Violence is, unfortunately, fungible.
As this society becomes more and more officially violent, it is probable that unofficial violence will also increase. In fact, it is almost a mathematical axiom. It is also one not comprehended by those most responsible for initiating the process.
Police and politicians seem baffled by the growing disenchantment with their class. They seem to expect people to behave toward them with respect and deference no matter what they do – by dint of the fact that what they do is Official and Legal.
Why are politicians – left and right – increasingly despised by reasonable people? Could it have anything to do with the fact that they will not leave people alone? That all they do – at great expense (to us) and with great pomposity – is decree how we will be allowed to live, what we must do and what we may not do? Most of these things being precisely none of their business to so order?
But they believe that it – that everything – is their business, which endows them with an effrontery so great they’ve lost all of the normal restraints that bind ordinary people. We have arrived at a point in our history that absolutely nothing is off the table, beyond the grasping control of these professional grifters – which is what they are. These are not people who earn an honest living by free exchange of value for value, as most of the rest of us do. These are people who take vast sums of money and then dispose of vast sums of money – none of it theirs by right.
They do so with an entitled insolence that is insufferable to those from whom the funds are mulcted. The worst part of it being that the mulcted are rendered legally defenseless against these outrages. A law is passed, an order given – and they must “stand and deliver,” as the old saying goes.
If one had a neighbor who behaved this way, one would bar the neighbor from one’s property and – if there was no alternative – defend oneself against such a violent busybody.
But what defense is there against the political class?
The Vote?
That is like trying to plug a leaky roof with sheets of copy paper. At best, the rivulets will temporarily lessen. The rain won’t let up.
Instead of protecting our rights, politicians spend their time gutting them, turning them into conditional privileges at best – to be further conditioned (or rescinded) at their pleasure. Nothing of ours is safe. Not our money, not our property, not our freedom to act and live as we see fit. There is no line over which these professional disposers of other people’s lives and property and liberties will not step as they are held back neither by ordinary human decency or legal restriction.
They have become a ruling caste, as entitled and arrogant as their feudal analogs.
The glib violence which inheres in their every act and statement has become so much a given that they hardly notice it anymore. When a new “plan” or other such is presented, the fact that what is being suggested involves more compulsion and violence, that people will have no choice, is never even mentioned. The discussion is increasingly centered only on the supposed merits of the “plan” – and alternatives to the “plan.” That is to say, other “plans.”
Resentment grows.
The average honest wage-earner in the productive economy now “owes” his Lord(s) more than a Medieval serf owed his Lord. The typical tax exaction – when one includes the income tax, the Social Security taxes (15 percent off the top for the self-employed), the taxes on their property and so on – approaches half of every dollar they earn. The burden has become so extreme that most people must now earn two incomes to support one family and work until they are too old to continue working. The oasis of financial security recedes ever farther into the distance, never to be reached.
The productive class would like to be left alone – would like for the mulcting to cease. Meanwhile, the client class (their ranks swelling with Millennial Marxists) demands ever-more-mulcting for their unearned benefit, which the politicians are happy to oblige as they receive payment for their services in the form of ever-increasing power.
Social resentment swells.
As it does, more overt violence becomes necessary to keep the pressure cooker’s lid clamped in place.
Enter the Praetorians. Or what is styled law enforcement.
It is no accident that this term – which is brutally honest – has become the preferred one. Nor that these enforcers of the law wax brutal. Behave toward the citizenry as occupying soldiers, barking orders and expecting – demanding – immediate submission.
Resentment of this bullying is also increasing.
Which has the effect of justifying a kind of doubling-down by the enforcers – whose mental state is becoming exactly like that of an occupying army dealing with threatening partisans. A soldier of the Werhmacht and veteran of the drang nach Osten would understand completely the fearful bleat of “officer safety” eructed by the enforcers of the law.
More distrust. Dislike morphing into hatred, barely suppressed. On both sides.
It is none of it good.
And it is going to get worse.
Because violence is fungible.
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What to Do
Always, the most important thing we need to do is fight the battle of ideas. Ideas really are more powerful than any government, but we don’t even need a majority of the population to agree with us. We really only need a minority of the population to actively agree so much of the population will be apathetic no matter what.
The government doesn’t have to be anywhere near the size it is now to do the one thing it’s supposed to do, which is protect our rights. Until we make government smaller, we’re not going to have peace. Government is doing a lot to self-destruct, in the meantime, we need to continue to spread the ideas of liberty, and to do whatever we can to get in the way of an out-of-control government that brings killing, violence, and so war.
How To Fight For Peace – Ron Paul
https://mises.org/library/how-fight-peace
Hi Voluntaryist,
You appear to be in moderation limbo. Not sure why this happens. I assume you are a registered user and that you are signed in. Pretty sure that once you get out of limbo, the link will work. When you’re in limbo the comments appear on the full comments page, but not in the thread.
Kind Regards,
Jeremy
Dear Voluntarist,
The premier NV raw milker is Brett Ottolenghi of Artisanal Farms 702-521-3761.
http://www.farmsreach.com/welcome/groups/?section=classifieds
Phoenix has it but that’s 5 hours away.
there will never be advanced nuclear reactors built here in the U.S.
getting new designs approved for construction is unrealistic due to all the bureaucratic approvals required.
so we’re stuck with old, not-very-efficient, pressurized-water reactor designs.
which are so expensive to build and operate utilities simply choose to use natural gas instead.
Nunzio,
What is “nukular” energy? Is it anything like nuclear energy?
Bill, I don’t know the difference between ‘nukular’ and ‘nuclear’, ’cause I ain’t got me none of that fancy edumacation. Now I must go fix my mother’s terlit!
Tor,
Apparently more than anyone else here, I recognize that Matt Foley is an imaginary character portrayed by an actor who dug his own grave with his teeth.
Nunzio,
When you buy bottled water, make sure the bottle is made of PET or PETE, which doesn’t have the plasticizers that the other plastics do. I don’t buy my water bottled, I bottle it myself from a filter machine in the market. It is usually 49 cents a gallon instead of over a dollar, which reflects the cost of the bottle and the cost of transporting it.
Soy proteins are making little girls into young women at a prodigious rate. It is the phytoestrogens that exist in very high levels in soy. Anything that is a seed, pod, bean, etc, is a mini-uterus. This same estrogen is feminizing our young men and making them sterile, which explains the increasing rate of men with fertility issues. This is just another reason to not be a vegetarian, beyond the fact that they suffer from chronic protein deprivation, and tend to die younger than carnivores and omnivores.
So true, Bill. It’s getting so’s ya can’t tell a 14 year-old girl from a 24 year-old. Of course, a jury can…. 😀
I was a vegetarian for over 15 years….but it trying to avoid soy- especially GMO soy and all that, it just wasn’t worth it. Things like meat and eggs (if ya can get the real things) offer concentrated protein in a very efficient low-cal form.
When I moved to the country I started raising my own grass fed beef and eggs. Gave up the beef though- I can’t eat that much meat- but my eggs were unsurpassed! Can’t find eggs like the ones I had anywhere…not from the Amish or anyone…nothing comes close. Gotta make a new chicken tractor and get a few hens and get back to that. (Stupid first batch of hens would always end up in my yard, and one of my dogs would kill ’em; Second batch were mixed breed, and didn’t lay worth a darn. Next batch, gotta find me some pure buff orpingtons- they lay great, even in the winter- and keep them in the chicken tractor so they don’t get et!)
Nunzio,
You’d probably be in hog heaven in Wyoming where the legislature passed a bill session before last that lets us buy raw milk from the original producer without regulation or prosecution. There are increasing numbers of grass-fed everything here. You don’t have to buy any more beef to get the grass-fed if your grocer already carries it. If not, you can buy half and quarter beefs packaged and frozen, and just keep them that way.
Is a chicken tractor a mobile henhouse?
Speaking of good news from the Guv Shuck…
CERTIORARI TO THE US COURT OF APPEALS FOR
THE FED CIRCUIT
Argued Jan, 2017—Decided Jun, 2017
Simon Tam, lead singer of the rock group “The Slants,” chose this moniker in order to “reclaim” the term and drain its denigrating force as a derogatory term for Asians.
Tam sought federal registration of the mark “THE SLANTS.” The Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) denied the application under a Lanham Act provision prohibiting the registration of trademarks that may “disparage or bring into contempt or disrepute any persons, living or dead.
Tam contested the denial of registration through the administrative appeals process, to no avail. He then took the case to federal court, where the en banc Federal Circuit ultimately found the disparagement clause facially unconstitutional under the
1st Amendmt’s Free Speech Clause.
Held: The judgment is affirmed. 808 F. 3d 1321, affirmed. JUSTICE ALITO…
Now your trademarks may encompass all kinds of speech, not just the narrow Judeo Christian Islamic PC kinds of speech.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jesscollen/2017/06/19/did-the-supreme-court-just-approve-a-big-fu-to-the-trademark-community/
The Supreme Court’s ruling saying Guv Inc. has no constitutionally derived right to penalize, ban or prohibit “hate speech”
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/15-1293_1o13.pdf
Your Federal Reserve System is what?
Tin roof, rusted
Tin doesn’t rust.
Groovy B.
I’d say Let the Goys persist in their folly, but do as tyou wish and inform those errant B-52’s…
B-52’s Rock Lobster
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szhJzX0UgDM
Put on your noseguard.Put on the Lifeguard.
Pass the tanning butter.Here comes a stingray.
There goes a manta-ray.In walked a jelly fish.
There goes a dog-fish.Chased by a cat-fish.
In flew a sea robin.Watch out for that piranha.
There goes a narwhal.Here comes a bikini whale!
Yeah, aquatic-themed songs were a thing….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYoEO-uw5T0
Good stuff Nunny.
Here’s my favorite funk…
Earth, Wind & Fire – September
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs069dndIYk
Boy and how do I remember September 1978.
The 40 years hence have all been a dead end.
If we AnCaps mentally rollback our minds to that last known good configuration of 1978.
We can then choose another path. This happens all the time. Let’s admit our error and start moving forward again.
100 Greatest Songs From 1978
https://digitaldreamdoor.com/pages/bg_hits/bg_hits_78.html
We Will Survive. With a Heart Of Glass One Nation Under A Groove.
With Just What We Needed. Because The Night. One Way Or Another. What A Fool Believes. Will Never Be the state’s Beast Of Burden.
It’s My Life. and Life’s Been Good to me so far.
Ooo! That’s one I ain’t heard in a long time!
I dunno about you, but I actually listened to this stuff back then, when white kids didn’t do that….even in NYC!
Do ya know this ‘un:
Johnny Guitar Watson _ What The Hell Is This?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDY5N7gCS2w
or:
Herbie Hancock – Everybody’s Broke:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3G7dZ—LA
Yeah, man! I’ll tell you, c. ’78 till about ’82 was an amazing time. Always seemed to me to be the demarcation point between what was left of “the old world” and the crap-hole we have now.
It was fresh….we were still relatively free. Even in a place like NYC, you were freer than you could be in any city or suburb today.
You could observe the change before your eyes after that- and by about ’86 it felt like a different world, and the government had grown like a rabid cancer- ironically, during the reagan admin.
The recession of the early 80’s was actually a great time. Probably stalled that gov’t growth. What a time to be alive. It was truly a special time.
And you tell a cop to go F$#& himself, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do!
I was 16 in ’78. Dropped out of school the very day I turned 16- Imagine 16 year-old me on loose to explore the nooks and crannies of NYC?! THAT was an education!
Ooooo! I like what you did there at the end! (I just tried the same, with links…but WordPress thinks I’m a spammer now…..)
I was into the Reggae of the time to (Even though I didn’t smoke’a de ganja, mon):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkYOMzQJmRI
That’s great, Bill! I’ve been through Wyoming once…loved it, indeed!
Yes, a chicken tractor is a portable chicken coop, with an open bottom, so the chickies can gobble grass.
I had wanted to get myself Jersey cow for milking- but being a single man, I couldn’t possibly use all of that milk. (My 92 year-old mother who lives on my land also, she won’t eat anything that comes from animals whom she knows personally….she’d rather eat the anonymous crap from the supermarket. She wouldn’t even eat my eggs!) – I may just get a milking goat….T’aint the same, but it’s another step towards self-sufficiency and staying healthy)
I am trying to be vegan but it is extremely difficult. I get cravings. I eat eggs & chicken.
I wish I could get raw milk, free range eggs/chicken but that is not possible in Henderson, NV. I filter my water for the last 2 years instead of buying bottled.
I recently heard it claimed on a “Growing Your Greens” video that ground flax seed will provide the protein needed to stop cravings. I will try it.
I tried the link to the “full comments page” but couldn’t get through.
Nunzio, take it from an old-timer, you never could tell a 14 year old from a 24 year old when it came to non-generalities. I recall some 14 year olds who had it all in the right places, some even younger and all you could guess was “young” although what age is a matter of confusion for everyone.
8-9 years ago I attended a family gathering. There was a woman there in the typical “black dress”. I estimated her age at 25 although it was a guess. So I asked a nephew who the hot number in the black dress was. He fell out and said “Your great niece”. Oh, I hadn’t seen her in 10 years or more and didn’t realize that number in the black dress was 15 or 16, can’t keep up with them.
AOC in most Mexican states is 12.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent#/media/File:Age_of_Consent_-_Global.svg
NV and many states is 15.
True, 8Man! I must’ve heard that joke (“Of course a jury can”) at least 25 years ago. It was true then, and even truer now.
A friend of mine, when he was young, used to work as a janitor in an elementary school. He’d feel guilty because he’d see this 12 year-old girl often going by, who wore tight-ish sweaters and had big bazongas (At least back then, they didn’t dress like sluts, like they do today).
It’s a shame that women age so badly. Unlike us guys, they can be hot when they’re fairly young…but by the time they’re 40, they’re done- while we can still be looking good for decades- often even better than when we were young. This is cruel paradox!
Makes me glad that I never met Miss Right when I was young though- ’cause she’d be an old monolithic sexless hag today….and I don’t believe in divorce!
Some people talk about the way the nation is controlled by the Donor Class. An appropriate definition of this group is, “People who would rather buy a politician’s vote so that the politician can do their bidding (lawmaking) so as to least affect their lives, while fully encroaching upon the lives of their neighbors.”
Think about why so many of President Trump’s big-business supporters (and certain members of his Competitiveness Council) whined about him snapping the Paris Climate Accord into small pieces. These insiders looked at that piece of horrid interference as a way they could use the government to enforce laws against their competitors that they had already overcome. This is why calling it the Competitiveness Council is a complete misnomer. Instead, it shows that it’s the Insiders against those not connected (the rest of America). This is not to say the deal was a good deal that should have been kept; it’s a deal that should never have been made!
It was also a way to create a system that could be enforced upon every other signer of the “agreement” by some supra-government entity that could not be held to account for their actions.
Why do you think so many people have been against the European Union within Europe? Because the EU is not accountable to any of their own national governments!
Travis: I read a piece by a progressive who was complaining she couldn’t get “social services” in her hometown of Utica, NY because it had been invaded/taken over by Muslims. I wanted to tell her, “That’s the system you love and support, until someone else gets in power.” But “comments” had been closed.
She moved to S. Carolina and is very happy. Voluntaryists have no where that is not plagued by collectivists.
Ins’t that hilarious, Volly?! Commu..err I mean regressives..err, I mean “progressives” complaining when the white genocide; destruction of their own communities; and power structures which they’ve advocated for and erected practice the very things these people have been advocating all along?! It’s not until it affects them personally that they might start to take notice. Perhaps, if they are unable to receive “benefits” and have to live by their own means, they will become more conservative. (Of course, they’ll still be authoritarian collectivists…but at least have taken a step in the right direction!)
There seems to be a shortage of “reply” buttons on this platform, so I’ll just have to start posting at large, I guess.
So, Eightsouthman, long after I quit watching Saturday Night Live, there was a skit about an unemployed guy who was living in a van down by the river. (www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nhgfjrKi0o) It came to my attention on another group after I identified myself as a vandweller. So, there you go:-)
Matt Foley. Motivational Speaker. Been living in a van down by the river.
Here is the real red pill for many. The rabbit hole of poverty and loneliness. Divorced and living in a van. Life didn’t go like you thought it would.
Matt Foley: Hey you kids are probably saying to yourselves: I’m gonna go out there and grab the world by the tail! and wrap it around and pull it down and put it in my pocket. Well I’m here to tell you that you’re probably going to find out, as you go out there, that you’re not going to amount to jack squat!
Matt Foley: Hi. How is everybody? Good. Great.
Matt Foley: Now as your father probably told you. My name is Matt Foley and I am a motivational speaker.
Matt Foley: So, let me give you a little bit of a scenario of what my life is all about.
Matt Foley: First up, I am 35 years old.
Matt Foley: I’m thrice divorced and I live in a van down by the river.
Matt Foley: Now you kids are probably saying to yourselves, “Hey Matt, how can we get back on the right track?” And the answer is that I get my gear and move in with you. We’re gonna be BUDDIES. We’re gonna be PALS. Here’s you, there’s Matt, here’s you, here’s Matt…
[Falls on coffee table]
Matt Foley: Young man what do you wanna do with your life?
Son of Matt Foley in sketch: Well actually, Matt, I kinda wanna be a writer.
Matt Foley: Well la-de-freakin’-dah! We got ourselves a writer here! Hey, Dad, I can’t see too good.
[moves glasses up and down]
Matt Foley: Is that Bill Shakespeare over there?
Good stuff from the old days there.
The best stuff on SNL preceded the “old days”.
I’ll say.
Lorne Lipowitz; b Nov, 1944) is a CaNuck-MeriKan tv producer, writer, comedian, and actor, best known for creating and producing Saturday Night Live.
L. Lipowitz’s Ma & Pa:: Florence Becker and Henry Abraham Lipowitz, a furrier:: in Mandatory Palestine, moved to Toronto, Ont, CAN, while he was an infant. He is Jewish.
Lorne whose Goy Surame is Michaels attended the Forest Hill Collegiate Institute in Toronto and graduated from University College, University of Toronto, where he majored in English, in 1966.
Michaels began his career as a writer and broadcaster for CBC Radio.
He moved to LA from Toronto in 1968 to work as a writer for Laugh-In and The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show. During the late 1960s, Michaels began a relationship with Rosie Shuster, who later worked with him on Saturday Night Live as a writer. Michaels and Shuster were married in 1971 and divorced in 1980.
In 1975 Michaels along with Dick Ebersol and president of the network Herb Schlosser createdmthe TV show NBC’s Saturday Night, which in 1977 changed its name to Saturday Night Live. (initially there was a name conflict with yet another Jew’s ABC show titled “Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell”).
The show, which is performed live in front of a studio audience, immediately established a reputation for being cutting-edge and unpredictable…
Gut Arbet amusing all them Goys (((Guys.)))
I thought the best seasons of SNL were the second generation- c. ’80-’84. After that, they could have just canceled the show. Few seem to share my opinion though, as that period of the show seems to be universally despised.
Although I much prefered Garrett Morris to Eddy Murphy.
Is this a farm tractor or a truck tractor?
Thanks, Eric. Another great article as always. My first thought when reading this one, was of Robert A. Heinlein’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”
He laid out the problems.
“Seems to be a deep instinct in human beings for making everything compulsory that isn’t forbidden.”
“There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.”
“That we were slaves I had known all my life–and nothing could be done about it. True, we weren’t bought and sold–but as long as Authority held monopoly over what we had to have and what we could sell to buy it, we were slaves.”
“Must be yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please.”
And some of the solutions.
“I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”
“In terms of morals there is no such thing as ‘state.’ Just men. Individuals. Each responsible for his own acts.”
Last but certainly not least.
“Revolution is an art that I pursue rather than a goal I expect to achieve. Nor is this a source of dismay; a lost cause can be as spiritually satisfying as a victory.”
We could use a lot more computers like Mike and fewer like HAL.
Right on!……….
Remove the brainwashing (no small task) and I believe most people (98%?) would be voluntarists. Two %? are that way in spite of govt. indoctrination camps. I was one from my first year at 5. I boycotted 1st grade continually, and got my cousin in (3rd grade) to write my excuses, signing my mother’s name. I bribed her. I spent my days in a tree house looking at pictures and day dreaming, but I was painfully bored. It was still preferable to the regimentation of class.
If revolution means trying to overthrow/take control of govt., I have never wanted to revolt. I just wanted to be left alone, to secede from the state, county, city, or any form of initiated violence. Since coercive govt. is supported by most societies and the ones that boycott it are religious/socially coercive I found no home in any society. I have lived as an outsider for 74 years. That has given me an objective perspective. Everywhere, I see a collective insanity, a closed minded irrationality, a failure to think, faith-based belief. It used to make me feel alienated. Then, at 23, I discovered the mind of Ayn. I was not alone. Later I discovered Heinlein, H.L. Mencken, Rothbard, and then the libertarian movement. Still no “place” but a society and that would do.
You don’t even have to remove much brainwashing with the majority of Americans, because the experience of running an Operation Politically Homeless project will show that the majority of them will wind up in the top quadrant of the late Marshall Fritz’s Diamond Chart, packed in under the top corner. They just have trouble until the left-right paradigm is opened up into two-dimensional reality, and then most of them get it.
Try it yourself at theadvocates.org/quiz/quiz.php
Uh-uh, Bill. The majority of those people will just resort to/continue stealing and looting and doing whatever they have to, to avoid meaningful work or self-sufficiency. You see the machinations they willing put themselves through NOW- often expending far more effort and giving up far more autonomy to get a few crumbs, when they could be prosperous if they wanted to be- so just imagine what they’ll do when TSHTF. People don’t change.
The people who today live like bums and slobs and criminals, the same way their recent ancestors did 100 years ago in slums, being shiftless and violent….is the same way their descendants live today even though they have a plethora of welfare programs and air-conditioned apartments, and access to the same free education and all and more so than those around them; and they will continue to be the same when things deteriorate.
It’s just like when one of ’em wins the lottery: No matter how many millions they win, they virtually all end up destroying their lives and ending up bankrupt within a few years. One guy won $350MILLION- he was broke again 9 years later.
People for the most part don’t change- and a despite the feel-good media stories, they tend to be even worse in a crisis, when their way of life or very survival is threatened.
Look at anyone today- be it a woman you want to marry, or some ghetto-dweller or an honest tradesman or a dishonest tradesman, etc. You can predict the future: However they are today…is the way they will be 10 years from now, despite how circumstances may change. Positive circumstances may tend to moderate their character a little; negative circumstances will likely make them more severe.
How will they continue to live the same way when that which they have been living on stops, as it must when the depression settles in, as it will, eventually? No matter how bad the baddies are, they are outnumbered, and since they tend to be anti-gunners, they’ll also be out-gunned anywhere I want to be.
>”How will they continue to live the same way when that which they have been living on stops,”<
By "the same way" I meant their personal habits of conniving and stealing and using violence and deception….i.e. doing whatever they have to do to get by at the expense of others. If the goobermint stops giving to them what they take from others, they'll just take it themselves- from their own, and from us.
And as Tor so rightly points out, these turds are minions of the state. As long as there is still any little scrap to be had from the gov't teat- even bread and water in a cell in a FEMA camp, they will gladly do whatever they are told. They are a large virtual army of rabble, to be used for whatever. They demonstrate even when times are good, that they have little or no empathy or morals. Imagine when it comes down to survival….
Well YMMV I suppose. My experience has been what you said Nunzee, though I’m very grateful for bringing up the Nolan Chart, and hearing some class theory about who fits in where.
Multiple homeless guys holding there signs and pan handling have seen me waiting at the light. They have yelled at me to put on my seatbelt.
The worst of these vagrant clovers even went over to a cop car and tried to get his attention to report me for not wearing a seatbelt.
I used to drive past the fuckers and drop a few bucks on the ground far enough away that they couldn’t reach me, and then drove away.
Actually letting them come up to your vehicle, or get within grabbing or stabbing distance seems like an unnecessary risk for no actual reward except virtue signalling.
Great article! Hits the bulls eye making the connection between our “overseers” & their strong arm enforcers, and that it will just inevitably get worse. (Some posters here are apparently frustrated bloggers. Get your own space.)
Your faithful commenters are too verbose for me to read, Eric, but I love the fact that the older you get, the more radical you get. It always exhilarates me when that happens. Great essay!!
Maybe eric’ll get enough funding to implement the collapsing of comments that go beyond whatever word length he feels is appropriate here. They’d then be shortened by default, and only would be visible if you clicked on them to expand them to their full intolerable tl;dr verbosity….
Intolerable verbosity is based more on insipid ignorance than volume.
You rely on the fallacy of argument aka begging the question far too often. Though you are neither insipid nor ignorant, but rather quite cogent and apropos.
Might want to work on yourself before advising others. Just sayin.
What you say is intolerable may not be so for everyone here. I for one can tolerate everything here, I welcome stress actually. Especially quasi ad hominems.
My favorite is strawmanning which I use extensively here.
If any paying customer here wants any of us verbosians to leave just ask. I certainly would if anyone so asserted they were a donor and Eric didn’t refute said claim.
Money should talk here as well as it does anywhere, IMO.
Those of us who live on $809 a month don’t usually donate money.
Hi Tor,
I prefer to keep this place “open source” – and not erect any pay walls. I know that many good people simply can’t afford to pay, yet I would like them to have access. So long as enough people who are able to chip in, do chip in, it all works! 🙂
Well Tor, you know what they say about money and bullshit….must be the reason my boot soles are wearing fast.
8,
Sounds like you should buy boots with better soles:-)
Bill, I do the best I can aha!! Obamacare based my Medicare on wages when I was knocking back a good salary…..er…..wage. Now, since I’m stupid and knew no better(I’d been better off to simply pay cash with no govt. involved…..whooda thunkit?)they stuck it to me……but that’s ok. I don’t intend to ever quit working anyway. Ok,, it’s not ok but that’s the way it is and it’s not something that surprises me. Some day, due to inflation, my retirement will be worth tens of dollars…..can’t wait. Maybe I’ll start my own drug cartel…..all those old cheap pharm antibiotics and such they still sell in 3rd world countries for a little of nothing.
I used to have an Indian doc and he mentioned the antibiotics no longer available here but his brother in India prescribed left and right because it was super-cheap. I lamented it was a shame since they are cheap, cheap. He said “You know why they don’t sell them here don’t you?”. Yep, indeedy, I sure do. They now have drugs that cost ten times more. And stuff that addresses bed bugs and such for humans(same as the stuff I use on cattle and much cheaper)is only a tiny partial strength but 10X what it cost 3-4 years ago.
Was it me you were addressing about tractors?
8sm,
Were you the one talking about shutting up the neighbor’s kid playing the cRap music? If so, then yes. I spent 4 years moving trunk (“bobtail”) tractors all over the lower 48. Most people call truck tractors trucks in the same erroneous way they call tractor-trailers “semis.”
I haven’t paid for health insurance since Obamacare happened because my vandwelling makes me legally homeless under the HHS’s definition and CMS is under them. The homeless are exempt from both the personal mandate and the “fines.”
Many of the antibiotics prescribed for humans are available without a prescription at a much lower price in a veterinary supply, or in Algodones, Baja California, Mexico.
Essential oils can do the same things as many pharmaceuticals. I haven’t used toothpaste in some time, having found that coconut oil with thieves and other essential oils mixed into it work much better at controlling my gingivitis, at a fraction of the cost.
Bill, twren’t me with a music problem. I have no neighbors close enough to hear anything but gunshots.
I almost got into moving tractors but it seemed so willy-nilly I didn’t pursue it far.
Going to the witchy doc in Mexico and her using aromatic oils and smoke worked well on me. I’d use her all the time if she weren’t 1400 miles away.
I’ve meant to check into coconut oil for mouthwash and just haven’t found any locally. I do use fluoride free toothpaste though since I often brush several times a day or at least every time after I eat anything. Glad to know someone who recommends coconut oil.
This is what I meant when I said that this platform sometimes makes it impossible to follow a thread.
Essential or aromatic oils being the same thing, they are only an email away from your nearest Young Living distributor, like me:-)
Not only do I recommend coconut oil, I use it to make my own dentifrice as well as cook my scrambled eggs.
Hi Bill,
What you describe is an annoying bug of wordpress. It is much easier to read the comments on the full comments page. Access instructions below.
If you are a registered user, this link: https://ericpetersautos.com/wp-admin/edit-comments.php takes you directly to the full comments page. A screen may come up displaying a “sorry, no log-in enablers provided”. Ignore this statement and put in your name and password in the space provided. If you bookmark this link, you can always go directly to the full comments page. It is much easier to navigate from this page. The comments appear chronologically. To the right of the comment there are two headings, “in response to” and “submitted on”. If you click on the date/time section under the “submitted on” heading, it takes you directly to the specific comment you wish to reply to. You may need to scroll up or down a little, but it will be easy to find. If there is no reply button, just scroll up until you find one. If you are concerned about attribution, you can do two things: just make it clear in your post or, scroll further up until you find a reply button under the specific commenter (rather than specific comment).
I try to recognize the person I am responding to both because I think it is polite, and because it makes it easier to follow the thread. I hope this helps.
Kind Regards,
Jeremy
Jeremy,
I don’t think there is anything about wordpress that isn’t annoying to me, starting with their refusal to use all of the standard identifying files like cookies instead of forcing me to sign on with what I long ago forgot.
Small machines is much friendlier in every way as well as free.
Dear Jeremy,
Thanks for posting that friend.
I don’t have that comment bookmark on this old laptop that has the date set to 2012 on purpose.
You want to see how much control you’re under, trying browsing the web with your computer clock rolled back a few years.
I put in my info and got “error>no access”
WordPress….
As comment/blog platforms go…it might not be perfect, but what is? Many other services are far worse.
I look at it this way: There is really only one inconvenience here: The lack of replay buttons after the comments get narrow- and that is very tolerable.
The way I look at it: As Anarchists, if we were able to live in the world we desired, we would no-doubt suffer some inconvenience, not having many of the things which are provided for us, which we take for granted and have come to rely on. So be it. Such is the cost of freedom.
Eric has established a great site here, where a handful of cream-of-the-crop regulars can discuss whatever to their heart’s content, unhindered. This is truly wonderful. And even though this is Eric’s site, and is ultimately supposed to be his platform for his articles, he selflessly shares it with us.
A very small inconvenience is a negligible price to pay for such anc extraordinary gift.
Anyone remember those old Yahoo discussion groups? Talk about a crap platform!
Hi Bill,
I used to find comment navigation to be difficult and annoying because I would try to find a comment in the specific post. Now, I go to the full comments page and find the last comment I read. Then I scroll up and read the comments that I find interesting and look for specific comments that I want to engage.
I never worry about finding a reply button or dealing with a narrow thread because I read all comments in the full format, and I know how to access the comment I wish to engage.
Cheers,
Jeremy
I guess that my general distaste for wordpress arrogance precludes my interest in compensation thereof.
Bill,
You’ve complained a number of times about reply/threading difficulty and you clearly wish to respond. I assumed your comments were directed at some end other than mere expression of distaste.
Jeremy
That will have to do since I will never traverse to wordpress.
Bill,
I stand corrected, mere complaint was your goal.
Jeremy
Dear Bill,
You of all people should understand Eric’s having WordPress.
It’s the Matt Foley of the internet.
Eric is a thrice divorced motivational blogger living on the web down by the river.
Jeremy,
As is ad hominem yours.
Hi Bill,
Thanks, that was funny.
Cheers,
Jeremy
This place is turning into the kind of sewer that Eric claimed he didn’t want.
Hi Bill,
You’re right, although sewer seems a little hyperbolic. I responded petulantly to what appeared to me to be your ungracious comments. Eric has made it clear, repeatedly, that he lacks the technical expertise and resources to “fix” the comment issues.
So, when you responded dismissively that you will “never traverse to wordress” or bother with compensatory strategies, it appeared to be hypocritical and ungracious, especially to Eric, who provides this site for free.
So, I apologize.
Kind Regards,
Jeremy
I think Bill’s and other’s here’s advice could have a monetary value to many.
The walk talk rhyming proverb is from 1968.
aka Attempting to accomplish a goal by a monetary exchange for material resources will succeed, while attempting to accomplish that goal through mere rhetoric will fail.
My take, words are all well and good, but actual exchange of material value for another person’s differing materials of a differing value will always take precedence.
Both have some value, but money’s value (it is a present day store of your past labor value) far outweighs the value of your words.
Eric is the rare individual whose words literally hold a monetary value, he can make money with each word he writes.
Just remember that money is not made of paper or zeros and ones. That is currency and negotiable instruments of debt.
Hi Tor,
You’re welcome. I was dismayed when the link to the full comments page disappeared from the site and I was very thankful when BrentP posted a direct link. Now, I’ve got it book-marked on all of my computers.
Cheers,
Jeremy
I spent years sarcastically referring to myself as a “useless eater”. Now I will start referring to myself as one of the mulcted as well.
All of the world’s truth tellers, you and I included Eric, certainly hope that those asleep will awaken from their stupor, and begin to use critical thinking, and understand what is really going on. Unfortunately, I read of a poll today that stated that 7% of American ADULTS believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows!
That does along with the equally specious premise that the milk in the store bears any significant resemblance to what came out of the cow. I have become convinced that the only way to obtain proper nutrition under the corrupted food chain in place throughout the world is by supplementing with bioidentical products. I still eat, but I don’t rely on food for nutrition, just enjoyment and satiety. The only thing that is reasonably safe is the protein and the lipids, assuming they haven’t been overtly poisoned, and I believe that would be readily discovered by even the grossly incompetent medical systems in use. Useless eaters are now those who won’t eat pharmafood, which are pretty much unavoidable if you don’t have your own farm and ranch to raise your own food.
The public continues to rely on entities that routinely come up in single digit in reliability in reasonably reliable polls. When the most reliable can’t break into double digits, the game is over.
Oh, Bill, if only. (…the game is over.) You assume rationality. The faith in force that fuels support for the govt. (institutionalized violence) is not shaken by reason. The public will continue their irrationality until it destroys the economy and the country breaks up into regions or hopefully state governments only. That might not help but it can’t be worse.
My wife & I buy organic, T.J.’s, Sprouts, Sam’s, mainly, but once in a blue moon, WFM.
I assume rationality here, not in public. Rationality becomes more likely when the plastic doesn’t work, the bank is closed, and the wallet and stomach are empty. That time is coming soon, as dramatised by Bill Bonner at ATMcrisis.com
Organic isn’t better if it is grown on the same depleted soil as the food that was grown with petrochemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. If the trace nutrients aren’t there, it doesn’t matter to the USDA.
Here’s Bill Bonner’s Hormegeddon (300 pages pdf)
https://www.southbankresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2016/06/hormegeddon-5.pdf
It’s about how Too Much Of A Good Thing Leads To Disaster …
An excellent read, well worth the time.
So Nuclear Power is somehow evil, even though in the entirety of its existence it has killed less than a million people and possibly as few as 269, depending on which sources you believe are more accurate.
The WHO estimates there are 7 million premature deaths annually linked to far more evil and deadly air pollution.
Most of this pollution being from wood burning, coal burning, diesel and gas burning, oil burning. Nearly all of which could be replaced by clean burning, immensely less damaging to extract and process uranium and other fissionable materials.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-pollution/en/
There is no need for climate agreements and eco fatwas. They are killing children, with their waiting for the day renewable sources will magically fulfill all our energy needs.
2nd and 3rd generation nuclear plants could be saving all the children and adults of the world RIGHT FUCKING NOW.
A moments investigation leads to a red-pillable moment. They define the problem. They purposely incite the wrong damaging over-reaction, and negligently ignore the obvious life saving solution.
Maybe eco-tards should be culled from our societies, and made to live in the new primitive societies consisting of their fellow violent uncivilized kin, the Muslims, the Blacks and Aborigines, and the Crips, Bloods, MS-13s, Triads, Yakuzas, Jihadists, and all other gangbangers.
It must be the 450 million year half lifes of the pollutants that bother people.
Consider this half-baked discussion of half lives then…
Every atom in every cell in our body has a half life. And all the atoms in each cell will be replaced an average of 7 times during our lifespan.
None of the atoms in your current body were there when you were born. We are low grade radioactive and atomically decaying from birth.
The reason you’ll die sooner than later, is scientists aren’t working on mastering this process, but rather pissing their pants about 0.001 increases in world surface temperatures or micro-escalating radioactive levels. All of which are controlled by the sun in 99.998% of the cases.
We only exist within the heliopause of that star out there that’s always 499.0 light seconds away whether it’s “day” or “night” as we have idiocracy-atically been programmed to misunderstand.
We’re living chimeras and more of a holographic movie, than materially substantive as would be observed and remembered by beings or video recorders that take in several frames a minute or year and then replay them at 30 frames per second so we can view and perceive them as mp4 file equivalent videos.
And don’t even get me started on Carbon-14 dating and sub=molecular tinder apps.
How Carbon-14 Dating and particle physic tinder works:
Cosmic rays enter the earth’s atmosphere in large numbers every day. For example, every person is hit by about half a million cosmic rays every hour. It is not uncommon for a cosmic ray to collide with an atom in the atmosphere, creating a secondary cosmic ray in the form of an energetic neutron, and for these energetic neutrons to collide with nitrogen atoms.
When the neutron collides, a nitrogen-14 (seven protons, seven neutrons) atom turns into a carbon-14 atom (six protons, eight neutrons) and a hydrogen atom (one proton, zero neutrons) results
This Carbon-14 in our bodies radioactive, with a half-life of about 5,700 years.
Carbon-14 in Living and Zombie Undead AmeriKan humans and other animals
The carbon-14 atoms that cosmic rays create combine with oxygen to form carbon dioxide, which plants absorb naturally and incorporate into plant fibers by photosynthesis.
Animals and people eat plants and take in carbon-14 as well. The ratio of normal carbon (carbon-12) to carbon-14 in the air and in all living things at any given time is nearly constant.
Maybe one in a trillion carbon atoms are carbon-14. The carbon-14 atoms are always decaying, but they are being replaced by new carbon-14 atoms at a constant rate. At this moment, your body has a certain percentage of carbon-14 atoms in it, and all living plants and animals have the same percentage.
The Firm-Radioactive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3973tfsllqw
Settled Scientific Verdict: Snopes cucked pussies say true.
http://www.whale.to/c/12108828_10153331574917989_2237763323897065321_n.jpg
Do all of your facts come from the links that you post, or have you actually replicated any of the studies that they don’t cite? Non-radioactive atoms don’t decay, and clean coal is almost totally carbon, which all life is dependent upon, unless you are a Vulcan. Live long and prosper.
Holy plutonium Batman! I read a decade or so ago that the then commonly made reactors used as much energy in building, maintenance, shipping for parts and all their other needs including disposing of old rods and water and all other factors left them just about even with natgas electricity for price of electricity made. Makes sense when you think about it. Natgas needs a pipeline in when it’s built and not anywhere near the maintenance as nuclear.
Now I could get on board if they could make thorium worthwhile, otherwise we’ll have more and more reactors that have been sealed off into their own community as in Russia. It pays well but nobody’s sayin’ if it makes your dick longer.
‘Zactly, 8Man.
The Nukular power “industry” is the Elon Musk of power generating. It exists only because the state vilifies, out-laws, and makes prohibitive other forms of generating;
It is only feasible when paid for/subsidized by the state; and only when protected corporations and utilities can shield those involved from liability- or even the costs of decommissioning; waste disposal and clean-up, etc.
In a free society/truly free market, nukular power would not exist, because just like electric cars, wind farms, ethanol, hydrogen, etc. without Uncle….it’s not economically feasible, much less advantageous.
All that money to build the damn things….then a few years later, even more to decommission them…then yet more to build a new one!
Just like Musky’s cars wouldn’t exist without Uncle using our money to subsidize them; Just like Space-X wouldn’t exist without being the chosen favorite of NASA…so too with nukes. In a free market, you can’t get away unscathed because “We followed NRC protocol and did nothing wrong or illegal”.
Nunzio, let’s take one example…..GE designs. WTF does it mean? It means that GE made billions with their “design” and probably nobody else was even considered. If I had a design that flogged GE’s into the ground you’d never hear about it.
So the gunvermin “accepts” their design….big surprise there since it was all done and paid for way before they even publicly admitted they were going to build that reactor.
Everybody gets a damned good payday and as it gets built, most receive more good paydays.
Meanwhile, you and I get to pay for all this bs. There’s never been a reactor in the US and I suspect, anywhere, that the taxpayer didn’t buy and pols and corporations didn’t clean up on. It’s good work if you can get it is all I have to say.
Would I stand in line for the contract to build one? I’d hire people for any price to stand in line for me when I know in the end I’m gonna make a few hundred million just for getting the contract.
Too bad for me. My bank…..nor any other bank won’t loan me the money to do this but the owners of GE or some other corporation who have former/current BOD or outright employees on the bank BOD’s waiting in line(they only have to answer a call or letter or at least their hirees do)for confirmation. It’s enough to make anyone who knows how it works sick.
Unfortunately, nearly everyone reads something about this and it’s all 3rd party bs. Did you see where “——“got the contract to build a new reactor near us? Gee, we’re so excited since “—-” might be up for a good job(but never mind he’s going to pay out the nose in taxes for it and so will everyone else). It all just makes me ill.
I have hauled lots of stuff for natgas electrical production but never the nuclear stuff which I hear is quite lucrative…..although it’s probably lowball hauling. The point being, we only get to pay for it.
Lookee here it’s the MIT Campus Nuclear Reactor right where all the students walk by everyday. They’re all going to die /sarc.
We should argue over how we can get Nuclear Power into individual hands.
At a small enough scale it would be an acceptable risk for some people. Of course this is likely only to be type 2.0 or 3.0 that is useless in creating any kinds of weapons.
Highly unlikely advanced weaponly would be allowed, though it should be if you believe in the NAP.
Nuclear power on a residential dwelling scale is safer than your neighbor who has a fireplace with soot and smoke billowing out.
But Tor, that fire could spark a blaze that burns down an entire city block, a neighborhood, a city, a county a state.
i’m so scared of the fire, I claim aggression and potential murder and property destruction by fire.
Well then you and your Nucleophobe buddies are both clovers, and can go eat shit.
No prior restraint. Trying to insert New Testament doctrine or Environmental Doctrine are not arguments.
Hidden in Plain Sight: MIT Nuclear Reactor
https://vimeo.com/47494901
It isn’t the scale that makes nuclear dangerous. It is the level of ignorance of the operators.
Woohoo Bill! It’s the Homer’s of the world who will do just what they’re told and never think twice about that paper they signed that stops lawsuits before they can begin.
With the crap that comes out of MIT these days, nukular waste is probably the most benign.
Heh, yeah 8Man- No surprise there. They’ve reduced the American public to a slave class who will jump at anything -a prison in their backyard; a nuke plant; subsidized housing for low-lifes…..anything, as long as it portends “good jobs”- even temporary ones.
They can even sell a war that way: “It’ll stimulate the economy”. Translation: “We took all of your money, now we’ll spend it like a drunken sailor, and plus indebt the country for 1000x more, and you’ll be grateful to clean the toilets or assemble widgets, because you hae nothing other than debt, and your $250K house is nothing but a place to sleep- You have the ability to produce NOTHING and therefor are totally dependent on us and any little scraps of your tax money we let your earn back”.
only with fission reactors, where the radioactive components are broken down into more, but less radioactive, molecules. With FUSION, radioactive molecules are joined with others, there IS no waste…. not radioactive, anyway. France have been using these for years…. WHY have we not? Simple…. when our gummit created the Atomic Energy Commission back in, what, the 1950’s?, they decided what could, and must not, be done.
WHY? Because they do not exist. There are no practical fusion reactors presently. Perhaps soon. (Practical fusion power has been reported to be 10-15 years away for the last 60+ years.)
Glow discharge plasma in UK’s fusion reactor ST40
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmqixmBF9Ik
The UK Just Switched on an Ambitious Fusion Reactor – And It Works. First plasma has been achieved.
http://www.sciencealert.com/the-uk-has-just-switch-on-its-tokamak-nuclear-fusion-reactor
For how long will it work? Who paid for it? Where does the fuel come from?
betIcanGuessTheAnswers!….betIcanGuessTheAnswers!…. nyah-nyah nya-nyah-nyah!
Aside from how long plasma containment will last, have the experimental reactors even achieved the energy breakeven point?
As I said, fusion power has been right around the corner for decades now. (I’ve been reading about Tokamak reactors since the 1950s.) I have no doubt practical fusion power will be achieved at some point but we do not have it now and I would not hold my breath waiting for it.
The problem isn’t in plasma containment as much as it is in the limited return for the energy required. That, and no one has figured out a way to make the fuel supply continuous, as it has to cross the magnetic envelope, and so, destroys it.
Fusion makes as many things radioactive as fission does, especially the reactor containment itself. It is very difficult to contain a star without getting hot.
Now that more scientists are finding ways to make cold fusion work, there are more advances in cold than in hot. Most of the problems with cold fusion are metaphysical and relativistic rather than Newtonian.
Fusion power: More elusive than the Tesla Model 3 ! (And let’s hope fusion power never comes, ’cause it has the potential to quite easily cause a runaway reaction, and destroy the whole world…)
A runaway reaction is impossible in fusion, because once the containment field collapses, the reaction would be quenched.
I’m no egg-spurt on things nukular, Bill- but I believe you are wrong.
Containment may be necessary in order to harvest the energy….but not to sustain reaction.
Again, just look at Fukashima- even though that is only fission.
It’s all pie-in-the-sky…..
How long is the safe usable lifespan of a nukular reactor, anyway? I doubt ANYBODT wants a 50 year-old reactor. How much do they cost to build?
Now compare the cost and longevity with simple old-fashioned techno-lodgey like coal. AND bear in mind that nukular fuel is not all that plentiful as it is- and the more demand there is for it (if there were more and more reactors) the more rare and expensive it would become. (And it is very difficult, dangerous and expensive to mine and transport. Makes coal mining look like a walk in the park!)
And remember, it is big government- from small local ones, to the UN, who are trying to out-law the simple , accessible-to-everyone self-sustaining good old ways of doing things/technologies, which have served mankind well throughout our history without “destroying the planet”, simply because they want to take the control of our lives and communities out of our hands, and put it into theirs.
We don’t need all of their high-tech big-government big-business magical mystery technologies to do the things we’d always done just fine by using the methods which they are waging war against with all of this phony “green” environmental BS.
And nuclear power is their poster child!
Luckily the parts that wear out are regularly replaced. That 50 year old reactor is probably better maintained than any other machine on Earth. Certainly more monitored.
It is impossible to repair the reactor vessel when decades of irradiation have made it brittle and highly radioactive. With brittleness comes loss of strength and leaks. It doesn’t matter how much a reactor is monitored if the monitors don’t know anything more about nuclear physics than the operators of a coal-fired power plant, and they don’t. Coal stops producing heat as soon as it is consumed. A reactor core takes days to cool down enough to stop the coolant flow, after the criticality has been reduced, which isn’t the same as shutting off the supply of coal.
Can’t simply replace the reinforced concrete….and it sure don’t last forever, whether in a dam or bridge or building….
The Shoreham nukular plant built 40 years ago started crumbling long ago, even though it was never operational.
Nuclear reactors are built for specified life spans, but because the metallurgy of alloys that are exposed to high levels of radiation are as much art as science, recertification is required to allow reactors to operate past their design lifespan. The components of a coal-fired boiler are never exposed to radiation degradation, just heat, and that was well qualified before power plants were built.
Uranium is not just mined and poured in a reactor. It has to be enriched from a level that is too low to produce a critical mass to one that will support one, which is well below what is required to produce a warhead. Then it has to be mixed with specific other chemical components to produce a homogenous mixture to be placed into fuel rods. Coal can be simply fed into the firebox. It is in the interest of the military-industrial complex and the nuclear industry to maintain a continuous flow of uranium ore, because less than 1% of the uranium is fissile and the rest, depleted uranium, is used to make armor-piercing projectiles. DU destroys the environment more than anything else could, by making it radioactive for over 4.468 billion years, the half-life of U-238. Most nuclear warheads are made with plutonium instead of uranium, and that has to be separated from spent fuel rods after they have decayed enough to be safe enough to work with. Plutonium is the radiologically safest thing in a spent fuel rod, but it is surrounded by other components that can give a human a life-time radiation dose in a few seconds, until it is allowed to “cool” off.
In what way are the casks full of radioactive waste stationed at nuclear reactors around the world less radioactive than the uranium that went in?
We’ll never even know the true impact to human and animal life caused by Fuked-up-shima, and for how long land and sea will be rendered sterile/mutated/toxic.
Effects of Three Mile Island are still ongoing.
myeah, nukular power is so nice and clean…so long as they don’t build a plant or mine or waste facility nextdoor to you…..
It’s a moot point though- without big government to make it “attractive” and to protect those involved from the extensive liability, no one’d mess with it anyway.
Such problems with just a relative handful of nuke plants in the world today; imagine if they were common and in more densely populated areas?
Coal is responsible for over 800,000 premature deaths per year globally and many millions more serious and minor illnesses. In China alone, around 670,000 people die prematurely per year as a result of coal-related air pollution.
http://endcoal.org/health/
Yeah, like “Second-hand smoke”, “global warming” and unicorn farts……
Like I said elsewhere, the globalists vilify the simple, accessible-to-all technology, so they can replace it with technology which is only available to/through them and their matrix of control.
If burning natural substances is detrimental to life and health, than we would not be here right now, because that’s what people the world over have done throughout history up until just now- but it is now that we have Fukishima; Chernyobal; Three-Mile Island; Hanford; Hiroshima [Note to self: Stay away from places that end in “shima”]; Nagosaki…….
But the UN would have us cowering in fear at the sight of a cigarette or lump of coal…… (Maybe they’re right about the cigs…. My aunt was a moderate smoker all of her life- Passed away a year ago at the tender age of 95, and hadn’t been in the greatest health for the last 2 or 3 years…so, don’t smoke, kids! Don’t even LOOK at a cigarette! If someone smokes within 500 feet of you, rush to the nearest hospital for hyperbaric oxygen treatments- or you’ll get cancer, and then they’ll have to give you radiation treatments or have you stand on the shores of CA> when the wind is blowing from Japan….)
“If burning natural substances is detrimental to life and health, than we would not be here right now”.
C’mon Nunzio, you’re smarter than that. Exposure to the by-products of combustion is detrimental to life and health, that’s why we invented chimneys and venting. But, the effect is not immediately toxic, which is why burning natural substances can be both detrimental to life and health and insufficient to prevent procreation. As with anything else, there is a balance between the benefits (warmth, cooking, etc…) and the costs.
As to whether nuclear power would exist in a truly free market, I don’t know, and neither do you. I, like RaedyKilowatt, suspect it is likely and that the risks could be mitigated to the point that free people would decide that the benefits outweigh the potential harm. But, I do not know. Same goes for electric cars. In a truly free market they could be viable, but only if people are allowed to determine, for themselves, the acceptable balance of cost, safety and efficiency.
Jeremy
Jeremy,
If you were to visit the Idaho National Laboratory, you could see a display of one of the nuclear aircraft engines that were made after WW2. They gave up them because they left a flume of radioactive debris behind them. You could think of it as a radioactive contrail, but it would always be coming out and ground teams would have to wear full-containment suits to work around them. A passenger in such a plane would get several times the exposure to radiation from the plane’s engines as from the high altitude gamma that they already do.
Part of the reason why we are so desperately looking for sources of energy is because the world’s population is out-stripping conventional sources. If all the Earth’s population had to rely on wood-burning stoves to stay warm in the winter, all the trees would be gone faster than they can grow. Food grows faster and easier than trees. Since we have enough coal or oil proven reserves in just the US to provide energy for the western hemisphere for 2000 years, it is foolish to use far more rare uranium until we figure out how to do so as safely as we can the “fossil” fuels, which are not from dead animals, anyway.
Hi Bill,
I’m not shilling for nuclear power. I know very little about it. I just find it surprising that radical free market anarchists would make some of the statements I have read in this thread. None of us know what the market would choose absent interventions. All human action produces some risk. I’m qualified only to determine what level of risk I’m willing to tolerate.
Intervention stifles innovation, directs resources toward political, rather than economic or scientific ends, and prevents knowledge from emerging. while intervention is the norm, we cannot know the real potential (harm or benefit) or the real cost of different sources of energy.
Cheers,
jeremy
I here you Jeremy.
Here my take on Muh Nukeleeyer Puhlutshun…
I was in Las Vegas for many years.
Talked to many of the older timers who have observed mushroom clouds first hand.
Nuclear testing used to be something you attended like fireworks anywhere else.
None of them seemed to concerned about Nuclear Power.
Didn’t seem to be any ill effects despite watching the beautiful fission blasts while sitting on blankets.
I think towards the very end of open air testing, some of the more nervous ones wore sunglasses to keep themselves safe.
Even the guys who directly handled the material in the labs didn’t mention any health issues.
Though I’m sure they’d love a big payday if the AntiNuclear Clovers have their way and they have to pay out trillions in Muh Damages.
Is it just maybe possible that all of this is mostly hysteria.
Smoking is fine. IC engines are fine. Nuke isn’t any worse than any other kind of energy.
If you want a truly clean energy life. Use your own biological energy and avoid the grid and even off grid energy sources. Maybe you’ll live longer and healthier.
Maybe we just all do what we want unless provable harm occurs to you specifically. Isn’t that the basic premise here?
Isn’t pollution another big brother newspeak concept?
The term was coined in 1860.
The word was not in common use until 1955.
I cant’ advocate for eliminating all nukes worldwide or smoking or automobiles anything really,
how isn’t that blindingly obvious.
Nothing should be eliminated or banned, but always researched and improved
Why can’t we all make our own decisions without being told we insulted Allah or their rabid case of Fissionophobia?
Even if its worse than what the NukeClovers say, the answer is more research and entrepreneurship.
The answer is the free gotdam market.
Tor, being an avid sportsman, I read many years ago about people going into the aftermath of Chernobyl. There was a plethora of fauna and flora that was very healthy and larger than ever. They were amazed at the size of fish and game that seemed to be extremely healthy.
We all absorb plenty of rays of differing sources. It appeared that some of them were great for animal life as well as plant life.
This is not my opinion, since I don’t have enough information or knowledge to really have an opinion. It was just a story(and I read more than one like that)from people who’d gone there and seen it for themselves.
Finding a hot particle of Chernobyl’s spent fuel.
https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=96e_1381890499
Megaly seldom produces healthy tissue.
8, In PA. to this day, 40 years later, there are still plants and animules bearing effects from Three Mile Island- including humongous bumble bees!
Caused all kinds of mutations. Mutations are never good; never add new genetic info.
Generally, the over-sized things are shorter lived and unhealthy. They were not designed to be of such size and exist under present conditions. It creates an imbalance.
Tor,
And yet Marie Curie died of radiation poisoning….
I don’t know that we have any way of knowing if those nuke test spectacles were even real- or merely a big fireworks hoax to wow the public- but the latter wouldn’t surprise me a bit.
Look at the effects of Fukishima and Chernyobal, or even that other Russian mishap in the 50’s in which entire towns disappeared, and it was kept hush-hush.
Truly, if those public spectacles had been real, having much more power than what the above nuclear incidents did, why are there no still-radioactive locations where the detonations took place?
Hi, Jeremy,
Just for the record: I’m not advocating interventionism. I’m just saying that I think nukular power is unsafe and not a very good idea- but luckily, because I do not believe it would be economically feasible in a truly free market, I don’t really concern myself with worrying about it (Not that we will ever have a truly free market…).
How would you feel if your neighbor had his own little nuclear reactor in his garage, to power his home?
Also: If we lived in a free society, and you were walking down the street in a crowded place, like maybe Times Square, and you saw someone put on a blindfold; take out his gun, and spin around in a circle randomly firing the gun, would you intervene if he had not yet hit anyone with a bullet?
Sometimes there are gray areas. Sometimes practicality trumps philosophy.
Hi Nunzio,
I know, with certainty, that you are not advocating interventionism. As to my neighbor having a nuclear power generator in his garage, if I had good reason to believe it was safe, it would not bother me at all. In a truly free market I would have access to more and better information to make that determination.
As for blindly shooting at people, that is an act of aggression.
Kind Regards,
Jeremy
;In a Bevin voice]
Dear Jeremy,
😀
O-K, please don’t interpret this as me being argumentative or anything, because it is not meant in that vein (Nor do i assume that you would interpret it that way…but just to be safe…), But I just feel that this line of thought could be an interesting one, and I think that I might get some good insights from you:
So… Suppose that neighbor with the nuke in his garage…. Suppose you had observed him to be an alcoholic and or drug addict, or otherwise reckless person or one who makes bad decisions?
Then what do you do?
In thinking about your last response, I have come up with the thought that maybe the more potential there is for catastrophic damage; or the higher the stakes, perhaps the lower the threshold is for what consitutes aggression?
i.e. If the guy in Times Square were shooting a pea shooter…..chances and severity of damage would be low, so the threshold of such an act being aggression would be much higher than if he were firing a gun.
Just a thought. And then there’s still the matter of what we’d do about it.
I also had a thought after my previous post: I should hope, that even if nuclear energy were feasible in a free society, that the majority of people comprising such a society would be more inclined towards self-sufficiency and producing their own power or alternate ways of doing things.
I mean think about it: If we were free, and then were to basically continue life in much the same manner as we now live it- paying utility bills and such, it would almost seem pointless, wouldn’t it?
Anywho, I’m just thinking that this might be a fun and enlightening aside to pursue, no?
Respectfully, “Nunzee” 🙂
Hi Nunzio,
Those are interesting questions. As to personal nuclear generators, I don’t know if they would exist or, if they did, exactly how their use would be regulated. Perhaps insurance companies and private defense agencies would require strict containment standards in the event of a meltdown. Perhaps, no producer could get insurance unless outside professional operation and maintenance was a requirement for purchase. Or, perhaps you’re right and the whole thing would be deemed too risky.
And yes, both the risk and the severity of harm caused are germane to any possible future (personal or otherwise) energy production.
With the pea shooter vs the gun, it seems to me that both are acts of aggression but, the legitimacy of the response must be proportional to the initial action. For instance, I think it would be acceptable to shoot and kill someone who was randomly firing a gun into crowds of people. I do not think it would be acceptable to do so to the pea shooter.
You are right, this is tricky. Clearly, both the likelihood of harm caused and the severity of the harm, if caused, affects my decision as to whether an act is aggressive, and what would be a legitimate response.
Firing a gun into a crowd of people is nearly certain to cause injury or death and I don’t think that the NAP precludes a response until someone is actually hurt. But, driving a vehicle above some arbitrarily set BAC level is insufficient to justify intervention unless the person’s actual driving is clearly dangerous and likely to cause harm.
As I’ve said before, the NAP is an excellent guide but it cannot, by itself, resolve all real or imagined conflicts.
Kind Regards,
Jeremy
‘Morning, Jeremy!
I agree with you on all counts, except perhaps the circumstances which might affect the garage nukes 🙂 .
Remember, there’d be no one forcing us to acquire insurance (And I would think that without the artificial economy and manipulations of it by the gov’t/Federal Reserve, that in a free society most people would not be in long-term debt for their homes as most are today. Remember, such debt is a modern concept, which has pretty much only existed since the FDR administration, but was pretty much unheard of throughout history/throughout the world before that) So even the idea of a lender requiring insurance wouldn’t be too common a sight.
I think that in a truly free world, things would be more like they were in patriarchal times and or in times when government wasn’t as pervasive. We have those times as an example- historical fact.
So, for instance, we basically have to work things out on our own, in our own lives and in our dealings with our neighbors.
If your neighbor has a nuke, he essentially becomes a model of US. Extrapolate that out, and we’d pretty much end up back where we are now, only with different players calling the shots. 🙁
But then again, if there were enough sane people in the world to shut down governments of the world and found a free world, I guess we wouldn’t have to worry……
But (and I KNOW you agree) either way, I’d “take the chance” to be free and to ensure that my fellow men could be free.
Ultimately, that is what separates us from the clovers/Authoritarian collectivists.
They will look at patriarchal times and think it egregious that one had to travel in a group to be safe/prevent robbery on a journey.
We understand that it would be largely the same today in most places, if not for the fact that we travel in steel cages at high speeds; and that at least in patriarchal (free) times, at least one could guarantee their safety by traveling in a group; whereas today, even a group will not protect us from the state’s highwaymen.
In a free world, a lot of things would be different than they now are; a lot of things would be the same; but we accept that; even welcome it.
So even the prospect of our neighbor having a nuke [Which would really be pretty unlikely, as uranium, etc. are pretty rare commodities] or the blindfolder gunslinger in Times Square don’t deter us, as such is just life, and we know that no “state” is going to protect us anyway- but in-fact, they are pretty good at creating more danger….
Or take “private security forces”. It wouldn’t take much for such a force to become abusive, or even to try and establish ruling power, if the citizens of a free world were as apathetic as our fathers have been about preserving their power and freedom- and again, we’d be right back where we are now, but just with different players- which I guess is WHY the world, since those patriarchal/less pervasive gov’t times has only grows more and more tyrannical and less free with the passage of time.
And I guess this illustrates why, that as long as their are tyrants/people who support and tolerate tyranny in the world, there will be tyranny, because how is it possible that we preserve the sovereign rights of others, and yet restrain their power to coerce/use violence against us and others?
Maintaining a balance of power would generally work- i.e. if everyone has a gun, then no person with a gun has any superior power over anybody else- but nukes are a game-changer. We all can’t have nukes…..
Luckily, in practical terms, I think nukes would go away if big gov’t went away. And unfortunately, at this late date, I don’t think big gov’t is going away because 99.8% of the people in the owlrd support it- so we will continue to have both big gov’t and nukes… 🙁
But I do think that this illustrates the ultimate question that us Libertarians/Anarchists need to keep in mind- especially when promoting our ideas to others. Ultimately, others don’t seem to reralize that the state in-fact does not solve the problems they worry about, anyway; and they don’t seem to think that freedom is worth paying a price for, whether there are less problems; more problems or just differences.
Uh…where was a I going with this??? Meh…I got a possum in the trap I need to go and relocate to a new home in the woods a few miles down the road….
Always a pleasure reading your posts,
-Nunzio
Hi Nunzio,
Good morning to you. An-Cap theory postulates that people would, through self interest and social pressure, insure themselves. This would be done through the hypothetical mechanism of a private defense organization (PDO). You are correct, that this would not necessarily be a requirement but, it probably would be within the confines of a private community.
Those who refused to obtain personal insurance would be expelled from the community (restrictive covenants, if voluntarily agreed to, are valid in an an-cap world). But, even if such covenants were not in place, anyone refusing to obtain insurance would likely be seen as an “outlaw” and distrusted by the community. It would be hard to get a job, enter into contracts, get a loan, buy a house, etc…
I also think it likely that most people would purchase home insurance, even if most homes were owned outright. Our house is now fully paid, but we never considered cancelling our insurance because we could not afford to repair or replace our home if it was severely damaged or destroyed. It is true that a creditor can require you to purchase insurance but that doesn’t mean the practice would cease to exist in an an-cap world. In fact, the realm of insurance would likely expand in an an-cap world. So, when I argue “perhaps private insurers and PDO’s would require strict containment standards” it seems both likely and consistent with an-cap theory.
Likewise, product liability would almost certainly exist in an an-cap world. Thus producers of goods and services would likely purchase insurance to protect themselves against potentially business destroying liability settlements. Insurers would insist on safety protocols as protection for themselves. My example above was offered as a possible solution to the particular situation you described (drunk, careless, negligent homeowner).
As to whether such PDO’s would simply become governments, I suspect not. Rand believed this would be a certainty, but I think she is wrong. Governments are monopolistic institutions and they enjoy a special status that would be denied to competing PDO’s. Namely they can extract resources through force. Either directly through taxation or indirectly through inflation.
As Randolph Bourne correctly observed, “War is the health of the State”. This is true because the State does not directly bear the cost of war, imperialism, violence, etc… If a PDO sought to become a government, the cost of war would be borne by the company and passed along to its’ customers. This would place them at a competitive disadvantage to other PDO’s that restricted their activities to protection and restitution. Of course, it is possible that a small group of very wealthy people may be willing to bear these costs but, nothing would prevent smaller PDO’s from temporarily joining forces to resist this aggression. In short, economic interests favor the escalation of power within the Statist world, but would mitigate against it in an an-cap world.
Of course, this is hypothetical speculation, I am not claiming that such outcomes are a certainty. But, it seems obvious to me that humans value security, community, comfort, safety, justice, etc… Minarchists believe, with us, that the State does a piss poor job of providing for the material wants and needs of people yet, amazingly, insist that only the State can provide security and justice This is why libertarian minarchism is actually the most irrational political belief.
I return to incentives. The State cannot provide adequate security and justice not because it is inefficient, not subject to competition, etc… (those are true enough) but because it has no incentive to do so. The State has an incentive to provide just enough security and justice so that the people will not revolt. But, it must create, or allow, enough conflict that the people continue to support it because they falsely believe that they would be worse off without it.
As usual, Mencken nailed it.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
This place is a gem and I cherish the interactions I have here.
Cheers,
Jeremy
Hi, Jeremy!
Well, I certainly do agree with your (And Mencken’s) conclusions, as stated above.
But your and my ideas of practical personal liberty may differ.
Covenants, and insurance; and being branded an outlaw for not conforming to the community ethic…..I don’t even live like that now, for the most part! (That makes libertarianism sound a lot like a retirement community in Florida! 😀 )
[O-K, I did recently reinstate my homeowner’s insurance- but only because I like to keep a high liability coverage with the legal system being what it is these days, just in case somebody were to say crash into my fence post and then turn around and sue me- so essentially I carry it just to have legal defense if needed- I have a $5K deductible as far as damage to my structures- and considering the discount I get on auto insurance for having coverage with the same co., I’m essentially getting the homeowner’s for $200 a year ]
A few things I feel it necessary for us all to bear in mind:
1)People need no prodding to be authoritarian collectivists. People throughout history and the world over who were free, all ended up establishing auth-coll. gov’ts- from primitive tribes to post-modern intellectuals. It seems to be a trait of humanity, and if we do not diligently guard against such powers being established in a free world, they will be re-established by those who have no qualms about using violence and propaganda.
2)The same people who are criminals [i.e. robbers, rapists, cops…] will be no less criminally inclined in a free world- and would have to be dealt with. Of course, being able to fully arm and protect ourselves would keep us a lot safer than the state and it’s goons ever could- but people would need to realize that we would need to guard against those predators forming gangs/armies.
3)The millions of people who now allow themselves to be subjected to humiliating treatmentc at airports, just for the sake of a little convenience, will be fodder for all those who again want to form an authoritarian-collectivist society/government.
^That is the “Catch 22” of establshing and maintaining a free world. Those of us who don’t want to tread upon, coerce or manipulate others, will always be far out-numbered by those who do, and their willing victims who value convenience and perceived “benefits” more than liberty. After all, this is the very reason our US minarchy turned into this monstrosity of a totalitarian empire.
Oh, and I did mean to say in my previous post: That I also agree, that the NAP is a great thing. A political creed, much better than any Constitution- and which just about all can advocate and practice without conflict with any other personal religious/philosophical creeds (Except perhaps for Muslims, who advocate conversion by the sword…).
Imagine if a significant number of people reagrded the NAP! It would would both free and yet unify! It is essentially the Golden Rule prior to statists getting a hold of it! (Or perhaps, more accurately: Made more specific, so that statists can not think that they are abiding by it, when they are doing the very opposite.)
Anywho, it’s very enjoyable for me to discuss these things with you- especially with me being rather new to formal An-cap thought (Though I’ve essentially been in the process of becoming one since age 7- only having to figure most of it out for myself until recently!)
G’night, my friend,
Nunzio
Dear Nunzio,
Just a couple of thoughts before I go to bed.
I agree with you as I’d prefer a much simpler and freer lifestyle. However, I was responding to an extreme case (what about personal nuclear reactors) and trying to imagine a way that an an-cap world could deal with that. We must recognize that people in a world without the State may create communities that are far more restrictive than we would like. But, at least they would be voluntary.
And, there would be nothing to prevent others from living alone, and self sufficiently if they chose. Also, those who valued a larger community that was, freer, more diverse, more individualistic, etc… could create one.
True freedom is beautiful and terrifying.
Good night,
Jeremy
Top O’ The Mornin’ To Ya, Jeremy!
[Are us Wops allowed to use that expression?]
Ah, yes, that would be the beauty of a free An-Cap world- That everyone gets to decide for themselves the level of community (if any) and degree of security provided by others, etc. under which they care to live; without having those determinations made for them just because they happen to reside with the boundaries of some imaginary line.
But therein lies the issue: The very things which would make us free, would also make free those who do not care to abide by the NAP. Not that this should in any way deter us, but it is just a reminder that we would need to be diligent to maintain our own power, and not delegate it to others, as is done in the current world.
And do consider (on a related note) that the apathy of the masses is NOT conducive to libertarians- it is conducive to tyrants, who manipulate by coercion and violence, because it means that most people just “go along” and don’t resist; and will even serve them; but that same apathy is the enemy of liberty, because human history has shown that it is not the normal human state to maintain freedom; and we as libertarians/anarchists do not wish to compel anyone, so the apathetic have no value to us- but instead, can be more easily used by those who oppose us. Freedom is maintained only through diligence- the opposite of apathy. [Just a thought sparked by something you had said a few replies ago, which I can not find at the moment. Please don’t think that I am being contentious; I just like bouncing ideas off of you, as you seem to be well-versed in Libertarian thought!]
As always, a pleasure,
-Nunzio
[Now that thios thread is dying down, I really have to try and get back to the ‘Theocracy” thread which I’ve been neglecting…]
Good morning Nunzio MacDago,
Of course you can! Anyway, Robert Murphy will be on the Tom Woods show tomorrow discussing tough problems for anarcho-capitalists.
Cheers,
Jeremy
“Nunzio MacDago” LOL!!!!
Oh, I don’t know that these things are necessarily tough problems- in the sense that we already are used to dealing with them, but now have the added burden of being restrained by the state and having to battle it’s thugs too. So in that sense, even the worst scenario under libertarianism would still be worlds better than what we endure now- and this is what the supporters of statism/opposers of liberty seem not to “get”.
Anywho, sounds like it would be a good listen, Thanks!
Well, yeah, Jeremy. Ingestion of the byproducts of burning matter is detrimental- but the key word is “ingestion”.
When I burn my garbage, if I walk through the plume of smoke, it’s pretty nasty. Step a foot to the side or 100′ downwind so that all you’re getting is a slight aroma, and it’s no more harmful ingestion than smelling someone’s fart. I mean, you don’t get a whiff of a fart and equate it with ingesting the farter’s feces, right? [If there is contention about this matter, we may have to consult the International Fart-Lighting Society as the ultimate authority on both counts! :D]
And, I don’t mean to be repetitive- as I know I have mentioned this in other posts since the time of you having written this post to which I am responding (I can’t keep up….which is why you guys aren’t seeing me on other threads…) but…
My premise about nukular power not likely existing in a free society is predicated upon it not being practical/cost-effective without the perversions of the market which big government currently effects- Much like [and I think we can agree on this] Tesla cars would not exist in a truly free market, because they just don’t make economic sense.
I think you and I can basically agree on these things, no? It’s just maybe the exact meaning of terms and degree of magnitude which both may be misunderstanding when coing from the other.
Hi Nunzio,
Yes, we agree that government interventions create perversions in the market. Perhaps, absent those interventions, the market would reject nuclear power as too risky, impractical and costly. I don’t know. Something like a Tesla would probably exist as a high end niche toy in a free market because people like Jay Leno (for fun) and Leonardo DiCaprio (for virtue signaling) would likely buy them.
Kind Regards,
Jeremy
The true impact of Fukushima won’t be limited until leakage from it is ended.
The long term impact is based on the half-lives of what has already been released, which runs to 450,000,000 years in some cases. Anyone who thinks that coal produces more noxious pollution than nuclear reactors needs to stop reading polemic and start reading reality. There are no operating fusion power plants on the planet, and we rely on the best one in the solar system to avoid turning into an icy pile of rock floating through space. It is called the sun.
The major emissions from a state of the art coal-fired power plant are water vapor and carbon dioxide, both of which are being wasted because they aren’t being directed into greenhouses where plants can turn them into healthy food without any need for fertilizers, because all of the waste from the plants can be recycled endlessly.
And the ash piles, Mercury, radon gas, mine tailings and sulfur runoff along other stuff that gets forgotten about in the furor over CO2, which is probably the least of the problematic stuff coming out of a coal fired plant. Not to mention the wholesale excavation of mountains because it’s cheaper than traditional mining.
Coal mines don’t have tailings because the entire product is shipped, and the overburden replaced during reclamation. The mercury and sulfur are collected by the scrubbers at the power plant. Radon isn’t a problem because it is rare and quickly dispersed. The fly ash, which is the majority of what the scrubbers scrub, is trucked to concrete batch plants and used in the making of concrete. I used to haul both the cement and the fly ash. The mercury and sulfur have their own recycling paths. A power plant is a lot like a animal packing plant.
Bill, what would you call the stuff washed out of coal? The ponds they use pollute the water table and streams downhill to the point that cancer is rampant for those who live downstream.
As much as I hate to, I have to give credit for the deal BC made with the power plants to replace stacks with scrubber stacks. Evidently, the way of figuring “new” stacks was something that allowed them to never replace stacks so scrubber stacks were never used. Once the shrub got into office it was all off anyway. But for people downwind of the crap coming out of coal fired plants, what is put into the air is some very bad stuff.
The point being, coal fired could be pretty safe, it just isn’t. And we get back to what’s wrong with this entire country, corporations making law no matter the consequences to anything but the bottom line.
Excuse me, I have to go watch The Magnificent Seven….since it’s so stupid nobody can take it seriously.
It is called silt, but it isn’t tailings because tailings are what is left after the product is leached out of the ore. Silt comes out of the bottom of your yard, along with all of the stuff you put on it, into the ground water. Carbon silt is much safer on the ground than petrochemical silt is underground, in the ground water.
When I was a kid the “normal” color for the Stonycreek River was orange. No one dared eat one of the trout they might catch. Bethlehem Steel got blamed, but the orange rocks were miles upstream from the mill. Looks like now that the mines are gone maybe it’s starting to get a little better.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonycreek_River
Could you imagine if there were fusion reactors?! Just one slip, and the whole planet and all life could wiped out almost in an instant.
Sorry, but the escape from the containment envelope would quench the fusion reaction, Nunzio. Nuclear fusion is different from a black hole.
Oh, I disagree, Bill. It might need containment to harness the energy….but once a reaction is started, it will basically consume as much oxygen as it can get.
Look at Fukishima- and that’s just fission. Extrapolate that exponentially for an idea of what would happen with fusion.
No nuclear reaction requires oxygen.
And the other nice thing about nuclear is that energy production is a closed loop. What goes in to the power plant is measured and known, what comes out is measured and known. We know where it is, it’s right here:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/37°09'46.8%22N+76°41'10.0%22W/@37.163,-76.6861,225m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d37.163!4d-76.6861?hl=en
That’s a dry cask storage location in VA. That’s the waste from 50 years of power generation. Right there. We know where it is. It can be guarded, tracked and (if Uncle would allow it) reprocessed to get more of the 95% of the remaining potential energy out of it.
I know nuclear power is very unpopular among libertarians. I don’t really understand why. It is by far the most energy dense fuel we know of. It is Galt’s “engine of the universe,” or at least as close as we can get for now. It is regulated to death because the other energy sources can’t come close to competing so the energy producers have to resort to politics to kill the technology. It is something to be feared for sure, but not by us. The government fears it because if energy is an order of magnitude cheaper than it is today we might not need as many central planners. For sure we won’t need as much oil and natural gas -meaning the FED can’t export inflation with the oil-dollar trade. It is simply another technology, and we’re supposed to be all in favor of letting the best tech win the fight.
Instead we double down on trying to eliminate it, choosing to drink the Koolaid of the left, desiring scarcity instead of plenty. The reason we should be in favor of nuclear is precisely because Uncle is so afraid of it. Yes, energy too cheap to meter was a fantasy, but energy so inexpensive as to allow for even the poorest of us to pay nearly nothing for electricity should be celebrated, not condemned.
Before we gather in a circle and start jerking about safety of nuclear power let me remind you nuclear waste is being shipped constantly from one site to another. 8 years ago the feds pushed off a disposal site near Andrews Tx. citing no significant local numbers of people opposed. That’s because there isn’t a significant number of people in the area and they’re all too busy in the oil field to do more than read a headline written by the NRC, a veritable whitewash of facts.
I know drivers who’ve been talked into hauling nuclear waste(Smart Move LLC, Roscoe, Tx.)and they find out the TSA and such have gone to everyone who they think might have known them and “investigate” their background and then surreptitiously follow them from Tx. to La., from one site in Tx. that’s already had problems of leakage and another in La. that has the same problems but is more remote and closer to the ocean so there’s less land to show it’s been polluted(Ludlum’s Industries, Sweetwater Tx., makers of geiger counters and all sorts of nuclear monitoring equipment.
The NRC is just another duplicitous alphabet agency designed to put a good spin on a dangerous industry.
Exactly, 8Man. Regulatory agencies like NRC usually exist for 2 reasons: To eliminate competition; and to eliminate liability (“We followed all of the rules and didn’t brake any laws, so we are not responsible for the melt-down. It had just been inspected by the NRC and passed with flying colors!”).
I remember when I lived in NYC…a truck carrying radioactive stuff hit the elevated train structure in Queens. Nice to know that nukes are traveling around on the local surface streets of NYC…..
Until transporters are created and perfected, trucks are how everything is moved. What kind of “radioactive stuff” are we talking about, or it is irrelevant to the witch hunt?
Mio amico Nunzio,
Assuming your bill is for a month…
$50/0.06 833kwh per mo *12 =10,000 annual kwh, which is
34 million BTU per year.
In 2015, the average annual electricity consumption for a U.S. residential utility customer was 10,812 kilowatthours (kWh)
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=97&t=3
:::::::::::::::::::
ÿ
Total world energy deaths in 2012. Coal 280,000 Oil 36,000, Nat Gas 4,000, Wind 500, Biofuel/Biomass 24,000 ,Hydro 1,400 ,Solar 440,Nuclear 90.
Many millions who had no energy also died miserably and prematurely.
Eh, Compare, Tor! (That’s “Ay COM-PARR-EH”- Kinda like the Eye-talian version version of the Canuckian “O-K, eh?”. )
Ahhhh…..I’ve yet to see so much as one death certificate in which coal was listed as the cause of death…unless the expired was a coal miner……
[Keeping it brief… Trying to get through replies here so’s I can get back to the theocracy thread… There just never is enough time. Va foncul! 😀 )
Brian Wang has no energy source dog in the fight. He’s concluded that…
Air pollution causes 3.1 million deaths per year
Atomic energy is the best hope to clear the air. But it must be something that can be provided at the farmer CoOp level. An energy source only the state can provide is a terrible idea for us AnCaps.
For coal, oil and biomass, it is carbon particulates resulting from burning that cause upper respiratory distress, kind of a second-hand black lung. Lungs just don’t like burnt carbonaceous particulates, whether from coal or wood or manure or pellets or cigarettes. The actual numbers of deaths in China from coal use exceeded 300,000 last year since they have ramped up coal so fast in the last decade and they usually do not install exhaust scrubbers.
Deaths per TWh for all energy sources: Rooftop solar power is actually more dangerous than Chernobylhttps://www.nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all-energy-sources.html
TORrington,
Wang is a dick 🙂
It’s the same hypothetical BS the “global warming” crowd uses. Invent a theory, and then imagine what would happen if it were true, and hype the scenario as if it were, while ignoring many of the real facts.
Like when the electric car crowd says that their cars are “clean and have zero emissions”. Sure…the CARS have zero emissions….the emissions are just at remote locations- but they ignore that inconvenient fact.
I lived for a decade mere blocks from Big Allis in NY- a huge generator which ran on gas and coal. My sister lived 60 miles away, but smoked 4 packs of Paul Malls a day. Guess which one of us has COPD, emphysema and had a heart attack? [Hint” Not me. 😀 ]
Then they say nukular is the way for clean air. Yep…can’t argue with that. Clean air, like electric cars have zero emissions. Clean air, but even if there’s no accidents, the earth is contaminated with radioactive waste and it’s byproducts for thousands of years.
Maybe if we want the electricity, we should endure the temporal effects of of it’s short-term pollution now, rather than destroying the world for generations to come.
Why don’t we ask Wang the wong how many people will die, directly or indirectly from Fukishima, Hanford, Three-Mile Island, Chernyobal…… (Real deaths from real radiation and it’s effects- not hypothetical “may haves” from the UN’s Agenda 21 despots who want to out-law our old reliable safe and accessible technologies and replace them with their magic big-government Kumbayah “It’s safe until something goes wrong” and “We have to trightly control and regulate it because otherwise you will die” crapola.
It is a very tiny percentage of the energy contained in nuclear fission that ever gets converted into useful work in a nuclear reactor. The fuel rods are continuously producing heat from the time they are made, and never stop making it. That is why they have to be stored in pools of water for several months before they can be moved to dry casks for long term storage. That, and the water makes them safe to handle by absorbing large amounts of nuclear radiation while they are cooling down. The cost of coal per usable BTU is much lower than that of nuclear fuel, especially after the exorbitant costs of handling it are factored in. Coal produces non-radioactive wastes that are dispersed into the atmosphere. Nothing that comes out of a nuclear fuel rod is radiologically safe, ever. When spent rods disintegrate, they release large amounts of highly radioactive material which has to be prevented from piling up, or it could become an uncontrollable criticality. This is what is being washed into the Pacific Ocean from the Fukushima plant, both from fractured reactor vessels and from leaking storage pools and casks. Fukushima is so radioactive that humans won’t be able to approach it for generations, and the best robots that are sent into see what is going on last two hours before they are killed by the radiation. The only way that nuclear power can be considered to be too cheap to meter is if all of the things that make nuclear different from coal are left out of the equation.
Good thing we humans know all that and can take that under consideration when handling the materials.
I agree with all of the commentary on the government and the nature of politicians, but let’s remember the shooter in Alexandria was angry the government wasn’t doing MORE of what Eric has eloquently described here.
What difference does it make what a shooter in Alexandria was angry about?
Wow! You did it again; Squirted starting fluid into some stubborn mental engines.
Many get going when this happens but, a few will fire, choke and only fart.
Keep it up until they either get running or throw a rod!
Eric, I was very pleased to see these sentiments represented in your latest column. Especially this:
> The Vote?
> That is like trying to plug a leaky roof with sheets of copy paper.
? At best, the rivulets will temporarily lessen. The rain won’t let up.
In fact, voting is just an effort to empower some thug to abuse others to your advantage. It is also, not only violence, but aggression.
The answer (a hard one): Cooperation between those who reject aggression. It may be too late to start, but if it is not even tried, we can never know.
Here’s the rare guy who agrees with this, despite it being common sense. If only more people abandon the Political Fuuuuhtball Mentality of blindly cheering on your team. The fastest way to stop the violence is to shrink the power of the state.
Steve Scalise Shooting: To Stop the Violence, Shrink the State
https://leakofnations.com/steve-scales-shooting-to-stop-the-violence-shrink-the-state-bernie-sanders-supporter-james-hodgkinson/
The latest Gallup Poll published over at Republic Broadcasting website reveals all: the loss of trust in not just government but in cops as well.
http://republicbroadcasting.org/news/gallup-finds-stunning-decline-in-americans-respect-for-us-government/
The politicians in Washington are all criminals, many of them child molesting pedophiles, corrupt and easily blackmailed by the real owners of America and certain foreign governments, as well as an evil alien agenda.
The deaths of three high profile attorneys in Debbie Wasserman Shultz Florida district in connection with the massive DNC fraud being held in Florida.
The deaths include Process Server Shawn Lucas, Seth Rich and that of federal prosecutor Beranton Whisenant, all under suspicious circumstances as well as threats directed at plaintiffs, their counsels and families has become even more bizarre which has prompted these people to request protection.
In addition a phone call to the law office of Elizabeth Beck was made using a voice changer and the phone number was from Debbie Wasserman Shultz’s office 305-936-5724.
Clearly the DNC has become nothing more than a criminal organization no better and no worse then the GOP.
The monster that resides in Washington D.C. is out of control: continuous wars, out of control military spending, criminalizing everything and attacking free speech in the name of national security and political correctness.
In a latest article, Pat Buchanan asks,” Are we nearing civil war?”
The possibility of such grows more likely every day.
The distrust of cops precedes the formation of police departments, as evidenced by the support of well-regulated militias in the Second Amendment. There is a treatise that calls into question the constitutionality of cops at http://www.constitution.org/lrev/roots/cops.htm in which it is made clear that the men who wrote the Constitution would probably have thought of police departments as standing armies, as I do. Until the common man is well-regulated enough himself to control a government of, for, and by the people, there is little hope that they will be worthy of his trust. I moved to where I reside because there are 14 registered guns per capita and the sheriff is a CLEO worthy of the trust of Richard Mack. Unfortunately, he still has to play with the clique if he wants to have their support. I suspect that, given the gross ignorance of many of our fellow citizens, this will be a safe place to be when the civil war breaks out. If they are foolish enough to venture here in search of booty, they will find themselves in boot hill. With the multitude of ways that our society is coming apart, a place where the common man, and woman, can carry in whatever manner they wish is likely to remain safe for those individuals who will.
Exactly, Bill. A police force is nothing but a standing army used against our own citizens, only by a different name so as to avoid the Constitutional prohibition. If even the worst of the Founders could see the tyranny we’re currently under, and the violence and abuse that the innocent suffer, they would be utterly speechless.
Ditto the founding of a Constitutionally prohibited central bank. Calling it “The Federal Reserve” and chartering it offshore as a private corporation in Puerto Rico to get around the technicalities should have been cause for mass revolt and overthrow of the then-existing government.
One the other hand, Nunzio, we aren’t being murdered at large like those who our government has directed their regular armies against.
I have never been able to locate the documents in which the Fed was chartered in Puerto Rico, but I wouldn’t be surprised if their attempts to become a state have fallen on deaf ears as a result. Can you provide a link to those documents?
Bill, I’ve never even looked for the documents- what’s the point? We have a de facto central bank, and it’s unconstitutional, and has been used to enslave us. Why go any further?
Same with the IRS. If some gas-bag on the Supreme Court can say with a straight face that being forced to file a tax return isn’t a blatant and egregious violation of the 4th Amendment, all it does is prove the corruption and lawlessness of the government.
But I was thinking the exact same thing about PR demanding statehood. That, and asking why on earth they would want to! (See how that works out for them- They had no property tax on resdiential or agricultural property….watch how fast that’d change!)
Nunzio,
Carping about something where the cited facts are easily disputable impairs the credibility of your arguments. I have studied the Fed from several points of view and PR has never come up in any of them, and it makes you sound like you’ve been reading too many conspiracy theories:-)
Being forced to file a tax return is a violation of the 5th, not the 4th.
PR has gotten a taste of the federal nipple and they want their own teat.
We would have less to complain about if our predecessors hadn’t been so predictable that Thomas Jefferson could read them like a book, as he did when wrote: “The spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may become persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated that the time for fixing every essential right, on a legal basis, is while our rulers are honest, ourselves united. From the conclusion of this war we shall be going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will be heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion.”
hmm what will/will not happen to the Fed and the IRS (both in Puerto Rico) if PR becomes 51st state??
Nothing, because they aren’t provably there, both being Delaware corporations.
Could you provide proof for THAT, Bill? (That the IRS and Fed are DE. corps).
Not that it matters- unconstitutional is unconstitutional- regardless of the technicalities they used to accomplish it- and at this point in the game, it really makes no difference, as they don’t even pay lip service to the constitution anymore, and the people neither care nor have the power to do anything about it- but since I’d always heard it was PR (And you well may be right about me being wrong about that) and you say it’s DE….. And quite frankly, I don’t think that the IRS is a private corporation, as the Fed is- but rather, it is an agency of the federal goobermint, under the dept. of the treasury…)
By-the-way, I got into this stuff back in the 80’s- long before the interwebz. I used to go to the liberry[sic] and wade through the US Code and the Federal Register and all that for “proof”- but I learned it didn’t pay to do that, because the people wanted proof, never seemed to care, or had other excuses, after being shown the proof- so I figgered[sic] if just knowing the way things are, and that they are unconstitutional isn’t enough for them, no amount of futher proof of the smaller details will matter.
Nunzio,
It is very easy to search the Delaware Secretary of State’s corporation database. I used to attend two “law clubs” back in the late 90’s, and we found amazing things when we would search government databases. The IRS was created by the Fed to collect inflated currency to hold down the inflation rate, and all of the proceeds of the income tax are paid to the Fed, not the US treasury. This is easy to prove by simply looking at the endorsement on a check written to the IRS. It will say “Pay to the order of any Federal Reserve Bank.” That, and you will never find a Federal Reserve Bank in the blue government pages in the phone book, but in the business listings.
All this is public knowledge but people will still run out and vote Republican or Democrat because our entire education system is designed to suppress critical thinking.
It is unnecessary to suppress that which is never taught or exercised.
Exactly, Robert. Most people are not motivated by reason and logic and knowledge and a desire to do the right thing; they are motivated by self-interest, emotion* and false knowledge or partial knowledge.
[*=This is why liberalism/socialism really started getting a stronghold when women were given the vote. Just show ’em some ragged skinny urchin, and they’ll throw the rest of the world under the bus if they think it means being a collective mother to the little hoodlum. Now that men have become so feminized by the government schools, they are now thinking the same way. Of course, all the little urchins today are obese, but no one seems to notice.)
One can be motivated by anything at all, but if one is completely and willfully ignorant of the organic laws of one’s nation, and also ignorant of the fact that they are routinely ignored, things are not going to go well in your country.
It not necessarily that people are ignorant; it’s that they don’t care. A willful ignorance- often because they’d prefer something else.
It’s like: If you’re arguing with a statist, and you make the point that something is immoral, unnatural; unconstitutional; unjust; etc. they will almost never directly challenge those assertions, but they will merely say “Yeah, but if it weren’t for that, we would have ______________” -So in essence, what they are saying is that they are willing to tolerate evil (especially if it affects someone else and not them!) in exchange for the benefits they get from it; and that they prefer that to fighting evil, and not having the benefits, or having to pay the cost of such benefits themselves instead of having them at the expense of others.
Educate them all you want. If they’re willing to tolerate evil, pointing out the evil is not going to have any effect on them.
Nunzio,
The problem is not in their acceptance of evil but in their inability to identify evil. If you don’t teach them ethics, they’ll never see evil. I see this problem continuously among those who claim to be conservatives and then turn around and act like fascists. I try to educate them on the socialistic nature of the entire left-right spectrum, but they are already convinced that anything off that spectrum, as libertarianism is, is too wacko to be understood.
History repeats itself. Rome also started as a republic, with a fairly egalitarian society. The path it followed to become an empire and then collapse is similar to where we find ourselves, except that the changes are happening much faster now.
Morning, Escher!
The Rome parallel is definitely there, especially the catering by corrupt pols to the depravity of the mob. Bread and circuses = fuuhhhhhhttttttttball and the Kardashians.
Eric-
At least ESPN is bringing back Hank Williams, Jr!
ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL? : )
Stefan Molyneux made a truly fantastic video covering this topic. It is long, but I spread it out over multiple viewings and while I was doing some things around the house. Really a must watch video. Better than any college lecture I assure you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh7rdCYCQ_U
Here’s the link to Moly’s forum on Libertarianism, Anarchism and Economics
https://board.freedomainradio.com/forum/29-libertarianism-anarchism-and-economics/
Bookmarked!
Thanks, Jack. Sounds like it’s gonna be GOOD!
Excellent piece, Eric. Violence indeed begets violence. As the old saw goes, imposition of order == escalation of chaos.
Eric, your article describes the way you and I and anyone of reason and intelligence sees it…..but “the people” [who possess none of those aforementioned traits] don’t see it like that at all.
A quick perusal of any general public forum on which the subject is being discussed, will give one a good (and scary) glimpse of the [lack of] understanding of a good part of the common boobis Americanis.
On a local Topix forum, the fools are ranting and saying such things as that the VA. shooting is a natural consequence of “the Republicans taking away healthcare; liveable wages; women’s rights; the right to unionize; …..” LOL. (If the Republicans were truly doing such things, they might actually be worth something!).
Far from the sentiment being that there isn’t enough freedom; I think instead, the more common sentiment is that there isn’t enough communism/redistribution of wealth.
It’s not going to be long before these idjits get the full socialism that they want so badly- and then the people and the pols will be in lock-step, and us lovers of liberty will be the enemies to be destroyed.
Good morning, my Wop friend!
Unfortunately, I agree completely with all of that. So why do I bother? I suppose it’s a compulsion. I can’t not write about these things. Also, there is one other thing. I like that I am – and others – have established these little redoubts of sanity in a world going batshit. It proves we are not alone, even if we are a small minority. And – who knows? – perhaps the day will come when our minority will become a critical mass, even a majority. It is possible.
And so, worth trying.
Eric,
When the alt-right and the alt-left kill each other off, then maybe Libertarian and freedom loving people will become the majority. I suspect before that happens, things will get much worse before they get better.
Eh, Pisano, Eric!
I know, right? Thank goodness for someone like yourself who takes the time and effort to make a record of what everyone should be saying, if we lived in a sane world. I’m sure it does give some who just stumble across it pause to think- and even if it may be preaching to the choir to many of us, we NEED to be bolstered-up by the knowledge that there are still sane people like yourself in this world; and we need the comfort of hearing someone else proclaim truth and justice. And quite frankly, your articles almost always contain things which make us think a little deeper, or which make us see a obvious conclusion sooner, rather than if we had been left to merely think about it ourselves.
Your articles and the regulars on this site who provide commentary and fellowship are a priceless comfort.
Boy! Good article! Spot on.
Thank you, Billy – welcome to EPautos!
“No mans life, liberty, or property are safe while the Legislature is in Session.”
Judge Gideon J Tucker
NY 1826-1899
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon_J._Tucker
The judge was in a position to know given his life long addiction to the public sector.
While in the NY legislature, he supported an 8 hour maximum workday.
Although I do not know, I would bet that he supported the New York State Bake Shop Act which gave rise to the Lochner case.
Figures the shooter is a government employed drone (building inspector). I bet he was fun to deal with on the construction site. You never know what you going to get when it comes to those guys.
The worst are the politically connected guys who wouldn’t know a nail from a screw, who expect a bribe to get signed off. In the middle are the guys who have some construction in their background, but only their way of doing things will do (aka, probably not the better way you as the owner wants it). Then you got the cop wanna be type, the guy who flunked out of cop school and took this job, just because so he can still hassle people for a living. The best you can hope for are the guys who eyeball the blueprints a little bit, check a thing or two, sign off and go away. The ones you see parked around the corner later sleeping or reading the newspaper, the lazy guy who doesn’t really want to work, running the clock off.
The shooter in VA didn’t do this to preserve freedom or beat back tyranny. He did it because he was angry there was not enough tyranny, he demanded more government, more taxes, more intrusion into our lives by government and more confiscation of people’s wealth. And there are millions more just like him in this country and billions more around the world. If we, we meaning the loosely defined “liberty movement” do not seriously address this, through secession and separation, we will be overwhelmed and sunk by sheer numbers alone.
I agree, AF –
The general point I was trying to make is that the violence which pervades the system must wax – will get worse. On all sides, unless people reject violence as the basis for society. It is imperative, most of all, to get “conservatives” to reject the violence which they, too, embrace.
Eric… BS. ‘conservatives”?? Really? They embrace violence? It’s rude of me to read your site and to argue with you. With that caveat, this is ALL on the left and the progs/socialists. They are radicalizing their folks , via the media , like ISIS radicalizes young men. They are literally enraging folks to a fever pitch. If this isn’t incitement to commit violence I don’t know what it is. There IS NOTHING on the other side. The media is 90% progressive, as is Hollywood. This is akin to the newspapers of the North daring the South to go to war in 1859-1860. They are actively egging people on to commit violence against their fellow Americans.
It’s not on both sides. It’s not.
Hi Clive,
We welcome intelligent debate here! So, let’s have at it…
Do conservatives – in general – support throwing people in cages over their personal use/possession of arbitrarily illegal substances?
Does that involve violence?
Do conservatives support a “robust” military – and the taxes necessary to support it? Does this require violence?
Do conservatives support “law and order” – that is, the enforcing of laws because they are laws? Deference toward and even veneration of people wearing government costumes charged with enforcing those laws? Is violence involved there?
Do conservatives support funding schools for “the children”? How is this funding obtained?
Do conservatives think it should be a crime to trample on totems of government power – i.e., the flag?
Do conservatives support massive military and economic aid to, for example, Israel? Is this money coming out of their pockets exclusively? If it is not, where is the rest of it coming from?
Do they believe it is the business of the government – that is, of the people who control it, presumably/ideally themselves – to regulate people’s private sexual activities?
Do conservatives – many of them – very much want their “values” (often religious) imposed by the state?
Obviously, the answer to all of the above is – yes, they do.
The problem with conservatism is it has no core principles. It just wants “less” government – it does not oppose government as such. For example, conservatives won’t say that health care – medical treatment – isn’t a right. Instead, they haggle over how the government will control health care. There are numerous examples. In terms of practical politics and history, conservative politicians have either amen’d or expanded or – in some cases – initiated massive expansions of government control/interference in our lives. The counterargument here is that these politicians weren’t really “conservatives.” And yet, that’s all we seem to get. Reagan, Bush, The Chimp… Trump.
The conservatives I have met do not oppose in principle the things that have led us to exactly where we are – they just want “less” of it (i.e., “limited” government)… in some areas. But they very much like big government in other areas, such as the sickening military colossus that bestrides the world like an octopus, serving the interests of Wall Street and big corporations.
If you, personally, oppose all the things I’ve listed above and believe – as I do – that each of us has an absolute right to be left in peace, provided we are peaceful and that no one has the moral right to force another human being to do as they wish, or to take their money for any reason then you are not a conservative!
I think you wrote another (great, actually classic) column here in this reply comment. Please publish it as such!
Thanks, Eric – I might expand on it, make it a full-length rant!
I eagerly look forward to your expanded rant. Good stuff, Eric.
Thanks, Larry!
I’ll be a guest on Tom Woods’ podcast today… stay tuned…
Sounds like one of Dave Champion’s rants! I like it. Hope you read his book which I sent you a few months back.
Awesome. And I will look forward to listening to your Tom Woods’ podcast appearance.
Hi Eric, et al,
This whole gestalt has the appearance of being scripted. As you mentioned above, Eric, the “conservatives” are fully as complicit as the “liberals” in this process. Remember that Republican as well as Democrat regimes were heavily involved in the invasions of sovereign countries in the middle east. This is the action of an imperial government and the West is in the stage of collapse that all empires go through eventually. But the West has brought it on itself…..due to blowback from military adventurism really around the world by western governments, leftists and their convenient bedfellows, radical Islamic terrorists, feel justified in striking at the institutions of western culture that we, libertarians, value(e.g. liberty, free markets and private property rights).
There are some great explanations of how leftist socialism has evolved by people like Jordan B. Peterson and Stephen Hicks..well worth a read or view. But, the script, as I see it, involves global socialism as the NWO and western culture destroyed. All the signs are there and there are the regular band of useful idiots as Lenin called them who will be cast aside as soon as their usefulness has passed.
In the end, what both sides of the Uniparty want is a totally authoritarian government, either worldwide or nationally, but with no regard for individual rights, property or liberty. They will demand that no individual own any means of self-protection and will brook no resistance. This will be a violent, ruthless campaign, IMO, and ultimately will leave the human race regressed five hundred years….sort of a modern Dark Age. Well, hell, I could be wrong but ain’t I a ray of sunshine. From my own, selfish perspective, I’ve lived a great life and the show will be pretty interesting. Not planning to initiate any violence but I suspect plenty of people, both “liberal” and “conservative” will not hesitate, as we’ve seen with antifa and various Islamic terror groups. Of course, they are still rank amateurs compared to state terrorists who (almost exclusively socialist states at that) are responsible for over 120 million deaths in the 20th century.
GC
this is spot on eric. both sides want power and control and only preach individual “liberties” when that power is not threatened. keep up the good work. the quality of a web site can be measured through the intelligence and civility of the commenters .in that respect this site is quite good!
Thank you, Dan!
Lots of bright people here – me excluded, of course! 🙂
Almost every self-identified conservative I’ve talked to enthusiastically embraces violence, especially when it’s directed at Iraqis, Afghans, Syrians, Palestinians and others abroad, none of whom have done any harm to the US, or even threatened such.
It seems liberals and conservatives are like a tag team, with the liberals promoting violence and tyranny at home and the conservatives promoting violence and tyranny abroad.
The tag team wasting of trillions of dollars is of no benefit to America. It only benefits the banks who make the loans to fund the wars.
Those same bankers have also stoked the Islamists to an even more fevered pitch of hatred.
https://bajurtov.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/my-jihad-4.jpg?w=609&h=423
A young Libyan man and his family of enablers just murdered a bunch of Westerners in Manchester, UK 3 weeks ago.
From what I’ve heard of Afghanistan, if an American was to go out walking anywhere away from the few safe enclaves of American controlled sectors in big cities and military bases.
He would most likely be murdered or kidnapped. If he was extremely lucky, he would only be brutally beaten and robbed.
America has become virulently hated all across Muslim lands in the same way and for the same reasons as the Israelis. There was no real reason for us to do this to ourselves. Don’t forget the Merchants who create the tag teams the first place for their benefit.
http://www.dailystormer.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Le-Merchant-21.jpg
Pat Tillman didn’t have to go out of camp to be murdered.
It is easy to see why Muslims would hate those who have invaded and destroyed their societies because they opposed a basis of economy on debt and usury, in opposition to their prohibition of both.
Tillman made clear, through his disappeared diary, and his letters home to mother, that the only reason why American troops were in Afghanistan was to protect the CIA’s opium poppies from the Taliban that have virtually eradicated them during our brief absence from the country. If we lack the common sense to deny the treacherous CIA a lucrative source of black market commodity, we probably deserve to suffer from the damage that the drugs which they make and market from them in our ghettos. Similarly, if we will dishonor those who will risk their very lives and liberty to expose gross violations of our organic laws to the light of day, we reconcile ourselves to provide support to those who regale them as criminals and traitors by default.
If it weren’t for the fact that our own media mouthpieces prefer to trot out every small incidence of mindless violence across the world to justify our causation thereof, we might be more inclined to ask why they don’t so likewise for every treasonable action of our domestic enemies here at home.
I agree with everything you’ve said.
But would reiterate they’ve been aggressing against both Secular Europeans and Christians and our entire way of life since at least the time of the Moors.
We can’t have it both ways. Either we cut off all Western and East Asian technology from them and make them live like our Amish. Or we continue surrounding them with bases and trading with them, while keeping them from murdering and terrorizing us.
Remember the Constantinople Alamo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ37zhk9i3o
Terrorism is at the very bottom of the cause of death in America. Only the vomitstream media pushes it to the top to serve the purposes of their governmental and military-intelligence complex cohorts.
Tor, maybe if “we” just stopped doing ANYTHING….. Just left ’em the hell alone; left them to do as they please in their own countries; stopped fighting wars for Is-ra-hell, and stopped using them to infiltrate our society, we wouldn’t have to cut off technology or not cut off technology or anything.
At the very least, we should bring the leaders of America and Israel up on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the treacherous attack on the USS Liberty by Israel, now that we know why they did it, because we were monitoring their theft of Palestinian land during the 6 day war. LBJ even committed treason to assist the IDF.
It IS civil war and just as “uncivil” as the other one, but in actuality the first one never has been over.
Since the confederation versus constitution debate, it’s been more of the same and worse, always worse because that strong-arm robbery of our freedoms made it so.
A civil war is one between factions attempting to take control of a government under which all factions already live. The United State of America illegally and unconstitutionally attacked the Confederate States of America in a war of re-conquest. It ended, and the former CSA states have been under occupation since. The Unionists argued that the CSA didn’t have the right to secede, but that has never been proven by law. If one doesn’t live in Dixie, it is easy to find someone there who will support the allegation that they are under occupation.
Violence to break free of tyranny, if it fails, we’ll make us less free.
If a small amount of violence, gets you a small amount of freedom, you should do it.
It’s not the violence that’s wrong.
It’s pointless violence.
If a town’s mailmen kept dying, and they cancelled deliveries there. That violence would have been strategic and thus good.
The trick is to do violence that doesn’t make things escalate.
This is Mossad 101 here.
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:
…
a time for war and a time for peace. — Ecclesiastes
Whether we want it or not, the time for violence is fast approaching.
Maybe for some. I don’t think I have the needed skillset. Or the inclination to inflict violence, despite it being defensive in nature.
For me it’s a time of striking at the root of our crisis right now. And worrying about the NAP in my spare time.
Here’s some ideas on what can be done.
Ethnoculturalism Part 1
https://voat.co/v/GoatsGulch/1937975
Ethnoculturalism Part 2
https://voat.co/v/GoatsGulch/1937982
Ethnoculturalism Part 3
https://voat.co/v/GoatsGulch/1937987
The violence inherent in the system is no longer recognized by so many. Which is why those in political office and those who cheer for them have so many plans. Then there is the other side like this guy who just opened fire at a congressional baseball game. This guy was angry that he might not get as much of the fruits of other people’s labor. That the slightest rearrangement of the deck chairs might somehow take away some of the obamacare he received. This the violence that comes out of dependence on the state. Dependence on violence to take from others. People feel entitled to the fruits of others’ labor and are willing to use violence to keep getting it and get more.
And what I fear even more is the aftermath. The next revolution will not likely give rise to another Jefferson, Gandhi, or MLK Jr., but another Napoleon, Stalin, or Khomeini.
For all the technological terror being fielded against American Citizens, there will come a point when even the most sophisticated machine is overwhelmed and fails to stem the breakdown.
I remember my two lowlife thieving “cousins” getting jobs in the World Trade Center in 1994 and 1995. They were very worried about terrorists after the February 1993 bombing that came within feet of taking out the main structural support and toppling one tower into the other with a far greater toll than even what was accomplished on 9/11.
Billions were spent on security, bomb proofing, searches, employee identification, public parking lots were closed to the public. Contingency after contingency was planned for and instituted. “They’ll never hit the World Trade Center again, they can’t now” I told these two horrific twats in my naivety in both the resolve of a well motivated enemy and the youthful trust in the absolutes of technological progress. Well, 9/11 showed us how much faith can be placed in the machines designed to protect and all of the contingency plans made to stave off or mitigate.
Look to East Germany in 1989 – the pre-American techno-terror state that obsessively monitored its own people down to maintaining hermetically sealed jars with the scents of it most “suspicious” citizens. As the Berlin Wall began to rock that November and the Eastern Block evaporated state by state, all of the technological terror controls used to check the populations crumbled. The STASI were powerless to stop the fall. Nicolae Ceaușescu fled before being captured and executed.
When the breakdown starts in earnest, all of the order and law that has been shoved down our throats will fail too. Brutal violence solves so many problems once a population realizes they have nothing more to lose in significant numbers. Our breakdown has moved within the past 24 hours past the rehearsal, the final casting is in place, the actors are in their positions with the orchestra warming up. To a New Yorker who saw the trade center go dark in 1993 – it is September 10, 2001. Get a good night’s sleep because tomorrow everything is going to change.
Perfectly brilliant. A single minor mistake: Paragraph 2: The sentence that says – It also one not comprehended by those most responsible for initiating the process?
We’re so far down the road that what remains possible is to get in the club with the World’s A List. I’m hoping Trump will elevate us in the world pecking order to that of Israel. Or of Japan. Time will tell if that’s ever going to happen though.
The Time For Argument Might Be Over – Moly
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVeCNI3gLUY
I doubt that the founding fathers would have wanted us to be elevated to the level of the treachery of Israel or the false honor of Japan.
Some Israelis are treacherous. And certainly many of them are manipulating our population in a myriad way.
I wonder if Japanese video game technology has something sinister about it. Is it a part of why we are so dysfunctional and degenerate?
I don’t see how it’s honorable for America to embrace every disadvantageous policy, all of which are pushed down our throats by Israel, the UK, EU, UN and others. It is no virtue to allow yourself to come to ruin and every kind of degradation.
Our government has its boots on our neck. But the governments of the world have their hands in our pockets and our singing the siren songs that get us marching into an even worse international tyranny. Certainly some of my facts will be proven wrong, and I welcome that. But I think I am nearer to the truth than your run of the mill Altruist who spews the pablum about founders he’s be fed since reading Fun With Dick and Jane.
American is afflicted with a kind of degradation and chaos completely absent in Switzerland, Israel, and Japan for all too obvious reasons. Homogeneity works. Being an empire of cognitive dissonance is societal suicide.
We only need the best and brightest from everywhere in the world. It is madness to bring in a few million each year of some of the worst humanity has to offer for 50 years legally, not to mention all the ones who’ve come here illegally.
I don’t mean we should emulate the character of Highly Egoistic nations. That’s not even possible. We are who we are. I’m saying we should emulate the some of the wise policies of places like Israel and Japan. Those two in particular are dumbfounded by how badly our policies are dumbing us down and making us hopelessly dependent.
Our motor of creativity and invention is going to stall out, if wet let much more impurities and low octane fuels into our gas tank. i’m talking intelligent racialism and red-pilled reality here. Not making a few minor tweaks to the National Matrix. So that it now contains 20% more founding fathers in it.
I’m confused that you would you say Japan’s honor is false. They have a highly developed moral code, and adhere to it as well as any nation.
In the year 2017, what things has Japan done that is dishonorable?
It’s telling that you have to go back 240 years in our history to find your America’s moral compass. What American person of note in 2017 would you say is honorable and moral? Pick business men, politicians, celebrities, philosophical leaders, whomever you respect and admire. I’m very curious who you’d consider today’s founding fathers of America’s future.
Japan sold itself out to the nuclear energy industry and will never solve the problems that is causing on the northeast corner of the island, as well as across the Pacific ocean. They could apply their kamikaze heritage and sacrifice some to the greater good of terminating the continuing oze, but they are not likely to.
If you don’t go back to the time of the Declaration of Independence and its principles, your compass will never register correctly. The current federal government is oppressing us in ways that King George never had the access to.
America’s future is in the hands of the survivors of the multitude of issues that the majority are ignorant of. The only political philosopher of note is Dr. Ron Paul, and he is only of academic value, now that he has given up being of political value. Doug Casey is the most spot on economic expert I have seen, but his primary interest is in speculating on disasters rather than preventing them. His friend Bill Bonner is an equal forecaster, but neither of them have enough exposure in the public eye to do more than prepare their few followers. Trump is a real disappointment for me because he neither foresaw nor is resisting his Perotification. He will go down in history as a repeat of Reagan’s failures.
So those Japs are cucks to the nuclear power industry? Maybe so. Let’s have a looksee.
BTW I am rabidly pro-nuclear in the same way as I am rabidly pro-internal combustion engines. If forced to eliminate one or the other based on enviro and sci reports, it would be the IC engines that would have to go, hands down.
If all those greenies would fund raise to build enough 2nd and 3rd generation nuke plants. The pristine Earth returned to it’s condition before Homo Sapien’s plodding carbon footprints destroyed their museum bauble would be far closer to reality.
Bonus, those kinds of nukes are useless in producing nuclear weapons.
Both nuclear and IC technologies may have impacted the environment negatively, but overall they have been such an immense positive, saved and improved so many lives, there should be no question they have been a true blessing and friend to the masses, whose lives they have elevated so greatly.
For all the hubris about Fukushima, there have been zero documented deaths. The only possible fatalities so far, have been reported in a WSJ opinion peace. This article discussed relocation stress deaths. Deaths that occurred in low radiation dosed areas.
Worldwide Nuke Death Toll: between 269-993,228 deaths
Chernobyl, UKR disaster: between 56-985,000 deaths
56 direct deaths (47 accident workers and nine children with thyroid cancer) resulted from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, and it is estimated that there may eventually be 4,000 extra cancer deaths among the approximately 600,000 most highly exposed people.
Estimates of the total number of deaths potentially resulting from the Chernobyl disaster vary enormously: Thirty one deaths are directly attributed to the accident, all among the reactor staff and emergency workers.A UNSCEAR report places the total confirmed deaths from radiation at 64 as of 2008. The World Health Organization (WHO) suggests it could reach 4,000 civilian deaths, a figure which does not include military clean-up worker casualties.
A 2006 report predicted 30,000 to 60,000 cancer deaths as a result of Chernobyl fallout. A Greenpeace report puts this figure at 200,000 or more. A disputed Russian publication, Chernobyl, concludes that 985,000 premature deaths occurred worldwide between 1986 and 2004 as a result of radioactive contamination from Chernobyl.
Kyshtym disaster: between 49 – 8015 deaths 213-8228
The Kyshtym disaster, which occurred at Mayak in the Soviet Union on 29 September 1957, was rated as a level 6 on the International Nuclear Event Scale, the third most severe incident after Chernobyl and Fukushima.
Because of the intense secrecy surrounding Mayak, it is difficult to estimate the death toll of Kyshtym. One book claims that “in 1992, a study conducted by the Institute of Biophysics at the former Soviet Health Ministry in Chelyabinsk found that 8,015 people had died within the preceding 32 years as a result of the accident.”
By contrast, only 6,000 death certificates have been found for residents of the Tech riverside between 1950 and 1982 from all causes of death, though perhaps the Soviet study considered a larger geographic area affected by the airborne plume.
The most commonly quoted estimate is 200 deaths due to cancer, but the origin of this number is not clear. More recent epidemiological studies suggest that around 49 to 55 cancer deaths among riverside residents can be associated to radiation exposure.
This would include the effects of all radioactive releases into the river, 98% of which happened long before the 1957 accident, but it would not include the effects of the airborne plume that was carried north-east.
The area closest to the accident produced 66 diagnosed cases of chronic radiation syndrome, providing the bulk of the data about this condition.
Windscale fire resulted in 33 or more deaths
33+ cancer fatalities (estimated by UK government) – Windscale, United Kingdom, October 8, 1957. The Windscale fire resulted when uranium metal fuel ignited inside plutonium production piles; surrounding dairy farms were contaminated.
Fukushima disaster 0 deaths
In a 2013 report, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation stated the overall health risks from the Fukushima disaster to be far lower than those of Chernobyl. There have been no observed or expected deterministic effects.
In pregnancies, there has been no expected increase in spontaneous abortions, miscarriages, perinatal mortality, birth defects, or cognitive impairment. Finally, there was no expected discernible increase in heritable disease or discernible radiation-related increases in any cancers, with the possible exception of thyroid cancer.
The high detection rates of thyroid nodules, cysts, and cancer may be a consequence of intensive screening. In a 2015 white paper, UNSCEAR stated its findings from 2013 remain valid and largely unaffected by new information, and the new information further supports the statement that high thyroid detection is likely due to more intensive screening.
None of the workers at the Fukushima Daiichi site have died from acute radiation poisoning, though six workers died due to various reasons, including cardiovascular disease, during the containment efforts or work to stabilize the earthquake and tsunami damage to the site.
An opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal cites a 2013 Japanese study, which concluded that mortality due to “evacuation stress” from the area around Fukoshima had reached more than 1600. This includes deaths from suicide and lack of access to critical health care, but not from radiation, increased cancer, or any other direct result of the nuclear accident.
The author also states these deaths occurred among people who had been evacuated from areas where the radiation posed little or no risk to their health, areas where they would experience less exposure than the normal amount received by residents in Finland.
Other nuclear accidents: 131 deaths
17 fatalities – Instituto Oncologico Nacional of Panama, August 2000 – March 2001. Patients receiving treatment for prostate cancer and cancer of the cervix receive lethal doses of radiation.
13 fatalities – Radiotherapy accident in Costa Rica, 1996. 114 patients received an overdose of radiation from a cobalt-60 source that was being used for radiotherapy.
11 fatalities – Radiotherapy accident in Zaragoza, Spain, December 1990. Cancer patients receiving radiotherapy; 27 patients were injured.
10 fatalities – Soviet submarine K-431 reactor accident, August 10, 1985. 49 people suffered radiation injuries.[22]
10 fatalities – Columbus radiotherapy accident, 1974–1976, 88 injuries from cobalt-60 source.
9 fatalities – Soviet submarine K-27 reactor accident, 24 May 1968. 83 people were injured.
8 fatalities – Soviet submarine K-19 reactor accident, July 4, 1961. More than 30 people were over-exposed to radiation.
8 fatalities – Radiation accident in Morocco, March 1984.
7 fatalities – Houston radiotherapy accident, 1980.
5 fatalities – Lost radiation source, Baku, Azerbaijan, USSR, October 5, 1982. 13 injuries.
4 fatalities – Mihama Nuclear Power Plant accident, August 9, 2004. Hot water and steam leaked from a broken pipe (not actually a radiation accident).
4 fatalities – Goiânia accident, September 13, 1987. 249 people received serious radiation contamination from lost radiotherapy source.
4 fatalities – Radiation accident in Mexico City, 1962.
3 fatalities – SL-1 accident (US Army) 1961.
3 fatalities – Samut Prakan radiation accident: Three deaths and ten injuries resulted when a radiation-therapy unit was dismantled, February 2000.
2 fatalities – Tokaimura nuclear accident, nuclear fuel reprocessing plant. Japan, September 30, 1999.
2 fatalities – Meet Halfa, Egypt, May 2000; two fatalities due to radiography accident.
1 fatality – Mayapuri radiological accident, India, April 2010.
1 fatality – Daigo Fukuryū Maru March 1, 1954
1 fatality – Louis Slotin May 21, 1946
1 fatality – Harry Daghlian, August 21, 1945, at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
1 fatality – Cecil Kelley criticality accident, December 30, 1958, at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
1 fatality – Operator error at Wood River Junction nuclear facility, 1964, Rhode Island, Robert Peabody died 49 hours later
1 fatality – Malfunction INES level 4 at RA2 reactor in the Constituyentes Atomic Center, General San Martín Partido, Argentina, 23 September 1983, operator Osvaldo Rogulich died days later.
1 fatality – San Salvador, El Salvador, 1989; one fatality due to violation of safety rules at 60Co irradiation facility.
1 fatality – Soreq, Israel, 1990; one fatality due to violation of safety rules at 60Co irradiation facility.
1 fatality – Tammiku, Estonia, 1994; one fatality from disposed 137Cs source.
1 fatality – Sarov, Russia, June 1997; one fatality due to violation of safety rules.
Maybe you should go have a very interesting but extremely brief career assisting the cleanup at the Fukushima site. Since you’ll get a lifetime radiation dose in approximately one nanosecond, you’ll have to work fast.
I see nukular energy as a defacto violation of the NAP. The WILL be accidents; there always have been. The results can be damn near eternal; and seriously, anything nukular is just asking for people to beg for oversight and control. It’s a can of worms that should never have been opened up in the first place. Luckily, in a truly free-market unlimited liability world, I doubt anyone would want to mess with it.
In a truly free market world, nuclear plants would be designed to be completely fail safe and reliable before they were designed with any other criteria in place. Their owners would be held completely responsible for every release of radioactive radiation that could be detected and they would be absolutely held responsible for mitigating all property and personal harm caused by their plant, regardless of whether it was accidental or negligent.
I have bounced back and forth from pro- to anti-nuclear, and I always wind up with the complete responsibility of the operators and owners to anyone who is harmed, as in the premise that libertarianism is based on complete individual liberty combined with personal responsibility by all actors.
In a truly free market, we wouldn’t need the expense and risk of nukular energy and all that it entails, because more conventional ways of making power- such as coal, are so much cheaper and easier, when not hindered by a group of thugs known as government.
My ‘lectricity comes from coal and hydro electric. My bill came yesterday- $50.20 -Have had the A/C going a lot as it’s been in the 90’s- even upper 90’s- to cool my 1000 sq. ft. Our electric co. is a co=op.
By contrast, my sister lives in a town 17 miles away, in a one-bedroom apartment, where the utility is owned by the city. Her bill for the same period? $178.00
If anyone can see that and believe that government is not the problem….or that we even need nukular energy, I can’t help ’em.
Nuclear need not be any more expensive than coal if done in an appropriate manner to the fuel. Coal-fired power plants use the same types of boilers and condensers. The only difference is the source of the heat, and if the reactors are built to the specifications and installed per the plans, all of the problems would be reduced to nothing more than would be possible with coal, especially if the reactors were standardized like those in submarines that are installed, serve their entire life, and disposed of as sealed units. If the NRC were in charge of coal-fired power plants, they’d be a disaster as well. Nuclear fuel cycles need to be simplified to prevent the theft of spent rods, but that is a fool’s game anyway.
I haven’t paid a utility bill since the mid 80’s.
Your sister’s experience is common in areas regulated by the Rural Utility Service, where rural electrification is still under the thumb of the federal government, decades after it was completed.
Look at your bill and find the kwh rate.
Nat ave US price is 12 per kilowatt hour.
in vegas i paid 10 per kw hour.
Houston is 9 per kw hour.
Nevada consumes 233 million BTUs per man.
Ave merkin uses 310 million BTUs a year.
World ave is 75 mil BTUs per man.
Got some of the cheapest kilowatts in the country where I live- last time I checked, it was just under six cents per. (Nice, considering I came here from one of the most expensive areas for electricity in the country!)
I live in the sticks. My sister lives in the next county which is more “progressive” and has a bigger town. They installed smart meters where she is. Her actual KW charge isn’t much higher than mine, but they raised the service charge to over $30/mo. and then they have one day per month (it varies and ya never know when it’s going to be) which will be the “peak demand day”, on which the KW’s cost an absurd amount- like $11.00
That is what happens when the local government owns a utility, vs. the co-op we have in my county.
The actual electricity for both places comes from the exact same place- and is generated via coal and hydro.
(Bill, if you think that a nuclear reactor is not infinitely more complex and expense to build, operate, maintain, fuel and decommission than a simple coal turbine…you are cuckoo! Cuckoo! )
A friend of mine actually was a welding contractor for the Shoreham Nuke facility (Built almost 50 years ago, and has never gone online…) and just the caliber of welding that had to be used, was insane! (The fact that they had this guy handling it….was even crazier! Thank goodness it never went online!)
I don’t get a bill and my deep cycle battery cost about $75 several years ago.
In a free-market no insurance could be obtained. Problem solved.
With the NAP as our social paradigm, govt. solved.
As is, govt. is a de facto violation of the NAP.
No insurance agent would write a policy to insure the scrap heaps that the NRC creates out of well-designed facilities by forcing their continual redesign during construction after having approved the plans before construction began. Just as flood insurance can’t be obtained, neither can insurance be had for a nuclear power plan. It isn’t because safe nuclear reactors can’t be made, it is because insurance agents don’t want to insure a government engineered failure waiting to happen.
Hi Nunzio,
“I see nukular energy as a defacto violation of the NAP. There WILL be accidents; there always have been”.
Hmm, wouldn’t this apply to any potentially risky service? To paraphrase: “I see air travel as a defacto violation of the NAP. There WILL be accidents; there always have been”.
I suspect that in a truly free market world, nuclear power would be more prevalent and much safer. It would probably be chosen by free people because the risk/reward ratio of nuclear is likely to be better than solar, wind, coal, gas, etc… Of course, liability would also apply but, it would apply to other forms of energy as well.
Jeremy
Accidents will happen and the responsible party will be held to make the damaged whole directly or through insurance. There is nothing in the NAP that prohibits the underwriting of risk by a competent and solvent insurer.
Hi Bill,
Yes, I’m aware of that. Sorry if my post was unclear.
Jeremy
Nothing to prevent the underwriting of risk….but how do you insure for something whose effects may last for 20,000 years; render hundreds of thousands or even millions of square miles useless; and destroy or at least negatively affect millions of human lives; animals; plants; and the livelihoods of multiple millions???
No one has such resources; no one could afford such coverage; and without corporations and government courts to protect such from liability, no one is going to take such risks- and why should they, when there are such simple, much cheaper and much safer alternatives readily available?
Nuclear power is a cousin to electric cars: Without big government to foot the bill; subsidize and create the need for by regulating other options out of business, no one needs ’em or would ’em.
Insurance can be written to cover whatever risk or level of loss is desired. There is a empty parcel of land here that used to have a refinery on it, and has been closed for the foreseeable future as a result of an EPA order. The owners were compensated for the permanent loss of the land, even though they retain ownership, because they are responsible for monitoring the ground water for contamination from the previous use, which could persist for 20,000 years. Radioactive contamination is far more persistent with many radioisotopes having half-lives of a half billion years.
IMO it was irresponsible for the government to allow nuclear power plants to be built and operated under these circumstances when anyone caught driving without insurance could be fine and they can’t. All of that is for future judicial review to sort out.
Electric cars are no more dangerous than conventional ones, so I’m not sure what you are getting at there.
Nunzio, for a second there I thought you were speaking of Roundup. Not a drop of unpolluted ground water in countless states including Tx. And if that’s not bad enough, no stream, underground water table or any other natural water in Tx. isn’t polluted by psych drugs which are turning aquatic animals into all female not to mention how do we get it out when we want to bathe and drink it? I’ve looked at the cost of triple distillery and it’s not doable for me and I don’t even know if that would remove those drugs.
Then there’s the ever growing spread of nuclear waste contamination that’s comes from the Panhandle and the west Tx desert to put a nice glow on the water too. Maybe the female aquatic animals will be supersized too. More flying fish and swimming birds and people with gills.
Hey Vern, look o’var at that tall one with the purple gills and red tail feathers. Don’t see em like that ever day.
Nunzio,
The steam turbine that makes the electricity in a coal-fired power plant isn’t necessarily different from the one that does that in a nuclear power plant.
I never said that a nuclear power plant wasn’t more complicated than a coal one, but that is true after you leave the boilers that make the steam that drives the turbines that drive the generators that make the power. From the boiler out, there are few differences between them. The Fort Saint Vrain Nuclear Power Plant in Platteville, Colorado is proof. After decades of trying to get an experimental gas-cooled nuclear reactor to work as its manufacturer said it would, it was converted from nuclear to natural gas-fired and has been comparatively trouble free since. The heat source is the only difference.
Bill, there are people who would gladly give you an old gas station for free, because it has old leaking tanks in the ground, and the cost to clean it up is so great….. Never mind the fact that NO ONE will insure it for environmental liability; and anyone who has ever been connected to the property (even if they did nothing wrong; and even if they sold it before it was contaminated) is fair game for the Feds to go after at any time.
And that’s just with simple gasoline!!! Something which in reality is doing no harm to anyone as lies there buried in the dirt.
Can you even imagine the implications of radioactivity and it’s waste, and the consequences of unintended or uncontrollable reactions???
No, my point about electric cars wasn’t that they are dangerous, but that they simply would not exist if it weren’t for big government manipulating the market through subsidies and crackpot “carbon credits” and CAFE standards/zero emission standards, etc.
They would not exist because without those perks, they would not be economically feasible. They really aren’t economically feasible/advantageous even WITH the perks (As Eric so eloquently points out in many of his articles). It is the same with nukular energy- They say it’s “cheap and clean”, but that’s only when it’s at your receptacle. It’s not so cheap, when all of the costs that go ingto it, but which we don’t pay directly are taken into account; and it’s not so clean everyone who is affected by it’s accidents and waste disposal and mining, etc. Much like electric cars are not so “clean” for those who live near where the power is generated…..
Nuclear energy and electric cars are bedfellows. You can’t be for one, and against the other, because they are both creatures of big government.
Yeah, 8Man- we are screwed! Just seeing all the crap that goes into the water from the farms here…pesticides; herbicides; drugs; doody (without benefit of first having been filtered through the dirt by going into the ground)….
The dairy farms are the worst! And these are just small little privately owned family ones…I could only imagine the big corporate ones.
Funny you should mention “Turning into females”- I was just thinking last night, how disgusting it is, that everywhere ya go lately, in towns and cities, the “men” are exhibiting the body language which you would normally only see in women. -Their body language; posture; affectations, etc. even the way they speak….they’re freakin’ women with dicks.
I buy my drinking water- Crystal Geyser. It must be legit, ’cause every time they open up a new bottling place, the greenies protest about how they’re “taking the water”.
Have you looked into reverse osmosis filtration? You can get into that for a few hunnert bucks- I’m not sure about it’s efficacy exactly- I know it’s a lot better than mere filtration…. Been meaning to look into it myself. If I’m not mistaken, I think it will remove heavy metals and flouride, so it wouldn’t surprise me if it could do drugs too….
Nunzio, I have spoken to a local seller of RO water and they have a fairly complicated system for taking out various things. I didn’t specifically ask about drugs but I doubt anything they use would address the problem.
I also didn’t ask about Roundup but can’t see anything in an RO system that would remove it either.
Remind me sometimes to tell you about my own and others experiences with the state agency that “used” to be in charge when people got their land, houses, et. oversprayed by herbicides/pesticides. I just don’t feel like dredging that back up right now…..a very unpleasant experience.
Yes, Bill, true- the actual electric generating machinery is the same, regardless of what powers it. What’s the point?
We were talking about the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of nukular energy powering a generator vs. coal or gas, etc. And THAT makes all the difference.
Heck, I used to live within walking distance of Big Allis. That sucker could run on multiple fuels..gas, coal…. but of course, whatever it was burning, was ultimately just providing power to turn the generator…..
Dear Professor Jeremy,
Just as there the “muh-roads” objection to free market capitalism.
There’s the “muh-polluted air” objection to the non-aggression principle.
If Nunzio builds a methane fueled power plant to use the waste products of his pig farm. The commons’ air quality is irreparably harmed by this polluting micro-particulate aggression.
Both these objects are seen as irrefutable proof of libertarian and NAP failures by those that don’t want to be free of collective violence, or even discuss such extremist ideas.
Molyneuxvean Arguments for the NAP
http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2013/07/molyneuxveau-arguments-for-the-nap/
The non-NAP LINO Libertarian Zwolinski opines:
Stefan responds by saying:
(1)If we prohibited all pollution, people’s average life expectancy would be reduced to that late teens or early twenties (because we’d have to give up all the benefits that pollution-producing industrial activity generates),
(2)So therefore we all willingly accept pollution, (3)and if you don’t like it, you can move to some uninhabited part of Canada, (4)so therefore the NAP doesn’t prohibit pollution.
It’s a bit hard to know where to begin with all of this. Something in the vicinity of (1) seems basically right to me, and to be an important part of the explanation for why some pollution is morally permissible.
But, of course, I’m not a NAPper. And it’s hard for me to see how this kind of aggregate reasoning could justify pollution from the perspective of the NAP. Consider, for instance,
There is some pollution that creates more harm than it does good. Grant that we’d all be living in the stone age if nobody polluted at all.
How does that do anything to justify the pollution of some particular firm, the loss of which would do nothing whatsoever to retard the progress of industrial society?
There are some people who bear a disproportionate share of the burden of pollution.
If you live next to a polluting firm and get lung cancer as a result, is that supposed to be made OK by the fact that “society in general” is made better off by “pollution in general”?
For a consequentialist, maybe. But for a defender of the NAP?
Regarding (2), just because Stefan Molyneux has decided that the benefits of pollution are worth the cost doesn’t mean that the rest of us have “consented” to it.
One would think that libertarians, of all people, would be a bit more careful in attributing consent to people who never actually gave it, merely on the basis of what we think would be good for them.
Regarding (3), I mean, really? “If you don’t like it, then leave”? If I’m smoking in my own home, and you’re my guest, I can say this to you. Because I own my home, and part of what comes along with that property right is a right to determine who uses my property, and whether smoking is allowed on it.
But what right do polluters have to make such a demand of their victims? Why shouldn’t the polluters be the ones required to leave?
That gets us up to about the 5 minute mark in the video. Perhaps the rest of the arguments are better. Said Zwolinski.I didn’t watch the whole thing, so I’m not sure.
Dear poet Tor,
I’m a Napster consequentialist. The NAP, while an excellent guide to moral action, cannot resolve all social conflicts for the simple reason that exactly what constitutes aggression is unclear. For instance, I use my outdoor smoker many times throughout the year. This emits carcinogens into the air; is this aggression?
From an absolutist perspective, it certainly is. But, I would not cease doing it if a neighbor complained. Perhaps I might offer him a nickel to leave me alone. When I refuse, is my neighbor entitled to enter my property and extinguish my fire? I would say no, but he may think he is acting in self defense.
Rothbard and Block offer proportionality as an answer to such a question. It has merit but still seems insufficient. I would add reciprocity to the calculus, which helps but still does not definitively solve the conflict.
Life is complex.
Jeremy
Using a smoker is nothing like burning a pile of trash, speaking of proportionality.
Pollution is ipso facto harmful. That is why it is considered to be pollution. One person’s pollution is another person’s benefit. Intelligence mandates that pollution be managed for harm reduction at the same time that the proceeds from its production are used most propitiously.
Aggression is aggressive. Lacking aggression, actions are not aggressive. Aggression is like mens rea, based on intention, not outcome. Perceiving actions that were not meant to be aggressive as such is misperception, which is best remedied with a bit of critical thinking more than with counter-aggression such as government regulation.
Agree.
If your neighbor is building a nuke plant. Make him stop. Or pay you damages for future harm estimated to occur.
W/O gunvernment, you use your own guns and butter to fight/negotiate each and every sticking point.
Such is reality for adults who aren’t wards of a state.
I think a good deal of the problems in life, in a free society or even a not-so-free one, like ours, could be solved or greatly reduced if people just didn’t live so damn close to each other!
I’ll never understand it- people pay a premium to live in the most crowded places; they’re willing to spend the bulk of their real-estate budget on a big fancy house with accouterments worthy of an emperor….but shoe-horned in on a little square of ground ten feet from their neighbor.
Just like the nukular power thing though, I think in real-life, if we had a free society, a lot of the problems would sort themselves out just by having the artificial stimuli of government removed, and by people’s realization that just as they can be unconsiderate, so can their annoyed neighbor be.
Just as would not be able to do anything about your kid revving a loud dirtbike for 3 hours….so you couldn’t do anything about him inviting the Harlem Funk Core over for an outdoor practice session at 3 in the A of M. -so maybe people would learn to be considerate.
Morning, Nunzio!
I am in complete agreement with you that what we call Cloverism is a function of population density. It is an axiom that the farther away from people you live, the freer your life. Also, the more civilized. People tend to be more courteous when not constantly butting up against one another. Driving is more enjoyable where I live because there are fewer Clovers and the few you encounter are easily gotten around. In crowded areas, Clovers are so thick you can’t get away from them. It is a constant, soul-killing affront.
Truer words have never been spoken, Eric!
Not only does one constantly trip over clovers in the densely populated places, but level of government control and cost of living are so much greater there; and the quality of life so much lower…. and it gets more so with each passing decade.
Here, where I now live, it’s a pretty safe bet that everyone I encounter is a gun owner.
Back in NY? Pretty safe bet that everyone I’d encounter thought that owning a gun makes you a criminal.
5 layers of gov’t in NY- Fed, state, county, township and city/village (And EVERY one of ’em has their own police).
Here? Fed, state and county only- and county (so far…) in my county is almost non-existent, so it’s more like only 2 layers here…and Fed. doesn’t really even have a presence here…
Talk about a night and day difference!
BWAHAHAHA, Jeremy! I KNEW somebody was going to say that before i even submitted the post which you replied to! 😀
And quite frankly, I really don’t have a good philosophical answer. To say that if nukular energy proliferated, that there would be an increase in accidents; what would be done with all of the waste? Who wants to take the chance of contaminating vast areas of the planet; etc. etc. may all be very practical questions, but I agree with you, that philosophically it is no different than a statist demanding that we have car insurance because “what if?”.
Quite frankly, I’ve never given it a lot of thought though, because, as I’ve said in an earlier post, in a free-market world, I don’t think we’d have to worry about it, as more traditional means of generating power would be far cheaper and more efficient, and expose their participants to far less liability in a world in which they would not be protected from liability like they are today, by the government-created artificial persons known as corporations. So I think it would be a moot point.
But you have to admit, nukes sorta ruin everything. I mean, in a free market world, anyone who got their hands on some nuclear weapons couild effectively control the world- so would we all need to have nukes to ensure a balance of power?
It’s a can of worms which never should have opened- and the best thing that could happen would be if nuclear technology were buried along with the bureaucrats who caused it to be developed, and to hope that without huge governments pilfering huge sums of money from innocents, it would never have the chance to be resurrected again.
And just imagine in a world free of the coercion of gov’t, how much less power would be required: Today, most urban/suburban houses can not be oriented to take advantage of passive solar benefits; can not have a wind generator; solar panels [big enough to be of any real benefit]; a wood stove or outdoor supplemental coal or wood furnace, etc. etc. But without gov’t prohibitions, such things and many more would be possible- along with the disappearance of electric cars, sicne there’d be no subsidies to buy ’em- so really, I would forsee a dramatic drop before long, in a free world, for the need for electricity. Pooblik schools, government offices, prisons wouldn’t exist…. Heck, they probably have to shjutter a bunch of our existing traditional generating facilities!
AFTERTHOUGHT: As far as nukes vilating the NAP: Maybe something along these lines: Not only is using unprovoked violence wrong, but even threatening violence is wrong, right? Yet, if you only threaten violence, you’ve not actually committed any violence; it’s just a threat that you may do so- a “what if?”.
So too, if we are messing with something so dangerous as to be able to kill a good deal of life on this planet in one fell swoop; something whose consequences can last for virtually ever; in a world where there will be accidents, because even unsinkable ships sink; and where waste storage IS a definite problem….I see no difference between that and threatening violence. In fact, iif given the choice, I’d rather have the threat of violence- for even if that violence were carried out, it would likely only affect one person, and for a short and definite period of time.
The ignorance of collectivism messes up a lot of things. It might even be the reason why Jeremy’s post doesn’t have a reply button on my computer’s screen. If I don’t like what my neighbor is doing, I just start the engine in the van I live in and move.
Down by the river?
Hi Bill,
I dealt with the problem of the neighbor’s kid playing cRap music – which I could feel at my place, several hundred yards away – thusly:
I fired up my diesel tractor, drove it to the edge of my property and pointed directly at their house with the high beams on – and turned the throttle up to LOUD. It only took a couple minutes for the Bix Noooooooood to cease. Whereupon I shut off the tractor.
Peace.
Actually you are arguing against all kinds of energy potentially being to plentiful.
Not unlike Nassim Taleb who I read on Facebook a few times a month, he too believes there is such a thing as having too much. Too much of anything leads to the apocalyptic ruin of hormegeddon.
“Hormegeddon” is the term coined by entrepreneur and New York Times Bestselling Author Bill Bonner to describe what happens when you get too much of a good thing in the sphere of public policy, economics and business. Simply put, it ends in disaster.
Tor,
Have you seen Bill Bonner’s latest video at ATMcrisis.com?