, too… Globalism, again. could that have happened if the companies were limited in size or by country?
More importantly, even if they WERE at one time size-limited: that law would stand in the way of profits…. how long would that law last, once morality decayed? a decade, maybe….? Look where we are since 2005, let alone 1995, let alone 1985, let alone 1975, 1965, 1955, etc? And how many things have gone wrong?
And looking back? It ain’t no accident, CAN’T be an accident.
There is no “nevinyrral’s disk” (called the “reset button”).
It is UP. TO. US.
and being a pacifist will still get you killed by a psychopath who doesn’t give a sh!t.
If you want to take that moral stance: that non-violence, even to your death, is better morally than defence, that is your right.
But at least acknowledge that that is what it is, and that apathy, laziness, and cowardice are the actual causes of most inaction. {that is not meant as an insult – unless it is true, and only the reader knows if it applies to him or her. If you are insulted – it likely applies. and in that vein, what have _I_ done? Better eating, better exercising, learning to shoot, acquiring various useful books – no electricity needed – and reading and talking to others to find like-minded individuals, without allowing it to become a “conspiracy”, which is how all movements for change actually start, anyway. Not much, but something. I need more time at the range, more training, more physical fitness, and more hands-on and practical skills… How about “you”…?)
“Rare retreat” by the NRA? Surely you jest. Somewhere in that legislation, they have thrown some special group to the machine and got crap in return. Same ol same ol for the NRA.
Gun Laws in Washington
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Washington
What if you would have “won” in Nov 2014 in Washington. There’s a hundred different ways they’re going to keep on skinning the cat. Maybe the Feds will pass something that supersedes WA law. Or the UN. Or commercial laws will be passed until a single shotgun costs $20,000. The sky is the limit for the PTB.
The center of the Earth 3,960 miles below us all is the limit of how low they will sink to get their way. If we see clearly, you’re right that they are only a paper tiger. The paper being the US currency and other currencies of the world.
We all need to ween ourselves from using paper tigers blood to finance anything. Reject money, and the compulsory economy, somehow. Start our own commodity based barter system.
Maybe there is a political way to bring back commodity based money. Maybe after America goes bankrupt and the world reserve currency is the Indian Rupee or the Hong Kong dollar.
Fighting for the capacity for self defense is extremely important. I don’t discount anybody doing anything at all they believe helps them.
Maybe Elon Musk will invent a series of electronic firearms that have a wifi controlling system and ai processing in the cloud. They’ll bankrupt all the conventional firearm makers.
The Tesla Taser rifle offers free ammo and discharges for life. His add on to google glass lets you shoot lasers out of your eye region at anyone you deem a threat.
You get all the home, personal, and property protection you want for $5 a month service charge from your IP. Your TV remote shoots thousands of different projectiles, lasers, pulses, and plasma. You see a criminal you say “OK Google” ‘kill’ the bad guy in front of me. Your Tesla remote powers every device in the world, and every payment system. Don’t leave home without out it. Oh you can’t its implanted in your wrist, I forgot.
But now ‘kill’ means incapacitate for a 24 hour period. The Google meat wagon spins buy and picks up the catatonic carcass of the guy you shot and they process him for you, no fuss no muss.
The guy comes to, but now his compliance chip is in incarceration mode and he’s paralyzed and unable to do anything until Elon, Google, Amazon and Associates decides what to do with him on your behalf.
Its your choice how you associate and cooperate with people. You don’t have to be a cyberhermit. You can rub elbows and band together with whatever hoi polloi you choose. I don’t offer any specific solutions to any problems. Just a general belief in the wisdom of productive individuals to do whats best for them.
Anarcho Capitalism has some things right, but other things wrong. It may well not be the case that DROs are the answer. The truth might be there is no answer to some things that we’ve grown accustomed to believing have answers.
The founders didn’t give good collateral. Not enough producers and makers made good their words and ideals a continuing reality and going concern.
Two hundred and some years ago, an allegedly brave collective signed their names to a document they asserted would change the course of human history.
Fifty-six or so men preened about in wigs and short pants in an impressive dog and pony show publicly declaring their commitment to the “self-evident truths” that formed the foundation of a new tyranny which greatly raised the bar for those hoping to continue the life of luxury of being a beacon of hope and idol of self-sacrifice for mindless sheeple around the world who have ever yearned to be slaves to something that sounded awesome sounding, since they lacked the fortitude to create something of value on their own without one againing into the breach of the great Man Vagina bottomless pit of self-sacrifice of vichysissytude and homoerotic clusterfuckery of a dogpile gleaming orgy of ravenous last twilight’s zombie yankee doodles of rockets red glaring anal raping and pillaging in the New Jerusalem.
The final sentence of the Declaration of Independence is a promise among the signers, to “mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor,” and many of them and their fellow patriots did in fact sacrifice their lives and fortunes in service to our country. No loss of life or money could ever diminish the honor of these heroes, and it is that honor that we celebrate today.
Over two centuries ago, fifty-six men put their lives on the line to preserve and protect the freedoms that are the God-given unalienable rights of all free people.
Today, as I think back about the incredible amount of courage it must have taken to publicly sign their names to this document, I cannot help but think that the best way to honor this courage is for each of us to consider making a similar personal pledge to our fellow Americans.
This is not a year to sit on the sidelines, not a year to watch from the bench. “The most important election of our lifetimes” may start to sound like a cliche but it increasingly seems to be true.
What can you do that will help ensure that these freedoms continue to be part of the American legacy? Can you volunteer a Saturday afternoon to knock on doors for a candidate? Can you take an evening to attend a candidates’ debate so you can be certain you are an informed voter? Can you help register new voters in your county? Can you write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper? Can you donate $5, $10, or $20 to candidates who you support?
If voting did any good, things would not have continued to go downhill whether I voted or not. I no longer think I have the right to push my ideals upon you by voting for someone to do to you things that are morally reprehensible.
I cannot give government a right I do not have, i.e. I can not give them the right to steal from you for any reason or to control your life in any way. I own me and you own you…therein lies the bottom line that makes all government an illegitimate fiction.
I signed a petition to keep Loretta Lynch out of the AG’s office, gun-grabbing, rights grabbing B she is. Vermin…..crawling from the woodwork of the “Capitol” to join the ranks of other vermin eyeing the same prize(s). If voting worked we wouldn’t have to spend money to try to keep the worst out and we’re rarely successful at that. For reasons I can’t even begin to understand, I just thought of Turd Burglestein and wondered what he was doing. I think it was the video he once posted of circling turds.
I’m still alive for now…just haven’t been online much lately. I got fucked up real bad in a car accident last year when a big truck with a texting/driving asshole slammed into the back of my miata doing about 50 when I was stopped at a light. I’m finally past the concussion, but was crippled from the resulting nerve damage. Now I’m just waiting for the lawsuit to drag out over the next couple of years so I can get my money and retreat from civilization to our land in amish country…hopefully before the SHTF…where I can hunt some deer off my back porch and live the simple life I’ve dreamed about for so many years.
Worst part of all this though is because of the nerve damage I can’t poop right most of the time now and docs said I’m going to need a colostomy bag if my condition deteriorates any further. Then I won’t be burgling turds anymore and I’ll have to change my name to ColostomyBag Burglestein or maybe Shitbag Smuggler. Which new name do you think would serve me better?
Jesus, Turd… I’m sorry to hear this.
It’s been a rough year all around.
Yeah…I was out of work for 6 months from it and just went back in December. Fortunately my company really likes the work I do and kept my position open until I could return, but now it’s going to be hell trying to catch up on all the bills and of course our wonderful healthcare that I paid all that money for (Thanks Fucking 0bama) won’t pay my medical expenses because it was from a car wreck so now I’m desperately trying to get my bills caught up and if I put every cent I make towards my monthly bills and all the credit cards I ran up during those 6 months I might be able to dig out from under most of this by the end of year. As soon as I get caught up, I’m going to kick a few $’s to help support the cause here.
TB
“retreat from civilization to our land in amish country” – sure you don’t mean ‘retreat TO civilization’ in Amish country?
True…I actually would be retreating to civilization. Because what’s going on here with this black brunch atlanta shit is going to be the death of me when I beat one of those bastards in the head with my cane for ruining my lunch.
Turd, good golly miss molly. Sorry to hear that. Best wishes to you. July 23 last year a texting/fucked up truck driver(sand frac rig)ran up my dovetail lowboy with a load of culverts(nearly riding over my tractor) fucking up my spine and vision. I’m much luckier being in a big rig myself although it totaled my trailer and nearly my spine. I continued to truck though since pain meds and benzodiazepines seemed better than starving. I surely didn’t suffer like you though. I hope laughing doesn’t hurt since Dec 10 my rig, sans me and the seat cover I was dragging with my butt was a victim of a malfunctioning signal and a Northern Pacific that did a number on that rig. I was hauled to the ER in June from a carbon monoxide poisoning in a big KW(RIP mf and good riddance)where they pronounced me “the worst case they’d ever seen”. And I thought that was probably my event for that year since I had never had an accident in a big rig.
It’s like Forrest’ box of chocolates, you just never know what you’re gonna get next. I wish you the best case scenario and plenty bucks. It’s beginning to look like the monetary part for me might be a bit shy.
Anyway, good luck and check back in when/if you can.
They’ve got me on 20 mg oxycodones 3x a day which gets the pain down just enough to where I can sit at my desk for 6 hrs and not be too wasted while I work. Sorry to hear you were also victimized by one of these texting/driving assholes too…the worst kind of clover out there.
Anyways, thanks for the well wishes and I’ll check in here from time to time.
TB
You really do hurt or have a hell of a tolerance. I had fiery, tingling extremities so long I was about to give up but then two months of herbal treatment and that went away. I suspect I won’t get reinbursed for that but just not having those symptoms are worth it all. It was a last ditch thing and I’m lucky it worked.
Modern politicians under worldwide fiat banking are absolute frauds, no exceptions.
There is no real economic calculation anywhere. They are thugs and accomplices who extract resources by force and compulsion. It’s utter lunacy to look at so-called government budgets and pretend they have anything in common with a businesses budget.
Fuel tax is raw theft. It’s already been consumed before it was even extracted by its victim. First and foremost, theft/taxation occurs at a level many multiples of any of our true transactions and exchanges of value.
Just because a politician wears a suit, he wears it as a costume of authority. There is no reality. When a politician wears a hardhat he is donning the costume of value production. When he poses with a shovel breaking ground, he is wearing a costume of a value producer to trick you into thinking he produces something.
Likewise when he mouths speeches. Poses as an academic. A caring family patriarch or clan leader. Under total fiat banking unreality, he’s just a dog and pony show distraction. No one politician is any different from any other. They all just exist to perpetuate the myth of fractional reserve banking as long as he can. So the ruling class can benefit from their heist for as long as they can.
Don’t believe a word of any of it.
>They are thugs and accomplices who extract resources by force and compulsion
Tor Libertarian, I share your views on nearly every matter that you have addressed here, but I’d like to point out that by voting for one’s rulers and masters, one becomes an equal accomplice to their acts of violence via the proxy of the voting booth and the state’s guns. It’s no different than hiring a hit man to murder someone (or a group of people hiring a hit man). Voting is violence by proxy!
The only exception would be voting to beg one’s rulers and masters for liberty in the form of a vote cast exclusively AGAINST an act of government initiation of force (a vote against new laws, measures, taxes, bonds, etc.) However, even this sort of vote implies one’s approval of a system of proxy violence and blesses it as being morally legitimate. I cast such votes with great trepidation and the gravest concern about this consequence (my vote against the Washington I-594 universal gun registration measure being the most recent example where I caved and participated in the unethical system).
America doesn’t have real voting, it’s largely just a dog and pony exercise. I’d say a voter has about as much influence as a Nielsen family has on what we watch on TV.
A Nielsen viewer is only allowed to choose from a few manufactured choices. He has no mechanism to affect what’s offered on his TeeVee in the first place.
Following this thread of reasoning, I don’t blame Nielsen families for the programming I watch on TV. And I don’t much blame voters for the crimes and impositions of the state.
The problem with voting is the way it greases the skids to even greater acts of coercion and organized violence.
I don’t think in terms of groupings. Sure principled non-voters as a group are superior to eager voters who live for the chance to choose the precise ways the state is going to predate on us and devour our carcasses while we’re still alive.
Those kinds of voters are sick. But someone who votes specifically against the buzzard feasting on gun owners aren’t a problem. They’re probably not much of a solution either. But if you as an individual feel it is to your benefit to vote against gun restrictions. I don’t see what objections I could raise against this. Just don’t cast another vote to increase the school tax or any other votes while you’re in there.
Vote No On Initiative 594 – NRA
https://www.voteno594.com/
What makes 594 so bad
https://www.voteno594.com/initiative-594/
1,000 gunowners violate 594 after it passed in November 2014
http://townhall.com/columnists/rachelalexander/2014/12/15/over-1000-gun-owners-violate-washingtons-i594–in-front-of-police-n1931759/page/full
>America doesn’t have real voting, it’s largely just a dog
>and pony exercise.
I mostly agree. However, much of the reason that it’s a dog and pony exercise is people are very susceptible to propaganda and brainwashing. They have very limited ability to detect valid data and perform well cognitively! I am not saying that voting would be a legitimate exercise, if people did control their own minds. People usually don’t have any moral objections to interfering in other peoples’ lives or controlling others using the proxy violence of the state either. In fact, most people believe that participation in democracy is virtuous. If they realized that they have been sold a hefty sack full of falsehoods and double standards in what constitutes moral behavior, the state would end.
>if you as an individual feel it is to your benefit to vote against
>gun restrictions. I don’t see what objections I could raise against
>this. Just don’t cast another vote to increase the school tax or
>any other votes while you’re in there.
That was my point. Casting votes that cannot result in the initiation of force against others is the only morally sound ballot box activity. Votes that result in the state’s guns being turned toward people who are not harming anyone is a violation of the non aggression principle. Even voting for the most benevolent ruler and master (Ron Paul?) is still an initiation of force against others.
If you think that the I-594 referendum and peoples’ participation at the polls was moot, you are terribly wrong. Just attend a gun show in Washington state. Dare to advertise and complete a “paperless” in-state firearms transfer in WA on GunBroker! All the gun sales from those kinds of transactions now result in registered guns. Sure, there’s safety in numbers when committing acts of civil disobedience, but their benefit is very limited and individual unlawful acts WILL be singled-out and people WILL be caged by the state’s armed agents (or killed, if people resist the cage), as a result!
The people of Washington state DID possess the power at the polls to deny the tyrants this new control over people; Washingtonians simply lacked the cognitive power to resist the tyrants’ mind control (including the control of their emotions) in the form of election propaganda. Sadly, the people of Washington, like everywhere else, are highly susceptible to propaganda and fear-mongering, I know that the outcome of this initiative might have been very different, if the pro-gun advertising dollars had matched the Microsoft and Bloomberg-fueled arsenal of funds! The NRA really dropped the ball by not spending big bucks to oppose I-594, and now the tyrants’ cancer is spreading to other states.
>And I don’t much blame voters for the crimes and impositions of the >state.
I do! If people could be convinced to not participate in the state (BE a part of the state) at the polls, I think the state would be very short-lived. However, I admit that we anarchists are faced with a chicken and egg situation where this change in people must be accompanied by other changes in order to occur–and it will not happen until how people think changes.
Again, voting is like hiring a hit man. Due to their incompetency, or a fraudulent contractual representation, or a number of other reasons, the hit man may not accomplish his contracted task, but the act of hiring him, like voting, is an initiation of violence via a proxy.
But, I don’t really care why people might choose to not vote. If they choose to not vote because they believe it is pointless, that’s fine with me. I only care about peoples’ actions and care not at all about their motivations. If people don’t fuck with me, I don’t care at all why they choose to leave me alone!
I’m going to address one thing first. America is not even a federal democracy. if we were, we would have popular votes on things, and the majority would rule.
Switzerland is an example where voters have a real say in matters. Here’s their referendums for 2014.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_referendums,_2014
1 Abortion initiative 30% for 70% against.
2 Against mass immigration 50.3% for 49.7% against
3 Financing/Development of railway infrastructure 62% for 38% against
4 JAS 39 Gripen procurement 47% for 53% against
5 Minimum wage 23% for 76% against
6 Primary health care 88% for 12% against
7 Restrictions on pedophiles 64% for 36% against
8 Unified health insurance fund 62% for 38% against
9 Hospitality industry VAT initiative 29% for 71% against
10 Gold reserves 23% for 77% against
11 Immigration cap 26% for 74% against
12 Flat tax abolition 41% for 59% against
To take only number 5, Swiss voters rejected the proposal to raise the national minimum wage to 22 dollars an hour, which would have been the highest minimum wage in the world if it had passed. That’s a nation with voting.
That’s democracy. You vote on policies. Dog and Pony faux democracy is voting for this clown or the other clown, either one of which does whatever they’re told by their financiers, with no control by voters.
None of us are voting for gun laws. Import deals and trade agreements. Surveillance. Obamacare. We have no say. We are not citizens. We are “free” to become rich enough to incorporate and internationally diversify our wealth. Or else suffer under fiat currency oppression and impoverishing.
Switzerland is a respectable country that other countries take seriously.
America is a land of deluded psychopaths. A people who promised to be the world’s banker and redeem their dollars at the rate of 35 per ounce of gold. They abided by their promise from 1945 – 1971.
Then they said F you world. We’re a great society now. We’re paying black people to lounge about in ghettos. We’re paying women to have illegitimate children and not work either. We’re devaluing all your savings so we can give free food to any American who wants it. We’re fighting a war in Vietnam that has nothing to do with us. We’re paying for the privilege of murdering millions of strangers.
We’ll give you as much or as little as we want for your gold. Later on, we said, we’ll give you nothing, but we’ll buy whatever things you make and sell to us, no questions asked.
We’ll even force our own citizens not to produce anything of value anymore, to make sure they have to buy from you. And we’ll start wars all over the world. And we’ll build highways in Saudi Arabia and dams in China. We’ll obligate 320 million American captives to unending slavery for generations to come.
It’s exactly like what happened in Russia now in America. Everything disappeared. All truths and conventions were washed away. America is the Soviet Fiat Banker of the world now. We’ll support our worldwide comrades in authority until our last dying gasp and final collapse.
If we keep inventing things and creating new products and worlds we can continue. The internet helped a lot. There’s still fracking. And arctic, antarctic and ocean mining and drilling. Maybe there’s asteroid mining. And 3D printing.
Our films movies are opiates for the masses of the world. But the UK is the ones who make or break us. The UK is hedging their bets, and relying more and more on India, Australia, Canada, Singapore, South Africa.
The UK doesn’t want to kill its golden American goose. But if forced to they will do so.
http://www.commonwealthofnations.org/commonwealth/commonwealth-membership/commonwealth-members/
>That’s democracy. You vote on policies.
“Policies?” Now there’s some truth-diverting semantic smoke and mirrors! No– in democratic mechanisms, you vote for the rule of law. You vote for when, how, and on whom the guns of the state will be trained. Usually the state’s guns are turned on people who have caused no harm to others.
It makes no difference to me (or the philosophy that I embrace) whether a dictator or the democratic mob controls my ass! In fact, a monarchy can result in far greater and longer lasting liberty than is found in most democracies or our alleged republic (which, even as the founder of the U.S. envisioned it, contained many elements of democracy and mob rule).
If there was one thing that I learned from my public school indoctrination…err, I mean education, it was the awareness that democracy results in double standards in the use of force. My 6th grade class voted on each day’s recess activity. Every day the majority members of the class imposed their will on two of us who always dissented but were forced to play softball with the other kids in the class. Voting is so repeatedly crammed down kid’s throats, sold to them, and reinforced as a virtuous method for eliciting human action and participation in social structures and activities that it’s no wonder that non-violence and voluntarism seems to be such a foreign and impossible basis for a society to most people.
I’m not arguing pro or con anything. Nor am I going to defend any terms. Let’s just call it the political means. I reject every form of the political means as I understand them. Specifically for America and Americans.
Not necessarily other countries that I don’t know much about.
This means “we” the sheeple can’t necessarily accomplish anything via any system whatsoever until some truths are told and some grievances are addressed.
Under anarchy as I conceive it, there is no “official” meaning imposed on everyone. No “official” best practice chosen by any means and imposed on everyone. Especially not for the pig ignorant Americans we all know so well and loathe.
There’s 8 million people in Switzerland who as I understand it, are able to run their country under a political means. I’ve only read about them, I have no first hand knowledge, but their system seems like one of the least worst.
How is it smoke and mirrors to define my own individual system and demarcation line of what’s mine and fight for it as best I can. Maybe you have some means to find other good people and collude with them to accomplish a social goal. I am far too poor for that luxury.
IIRC Eric seemed to say his neighbors have a local imposed way of doing certain things, and for the most part he like it. All well and good. Maybe if Mama Liberty were my neighbor, I’d feel differently.
I choose to live in an isolated manner among broken down infrastructure and dysfunction. That affords me some self-rule capacity because others around me can’t even assemble capital or reason on the self-attendant level that I have been taught.
My family has a long tradition of doing their own thing and minding and promoting their own. This doesn’t scale at all as far as going out and finding folks in gated communities and fancy suburbs who have my values.
Where am I to go, except for online at Eric’s place. I really do owe him far more than I’ve contributed to him. It’s shamefull really.
Because no one has my true core values. And those who know me don’t even know my true values, I don’t disclose or share them. Eric changed my thinking about alternate sexuality permanently, and for that I’m grateful. Surely, I have much farther to go though.
Perhaps you’ve heard of unconditional love, where you love someone regardless. I’ve been raised under unconditional individual sovereignty where a man might do whatever he will, so long as he can do so with out injury to others of his phyle. Whatever you think right under your own roof is right. No exceptions. None.
Maybe I’ll be out jogging and see an old lady beaten and unconscious. I might stop to help. Help myself to her valuables that is if I can successfully grab them. If I don’t know her, or have an idea of who she is, she’s nothing to me any more than some starving kid in Somalia’s next meal is anything to me.
That’s my version of hardened realism. And hardened anarchy and self-preservation. Of course this is ad absurdum. But the principle is a sound one that’s worked for generations, if worse comes to worse, which I believe it already has for much of America.
When enough of you somewhere start making good on your broken promises to the world. And return all you’ve stolen from the people of the Earth through your epic mismanagement and relentless fiat holocausts. Then I’ll start to consider the actual issues you claim to hold near and dear of those who consider themselves Americans of some sort.
I am no American. Or Nevadan. Or Christian. Or Father. Or employee. Or friend. Or neighbor. Or any of unlimited promises of self-restraining hierarchy-hives based on punishment and self sacrifice.
Until then, I’m just a hostage and an inmate in a giant free range police state that calls itself the United States of America. I am illegal alien minority of one, with nothing in common with this planet at all, unless a reckoning and accounting is to be made over each and every detail of each and every instance.
In the best case of majoritarian rule i’m aware of you vote on the details of what is to be enforced on everyone else at gunpoint. One size for all. No exceptions.
America doesn’t even rise to that low level, does it.
Law is the proper word it appears. Though for me that word is useless. I can copy down what others say it means. But i don’t believe any of it.
Trying to use law in a sentence. Gives me the same problems as using the word god or jesus in a sentence. It’s not really a noun I’m able to employ in any meaningful way.
Law and Scripture are each equivalent words I think. Two religious irrational terms that mean whatever the nearest Humpty Dumpty says they each mean.
It’s difficult to discuss, since all the words available are designed to obfuscate and mislead.
Policy…
A policy is a deliberate system of principles to guide decisions and achieve rational outcomes.
A policy is a statement of intent, and is implemented as a procedure or protocol. Policies are generally adopted by the Board of or senior governance body within an organization whereas procedures or protocols would be developed and adopted by senior executive officers.
Policies can assist in both subjective and objective decision making. Policies to assist in subjective decision making would usually assist senior management with decisions that must consider the relative merits of a number of factors before making decisions and as a result are often hard to objectively test e.g. work-life balance policy.
In contrast policies to assist in objective decision making are usually operational in nature and can be objectively tested e.g. password policy.
The term may apply to government, private sector organizations and groups, as well as individuals.
Presidential executive orders, corporate privacy policies, and parliamentary rules of order are all examples of policy.
Policy differs from rules or law. While law can compel or prohibit behaviors (e.g. a law requiring the payment of taxes on income), policy merely guides actions toward those that are most likely to achieve a desired outcome.
– You’re 100% right. Policy is not the right word in this situation. In America you vote for this or that middleman. Or this or that question put before the public on the behest of some power group.
– In Switzerland, you vote for the law itself. And also various questions. As a bystander, it does look like they have a lot more say over matters than does an American. But I can’t say for sure.
i study British politics, Australian politics, japanese politics. On the off chance there might be something of use to learn.
Not American politics. That looks to be a useless cesspool. The American political machine looks to be constructed to serve worldwide agendas that are counter to anyone living in America.
Why study the gang signs of the crips or bloods. Or American politics. They’re all of no interest to me, since I’m not willing a part of any of these three organizations.
“The human race divides itself politically
into those who want to be controlled,
and those who have no such desire.”
— Robert A. Heinlein
The one way Nielsen families could influence TV would be if a large number of them just turned the TV OFF, thereby convincing potential advertisers that they would be wasting their money by financing ANY show.
Maybe we could hijack a frequency, and talk directly to the people.
Max Headroom Incident – pirates hijack Chicago TV broadcast to air bizarre and creepy tirade in 1987
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t32JpruyLZk
Article
http://altereddimensions.net/2014/max-headroom-incident-pirates-hijack-chicago-tv-broadcast-bizarre-creepy-video-1987
Fuel taxes do pay for nearly all upkeep, but politicos occasionally raid them for boondoggles like public transit, especially “passenger rail” fiascos.
Imagine how bad roads would be if all fuel taxes were siphoned off into the general fund…well, I bet that will happen in a few years.
Toll roads are bad because you’re handing the keys to the kingdom away to a private concern who can charge whatever they like over and above the cost of maintenance/repairs.
Bill in NC, in some states, fuel taxes are siphoned off into all sorts of funds, generally slush funds they can raid for any type of boondoggle as you accurately term it.
Before Abbott became guv of Tx. he called for $500M to be used for hiring more DPS(exactly what we don’t need and even the DPS said they couldn’t staff it as they can’t even keep up with staffing now). So now he’s guv, the number has arisen to $858M. Of course no one can speak to how that number has escalated.
If you could see the traffic in Tx. for the last few years, you’d wonder why the fund isn’t rolling in dough. The answer is in those funds designated for highway repair more and more bureaucrats(and politicians) have the ability to move that money to various other funds(hospitals, privately owned and making lots of money for one example). And the state has it’s own bunch in Austin who want big money for various and sundry things that aren’t of any value except the few who will receive them. Many of these things are like the Kangaroo Rat the feds said was endangered. Uh-oh. Looks like I’d better keep the lid on Squealer(a young tomcat)who had same one day this week that became a pass-around toy for the other cats. I knew of a guy near O’Donnell Tx. who farmed and so the EPA, USDA or some other entity said violated the protection of these animals. I’m guessing he broke out some acreage that had the contract for set-aside run out and since he was no longer paid to not farm it, needed to do something with it to generate revenue. I don’t know how he was singled out, probably going back to some local or maybe federal enemy. In the end the “govt.” took a great deal of his land and ruined him. This has been 25 years ago but you see how something like that could happen with out of control govt.(no other kind).
As far as toll roads go, the newest one in Tx. goes around a huge mess of interstate near Austin. The fees must be fair or it wouldn’t be used to the point it’s being used now. My only gripe is the company who built it bowed to the DPS to let them control “law enforcement” on it and the PSL is 85mph, way too slow for a great segment of the driving public. The only time I drove the PSL on I-20 yesterday on a parts run for a truck was when a DOT pulled on in front of me and set his cruise at 75mph. It’s not a good idea to pass these guys. Once off though, everybody sped back up to 80mph and more.
MY point though is that as long as politicians determine that money can be drained from one fund to another or just the fact they can determine money collected in any way, the system if ripe for the abuse that it gets.
I, and my cohorts in big rigs use hundreds of gallons of fuel(each of us) every day. That’s a significant amount of money in itself. The fact that cars are fairly rare in Tx. also tells me the private 4 wheeled conveyance(mostly light trucks) are putting a significant amount of money into this fund also.
“Toll roads are bad because you’re handing the keys to the kingdom away to a private concern who can charge whatever they like over and above the cost of maintenance/repairs.” Yeah, not a chance the good G boys would miss-allocate anything they steal from us.
Mike
Just came home from the grocery store…..Or what I like to call Downtown Juares
Mexico.My church yesterday helped pass GLBT bill that does not let me descriminate on my own property.(Utah Gay rights Bill)And now Oregon wants to further invade my life? GReeeeat! I like Oregon, it is at the end of my driveway(150 yards).
Fortunately I am on the Idaho side!! Where I can pump my own gas and can’t
Kill my grandma when she becomes more of a liability than asset.
Hi Tired,
Like the tide, it’s only a matter of time before you get wet….
OHHHH don’t fear my comrade .The sand crabs are dining on what is left of me
on this side of the dotted line.!!
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fb/Cattle_eating_grass_through_barbed_wire_fence.jpg/640px-Cattle_eating_grass_through_barbed_wire_fence.jpg
tired, I thought Juares Mexico was the former San Antonio. I can only tell the uninitiated and unwary, BE wary……and stay north. Try to not get very far south of New Braunfels.
eric, tide is wholly accurate.
Closest exo-planet is a Super-Earth. It’s only 271,932 AUs away. (An AU is the average distance from the Earth to the sun)
25,277,659,000,000 miles away. Fastest instellar vehicle currently travels at 100,000 mph.
252,776,590 hours away using current tech, which is 28,836 years. Homo Sapiens have been around for 250,000 years. So not that long, relatively speaking. In 2018, a new faster technology will be tried.
Even without FTL, we can leave this solar system if we plan long term.
Yes, “legacy” ships. Multi-generational.
A long (and hard) haul.
On the upside, those who take the trip – their progeny, anyhow – would be free of earthy Cloverism by dint of time and distance. If FTL existed and became as widespread as, say, travel by jet airplane, Cloverism would simply spread across the galaxy, then the universe.
Perhaps the aliens are right – and the plague must be contained.
Alina Kabaeva make Vladimir Putin glorious new comrade for Russian republic future!
Typical cowardly government cretins, do what ever the parasitic masters pay them to do.
Tax by the mile will encourage hackers to develop devices that will plug into your ODB port that will alter the signals. This is inevitable. This will just as inevitably lead to road blocks (much like the DUI ones) where our betters will do at least one of these two things if not both:
1. Physically inspect our car for the illicit device (these devices will definitely be outlawed);
2. Check their real time database to verify that our ODB says it is where we are (at the road block).
Fail either of these two checks and you can expect severe consequences.
I don’t want to give the government people any ideas but long story short there is a parallel system of automated number plate readers that are going in now.
Unless there is an emergency override button on the signal altering device allowing it to revert back to normal at the flick of a switch…. Approaching a road block? FLICK! Nothing to see here officer…..
Utah just passed a gas tax, partly in response to less gas being used. Blackguards.
Would they have a problem with me paying my per mile tax with lead projectiles of the 9mm variety?
They would not have as much problem with the payment as they would with the method of payment delivery….
It’s time for car owners and enthusiasts to unite in the manner that gun owners have. We are achieving some successes in restoring freedoms to own and use and carry firearms. Cars are even more important on a day to day basis. Politicians fear the wrath of the NRA, and they should be even more fearful of car owners. A politico who even suggests a mileage tax should be removed from office–now! Same goes for those who prohibit the importation of specialty cars such as JDM vehicles, London Taxi Cabs and other vehicles that collectors covet. Those cars are perfectly safe in their own home environments, and I can’t see that they pose a threat to American motorists in the relatively small numbers that would show up here. Likewise, the small, economical diesels you often speak of. A friend of mine had a VW diesel that had to have the top end of the motor rebuilt after an absurdly small number of miles. Now I know why–the exhaust gases and soot were being recirculated into the intake manifold. Foolishness like that should cost politicians and bureaucrats their careers.
Patrick –
“Politicians fear the wrath of the NRA” – I don’t know why. The NRA is a bunch of weinie sell-outs – always willing to accept ‘reasonable’ restrictions on gun ownership. The 2nd Amendment says “shall not be infringed.”
Gun Owners of America is better. JPFO (Jews for the protection of firearms ownership) better yet.
Sadly, that’s no longer the case with JPFO. After Aaron died, it fell on tough financial times and was purchased (“merged” with) Alan Gottlieb and his Second Amendment Foundation. Gottlieb has been very compromising in the past and even supported the Toomey-Manchin Act–at least initially when he argued that by not compromising we’d just end up with something worse.
These sorts of compromises play right into the gun grabbers’ plan, because, they know that they WILL win in the end, if we compromise!
The only two uncompromising rights groups I can recommend are GOW and OFF (Oregon Firearms Federation.) OFF is also highly effective but there may be other uncompromising state or local organizations too.
Calin, if you’ll do some research you’ll find the best buck spent against the gun control lobby is the outfit that puts ALL the money into lobbying(threatening with accurate figures up front to the politicals), the Gun Owners of America. They manage their money to keep the pressure on legislators.
Oops–I meant GOA–not GOW. Thanks for bringing the typo to my attention, Eightsouthman.
The NRA helped write the Brady Bill, among other anti-gun bills. To keep a bayonet lug and a flash hider both on an AR 15 and then they, once again, threw another politically unpopular group deeper into the grinder, the people who get caught with an illicit substance(almost always illicit drugs). They roll over like lap dogs and have often suggested various groups to target in legislation that kept their own stupid clover following feeling better and eager to contribute. In that keeping, I’d like to posit the theory that they actually knew they were throwing their base to the maw of federal tyranny. Everyone with half a brain knows country people are the very ones who keep firearms for sporting and self defense measures. I like to use a 00 Buck, #4 magnum, 00 Buck, #4 Magnum sequence. 00 or #2 shot(if you can find it). The #4 follows the 00 Buck that can be cycled out if need be and start with #4. This is common in the wild country I live in. Buck for big stuff, #4 for smaller and Cholley Jack for anything but big cats. I guess he’s managed to avoid being pig shit(since he lying here at my feet) so must know that routine. Reminds me, I need to order a wifi game cam….or 4…. I’d advise these new wifi game cams for everybody. Game comes in all forms. It sometimes has bad things in mind for you when you aren’t even aware “the game is on”.
Sins of the NRA are part of the organization and have been since shortly after its inception. Pierre can KMA…..and all those stupid people who give money to a suck-ass organization. I apologize if these two syllable words make me seem “uppity”. ………dumbasses………… I quit the NRA in 1979 when I realized just what they were. They haven’t gotten better.
Eric, I didn’t read all the comments, but what about sema are they doing anything to prevent this? I don’t own a vehicle newer than 1970 and I’m not going too. And I’m not putting any computer crap in my car either. Also what about bikes? Is the gubmint going to do this to bikes?
The Oregon ruling class earlier noticed that hybrids were not paying their “fair share”, so they doubled their registration fees. The people being frugal were doing their best for nature (as they saw it), but “No good deed goes unpunished.”
As to this being planned by ODOT, I doubt it. It’s merely the nature of control to grow, and of liberty to shrink.
I believe this is a “bridge too far” for the control freaks, though. A significant fraction of the people will just ignore the requirement to have the transponder, and it may even lead to the killing of anyone attempting to impose it.
This is taxation without representation, my red line in the sand…. I think you are spot on with your last paragraph.
Thanks, Morgan…
Although I wish it were not so.
If I could pay to not be “represented”, I would jump at the chance…not voting has been somewhat effective, but living in Virginia tobacco country even more so.
Mike
Clint Richardson is a primary researcher, writer, radio personality, and film-maker specializing in the audited Annual Financial Statements (CAFR) of the corporate government (municipal corporations) and its ownership stock investment in private industry.
He currently resides in Utah, but is in the process of severing his citizenship to the municipal corporation of Washington D.C., and wishes to help others follow the same path to become free men.
His talk radio show focuses on natural law and how to reclaim the natural rights each of us have lost through the contractual nature of citizenship as artificial persons to the “State”.
Other topics vary from government’s hidden trillions in CAFR investment wealth, the trivium method of education, Agenda 21, Common Core, the dangers of vaccination, and other pressing national and global issues.
http://republicbroadcasting.org/the-corporation-nation-with-clint-richardson/
http://republicbroadcasting.org/
Its a mess,there are very few loopholes in this commonwealth all of the smartass bright quick study power mongers want to control us from cradle to grave and even the lower end of the state payola(prison guards- are for the most part on a power trip too-amazing what a title and badge can do for ones ego)LMAO when someone said this fee would replace and supplant another(just like the income tax,har-har)
I’m just about at the point of going to an intersection and holding a piece of cardboard.Gentlemen we will swallow bile and grin and bear it I suppose,Eight,have you heard about the astounding requirements on the upcoming VDOT physicals?Makes Me glad I’m almost out of it.peace Brothers.
kevin, I know about DOT. I’m grand-fathered out of it. That didn’t keep that rookie on Friday the 13th from grilling me about not logging. I pointedly said I was grand-fathered out and didn’t run in a way to have to log. He knew this or should. Then he asks me who keeps my hours. Sorry sonofabitch, just trying in any way to find anything he could write on that ticket. The little bastard listed no DOT number on the tractor I noticed after he handed me a 4′ long printout. That’s just a flat out lie. The truck had the same lettering they all have. Black on red(in our case) in the required height, width and everything else right there on the doors……mf’s……
Libertarianism requires only heterostasis, not homeostasis. Thus it doesn’t matter when situations arise where libertarianism fails or doesn’t have answers.
The uniqueness and harmony of people is all that matters. If Libertarianism fails, free people will erect a new system in its place.
Libertarianism will appear weaker than compulsory systems, because it doesn’t use human beings as a means to achieve its ends. The strength of libertarianism is the strength of individuals who live within it. Individual who may or may not choose to build or maintain such goods as “the roads.”
The individual is what is important. Not the system. Often times all libertarianism can do is free individuals to solve problems. Because of libertarianisms necessary limitations. It is a system without a complete answer to such imagined problems as “who will build the roads.”
Think of what the lunacy of such a question really represents.
“Who will build the roads?”
If we free the slaves, who will pick the cotton? If we dismantle parts of governments who will build the drones to kill the unpersons. Who will start the wars to centralize power in a ruling class.
It does not matter. What matters is that slavery is morally indefensible. So it is with government and who will provide services in its absence.
It is not necessary to know the correct answer to a question in order to know that a particular answer is incorrect. And who will build the death camps? The state pathologically provides intolerable disservices which would almost certainly not occur in its absence.
In the discourse of zombie statists, there is a group of poison phrases which tend to be present in nearly every argument. Besides who will build the roads, here are 24 more of the most common statist phrases that statists use in their arguments.
As propaganda has a tendency to be repetitive, some of these contain the same logical fallacies, and will therefore have similar refutations. The phrases are ordered so that earlier rebuttals also apply to some later phrases.
“Our government”
“Our” is the possessive form of “we.” This phrase assumes that a collective exists and has ownership of the government, which is another collective. To exist is to have a concrete, particular form in physical reality. To say that abstract objects exist is to beg the question of where they exist, to which there is no answer because there is no empirically observable entity. To say that collectives exist is beg the question of what physical form they take, as all available physical forms are occupied by the individuals which are said to comprise the collective. Thus, there is no “we”; there is only you, I, and every other individual person. By the same token, the government does not exist; each person, each building, each gun, etc. exists. As such, the phrase “our government” is meaningless. Additionally, to own something is to have a right of exclusive control over it. Part and parcel of this right is the right to physically destroy that which one owns. As governments use force to stop citizens who attempt to physically destroy the state, the citizens are not the de facto owners of a government.
“We are the government”
This phrase confuses society with government, which is as serious an error as confusing an entire human body with a malignant tumor growing inside of that body.
“The social contract”
A valid contract must be presented honestly and agreed to voluntarily, without duress or fraud. The social contract does not meet this standard because the state will initiate the use of force against anyone who does not voluntarily enter into the social contract. The state is also not automatically dissolved when it fails to uphold its obligations under the social contract, so the presentation is dishonest if it even occurs at all. Therefore, the social contract cannot be considered a legitimate contract.
“Our leader”
In the case of the state, we are not speaking of just any kind of leader, but a ruler. No one owns the ruler, and the ruler falsely claims to own those who are ruled, as the ruler claims a right to exclusive control over the ruled and has no logically defensible basis for doing so. Thus the leader is not “ours.”
“The leader of the free world”
“The free world” does not exist; each individual person exists. Again, we are speaking of rulers rather than all types of leaders. Free people do not have rulers; they rule themselves.
“You don’t have to like our leaders, but you should respect them”
Respect should be a response to virtue. Ordering the use of initiatory force against people to control them is not virtuous behavior, therefore it is unworthy of respect.
“You don’t have to like the president, but you should respect the office of the presidency”
The office of the presidency, like any part of any government, is a violent criminal institution. Violent criminality is unworthy of respect.
“Our military”
If the military is “ours,” then “we” should be able to exercise exclusive control over it. But “we” neither command the military nor have the freedom to destroy it. Thus it is not “ours”; it is a tool of the ruling classes used to make it very difficult for citizens to violently overthrow the government, provide a last line of defense for the state in the form of martial law should the citizens succeed in violently overthrowing the government, and present a deterrent to other rulers elsewhere in the world who might seek to take over the state and capture the tax base for themselves.
“We need to make the world safe for democracy”
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on who gets eaten. This sort of behavior should not be made safe; it should be made dangerous by giving the sheep means to resist the wolves. Some will say that this is what a constitutional republic does, but this is false. A constitutional republic is three wolves and a sheep voting for a representative among them to decide who gets eaten. To claim that establishing a constitutional republic counters the negative aspects of democracy is to claim that simply by making a chocolate cake double-layered, one can magically turn it into something that is not chocolate.
“You don’t have to like what the police/military are doing, but you should support them”
Again, respect should be a response to virtue. Just as ordering the use of initiatory force against people to control them is not virtuous behavior, carrying out said orders is also not virtuous. Therefore it is unworthy of respect.
“The homeland/Our nation”
As only individuals are capable of action, only individuals may rightly own property. There is no such thing as public property; there is only privately owned property and property which has been stolen or otherwise interfered with by agents of the state. Thus, there is no homeland or nation because these require collective ownership.
“National defense/security”
There is no such thing as national security apart from each individual person’s security because there is no such thing as a nation apart from each individual person.
“It’s the law”
In a statist society, the laws are a collection of opinions written down by sociopaths who have managed to either win popularity contests or murder their competitors and enforced at gunpoint by thugs in costumes. The implication of the phrase “it’s the law” is that this state of affairs is both necessary and proper, rather than inherently illogical and immoral. Also implied is that the law is somehow sacrosanct and immutable, which is clearly false because the aforementioned sociopaths both frequently alter the laws and routinely disregard the laws they make for everyone else.
“Voting is your voice in government”
This statement assumes that there is no voter fraud, that votes are counted correctly, that vote results cannot be altered by courts, and that politicians will do what voters tell them to do. Each of these assumptions has an unfulfilled burden of proof at best, and is demonstrably false on several occasions at worst.
“Voting is a civic duty”
A legitimate duty can only come from a legitimate right or contract. There is no such right or contract that could create such a duty. In addition, there can be no legitimate duty to perform an immoral act. Voting is immoral because it helps to impose violent rulers upon peaceful people and gives the appearance of legitimacy to institutions which deserve none.
“If you don’t vote, you have no right to complain”
This is exactly wrong. People who do not vote are the only people who have a right to complain. Those who vote for people who win elections are endorsing politicians and their minions who will engage in activities under color of law that would be punished as crimes if you or I did them. Those who vote for people who lose elections may not be vicariously responsible for the crimes of state agents in the same degree, but participating in the system helps to create the appearance of legitimacy for that which is inherently illegitimate.
“The public good/The good of society”
Society, or “the public,” does not exist. Each individual person exists. As such, there is no such thing as the public good or the good of society. There is only what is good for each individual person.
“For the children”
Those who wield state power subject children to forced indoctrination that leaves them with few marketable skills and restrict the ability of suitable guardians to serve as their parents. They do not care about children as anything other than a means to shame and guilt people into handing over more liberty and property to the state.
“Government is necessary”
This is a positive claim which carries a burden of proof. By itself, this is a claim asserted without logic or evidence and may therefore be dismissed without logic or evidence.
“Anarchy is chaos”
The word “anarchy” comes from Greek αναρχος, meaning “without rulers,” or more accurately, “without beginning to take the lead.” It does not mean an absence of order, rules, or structure. The state, on the other hand, is chaos plus organization.
“Taxes are the price for a civilized society”
This is exactly wrong. Taxes are the price for failing to create a civilized society based on voluntary solutions, and the degree of taxation corresponds to the degree of failure.
“Paying taxes is a civic duty”
Taxation is immoral because it violates the non-aggression principle, private property rights, and freedom of association. There can be no legitimate duty to comply with immorality.
“We owe it to ourselves”
This would make one both a creditor and a debtor in the same transaction. This is a contradiction, therefore it is false.
“We’re going to hold them accountable”
This is contrary to the nature of the state. The state apparatus allows some people to do what is ordinarily forbidden for anyone to do. Thus, the objective is to avoid responsibility for the commission of crimes. Avoiding responsibility is the opposite of being held accountable.
Ah yes, very few people have thought the process completely through. It is really very simple. Theft of property. (your money, land and time)
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and INVOLUNTARY servitude, except as punishment for a crime. In Congress, it was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, and by the House on January 31, 1865.
However, nothing prohibits VOLUNTARY slavery… I hear the bleating of the sheep.
That explains how I got drafted in 1966, if the gunverment enslaves you it’s voluntary. Not exactly what I felt at the time, but then Nixon said “if the president does it, it’s legal”, and that’s what these douchebags believe to this day.
“divine right of kings”
Reason to remove the arrogant bastards at birth, if not sooner.
Please don’t talk of privatizing roads. All our roads and large projects are funded by bond issues, which is basically private. And all our political jurisdictions are already Municipal or County corporations. And they make alot of people money. The largest investor in WallStreet is the collective government pension and related employee investment funds(if it’s not the largest, it is close!). So things are very privatized already! Check out Clint Richardson for this type of info, if you don’t believe me…
Will, I don’t understand your point. Bonds are simply loans. They are almost always repaid (with interest) when they are sold by a government entity in the U.S.. Thus, all our roads and large projects are NOT “basically private.” Unwilling subjects of the state must pay back the loans, with interest, in one manner or another. While government sometimes manifests itself as various corporations, this legal construction does not make them “private” (nor are they really owned and controlled by the public either.) Rather, they are simply one result of the force and violence perpetrated on people by the state, which can certainly occur in the private sector too (for example, in the case of the mob and organized crime), which can also be structured as corporate legal entities.
Maybe instead of talking about “privitizing” roads we should talk about creating a free (and peaceful) marketplace for roads. “Privitization” doesn’t fully embody what is actually needed to reduce the violence of society and the state.
AR produced such movies as Trading Places, Wise Guys, and The Rose. Later in life, he created various Libertarian-leaning political documentaries including Mad as Hell and America: Freedom to Fascism. After a six-year battle with bladder cancer, he died on August 24, 2007 at the age of 64.
AR1
AR2
AR3
AR4
AR5
AR6
Thanks, Tor (again)!
AR seemed to be a mensch and so, my kind of guy….
As a means of escaping the drudgery of (such) illogical taxes, the invasion of privacy from tracking and as a means to get more exercise, the suffering populace may start getting into the walking habit, or use some kind of terrestrial mass-transport system: all this to leave their cars behind.
But here’s how BigBrother could respond: they’ll probably implant then (surreptitiously or otherwise) tracking devices in items close to the body- like shoes, gloves, pens, watches, caps or even sunglasses, all this till the time the people say its “OKAY” to implant tracking devices in the human body. The incentive given? Safety (you, your child, those unknown offenders), tax cuts (“Take an implant, get a break”), “overall ease” (whatever that may be)
Hi Kurvy,
Yup!
Years ago I read about the ultimate goal: Every human being “chipped,” able to transact business only through electronic means. Ever hear of Aaron Russo? He’s dead now, but look him up…
i see data being the ultimate currency. bits will be “coin”
i also see nano tech on/in the body analyzing and charging based on findings – eat a donut? pay the “fat tax” on all those calories until they are burned. sensors predict an emotion coming on? hope it’s not a taxable one and that the “every ill” system releases the right counter-feeling chemicals.if we’re mad, maybe it’ll cue our surrounding “environment” to display only calming pictures and sounds to us.
Read Revelation 13…spells it out.
eric, refresh my memory please. I’m sicker’n hell so my brain is barely working. What was the old sci-fi book where the main character had a run of bad luck and was about to be “terminated” by proxy if he ran out of chits that were identified by some device in his body from birth. Everybody started with the same amount. If you ran out, you were “out”….finis
Hi Eight,
I’m thinking…. it sounds like a PKD plotline….
Sounds like the Justin Timberlake film, “In Time,” where people wer functioanlly immortal, and time had become money, literally. You lived until the counter on your wrist hit 0, then you died, immediately.
Just another little piece of the of the jigsaw being fitted into place. One of many approaches towards taxing the Individuals supposed Carbon Footprint, is also an avenue of enroachment upon the Right of Peaceful Assembly and Protest. Obviously, we of the rural areas will be overjoyed as like Small Business and the Tourism Industry.
This was taxation without representation and is illegal and must be contested and the purps sued.
The people of Oregon must get together and refuse to drive until this is dropped.
Just two or three days of not driving would do it, since businesses would be empty and the state would be losing millions upon millions per day.
They have been conditioning us to automotive surveillance for years already.
Professional commercial drivers like truckers already know the surveillance state all to well already. Not only are they watched relentlessly, they are required to do much of the surveillance states work for them (log books). Any street cop can demand to look at the log books, and god forbid, if your behind on logging (common problem) or the LE officer thinks your putting in false information. The fines are large in relationship to truckers pay these days. AND you get benched for a couple of days as well most of time (no way to appeal that). That $600 fine is really costing you double that.
And how did trucking get to that point? As Eric says often “saaaaafffffeeeetttyyyyy”. Since a handful of operators had bad habits in the past, now all pay the price and the all knowing state watches. You think its actually about safety? You must be smoking better dope then the rest of us.
A trucker friend remarked about how he thinks some recent rule changes actually increase danger. Unfortunately for his paycheck, the company he drives for thinks the same way, and in order to comply with the new rules and to not increase the danger, cut hours they can all drive. His pay is down about a THIRD, and it wasn’t great to begin with.
Now non-commercial drivers are a bit harder to track. Imagine if they had tried to require log books for the rest of us back then, when they did it to truckers? Then it wasn’t possible. Even they knew that they couldn’t get away with it.
However it’s happening, slowly. They are rolling it out in a number of ways. Some work better then others.
One of the ways is red light and speed cameras. Also done in the name of “safety”. They hoped it would shame most into complying (with paying the tickets that is, your welcome to continue getting them). Or the tickets wouldn’t arrive until you would have a hard time even remembering where you were then, so you just pay them.
They were largely a success until recently, at least in my neck of the woods. The city of Chicago rakes in about $70 million a year on its hundreds of cameras. Yes, hundreds of cameras. They have however, become a political liability for Obama crony, Mayor “Rahmbo” Emanuel. His challenger, Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, managed to force an unheard of run off election. (Don’t you just love all the nicknames these clowns have?)
In the case of doing the right thing for the wrong reason, “Chuy”, a political hack that has managed to “reinvent” himself as a populist in recent months, has pledged to remove ALL the cameras when elected (all well not doing anything to prevent them in the first place when on the county board, hmmmmm).
Most likely if elected, will find he cannot remove them, as the city is broke. But he did manage to get Rahm, to turn off (and supposedly they will be removed, yeah right) about a third of the cameras (still leaving well over 300 in place).
This is the stick method of surveillance. Its getting some negative feedback finally. So it may not work for the time being.
So the other method that is used is the carrot one. This one will probably work, if they don’t blow it.
Eric, you have noted this one several times. You tie the surveillance to some “convenience”. You like the google maps, or satellite radio, or On Star? Well, now they have planted the surveillance box in your car. Can’t have one without the other.
One that doesn’t get much notice is the toll way transponder. Known in Illinois as i-pass, in Indiana as i-zoom, its best known nationwide as EZpass. They are all the same system, they all work on all the tollways (though i found an annoying glitch the last time I was out east).
The carrot for using said system (in Illinois anyway) is a lower rate then paying cash. They have also redesigned the remaining cash toll plazas to be enough of a delay to be annoying. Since the congestion has largely ended with the system, not so ironically a selling feature of the system in the first place. So most now use them (myself included, sorry but I have a life).
If you know the history of tollways in Illinois, you know that tollways were sold to the public back then as something temporary (the tolls that is). When the bonds that originally built them were retired in the mid 1970’s they were supposed to become freeways. That of course never happened as the tollway authority became large, powerful and corrupt. Congestion around toll plaza became a huge problem as most of the population of the Chicago area moved to suburbs after the second world war. So instead of simply removing the toll plazas to end the problem, the toll transponder was born. Funny how that happens huh……
Its been in operation on the Illinois tollways for probably 15 almost 20 years now. One of the early adopters of the i-pass was a friend with an electric contracting business. His employees had the annoying habit of using local roads and pocketing the money intended for tolls. So he installed i-pass in his vans.
One day a few months into it, he got a letter from the tollway authority (not the state police), with two pictures of one of his employees going through two plazas. It was noted that the time between each picture was far too short for that driver to have gone the posted speed limit (55 mph, he was probably doing 80+). It was not a ticket, as they couldn’t ID the driver nor were they the police. But he said, he felt some cold chills reading it. As we all should.
He was not the only company to get such a letter. It was a news story for a few days, the tollway “promised” they wouldn’t use the transponders for LE. As far as I know they haven’t used the system to write tickets, yet. But you know they will try again at some point. So even the carrots become sticks.
search…. gatso bashing…..
First nice day in a couple weeks of ice and snow so the DOT was out in force yesterday. Please don’t let em know I’m bleary-eyed and dead on my feet today(REAL long day yesterday). They’ll be hell on wheels for me to keep a log and that would send me straight to that house for the poor.
How do you propose to maintain the road system?
They are going to collect a gas tax and a mileage tax? On the net some articles are saying it will replace gas tax.
In NY NJ cars already have transponders for toll roads aka ez-pass, but guess what the transponder is no longer needed as the license plate cameras work almost perfectly now.
George –
“How do you propose to maintain the road system? ” Well, ideally all the roads should be privatized, and the gunvermin would have nothing to do with them. Until then, the Congresscritters who CLAIM to represent us should see to it that all highway taxes collected go just there, to the highways. Fat chance of that happening either.
“On the net some articles are saying it will replace gas tax.” When was the last time you knew of the gunvermin eliminating ANY tax? They will keep both, and keep them both as high as they dare. Same with a national sales tax to “replace” the income tax. Ha!
Reminds me of the Pennsylvania legislature years ago. They overcame public opposition and enacted a state income tax by promising to reduce the sales tax. You can guess the rest of the story.
Yet there were no riots, no lootings, no dead pigs, no dead legislators.
I suppose we’ve been domesticated, we just roll over and squeel while they brand us…. and do worse, for that matter.
Perhaps not in the majoritarian universe. If there were such, they could suppress the knowledge. Even so, the ravenous cancerous world of the pignorant (pig ignorant) doesn’t have to mean our end. Sure they comprise the majority of the populace, and most of the resources, and all of the power. But what does it really matter, this cartoonish 2D reality of Illuminati masters and Pignorati servants.
We can invent and inhabit a parallel universe of our own making, completely outside and independent of their infantile capabilities.
Universes are everywhere. The world of machines. Of data. Of books. Of music. Of art. Of motion pictures. Of games. Of the internet. Of business. Of industry. Of invention. Of play. Of imagination. Don’t believe them when they say all those universes are just regions of the their One World Order. It’s not true, just ignore their squeals of deception.
no one likes hearing this but the only way to stop these people is to kill them
Hi mr meener,
Defensive force is certainly morally defensible. Most of us accept this without much argument needed. The principle ought to scale. And does – morally speaking. But – unfortunately – people (most of them) have been conditioned to view the same things as different things, depending on who’s doing them. Thus, for example, when an individual steals someone’s property or money, most people regard this as a moral wrong. But when it is done by people in special costumes (and via the ballot box) then it is regarded as something morally different – “taxation.” Same thing wit defensive force. If a random person assaults you, most people would agree that you have a moral right to resist, even if it means harming the person attacking you. But if the person attacking you is wearing a special costume…
I can’t believe i predicted this so closely. First load Friday the 13th the DOT was waiting for me at the interstate overpass. He started in on my about my log or lack thereof. I had to remind him of the specifics to get him off my case. So he did the next best thing and wrote me up for 14 violations, one of which was completely false, no DOT numbers on the doors but they are there for the whole world to see, he simply chose to include that charge. Then he led me a mile down the access road where I had to park the rig and he put Out of Service red tags on tractor and trailer, typical a-hole rookie crap.
I knew he was full of shit when he started in on the tractor brakes being ancient and worn out. I finally lost my calm and told him I had gone to the Peterbilt dealership myself and picked up a pickup bed full of new brakes including drums, shoes, s-cams, bushings and spring kits. So he starts ranting about the trailer brakes which were worn but not worn out.
Eightsouthman, It’s the same with the FAA. Check out these vids:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W_42CGdgrw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF7XRmlqvT0
It’s the same with any type of “cop.” They do and say what they please, however bogus their assertions may be. Discovering truth and doing diligence is not a part of their daily activities. Sociopathic predispositions (dominance over others and control-freakishness) drives their behaviors.
Our best hope with these petty militant bureaucrats is they will take their generous retirement and get paid to stay home and no longer harass us! (Of course they are usually replaced with equally terrible clones.)
eric, I suppose you’re our Isaah. You speak to the masses but it goes right over their heads with the exception of a few clovers who only wish to denigrate you for speaking truth to power.
When the economy(world)tanks maybe this year, it will be a full-on fighting war between the remnants and their keepers who won’t do anything to keep them from starving and the rest of us, the Remnants, who will figure out a way to survive.
And don’t think every clover won’t be pointing out who they think has food and isn’t “sharing”. It’s already happening and has been for years.
Excuse me, I meant masses starving, not Remnants.
This is exactly right. I could get behind this if they were going to cut taxes, privatize the roads, and implement a toll system. From a Libertarian / Ancap perspective, a pay-for-usage system which obtains voluntary revenues without coercion is the way to go. Obviously, I’m not too wild about the surveillance.
There’s a guy who runs a little used car lot near my house. A few years ago, I sold him a ’67 Comet, a ’68 Galaxie fastback (neither running) and a 351 Cleveland because I was tired of them sitting around and didn’t want the Craigslist people poking around my property. He seems like a decent guy, and his motto is “If it has round headlights, I’m interested.” I swear, I’m going to stop by his place and see what he has. This is getting out of hand.
Even libertarianism fails here. Adherents have long proposed privately owned roads facilitated by tolls taken electronically as your car passes , because stopping to pay at each private road is impractical. In my case, I traverse township, county, city, state, and sometimes federal roads regularly.
But the proposed libertarian solution has all the same problems the government one does: every car has to be digitized in some respect, the information has to be gathered electronically, and we’ll be equally surveilled and monitored either way.
Will the private owners be more careful with all that juicy data they’ve gathered than the government would? Probably not, seeing what private companies (Google, et al.) have already done to us. And what a pot of gold for the government–private companies do the work of gathering the data, and the government simply coerces them to give them up, if the companies aren’t already happily handing them out.
Technology poses problems we’ve never had to face before, no matter whether it’s in the hands of private companies or the government. And most people just can’t get enough digital junk in their lives, which means I have to go along with all their damned stupid choices. The Amish have it right, I think: they pick and choose which technology suits them, rather than swallowing all of it whole.
The only solution is minarchy, the minimal, watchdog theory of state. Libertarian worship of technology plays right into Big Nanny’s puffy hands. But even minarchy seems outmoded, alas.
Ross,
“The only solution is minarchy, the minimal, watchdog theory of state. ”
It should be obvious by now that “minarchy” has failed. Minarchists embrace the idea that there must be a special class of people empowered by the “government” to rule over others. In addition this “government” must have a monopoly on the legal use of force, as well as a monopoly on the interpretation of law. Such an institution cannot be constrained by law, because it exists, by definition, outside of and above the “law”.
Nor can such an institution be constrained by “democracy”. The “people” will clamor for more than mere protection of property and contract rights. Soon they will ask for protection from scarcity, prejudice and privilege, etc… “Minarchist” politicians will soon realize that the lofty ideals of the “watchman state” are incompatible with the demands of the populace and the embedded special interests. They will “modify” their stance to accommodate these demands, or find themselves unemployed.
What is to stop them from expanding the scope of the supposed “minarchist” government? Certainly not “law”, as they decide what law is. Certainly not “democracy”, as people will clamor for more and more at “other peoples expense”. Certainly not big business, as they will bribe those who wield the power of government to gain advantage over their competitors.
“Minarchy” is a dangerous delusion. It is certainly not the “only solution”.
Jeremy
“The “people” will clamor for more than mere protection of property and contract rights. Soon they will ask for protection from scarcity, prejudice and privilege, etc…”
Exactly as they would in a libertarian society. And if you answer that somehow a libertarian society would be immune to these same pressures indefinitely, then you’ve a faith in human nature that I lack.
I – reluctantly – agree.
We Libertarians are Bonobos among Chimps. A flaw in the genome. Or the opposite. Some kind of leading-edge mutation. The conscious eschewing of violence, even when one is “the stronger” and there is no practical reason not to be violent, that’s a rare thing.
Hence my desire for FTL.
Eric,
I’m not sure I agree that, “[t]he conscious eschewing of violence, even when one is “the stronger” and there is no practical reason not to be violent, that’s a rare thing. ”
I believe most warrior traditions take that approach. Samurai int he early periods; knights in the age of chivalry, Mostly… Ok, I’m coming up a little short on good examples, and there are bad examples mixed in those same good ones. Samurai “sword testing” on a convenient peasant, for example, which IIRC was the alter periods, towards the Shogunate.
Viking culture as we (know/romaticize?) it, the chieftain gets the treasure en masse, and then doles it out – the loyalty is based on that chief being on the field of battle and fighting alongside his men, though.
Much of our modern world divorces us from more than an implicit, maybe tacit compreshension of this. Theory is, this is why women can be so vicious, while men tend to be less vicious – though maybe more brutal. Men understand when they fight, there will be a winner and a loser, and the loser may be scarred for life or dead. There’s always someone bigger and faster and stronger out there. So violence isn’t the best solution.
When women can indulge their cruelty, they do more than socially ostracize others (which they can do in amazingly vicious manners of gossip, exclusion, rumor- and power-mongering). The men prayed to NOT fall into the hands of the squaws, if you recall, out west…
Women will carve pieces off, little by little, drawing out the agony as long as possible – they have no historical limits, no consequences, and are allowed to act in violent fashion when in a “safe zone” inside the tribe – meaning, they aren’t at risk, they are attacking and killing a captive or such. Their normal cruelties in the social arena don’t result in any “injury” to their mind, so… they don’t understand violence in the physical sense, even when they can act in violent means. Then, “It just happened.” (Passive voice, like having sex, “it just happened,” or, “He did it.” She wasn’t an active participant, she was along for the ride…)
Much like our modern feminized state.
We’ve been decaying to the feminine for some time now – you’ll see lots of Neomasculinity / man-o-sphere talk along these lines, too. Probably a mostly-overlapping Venn diagram there.
Roosh cross-posted, but here’s his article, also on Return of Kings; it’s echoed (not copied) elsewhere as well:
http://www.rooshv.com/neomasculinity
Neomasculinity is…
■Game
■Traditional sex roles
■Self-improvement
■Understanding the true nature of women
■Patriarchy
■Weightlifting/fitness
■Individual responsibility
■Equal legal rights, free speech, due process
■Testosterone
■Entrepreneurship
■Hard work ethic
■Red pill truths
■Sexual marketplace value
■Male-only spaces
■Hedonistic moderation
■Nuclear family
■Binary sex model
■Natural health and hygiene (baking soda, apple cider vinegar, etc)
■Male virtue
■Anti-socialism
■Technological skepticism
■Feminine beauty ideals
■Deeper life meaning and/or spirituality
■Lifestyle optimization
I think it will ring true here as well.
Agreed, Jeremy… female cruelty is much more savage than male cruelty. Men usually stop beating/inflicting punishment when the other man yields or is no longer a threat. But women will continue for the pure sick joy of it. Men – in my experience – are much more likely to genuinely forgive/forget. Women tend to remember forever and will never let you forget.
“We Libertarians are Bonobos among Chimps. ”
Hey Eric! that is the most concise statement of the problem that I have ever read.
Yes, FTL would be a nice solution — but barring that, I see another possibility. Maybe a long shot, but a possibility… Most Chimps are basically decent, at least if you get an opportunity to train them properly. Somewhere around 5% of the Chimps are the sociopaths, the dog-crap in the milkshake. We have today the technology to test people and determine categorically whether they are sociopathic; their emotional centers do not work the same as normal Chimps, and it shows up on PET scans. If there were some way to identify such people at a young age and have a big “S” tattooed on their forehead, maybe we would have a better chance.
Ross, eric,
The only faith I have in human nature is that humans respond to their environment and human behaviors change in time. Humans adapt–usually over several generations but only as peoples’ minds change. Other than adaptability, there is very little in what is commonly called “human nature” that is not a product of peoples’ environments. I can point to a huge variation in human behaviors in various societies, cultures, civilizations, and social environments over the course of history and even in the current day. It is also their adaptability that enables humans to occupy a geographic range on the planet that far exceeds that of any other high order life form. In terms of geographic range, humans don’t possess a “nature” either! People are capable of exhibiting a comparably varied range in behaviors and social organizations too.
Of course the many people empowered by the state want you to fear “human nature” and believe that you need them to protect you from it!
If you have been around children very much, a good analogy to the ineffectiveness of the protection provided by the state is how children learn to solve their disputes and social problems far better when adults DON’T step in and mandate and impose “solutions” upon them (or at least they minimize their interference).
Finally, property and contract rights, and protection from scarcity and prejudice can be offered and provided by a free (peaceful) market with voluntary subscribers. Great libertarian minds are working hard to develop many ideas for social organizations and structure that would be ethical (not violate the non-aggression principle), and some of these ideas would probably function very well. Nonetheless, it is pointless to expect a “blueprint” for a stateless society to develop in any way other than by trial and test in a free market. For a start, I’ve studied the idea of dispute resolution organizations (DROs) to get a glimpse of one piece of the puzzle that might advance liberty in the long run.
Everyone is unique and special. But generally this is true. If the US economy declines to the level of Mexico, you will find you’re suddenly surrounded by the same utter disregard for the commons and your neighbors now found in Mexico.
Once capital and the means of production finish leaving the US. There’ll be no way to compensate for their loss. This loss is economic, political, and social.
No, libertarianism didn’t fail. If the government weren’t around to use the information to steal more money, there would be no problem. I don’t care if McDonald’s or Target keep track of how often I visit and which items I buy. I get to choose if I go there. I get to choose which items I buy. I can change it up at any point. With government roads, you have no choice. You WILL buy their plates. You WILL pay their fee’s. You WILL lick their boots. If not, they WILL cage or kill you.
Fuck coercion and the satanic horse it rode in on. Technology isn’t coercion. That it is used for coercion doesn’t make it coercion.
You are blaming technology for what minarchy has brought about. Any amount of evil can only be used for evil. Any amount of technology doesn’t have to be used for evil. It is used for evil because people believed in the fictitious idea that if government only does certain things, everything will be alright. That fictitious idea is why we are where we are.
Minarchy birthed none of the current tyranny. But its failure did. Clearly minarchy requires a moral, liberty-loving people. But so does libertarianism, or any system that’s not tyrannical. Unlike your MacDonald’s example in which we have a choice, we have to “buy” travel on roads, and the technological solution to millions of drivers on thousands of private toll roads is exactly the same as Big Nanny’s and carries the same risks. QED.
Somehow libertarians believe that people are perfectible, that a libertarian society could never be corrupted. This notion runs contrary to human nature. Take private police forces, e.g. The idea appeals, but why wouldn’t there be lawless collusion intra-and inter-private services just like we have now? Blackwater is a very good example of the harm that a private security force can do, and I see no solid reason why such excess wouldn’t be a problem in a network of private security forces.
Nail on the head, Ross.
I am chewing hard on this one. Even if one could gather a group of committed, conscious Libertarians eventually some would have kids… reversion to the mean. Inevitable.
I am not sure what to do about it.
Perhaps Washington was right. The masses are asses. And must be controlled. Benevolent Cloverism to keep Clovers in check. Which inevitably leads to Cloverism writ large, as we are now experiencing.
This has all happened before and will happen again.
Your Blackwater example is an example of private security that contracted exclusively to government.
You are correct that there would be problems that arise. The belief is not that markets are perfect. The belief is that markets are better than coercion and monopolies.
Your belief that the private security would basically monopolize should show out in other sectors. Grocery stores would be doing this. Fast food. Wal Mart, K-Mart, Target, etc. Why hasn’t this happened? It only happens in industries granted monopoly status. If there isn’t an entity that is granted monopoly status on coercion, it is not impossible for monopoly to happen, but is far less likely.
When Wal Mart was in their building boom in the 90’s, people screamed that they were going to come into small towns and run the other stores out of business, then raise their prices. The did run stores out of business for sure. But they didn’t raise prices after that happened. All they did was offer people low prices closer to them than the bigger towns they would need to drive to.
If private security firms were to get big and out of control, the only thing stopping a competitor from coming in and not being corrupt is government regulation on market entry.
Uber attempts to move into some towns and the taxi companies cry and scream. They are used to government protection. Then Uber is regulated like the rest of the taxi companies. Where I live and own a taxi company, the regulations are light and anyone can enter the market with relative ease. Uber hasn’t moved in. They can’t afford to, because they would be more expensive than the other taxi companies. What stops all of the taxi companies in my area from colluding and raising prices higher? Competition and the threat of prices raising high enough to make it desirable for other companies to come in and capitalize on our corruption.
Markets are the best and only fair manner of regulation.
I’m not sure that it matters that the government hired Blackwater for the purpose of my point. Suppose the people of north Los Angeles hired it, south LA hired another security firm, etc. Corruption and abuse seem as likely with a private network of security firms as with a governmental patchwork. The only rein on our Blackwater firm would be the voters, and we’ve seen how well that’s working now in America. Again, without a moral and liberty-loving people, I suspect a patchwork of Blackwaters would engender the same problems government forces do.
Still, it would be an interesting experiment and who knows? Maybe it would work better.
There is a difference in kind between a network of private police forces, which would have the right to investigate, arrest, imprison, and even kill if necessary, and a bunch of competing grocery stores who have no authority over us at all. If I don’t like Walmart I can go to Costco. But if I’m arrested in north LA I have no choice as to which security firm to turn to, and if LA North Blackwater is corrupt then I have a big problem with no recourse or appeal to a higher authority.
Ross,
What makes you think that swaths the size of N. LA and S. LA would be hiring security firms? The chances of that are slim. It would likely be how it is currently where private protection is hired. Small communities, streets, single properties, or personal protection.
Could it get to the point where it gets big enough to protect a homogeneous group of a million, or even 100,000? Possibly, but unlikely.
Many of the problems we face currently is that you have no choice. Uncle decrees that 320 million people must agree to the terms “they’ set. In a the market, you would never be forced to “agree” with that. You wouldn’t be considered to have “agreed to the contract”.
It’s not perfect Ross. But it is smaller and thus has the opportunity to be better than the current leviathan.
Another thing to consider, Ross, is what is minarchy. How clearly can we define it? 100 people are going to have pretty big variances on what minarchy is. For the founders, generally, they believed it was in the minarchist purview to provide public schools. Just that one allowed “minimal” interjection into the market destroys any semblance of freedom.
“The power to tax is the power to destroy”. That is the biggest failing of minarchy. Taxation. You cannot have freedom, no matter how minimal the allowable theft may be.
Minarchy is no panacea. My definition is that of the classical watchman state–only negative rights and therefore no entitlements (the Constitution is an example of such a watchman’s state) and a government that is only a “referee” to enforce law and to provide protection against enemies, domestic and foreign.
I guess it’s not necessary to point out that minarchy is a dead duck these days. My point is that it seems to carry a few advantages over libertarianism. But the people want neither and, like Eric, I don’t really know what to do about it.
Morning, Ross!
I think Jeremy makes a good point regarding the diffusion of threat (to put it that way) which would exist absent empowering any a single entity (government) with authority.
On the other hand, I (like you) worry that absent a general change in people’s attitudes (toward the NAP) such a state of society would quickly devolve into “the rule of the stronger” (as Plato put it). This was the view of several of the Founders, who believed that until such a time as men eschewed taking advantage of other men, some mechanism was needed to restrain them.
Or, so say the history books.
Looking more closely, I find that the Constitution of 1787 was never intended to establish a “watchman” state. Rather, its opposite: A “vigorous” (Hamilton’s word) central authority that would have dictatorial in principle authority over … well, pretty much everything. In the name of commerce (that is, capital) and empire (same basic group). Or put another way: Money and Power.
It has always been thus.
And, I suspect, always will be thus – as long as a determinative cohort of men do not accept the NAP as a volitional restraint on their actions.
This does not mean Libertarianism is a hopelessly naive, romantic idea. Just one that will take a turning of mind to realize.
This will not happen overnight, or even within one (or two or three) lifetimes. How long did it take before a critical mass of people came to revile chattel slavery? At one time, pederasty was considered acceptable. What must happen in order for Libertarianism to be viable as a practical political philosophy is a general awakening among the people that causes them to view aggressive violence the same way most people currently view chattel slavery or pederasty. That is, as despicable, moral outrages.
It’s that simple – and that hard.
I take the view that people like us – you and I and others of like mind – are the leading cohort of the inevitable. We may and probably will not live to see its realization. But I am firm in my belief that humanity must abandon aggressive violence not merely as the “next step” but the essential step. Because otherwise, we’re doomed as a species. The end result of aggressive violence and technology foreordains it.
Ross,
I know of no libertarian who believes that human beings are “perfectible”. Nor do I know of any libertarian who believes that a libertarian society would be incorruptible.
Libertarian theory does not run counter to human nature, it embraces it. “Minarchism”, on the other hand, does run counter to human nature. It is naive in the extreme to argue that there must exist a special class of people who possess a legal monopoly of violence and coercion, and then expect these same people to strictly limit their own power.
“Why wouldn’t there be lawless collusion intra-and inter-private services?” There would, of course. But it would likely be far less of a problem than now because there would exist no entity that has the legal right to force everyone to buy it’s services. Arguing that there must be such a monopoly “service” provider guarantees the outcome you lament.
Finally, Blackwater is not a free market company in any meaningful sense. It is a quasi governmental institution in that we are all forced to buy it’s services, though few of us would if we had a choice. Blackwater, and companies like it, cannot exist without government force. The harm caused by Blackwater is an argument against minarchy, not for it.
Jeremy
Good stuff, Jeremy… it’s what I needed to read on an otherwise very depressing day.
Thanks Eric,
I hope your day improves.
Jeremy
Another VERY IMPORTANT counterpoint is:
In a world where YOU are ultimately the responsible party for your safety, problems like Blackwater will answer to the citizens – you eventually have the people shooting anything wearing a Blackwater uniform, and ostracizing (not doing business – like, selling food to) anyone known to be associated with such a group.
Even the Mafia knew to not get TOO big for their britches. They could go after every store owner for protection money – until the protection money became too much to pay, after which, they got no money any more. Diminishing returns.
And at a certain point, the populace WOULD ally together and take apart the Made Men. Regardless of cost.
Like what we’re seeing with the cops now – there’ve been how many attacks on the police, SPECIFICALLY because they are police? It’s been years building to this point, but we’ve had separate incidents in NYC, Pennsylvania, Ferguson, and one other, IIRC. total of 5 dead, two injured?
It’s coming… Or, the opposite is coming. there is no middle ground.
Anyway – same thing happens when the Mafia gets too heavy on the businesses, people send a message. [Though I am reminded of High Noon… No one would back the Sherriff. We need to be ready for that, too. But it’ll happen regardless of whether it’s government/public, or something private… that’s a PEOPLE issue.]
Spot on Jean. Agreed.
First, let’s assume that the “send/receive” cannot be required at literally all times for the car to function, or else the car would shut off in a tunnel or when driven outside the range of the nearest receiver (think driving across the desert of death Valley for example). So it must just periodically upload it’s data, or on demand.
Therefore, can the antenna just be broken off, or “Faraday caged” or something, so that they never get their data? As per point #1, the car would still physically function (no shutdown commands allowed in), and they can go pound sand when they notice your car has a total mileage of zero?
If they complain, be surprised. How were YOU to know it wasn’t working? And how it keeps breaking every time they leave? Funny that…
They can force you to HAVE the system, but can they force you to USE it? They might try, but eventually their own laziness will outdo them, like the first time they try and send a “remote shutdown” command to a car during a chase, only to have nothing happen. 🙂
It’s technically easy to verify what cars have an operating transponder and which don’t. I won’t type out how because I haven’t read that government experts have figured it out yet and I don’t want to tell them how. But it’s easy. From there traditional police state measures will work so long as the legislation was put in place for it with the requirement.
The enforcement of a transponder requirement like the transponder and ANPR systems is very expensive, but remember they are paying for it with our money and the goal is power first, revenue second.
Brent – you wrote “the goal is power first, revenue second.” You are correct. Often someone on here will post the quote “Follow the money.” And that does work a fair amount of the time.
But the true question is “Qui bono?” – who benefits. There are those among TPTB that have more money than they could ever spend. Not that they would try, or object to having more. But sometimes the goal is not money, but ‘the ultimate aphrodisiac’ – power.
Back in the day, when those small TV dishes had just come out some friends of mine got satellite TV. It offered of course, additional pay for view TV programs as well, like any other cable service. The charges would appear of course on the monthly bill when ordered.
Turns out, those sales were recorded by the cord connected to their phone line, since at the time, there was no uploading data back to the satellite. It would make outgoing calls sometime during the night. They only discovered that, when the tech unplugged the phone cord when he was doing some sort of service and forgot to plug it back in.
So they were ordering pay TV, and they weren’t getting billed anymore. Somehow, the dish provider had forgotten (or it wasn’t tech possible at the time) to put in blocking software to prevent the pay for view service from providing service when the phone line wasn’t plugged in. It didn’t seem to stop working as the memory chip in the box must have gotten filled up at some point too.
So they never paid for any of the pay for view, they unhooked the other end of the cord at the phone box so any service tech plugging the cord back in wouldn’t generate a huge bill.
Never the less, they tried to keep that equipment as long as possible. No satellite dish service will work today if it not completely connected. Even Comcast won’t let you hook up extra TV’s without a extra box now.
So I would guess, that yes, you could break the connection and not get “shut off”. At least in the first version.
But watch out for version 2.0. They will fix that bug the moment they notice people are using it.
Tax by mile test programs have been coming and going for many years now. They just need an excuse to sell them to the public. It’s a very costly and complex way to collect a user fee for the roads. The regular old fuel tax does it quite well but over the last many years they have been intentionally breaking the fuel taxes as being able to fund the road system.
First the central bank inflated the currency. The fuel tax is per gallon, not a percentage so it doesn’t buy what it used to. Then they crashed the economy so people drove less and bought fewer commercial vehicles (a goodly part of the revenue came from taxes on large trucks). Then they had their wars and other nonsense to increase fuel prices so people bought less fuel. Then their climate change nonsense and higher CAFE levels so the people who bought new cars used less fuel. Then they pushed and subsidized electric cars so less fuel was used. But all while doing this they diverted ever more road use taxes to transit, checkpoints, bike paths, and anything else they could that wasn’t roads.
Now we are supposed to be shocked that there isn’t enough money for the roads.
We have the problem. We have the reaction. And we have the waiting solution. Tax by mile. Now they just have to sell this solution. They’ll manipulate us with tales of how those bastards with electric cars and home brew bio diesel powered 1980s VWs are cheating the system and not paying their fair share. The solution will a complex system of transponders and automated number plate readers to tax us fairly. Never mind the enormous cost for these systems.
That cost is justified. It feeds cronies with big government contracts and it is a source of power. A much better way to manage the free-range human resources. Remember, if you object, you must have something to hide and hate the environment.
“Fair Share, Fair Share!” they keep chanting ‘Fair Share.’
The gunvermin’s fair share of MY money is $0.00 or 0.0% whichever way you choose to calculate it.
Oregon “could” be such a great place to strategically relocate. Except the people who run the state government are truly insane.
Their banning of self serve gas stations is silly, and kind of quaint. But there’s more.
Did you know that it is illegal in Oregon to collect and keep rain water that falls on your own land?!
And now, the imposition of taxation per mile driven.
What’s next?
For sure, the feds will take advantage of every tyrannical opportunity that comes along.
But Oregon, like General Kurtz in “Apocalypse Now,” has gone upriver and totally Off The Rails.
Impounding rainwater bans are common in the western US, MikePizzo.
Water rights are homesteaded, and not owned riparianly, like they are back east.
When you impound, you effect the water rights of everyone downstream of you. This is treated the same way as damming a stream and not allowing people downstream access to water. You can ask the person in charge of enforcing water rights for a new water right, and a simple rain barrel will generally be approved immediately, unless you have an utter retard enforcing this ( which does happen, unfortunately ).
“a simple rain barrel will generally be approved immediately, unless you have an utter retard enforcing this ( which does happen, unfortunately ).”
Of course it happens – these are gunvermin employees, ‘educated’ in gunvermin schools. Be thankful it does not ALWAYS happen.
The whole western water rights issue should be handled privately. If a rancher is offended by a rain barrel, he would then have the option of taking the barrell owner to court, which is unlikely for such a small impoundment.
Very much like alcohol and tobacco taxes, the government left brain screams about the dangers of consumption and the right brain screams about shrinking tax revenues as consumption falls. Of course, no politician ever consider axing agencies or reduced spending (real cuts, not knocking a percentage off annual budgetary increases) in lieu of raising taxes.
Tax by the mile AND tax by the gallon. It’s for the children. No wonder so many youngsters don’t drive, they can’t afford it. Cash For Clunkers destroyed the cheap used car market, modern automobiles need expensive maintenance to keep running. Think timing belt/water pump, tires, brakes and failing emission crap. Can’t afford that and student loans.
Especially can’t afford student loans, since any job you can get still requires you to say “You want fries with that?”
Yeah, who wants a job while Uncle hands out SSDI for ADHD or toenail fungus. Especially when Grammy lets them live in her basement. Free.
The big problem as I see it is that no one in any state has the guts to put their own state governments on a fiscal diet. After the crisis of 2008, everyone had to tighten their belts. But government at any level? Hell no! Oregon, unlike most states, has the Initiative and Referendum Petition option; residents there need to use it to bring Salem to heel.
Make state governments live within their means. If lower gas taxes means firing some overpaid stiffs at the DMV, too effing bad.
Eric,
I suspect it (GPS tracking for cost/mile) is just another way to keep track of the livestock.
It would be much easier to increase the fuel tax and be done with it. (assuming it is just the money that those in government are after.) The tax could be indexed to inflation as well so it would increase over time.
The infrastructure is in place to collect the tax at the pump. The more one drives the more one pays.
A technological system could be abused/misused in ways I can think of and probably in ways that I cannot currently imagine.
Easier to increase the fuel tax: sure. But it’s not about the government’s ease. It’s about its power. Put another way, they don’t want to own your fortune, they want you to lose it.
Mith,
The despicable reprehensible from tennutsee Bob Corker has just proposed a bill to do just that. Increase the gas tax and tie it to inflation. You know there is something to be said about tyrants dying from a disease and praying for it to happen. LOL!
Mith –
“The infrastructure is in place to collect the tax at the pump. The more one drives the more one pays.”
Oh, but what about those of us who drive efficient cars? We aren’t paying ‘our fair share.’ Never mind that they WANT us to drive cars that put less CO2 into the atmosphere. In the words of R J Rushdoony, they are schizophrenic.
Rushdoony, Huh. I have never known anyone else who has read Rushdoony.
Rushdoony’s son-in-law is a guy named Gary North. He’s absolutely convinced that NASA is out to destroy his religion. The discovery of a single living microbe elsewhere in our solar system, apparently, is sufficient to achieve that. So North wants NASA shut down entirely to postpone the inevitable.
(Off topic, but fun fact nonetheless. Apologies in advance.)
Blank Reg – Or maybe, just maybe, he does not want NASA wasting stolen money looking for something that does not exist.