By making “IC” cars impossible – legislatively – electric cars are to be made inevitable. In this way, the practical and functional deficits of EVs become irrelevances. Just as the Fourth and Fifth Amendments are irrelevant as a practical and functional matter.
The commonalities – the tactics – are interesting.
Naturally, they emanate from the same place.
In the case of the Fourth Amendment, the government simply decreed it had a “compelling interest” to override it at will, whenever it felt like doing so. The amendment’s crystal clear prohibition of any unreasonable search, absent probable cause wasn’t denied. It was simply swept away because it was in the way . . . of exactly the police state tactics those prohibitions were enshrined to forbid.
Similarly, there is now a “compelling interest” to force-feed electric and automated cars to the public, which hasn’t asked for them. The analog of the Fourth Amendment impediment is the free market, which exists to prevent exactly such force-feeding (and profiteering, which always attends the funnel in the mouth, with the gun pointed at the victim’s temple).
Thus, the free market must be suppressed. In its place, a command economy – Mussolini (or Goring) style. The edicts about what shall be manufactured are decreed; price signals become . . . irrelevant. It is probably only a matter of a handful of years before there is an official Five Year Plan – complete with pronouncements about the overfulfillment thereof.
Electric cars have to be force-fed because there are not enough takers on the merits. It’s a simple statement of fact; no elaboration needed. If this were not so, the force-feeding wouldn’t be necessary. No one puts a gun to people’s heads to buy Starbucks coffee or for that matter, Toyota Corollas – because it’s not necessary. They sell on the merits.
EVs don’t.
It is a bitter pill for their proselytizers – and profiteers – to swallow. In a moral universe, they’d go back to the drawing board, come up with something that could sell on the merits. But that has proved not possible thus far, which drives the proselytizers batty and fails to line the pockets of the profiteers (which includes but is by no means limited to Our Friend Elon).
Thus, the legislative and regulatory attempts to get rid of IC-engined cars. If you can’t build a better mousetrap, illegalize your competitions’ mousetrap.
They tried using emissions regs – but that failed because IC-engined cars got clean. Nearly “zero emissions” clean. That is, almost electric car clean. Very possibly, cleaner in the aggregate than electric cars – which haven’t got tailpipes but do have smokestacks. The government hasn’t – and never will – tally all the emissions produced by electric cars. Unless, of course, they become functionally and economically viable – at which point it will. But that is another story, saved for later.
And so, the government changed the rules. Better example, pulled away the football, Lucy-style, that Charlie Brown was just on the verge of kicking through the goalposts.
Carbon dioxide became a “pollutant.”
Almost at once – and as one – the media orchestra (which is funded by the same philanthropy) began to play the specified tune. It happened in much the same way that – if you were there and recall – the post-911 tune very suddenly changed from a libretto about Afghanistan to eructations about Iraq. It seemed very odd – to those plagued by a capacity for discernment, who knew that Afghanistan was one country (and home, apparently, to “enemies of freedom” who’d attacked the U.S.) and Iraq another – filled with people who had nothing to do with it.
No matter. Switch gears. Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Eurasia is our ally – and always has been.
Just so, with C02.
It relies on similar stupefaction – and a reflexive capacity to accept the New Story.
LIke the Iraqis, who played no role in the attacks of 911, C02 plays no role in the problems heretofore attributed to internal combustion, such as smog and respiratory problems. But just as there was a predetermined agenda to “regime change” Iraq, which the 911 attacks provided the necessary hysteria to set in motion, so also the conflation of inert, environmentally inoffensive C02 with things like carbon monoxide, unburned hydrocarbons and so on.
All of which have been dealt with. Are no longer meaningful issues, as regards smog or human health.
Enter C02.
Like the “war on terror,” the war on carbon dioxide is a strategically brilliant tactic because it’s impossible to define and just as impossible to win. Both are forever wars which provide an endless pretext for any affront the government cares to rain down upon us.
It will not just be cars, either. Your house has a “carbon footprint.” Have you been using too much electricity? Wait and see.
Eyes should be opening now, even if only a few. It was never about “the environment.” If it had been, there would have been a happy press conference about ten years ago at which a beaming EPA administrator would have said, in effect, mission accomplished – and let’s move on to other things.
This might even include electric cars, assuming they can ever be made economically sensible and practically plausible. There is always a market for a better mousetrap. The problem is the EV isn’t it – and may never be.
And if it ever, by some miracle of chemistry or physics, becomes economically sensible and practically plausible, it will at exactly that moment become a problem. The orchestra’s tune will change again. As quickly as the Tele-Promp-Ter switched from Afghanistan to Iraq, we will begin to have stories about all the Bad Things coming out of the smokestacks that power electric cars. The “free” electricity now available at government-sponsored Fast Charger stations won’t be anymore.
Because the point of the exercise isn’t a better mousetrap, or even “clean air.”
It is shoring up the matrix, maintaining the integrity of the pyramid . . . with guess who at the apex and the rest of us you know where.
. . .
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Eric,
I saw this after reading your most recent diaper report. I have a question: what will TPTB do if EVs ever become good? Elon put forth a $25K Tesla recently. Even if it ends up at $30K, yet offers good capabilities, what will TPTB do to get us out of our cars then? Supposing solid state batteries are perfected, thus enabling EVs to be competitive with ICEVs, what will TPTB’s next move be? They tried eliminating cars via the emissions regs, but they failed because the engineers were able to build clean ICEVs with good performance. With that in mind, if EVs become competitive, what will be the next move they make to tie us down and take away our mobility?
I wonder if we have achieved “peak reliability” in passenger vehicles, at least for a time.
Here’s my thinking: As government piles more and more regulations on manufacturers to force them to achieve standards the vast majority of consumers don’t care about, or wouldn’t trade for the cost increases or other consequences of such premature technological advancements if given a choice (i.e., free market), more and more systems are introduced into vehicles that serve no purpose other than to meet such regulations and are ever further divorced from the reality of consumer demand. Necessarily, these systems introduce new and ever more complex points of failure. Also, since these are usually safety or emissions systems, they cannot be legally defeated, and the vehicle cannot legally be permitted to function if they fail (e.g., DEF and filters for diesel engines). We are being forced, prematurely, into electric and hybrid vehicles as “old” IC technology continues to be perfected, at least as far as the consumer is concerned.
More and more systems, including electronics, have been added not to improve reliability but to meet government regulations completely unrelated to consumer preferences. As these systems fail, as all such systems eventually fail, it is increasingly difficult to repair them and parts will become progressively more difficult to find. This is not so much a problem with current generation IC cars, since the average new car can easily last to 100k or more without much more than basic repair and maintenance schedules and replacing wear items. Most can make it to 200k with a little care and investment, far cheaper than buying a new car. But what happens when, as these new mandated systems start accumulating, they start negatively impacting vehicle reliability? What happens when we are all shoved into electric cars and all IC powered vehicles are illegal? What happens when this immature, and untested, technology starts failing left and right and the average lifespan of a new vehicle goes from 10-15 years to 5 years or less before it becomes economically infeasible to repair vs. simply replace?
Now might be the best time to “lock in your savings” and buy a vehicle with the greatest promise of longevity and simple repairability. As we see things like turbocharged 4s replace V8s, direct injection replacing far more dependable older fuel injection systems, 10-speed trans and CVTs replacing reliable 6-speed autos and manuals, etc., none of which seems to have arisen for any other reason than as attempts to meet government mandates, will be slowly start seeing unreliability creep in? Are the Tesla vehicles’ reliability woes just Tesla or are they endemic to the electric power design itself at this point in time mostly due to lack of tested and proven designs, or is it simply negligence on the part of the manufacturer? Probably a bit of all of these, I’d wager.
Add to this the self-driving mandates that will undoubtedly manifest over the coming decade or so, and all the complexity involved in that, and we’re either going to have to see a dramatic uptick in cost to cover the R&D to make the new tech dependable and reliable, which the market otherwise wouldn’t bear, or we will see a marked increase in unreliability, which the government couldn’t care less about, but the market does.
So this leads to a question. What vehicles, money no object, would be expected to be the most reliable if bought new today?
My guess is that things like the Toyota Tundra and Land Cruiser would be at or near the top of the list, but long-haul heavy-duty diesel pickups might also be on that list, despite the choking emissions regulations the current ones suffer under (there’s a marked premium on pre-2008 diesel HD pickups b/c they lack all the emissions crap which, in turn, makes them more reliable and simpler to work on). There is probably an argument to be made for small, simple cars like a Corolla or mid-size sedans that are mass produced like the Camry. I’m mentioning mostly Toyota, as despite its Prius line, it tends to be among the more conservative manufacturers with new technology and, consequently, has a reputation for longevity that is well deserved, even in their otherwise tech-laden Lexus brand.
Oddly, though, you still have to balance this out with current reliability ratings. The Nissan Frontier, for example, is fairly old and stable technology, yet for other reasons they are fairly mediocre in the reliability department (though not as bad as their more modern designs in their cars).
Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t.
precisely, Soj.
I think we’ve already passed the point of peak reliability. New cars are too dependent upon electronics and computers and complex mechanicals- they may work O-K when new…but they are economically unsustainable once out of warranty, because in addition to the normal entropy of necessary components, they have added so many extraneous components which aren’t necessary, but which have been made to be so, that in the very near future, it will cost WAY more to buy and maintain and repair a used car, than it would to buy new- so if one doesn’t want to throw their money away on a new car every four years or so, or can’t afford to….they’re screwed.
A good example are the Ford Triton motors. From the 90’s up to ’03 they were pretty awesome motors, which could rack-up amazing mileage with virtually no problems and only basic maintenance. I had a ’98 Econoline van for 15 years, with 300K on a 4.6 Triton, and never did a thing to it, other than normal maint.
Starting in ’03 or ’04 they added variable cam timing to those motors…then the problems started!
I can’t even imagine dealing with all of the BS on newer cars- Touch screens; direct injection with a port injection system over that; turbos, or even dual turbos…. These things are being engineered to meet government requirements, and those requirements are essentially mandating the planned obsolescence of the automobile. Not to even mention the plethora of powered luxury features on every vehicle these days- which is just more to break, and adds to the cost of repairs……
And people must be catching on to this, because the prices of good old simple cars are getting out of hand! It’s practically to the point where a 20 year-old pick’em-up in good shape costs what a new one would cost if it weren’t festooned with $25K worth of “safety” and EPA and luxury crap!
The class 8 truck engines with the best dependability and simplicity are the Caterpillar engines. The only problem is that they gave up building truck engines instead of messing with DEF, and the only ones that are still in use are those that have been transplanted into newer chassis where they can continue to be used for as long as they are maintainable per their year of manufacture. Since Cat is still using the same designs in their larger markets, generators and marine, parts will be available as long as the basic engines are.
Since most drivers don’t have a need for a class 8 truck engine and automotive diesels are no match, with the reliability of the electronically controlled direct injection being well established, I’d go with such before the black boxes started being installed and live with it.
I hear they’re out-lawing glider kits now….. The noose just keeps tightening.
Regulation is just the beginning of confiscation/criminalization. The gun control nuts always tried to downplay that. Now it’s happening even with cars and trucks.
Another log on the fire: Reporter from somewhere they ahve no need for cars on how Bob Lutz says individual ownership will go the way of the dodo. https://qz.com/1122534/former-gm-chairman-bob-lutz-says-the-end-of-the-car-industry-is-near/
I wonder if they really believe this. I see the first part, with delivery and trucking switching to autonomy – the current regs and staffing problems make it a match made in heaven, kinda like how the railroad industry gave rise to OTR trucking because of their greed an ineprtitude.
I won’t worry about this putting me out of work until all those self-driving trucks can unload themselves.
Bill, that day is coming as well. Until then automation will continue to replace jobs. The result will be thousands of people competing for those few jobs. What then of the people who do not get/have jobs? What happens when humans are obsolete for production except for the very few?
Automation can’t replace all of the specialists that are required to keep it running. The military is losing pilots faster than they can recruit them. They’ve been having trouble retaining drone pilots for some time. Fewer people want to kill innocent non-combatants when they recognize that is what they are doing.
I don’t expect self-driving tractor-trailers without monitor drivers will happen before I lose the ability to pass a DOT physical to keep my CDL. As the economy gets dicier, the drivers that have a home to come back to will become less willing to stay away from it. Those drivers who don’t have a place to call home, like me, will be hired and bonused to replace them. The rest of them will wind up with jobs where they drive 200-250 miles to a terminal, swap day cabs, and return, and spend every night at home. Humans will never be obsolete for those things that machines can’t effectively accomplish.
Bill, “Automation can’t replace all of the specialists that are required to keep it running.”
The number of specialists to keep say 1000 robots operating does not balance out the 1000 jobs lost to those robots. Plus robots do not purchase the things they produce. It is like combines. They replaced thousands of farmhands. Many of those displaced farmhands went to work in factories. Now there is less and less work to be found in the factories. If technology keeps on its pace then there is a better than good chance that there will come the time when there will be no jobs/so few jobs that society as we understand it today cannot be sustained. Fred Reed has a few excellent columns on this.
“Fewer people want to kill innocent non-combatants when they recognize that is what they are doing.”
Oh how I hope that is the case. But even so, technology has already made it easier for even fewer people to accomplish the slaughter of innocents e.g. a WWII B-17 bomber’s 8 (I think) man crew v. a modern F-18 and its lone pilot.
“Humans will never be obsolete for those things that machines can’t effectively accomplish.”
Yes, but the list of those things machines cannot effectively accomplish is getting shorter and shorter. And with that comes more and more people vying for fewer and fewer jobs.
As for over-the-road trucking I pretty much agree with you. I have been saying for years now that OTR trucking can and should be eliminated precisely because of technology. As you suggest properly placed drop and hook/distribution terminals would eliminate the need for many if not most OTR trucking.
Man must think all of this through. If he does not blow everything all to hell first that is.
Fred Reed seems to think through the things he writes a whole lot better than many of those who misunderstand what he wrote.
I have a step-brother who is a retired railroad engineer. When we’d meet at family get-togethers, he’d tell me about how he was putting me out of work, due to the increasing number of container his employer was hauling. He hasn’t said anything about that since I pointed out to him that more railroad sidings are going out of use than are being built, and I wasn’t going to worry about containers until there were railroad sidings up to all of the buildings that still use truck docks.
The severe downsizing of the economy that will accompany the Greater Depression will eliminate more jobs of all skill levels than anything AI could ever do, and that will be largely caused by the gross reduction of human intelligence which is self-inflicted.
Bill, what do you think I misunderstand about Fred Reed’s columns on this subject?
What do you think will cause the Greater Depression and what kind of economy will emerge from it? Will AI not be a part of it or will AI emerge as the dominate factor?
Your post didn’t represent proof of understanding anything Fred Reed had ever written. In the absence of proof, what can be believed?
The Great Depression will sink every indebted boat on the economic ocean.
Bill, since I only mentioned that Fred has some columns on the subject and I did not mention any specifics about what he wrote how can you conclude either way if I misunderstand or correctly understand what he wrote?
And while I agree with you that the Greater Depression will be devastating my two questions to you remain unanswered.
I do not mean this in a challenging way; I ask only out of curiosity. My questions are for anyone reading this btw.
I have read more written by Fred Reed that made sense than everything I’ve read on this group, regardless of sensibility.
I think most thinkers would be better off in the trees.
A great deal of sidings going away don’t make a lot of sense in many ways but I think it’s the way RR’s have designed their cars for auto-loading that contributed to it.
I removed sidings in Sweetwater and Colorado City Texas in 1988 and the tracks themselves were fine. Now new sidings have been built in some towns to take cars of frac sand and asphalt. My first job of operating a belly dump was for hot asphalt and then worked for months creating pads for frac sand yards and oil off-loading/pipeline terminals. I worked the last 2 days building a lease road and have another day of that and then building a drilling pad. That’s all we’ve done for the last month or so.
As Dan the Super Trucker says, “If you want job security be a flatbed driver” in regards to automated trucks. So many custom sized and shaped loads can’t be done by automation or at least it would take some very smart truck to chain down those loads. I look for coiled steel to eventually only be hauled by specialized trailers since most fall into either 2 rolls or single roll maximum load. It would be easy to design a trailer that would be much more stable and have less labor involved.
I delivered a lot of Coors beer to warehouses, and I noticed that a lot of them had permanently closed railroad sidings. I asked the manager of one why they didn’t use the railroads instead of trucks, and he said that the practice of slamming railcars together damaged more bottles and cans than they saved by using trains.
Bill, there’s rail lines in all big towns and cities that are grown over in trees and bushes and vacant warehouses to boot. I don’t claim to know the reason for it all but I suspect that some have been abandoned since NAFTA judging by the size of the trees. Now warehouses depend on trucks and roadways. Some businesses still ship by rail such as wallboard and gyp products but not a great deal of it. Prices change rapidly and nobody wants to keep a warehouse stocked with wallboard that may not get used for months or years. Plasters and such are very time sensitive and must be used as close to date of production as possible so rail cars haven’t been germane to that particular industry in decades.
The B-17 G had a crew of 10 in its last incarnation. The crew is listed below:
01. pilot
02. co-pilot
03. bombadier
04. navigator
05. top gunner
06. left waist gunner
07. right waist gunner
08. belly gunner
09. tail gunner
10. radio operator
Earlier incarnations had a crew of 9, of course. The tail gunner was the last position added, IIRC.
NoneYaBiz
None, thanks for the info. I was not sure.
BTW, the F-18 is not listed as a bomber. The F in its designation stands for fighter. Actual bombers have more than one crew member.
Remember, the atrocious B-52 is still on the active list and is being used to bully NK. While some of the avionics have been upgraded, the crew still is 2 plus. The B2, a not so stealth bomber now that it has been added to radar signatures world wide, has a crew of two from what I understand.
NoneYaBiz
Thing to think about, create a weapon someone will figure a way to counter it as fast as they can. that means the B2 is now obsolete.
None, yeah I know the difference between the B and the F. I was referring to the amount of devastation that can be caused by fewer people thanks to technology and not so much the capabilities between the two planes. But, again, good info to know.
“Fleet owners like FedEx and UPS will be the first to defect to self-driving vehicles.”
So now we’ll have to wait at home until the automated delivery truck arrives and unload the packages ourselves? All this automation is to one end, push the labor on to the customer.
Is human laziness so vast that people just want to be cared for serfs? Is their collective memory of those who take the management roles end up doing so dim?
This whole thing is being pushed from the financial top down and it’s obvious to anyone with a clue.
I suspect that the mountain of undelivered packages will change their minds, unless there is a significant reduction in the shipping cost of a package you have to retrieve from the truck. Maybe that is where Amazon’s drone delivery idea might make the self-driving vehicles pan out, by letting a drone complete the delivery.
Drones with a micro camera could appear to be self driving vehicles, though a human is on the other end.
Kind of like Stanislaw Lem in the 60s who imagine elevators weren’t really miraculous inanimate machines, but rather behind the scenes, there were countless soviet minions heaving the ropes and manually moving the elevator cars floor to floor.
The drones wouldn’t need a camera, just a GPS so they’d know where to deposit the package, just as the truck knows where it is. In fact, a self-driving truck combined with a delivery drone would be able to make deliveries far faster than a driver and a truck. Efficienties would be accomplished by the truck never needing to stop or find parking.
the illusion of self driving is way easier and cheaper though
look for that tech to come first and to dominate
the purpose of self drive is the surveillance so having cameras watched by humans is perfect
china has millions that just do surveillance work like this
they’ll be faux self driving first
China has a distinct advantage over us in that they have a far larger number of people who can actually watch the cameras collect. Their economy is also leaving ours in the dust, largely because of a rapidly growing middle class, as the same time that ours is collapsing.
Who cares what China’s communal economy does?
Who cares what “our” communal economy does?
Unless one is in the loathsome position to be profiting off of the labor and property of others, why should such be a concern?
If you can produce a product or service and trade with another neighbor for a product or service or something of value, what ever anyone else does, or how much they do of it, etc. really is of no concern- again, unless you are in a position to skim off what others have produced.
Anmd besides, the Chinks are too smart to give people free money to sit at home and make babies…so people work or starve- so naturally, there will be a higher overall productivity than here in the US where being a couch-potato and popping-out mulatto babies is a viable career.
Is popping-out non-mulatto babies more acceptable as a career path?
No, Bill- it’s just that mulattos seem to predominate these days, since either:
a)Fat ugly white chicks want to knock boots with “bruthas” to show how PC non-raciss they are…
or…
b)Fat ugly white chicks can’t find white guys these days who are hard-up enough to want to bone them, or stupid enough to without wearing a hat.
Either:
A)They haven’t thought these things through very well…
or [and more likely]
B)They’re foisting upon us a system which they KNOW will not work, as a way of destroying the old infrastructure- and once it is destroyed, and the new one is not capable of truly replacing it, there is no going back, and we will be reduced to being literally dependent slaves on a government plantation, looking to master for what ever crumbs he will throw us.
Drone delivery; self-driving cars; self-driving trucks; colonizing Mars [LOL!]; sex-robots, etc., they KNOW this can’t work, and that it would have horrible consequences if it did…. A reasonably intelligent 10 year-old would see the folly in all of this nonsense. One really has be “educated” [indoctrinated] to take this crap seriously and not laugh when it is mentioned.
Having been a telecommunications engineer for a decade before becoming a trucker in 1990, I’m having difficulty in understanding how the highly automated radio stations that I was chief engineer of were not capable of working. I guess reasonably intelligent 10 year olds aren’t what they were when I was 10 years old. In the early days of broadcasting, the age of the engineer that was building the transmitters from scratch was academic. If the feasibility of making something like that work was non-existent, how would we ever have come up with transistors, let alone smartphones?
Li’l skoash of a difference between playing some Mott The Hoople tapes vs. negotiating curving roads with varying traffic at 60MPH and leaving a package on someone’s porch….
They still haven’t worked out traffic-light recognition….
It’d be far easier to have automated air traffic control…and as far as I know, they ain’t done that yet.
“Li’l skoash?” Do you mean scosche?
It isn’t necessary to recognize traffic lights that are under the direct control of a computer network which can be easily interrogated. Air traffic control is complicated by human involvement, because most humans can’t calculate the potential contentions of thousands of independently controlled aircraft in real time. All of the current airliners can be flown by remote control, without any need for a onboard pilot. It is human superstition and ignorance that prevents total automation of commercial air traffic. The 777 can take off and land all by itself, given the necessary landside infrastructure.
Navigating a drone from a truck to a porch would be a piece of cake by the average X-box user.
All of this “no ownership”, is basically just the last step to achieving total communism. I mean, “we” already practice the redistribution of wealth; collective edumacation; total control over personal/familial relationships and every sphere of life and business; disarmament[Yeah, you can “own a gun” still- but can’t really bear it/use it in a meaningful way]; and while private real property does not exist in this country, now, they are putting the finishing touches on NO property of any substance- in that you will no longer own a car or truck or tractor….but rather just “use the collective’s”- for which you will pay dearly, while having no equitable interest; and while being subject to even more rules and prohibitions than the ones the goobermint imposes….
If this somehow manages to continue before it all comes crashing down, it is going to be an even scarier world than it already is!
What kind of communism has the means of production owned by anyone but the state?
Just look to GM as an example….. First it’s state-control; then it’s corps in “partnership”/bail-outs/asset-seizures….and then it’s plain-out “nationalization”.
What does the ism matter though? Communism; socialism; fascism; Naziism; Democratism; whatever…..the technicalities of ownership don’t matter- it’s all about who’s calling the shots; who’s printing the currency; who owns the weapons/media/schools.
Vote for Hitler or Stalin; Hillaryor Donald….what the hell’s the difference? YOU don’t have control of your own property or body, except in so far as they let you.
State control is fascism, not communism.
I think that depends on how “state control” is defined. Nunz is correct here I think. The difference in the “ism” is irrelevant because the outcome is the same.
Neighbor Song – Lake Street Dive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QIlmlMjAvo
78% Of US Workers Are Living ‘Paycheck-To-Paycheck’
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-02/78-us-workers-are-living-paycheck-paycheck-71-them-are-debt
It is very easy to be living paycheck to paycheck if you consistently spend more than you make. I gave up trying to increase my income long before I got to the point where I was running out of money. I have never had nor wanted a regular credit card. I had some store cards back in the late 70’s but they went away with my ex-wife, who had maxxed them out on crap we didn’t need. That is probably when I became a manic saver. If I don’t need it, I don’t buy it. If I do need it, I find a way to make do without buying it at retail or at all. I have a very clear idea about the difference between want and need, and have bought very little of the former.
Preach it Ronnie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOpHnXG8b4I
How the West Was Won Again
it was 5 am eastern time Thursday November 23rd. On some porches the headlines of the newspapers were visible. Tax reform fails in close senate vote everywhere was the headline.
But the real news wasn’t in the papers. Across a waking nation hundreds of thousands of priests were being stabbed in their beds. Imams in mosques were all killed and mosques burned to the ground. All the nations prisons and jails were on fire. Everywhere there were throngs of working men in their vehicles with their weapons and their tools.
All the news organizations were burning. Newscaster corpses lay strewn about thousands of national news rooms. Schools were on fire, and the buildings were being knocked down. Retirement homes were under seige. Often you would see a son killing his own aged fathers and mothers as the necessary deeds were all being done.
Projects were on fire. Section 8 neighborhoods were war zones with sniper fire. Buses were being loaded nearby as women and children were being sent away by the millions to public lands nearby.
Institutions that existed to transfer wealth were demolished. Any of their leaders were killed as they were found. Everywhere there was rubble and junk heaps and ruinds of an unliveable society.
Everyday working stiff men and women were barking their orders at the confused and crying freeloading classes. Young men were gunned down where they stood, and killed in their apartments, if they had even the slightest look of criminal class about them.
Everywhere there were gatherings of men and women. Each of them checking their records and deciding who is to survive and who is to be sacrificed. The days of some Americans being forced to support other Americans at gunpoint were clearly over.
There was a heady optimism in the air again. America was again renewed and back on her feet again. Honest productive men of all races and creeds wore strips of clothe tied around their arms or necks. Symbols and promises that they were not freeloaders, and would never take from a fellow American. A simple gesture and belief with which no one dared disagree or dissent.
Elsewhere, in Park County Wyoming, nary a shot was fired, aside from those at those which had make themselves a target for the 14 guns per capita. The very few living in section 8 housing had always made themselves useful whether it earned a wage or not, grandparents are always needed and useful. As usual, the federales found good reasons not to bother those using land which has always been used by them and theirs for many decades for a century or more. The few potshots that were reported were in the direction of government vehicles other than the sheriff’s office, which was occupied by a CLEO according to Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997). The first government employees to leave were union teachers whose stewardship of local children whose test scores had been falling was no longer needed or welcome. The schools were finally being used by private educators who were quickly reducing the need for corporal punishment by its application. All abandoned government facilities were being repurposed following their sale at auction.
“How the West Was Won Again”
I hate to tell you, Tor, but that was fucked up.
That reaction was easily foreseen from you, Ed.
Bill, you’ve never forseen anything in your life. Shut up before I rat you out to Disqus, Google and Wells Fargo. There’s probably an algorithm out there looking for your ass right now.
Rat away since you are the rat king.
Somebody take that Chromebook away from Bill before he pokes his eye out with it.
People like you couldn’t do that with a key or a pen?
Hey Bill,
Teran is back at the gulch again east of Van Horn TX.
https://imgtc.com/HTD7po6
Not much like Galt’s Gulch yet, but its a start anyway.
https://imgtc.com/gOtlzix
Tor,
Is Teran a person, a travel trailer, or a Ford light truck?
Just a kid with some west TX land.
https://github.com/teran-mckinney
Who is [your name here] Galt?
Libertarians believe that if someone is peaceful, they should be welcome to immigrate to the United States.
Libertarians believe that people should be able to travel freely as long as they are peaceful. We welcome immigrants who come seeking a better life. The vast majority of immigrants are very peaceful and highly productive.
Indeed, the United States is a country of immigrants, of all backgrounds and walks of life…some families have just been here for more generations than others. Newcomers bring great vitality to our society.
A truly free market requires the free movement of people, not just products and ideas.
Whether they are from India or Mexico, whether they have advanced degrees or very little education, immigrants have one great thing in common: they bravely left their familiar surroundings in search of a better life. Many are fleeing extreme poverty and violence and are searching for a free and safe place to try to build their lives. We respect and admire their courage and are proud that they see the United States as a place of freedom, stability, and prosperity.
Of course, if someone has a record of violence, credible plans for violence, or acts violently, then Libertarians support blocking their entry, deporting, and/or prosecuting and imprisoning them, depending on the offense.
Libertarians do not support classifying undocumented immigrants as criminals. Our current immigration system is an embarrassment. People who would like to follow the legal procedures are unable to because these procedures are so complex and expensive and lengthy. If Americans want immigrants to enter through legal channels, we need to make those channels fair, reasonable, and accessible.
https://www.lp.org/issues/immigration/
Tor, thanks for the reminder of why I left the LP. Of course, there was also the issue of the national office doing fundraising for Harry Browne starting right after the end of his first losing campaign.
The LP was/is a big waste.
Ed, a Libertarian (political) Party is a contradiction.
That is why the LP sucks – always.
Absolutely right, skunkbear. At their convention in ’96 they got fucking Nadine Stroessner of the ACLU to speak. She said some shit like “this is a great day to be a CIVIL libertarian.
You could see Bumper Hornberger wincing when she got up to speak. Bumper spilled the beans about the games they played spending the campaign funds in ’98 the same year I quit. He raised hell in his columns about it for about a year.
Altered History: Exposing Deceit and Deception in the JFK Assassination Medical Evidence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrVyOYsx81k
good ol’ FFF.org
Yep, FFF is Jacob Hornberger’s home online. Good ol’ Bumper.
He has written a lot on the JFK assassination, including a book on the autopsy fraud.
Yep, when some evil-doers seek to cover-up they don’t care some day there’ll be a way to prove they lied. Why should they? Public doesn’t remember yesterday on the political spectrum and even if they did, they’re constantly fed lies every day to cover the lies of before.
A couple days ago I called my best friend on the long drive home and we got on The Donald.
I said he’d gone back on a campaign promise of not entering new wars. My friend said he never said that.
He goes on to take me to task for saying that pointing out he’d heard EVERY speech the Donald made in his campaign and he never said such. I pointed out it would be impossible for a buy who doesn’t do the internet to find every single speech of the orange one and listen to them all.
He was made by then and let me know he heard every a
speed cause Fox news played all of them. I had to change subjects that was so stupid.
8, it’s a good thing he’s your best friend. If he was just a work acquaintance you would have beat the piss out of him by now. ahaha
Ed, yeah, what the bloody deuce is a “Civil Libertarian”?!
Such an expression is both redundant and contradictory depending on the meaning of the word “civil”.
The very core of Libertarianism is about people being civil to each other. There is no such thing as a barbaric Libertarian. Libertarianism is civility itself.
Therefore it is also a contradiction for a Libertarian to be for so called “civil” rights (as I believe the speaker was referencing).
There are no such things as “civil rights”. They are a pure political invention designed for a massive federal power grab.
Note too how “civil rights” are ambiguous and therefore unlimited and require a gun to the head of others to enforce whereas Natural Law Rights (the only legitimate rights) are well defined and few. Unlike “civil rights” NLRs are defended not enforced. Defended or enforced. That is the yard stick for measuring the legitimacy of what is a right and what is simply a politically contrived tool.
Well-said, Skunk!
I guess the cluelessness of the Libertarian Party on essentials like those, are why they end up running a clown like Gary Johnson, who is nothing but an embarrassment to real Libertarians.
“what the bloody deuce is a “Civil Libertarian”?! ”
I’d bet she meant a member of her little commie outfit, the ACLU. The fact that she was asked to speak there shows that the LP is run by statist douchebags who have been in DC too long.
Yep, skunk, you can bet anybody using those terms really has no concept of what a libertarian represents.
Hi Skunk,
“There are no such things as “civil rights”. They are a pure political invention designed for a massive federal power grab.”
Correct. Rights, by definition, cannot conflict. They cannot be granted, merely respected. This poses a problem for those who wish to rule. Namely, if it were understood that rights cannot conflict, then nearly all of the actions of the rulers would be seen as illegitimate. Thus it is necessary to convince the people that rights are not natural, that the exercise of some rights, violates the rights of others, and that rights must be balanced by a fair and just authority.
It is in the interest of the ruling class to transform “rights” into granted privileges but also to maintain the illusion that these “rights” are somehow different than mere privilege. Enter bifurcated rights: civil rights, economic rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, men’s rights, etc…
Civil rights conflict with economic rights, men’s rights with women’s, smokers’ with non-smokers’, property rights with free speech rights, etc… “Right” becomes a meaningless concept, transforming society into a battleground where everyone seeks privilege at the expense of everybody else. But, the language of “rights” must be maintained so as to obscure the petty selfishness and aggression that animates those in this battle.
A gay couple, whose feelings are hurt when a Christian couple refuses to bake a cake for their wedding, may indulge their desire for revenge and punishment, comforted with the delusion that they are engaged in a noble fight for “gay rights”. A union member may vilify as “scabs” those whose crime is to be willing to work for less, even justifying the use of violence against such “scabs”. Most people sympathize with the union. Perhaps they would not if “collective bargaining rights” were defined correctly as “grants of exclusionary privilege”.
Randolph Bourne noted that, “War is the Health of the State”. What we must understand is that this war is mostly fought domestically. The State intentionally creates
conflict among the people, rendering us blind to the true nature of our common enemy, and impotent to combat it.
Kind Regards,
Jeremy
Jeremy, et al, exactly.
I’m come to prefer a barbaric liberty, as in the second definition at http://www.google.com/search?q=barbaric&rlz=1CAACAY_enUS743US743&oq=barbaric&aqs=chrome..69i57.2253j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8.
SB,
That is why David Nolan created the philosophy but left the party to those on the scene, all politics being local. By improving on the Nolan Chart and creating the World’s Smallest Political Quiz to score on his Diamond Chart, Marshall Fritz vastly improved the marketing of the philosophy, but it has never been in search of political success, politics being used for power, not liberty.
Bill, “… politics being used for power, not liberty.”
Indeed. The very purpose of political power is to limit others’ Liberty. This of course is the very antithesis of the NAP.
Just as an explanation of what I took issue with in the lp.org’s description of immigration, that description fails to include an observation on how immigration is manipulated by federal actions.
FFF’s mention of immigration is more direct and doesn’t go into the virtue-signalling swoon over “our nation of immigrants”. Before the first republican revolution, also known as the civil war, immigration was a state matter, and some states even allowed it to be a local matter.
https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/libertarianism-defined/
Virginia, for example, left the question of immigration from Africa by freed slaves from the states who had emigrated at the urging of the recolonization society. Petersburg had citizens who were willing to allow former slaves, who had been given passage to Africa and wanted to return to Virginia, to immigrate to Petersburg as “free people of color”.
There was no interference from the state government in this decision by Petersburg’s sponsors of the immigrants, and the return of some former slaves took place. With the enactment of the 14th Amendment, that state power was usurped by the federal government and every aspect of the immigration process was eventually taken up by the feds.
Tor,
I don’t remember who said it, but every mouth that arrives comes with two arms to feed it.
Research by some scholars provides population estimates of the pre-contact Americas as high as 112 million in 1492, while others estimate the population to have been as low as eight million. In any case, the native population declined to less than five million by 1650.
https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/2182945
It is very difficult to accurately estimate what was before the estimator was alive and record were kept. Those who murdered the natives certainly wouldn’t have had a reason to keep such records.
It’s a true story though.
How do you think the 50 million people already living in America before Europeans arrived were persuaded to make way for “progress?”
This kind of mass populist action is what Cowboys versus Indians really meant.
And what it would likely mean again, if enough of the doers finally decided to “Cowboy up” and take back the lands currently ruled by the fakers and the takers.
The elite remain the elite, you never win by going against them directly. The history of Europe and the history of America will always be about those who manage to survive and continue as the ruled.
As the good book says there is “A Time To Reap.”
Yeah, I get you. Still, lots of true shit is fucked up. I can get with a lot of it, but the idea of killing my own elderlies is out. I’d hang a banker in a heartbeat.
The ones dumped in nursing homes and on the dole we all pay for are a huge drain.
There’s a predatory mindset common among the elder Americans, and I wouldn’t say it would be wrong if the younger victims put their foot down about it in rather harsh and certain terms.
Of course this story can and should be better written with far less bloodshed and “innocent” carnage.
Just a thought experiment, of what could conceivably happen at some point, if we don’t keep getting breakthroughs and new inventions that feed the machine of state.
Could probably happen right now fairly bloodlessly in ND, MT, WY. Lot of guys there who would do what had to be done quietly and not make a fuss about it.
Or this could happen openly and notoriously in a place like MI where the cart pulling class is all the way fed up, and might just chimp out against the chimps themselves.
There’s been a once in a lifetime guy in the white house for over a year now, and no libertarians, conservatives, or anyone is doing much to take advantage.
He tried to shut down 55 programs, has already nixed more regs than Reagan, etc. etc. and no one is willing to kiss the pig of opportunity. But rather wants to sit on the sidelines waiting for some miracle to somehow happen.
Everyone is complacent and paid off, and a fairly small group that was willing to “really do something” could have an enormous effect right now.
Probably the best way to NAP is to first do a whole bunch of aggressive and beneficial stuff from the beginning, and then kind of slide into the NAP after all the big problem areas have mostly been taken care of.
It’s a gamble and YMMV of course.
What is the book of well-documented acquirements that your claims clamor from? I know a lot of people who could probably defend themselves very well, even though they’d do it from a bed in a nursing home, and I doubt anyone would pity anyone that they dispatched in self-defence.
“There’s been a once in a lifetime guy in the white house for over a year now, and no libertarians, conservatives, or anyone is doing much to take advantage.”
Well, speaking only for me, I wouldn’t know what to do to take advantage.
Me either.
There’s been this unstoppable machine destroying everything for a 100 years. For the next few years, there’s a wrench stuck in the gears and its our first chance in who knows how many decades.
Seems to me like Ron Paul, the think tanks, the foundations, the great libertarian pundits, are all just acting like this respite is no big deal, when it is clearly a huge deal that millions of people are at least “trying” to come up with something, before the damn planet chipper gets back to planet chipping once again.
are you an effective team?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mGr4Uc7ebA
no we are not an effective team
“Seems to me like Ron Paul, the think tanks, the foundations, the great libertarian pundits, are all just acting like this respite is no big dea”
Yep, seems that way to me too. Ron Paul has become an irksome natterer to me. Walter Block has always been irksome to me, and I’ve seen nothing much from the think tanks and foundations that even makes sense to me.
I guess that if there’s a team, I’m not on it.
German interior minister floats idea of Muslim holidays
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/10/german-interior-minister-floats-idea-muslim-holidays-171015115357436.html
Islamic holidays? Day of stoning? Day of the lynched homosexual? Day of the burning church?
If Hillary had one, the US too would be +5% islamic by now
Hi Tor,
When I read about stuff like this, I entertain the thought that the wrong side won the war.
If you consider all of the philosophically pure libertarians to be irksome natterer, that is a very clear indicator that you aren’t a libertarian. It is also probably why you find me the same way.
Tor,
I was a volunteer in the Colorado Libertarian Party office when the neo-cons chased the real republicans out of their party, and they did the same thing to the real libertarians in the LP. I could tell when the suits showed up that they weren’t the least bit libertarian. They were just taking over the only ascendant third party, after which it ceased to be ascendant. Gary Johnson is a good representative of that type, a LINO.
Well, it ain’t like I wouldn’t like to off some…..and I know some of the sorriest. I just don’t want to off some…..and not get the ones I really want. Once I begin to count the sins I know and the people who did them and continue, the damned list just grows too long.
You wanna help? Yep, that’s what I thought.
It sounds like there are a lot of us here who would give due process short shrift.
You’re not any kind of us for some reason.
it’s just the internet, why so serious 24/7?
If you’re disputing facts and circumstances links are appreciated. Other than eric none of here are “right” about anything.
Cahokia, America…
The amount of labor that was required just to move earth to create the Monks Mound (the largest mound, but one of many) was c.5,000 people-years.
The central plaza was surrounded by houses, and there was a palisade that protected the center of Cahokia from attack:
http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/the-splendor-and-mystery-of-the-mississippian-civilization/
Given my doubt that there were 50 million indians here when the europeans arrived, whatever book you got that statistic from might be better than the good book.
Well some days you kill it and some days you just choke
Some days you blast off and some days you just smoke
Well now maybe I do and maybe I don’t
Everybody says they’ll be there but in the end y’all know they won’t
I’m getting pretty tired sitting around and wasting time
And I’m tired of taking blame when I ain’t done nothing wrong
I’m tired of other people trying to take what’s mine
And I’m tired of y’all playing dress up and trying to sing them old country songs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNV16tz1NK0
“… But I’d still be trying to figure out what the fuck rhymes with Bronco.”
Sing it, Sturgill.
Tor, youtube has most of the songs from Sunday Valley, Sturgill’s old band. I’m not surprised that you know about him. You do have a wide range of musical taste going on.
I’ll bet 8 is a Sturgill Simpson fan, too.
I wish I could have snapped a picture of this vehicle I saw on the way home. It was a big F-550 Super Duty crew cab with one of the biggest service boxes on the back I’ve ever seen. Dualie of course, oversized tires, the whole works. Couldn’t tell if it was a diesel or not. Federal plates, so I assumed it was forest service or National Parks. Turns out, it was an EPA Emergency Rapid Response vehicle! Makes me wonder, what’s the carbon footprint of the EPA?
If they are driving that, it’s got to be enormous. Maybe not US military enormous, but bigger then any of us taxpayers are driving.
I saw an Ford Expedition with “homeland security” markings on the expressway the other day. Mars lights like a hero, and of course one guy driving alone. So probably one Expedition per agent no doubt. Must be nice to have an unlimited budget to buy (and fuel) those enormous vehicles. I am guessing 95% of those people could do the “jobs” they are doing with a Chevy Spark. Probably a take home vehicle too, so the hero’s SO probably uses it as a grocery getter too, saving the expense of having to buy a second car.
Hi Rich,
Isn’t it amazing that so few people – especially “climate change” believers – never question the government’s failure to reduce its “carbon footprint”?
For thousands of years, the control mechanism was The Lard and the Church. Then came The People.
Now, it’s The Environment.
But always the elite, controlling the masses.
Makes you wonder how much pollution a jet dropping bombs on people who don’t threaten us creates.
Since the US military has long been on record as being the largest single governmental consumer of energy, it should be easy to determine if you are good with parsing statistics.
” I am guessing 95% of those people could do the “jobs” they are doing with a Chevy Spark.”
Good point. Most of them could probably ” do the ‘jobs’ they are doing” on a child’s tricycle, since the DHS is a do nothing department anyway.
A tricycle would be a waste if they can carry a attache case. Let them take the bus. They can do paperwork on their laptops en route.
Yes, it was one step away from being a Peterbilt. No way it would fit in most parking spaces.
I haven’t driven many Peterbilts, but I have had to park class 8 tractors in places where most people wouldn’t believe it was possible. My neighbors didn’t usually appreciate my skills:-)
All they have to have is an idea where they are going and a list of fuel stations that will accept a US Government credit card.
richb, I am guessing those guys could do their job sitting at home watching a porn network with a jar of vaseline. They are quite literally stupid a-holes with no ability and less understanding of anything.
Their conversations are always one guy asking a higher up what he thinks. And it doesn’t get better from there.
The EPA’s carbon footprint is classified:-)
Thanks to anyone who contribute to this article
The current de-industrialization of the West is seen as a necessary condition for universal disarmament. The extreme Left is paranoid about being burnt in their beds by nuclear weapons. You can talk all day about the benevolent nature of C02 and the importance of freedom, but their overriding fear of the nukes makes them deaf to the pleas of real science and commonsense. The Left needs to be made to understand that there is a worse-case scenario to nuclear war: being strapped to a gurney while one’s organs are removed — without anaesthetic — for transplantation into the bodies of the rich and powerful. As is happening in China today. Surrender is no longer the kind of option that served Japan and Germany so well in the aftermath of WW2. Without an industrial base able to serve a defence force, the surrender of the West will be inevitable.
“This Perfect Day” by Ire Levin…
https://www.amazon.com/This-Perfect-Day-Ira-Levin-ebook/dp/B00T5PI65W
(spoilers)
LOVE that book, Ready! Been a long time…..think it’s time to enjoy it again!
Brian,
No one can describe the current conundrum or the way out if it better than Thomas Jefferson did:
“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.”
Well, your post always revs me up but today ya got me extra charged up. While I may on the bottom of the pyramid, any structure without a solid foundation will fall. So I will do my part to invert the pyramid.
Sadly, gone are the days when you can discuss the actual science of carbon, fuel emissions, etc. We are in the John Galt era, but with a twist: we need to sarcasm and grit of Joey Wales.
“Diein’ ain’t much of a way of living, boy”, and the SJW will not want to slink back into the mire without the Smart Phones, Wifi and other comfort items. We need to jump ahead and tell the morons that electricity will be turned of next. Point out each country where the economy crumbled, where brown outs are a daily occurance. When that doesn’t work – and it won’t, we have to walk on, take over the legislatures, create new media and in their faces and a direct, brutal manner. And mock the hell out the SJW’s with man buns who can’t even start fires.
Thanks for bearing with the rant.
Hi Dave,
Amen. Good to have you with us, by the way. We’re not yet a critical mass… but working on that!
The end goal is technocracy. Technocracy is the central micro management of society. Early technocracy concepts included rationing people a form of currency based on energy. This would then allow for such central control of their lives. It’s the company town concept from the early 20th century where one’s big life decisions had to be approved by the company executives. Modern feudalism. The management of the serfs by the nobility.
Hi Brent,
And the tragic thing is, a large portion of the population actually wants this; either to be micromanaged or to be the micromanagers. The idea of live and let live – of vive la difference – is beyond them.
Eric, I’ve said it many times, most people want to be managed. Want things done for them. Problem is those doing the managing will steal and those doing the things will do them wrong. Happens over and over again but nobody seems to notice and nobody seems to care.
The world seems to be going the way of a Dr. Who episode. There just won’t be a time lord to show up eventually and set it right.
Eric, that is why only those who score at the top of Marshall Fritz’s Diamond Chart are of any relevance to someone like myself, to whom total individual freedom is the only worthwhile goal, as well as why it is largely unreachable with the ignorance of this world being the well-established status quo for most of its population.
That’s the hard part about explaining what it means to be a libertarian. People are more than happy to defer to a “higher power” because it is the lazy way. They don’t want to learn on their own, or do any research, at least not beyond the cursory background presented by mainstream media outlets. Because it is very hard to know the truth. In most cases it’s also quite nuanced. Presenting more than a “good vs bad” narrative in an increasingly short timespan becomes impossible. And if it’s tried that 7 figure income goes away when something more titillating is offered on another channel with just a push of the channel up button on the remote.
Hi RK,
There also seems to be a general tendency to Be Like Everyone Else. That – plus the awful human instinct to want to lord it over others – is in my opinion the root of all our troubles. If people could just grow out of the need to conform – and loose the desire to forcibly control other people – this rock would be a pretty decent place to live.
The thing that I cannot get over is why “my generation,” Gen X, is playing along. We were the punks, we grew up with the government as the evil villain in ET, the government who in real life tried to ban “offensive” lyrics in music and put warning labels on video games. We were lied to about nuclear war, AIDS, Reagan, the Soviets and the Middle East. And we are fairly fragmented, demographically we’re like herding cats thanks to growing up with 57 channels. Our cars were 4 cylinder shitboxes, not muscle cars (unless you were able to con grandma out of her old Nova). And we had to put up with the 20th anniversary of everything that happened to the boomers, including all the horrible Vietnam movies. We should all be libertarians.
I think that’s one reason I like it here. Eric you’re a punker just without the pink mohawk.
Hey RK,
Yup – we speak the same lingo… our generation was the last one to experience remnants of real freedom; I am just as baffled as you are that so many of our cohort don’t seem to remember – or care.
Before this site lost a bunch of articles there was one I had written one lamenting the loss of that old TV and movies where the government was shown realistically as a tool of the evil and corrupt. Where busybodies were derided. But that was only a small bit of what people were exposed to.
The conditioning in the schools was very strong and damaging. More so than previous generations less than following ones. The entertainment programming changed. You have to go back 30 years now to find routine government bad guys in shows and movies. In most people new programming from the scientific managers supplants old programming. Especially if it goes with the baseline conditioning.
The book of face is interesting in that I can watch people adopt the media narratives almost immediately. Without question they start repeating what they were just told.
If the Andy Griffith show were redone today Barney Fife would be the competent cop that was protecting the citizens of Mayberry and Andy Taylor would be an incompetent relic of another time.
Another thing I’ve noticed is that being smart is repeating what authority says now. It’s not thinking for one’s self and coming up with things, it’s just repeating what we were told.
It’s social control.
Which gets to another issue. There are a lot more people who get it than ever let on because of the social penalties. What happens is the system gets people invested in it. Then the people defend it even if they don’t like it.
Very accurate, Brent!
With regards to the TV/people-programming:
Even the cartoons!
I was brought up on Bugs Bunny. Bugs was a resourceful, independent thinker who was never in servitude to the sytem.
Contrast that with the garbage that started coming out in the 80’s- all “superheroes” who were always in lock-step with the city-state, and whose idea of right and wrong perfectly matched the narrative preached by the pooblik skools and gov’t agencies.
Bugs was the creation of cartoonists; The superheroe shit was the creation of psychologists and “political scientists”.
And Woody Woodpecker….haha, he was always battling a stupid cop! Even Fred Flintstone- even though just a nine-to-fiver, more often than not, a cop would be hassling him rather than helping him.
Then the new crap came out…..where the cops/state/superheroes were ALWAYS portrayed as the good guys; and anyone who was not fully onboard with them, was a bad guy.
Even the modern non-superhero stuff, always portray universal submission, and looking to the state for the definition of right vs. wrong.
Wily Coyote was also a creation of cartoonists, and a perfect template of most government employees and endeavours.
In Wiley’s day, Musk’s various businesses were consolidated under one brand name, called “Acme”.
I doubt that Musk would have anything of interest to Wiley.
Ready,
You missed the fact that most of them were indoctrinated in the same public fool system that their parents were, and came out of university with a degree and a debt.
Most public school curricula don’t mention libertarianism with any degree of accuracy or truth. Those who ignore it entirely are forced to ignore those who were classic liberals at the time of the revolution because to give them their due would mean answering questions that they can’t without looking like the liars they are.
The benchmark is the EU.
Yup, unelected, and unaccountable to anyone, not even the governments they are replacing slowly.
We should be so lucky.
More like China methinks.
New York ‘truck turrorist’ will be the gateway starting point to banning free range combustible vehicles.
Staged, Fake CIA event. Already has all the checklist marks of a government hoax.
Will lead to, at minimum permits to operate commercial vehicles (including panel vans and pickups) in certain urban areas. Likely banned outright during rush hours, and even more highly restricted the rest of the day. The news regs will be championed by the big boys like Fed Ex, Ups and the US post office since they can deal with the annoyance of the permits with less trouble, then the little operators who will be shut out for the most part.
Especially the total disregard for the lives of the innocents who constitute collateral damage.
Not the nature experiences, not the Law’s of the Nature, not any laws of physics/chemistry, thermodynamic, nothing what it is natural could be good and acceptable by the NAZI/Fascistoid and schizoid bureaucrats of the governments of today !
When Marylin French wrote in her book “Beyond the power “that the humanity has going crazy/lunatic/insane about 3000 years ago, somehow I’ve doubted a little.
Nowadays I see that she was absolutely correct and told the ultimate truth.
The New religion of the Insanity itself( governments and all about this) it’s reign everything against the Mather Nature and dismiss the Nature as Evil .
Thank you Eric I very much like you ! Thank you !
Alex
Hi Alexandru,
Appreciate the kinds words – and I plan to check out the book you mention, too!
I think Pete (whose column I read) is slowly coming around to what is really going on. You know, the easy transport available to the plebes.
Brilliant stuff Eric! Love how you linked the complete revocation of the 4th and 5th amendments with the forced-onto-the-public electric car. Always and in everything it is about them controlling us.
Thanks, Skunk!
I am trying to do anything and everything possible – within my power and the realm of my influence – to at least throw a wrench in the works of the machine. Even if it gets me nowhere, I’ll have the comfort of at least having tried. Almost all of this could be stopped – without violence – if enough people would simply say… no. No – I am not putting up with it anymore. I won’t fly anymore – until the TSA is disbanded. No, I will not accept being randomly subjected to interrogations and searches on the road. I will not buy a new car that has Big Brother systems in it.
I want my life – my freedom back.
Not negotiable.
It’s such a compelling, obviously right position to take. Impossible to make a moral argument against.
All it would take is maybe 10 percent of the public… we could have it all back.
America, I mean.
Eric, you aren’t subject to being submitted to random interrogations in the future. Anyone who can’t show an official identification or isn’t driving a government or commercial vehicle will be interrogated until the interrogator is satisfied that they have a legal and justifiable reason to be there. America is gone, and the majority of the inhabitants of the United States are subjects, not citizens.
You’re right of course, Bill – and it breaks my heart to have to agree with you.
I have mentioned that I often regret I am not 20 years younger, because leaving would be a viable option in that case. But, I am increasingly at peace with the idea of standing my ground, come what may.
I say this not to boast. I am not a brave man, I am not looking for a fight and very much do not want fight.
But if it comes to that, I will not go gently into that good night.
I suspect there are others out there who feel the same way.
My Jolly Roger is ready.
Eric,
That is why I have already staged my stand in Park County, Wyoming, where there are 14 registered guns per capita and the Wyoming Guard membership has made it clear what would happen to any commanding officer who thought to order gun confiscation.
If you are familiar with the 10 orders that Oath Keepers would refuse, you’ve got a pretty good indication of why the federales have decided that county isn’t worth their trouble until the very last, if they have anyone crazy enough to try.
At 63, I have little reason to look for anything better, since everything that isn’t with me is in a storage unit there.
I’ll second that Eric, my 12 gauge is no match for the armored vehicles that will be rolling down the streets to round up anyone not willing to accept serfdom but being old makes the decision easier. I hope to be able to take out a few of their stooges before my demise and it’s good to know there are others, especially most of the readers of this site, who feel the same. Solzhenitsyn said it best, paraphrasing here, that if the receipiants of the “knock on the door” in the middle of the night were waiting behind that door with an axe things might have turned out better for them.
I know exactly what you mean. I ONLY have an old 12 gauge too. Really. Just check your paperwork. Nothing militarily useful- high velocity, long range, armor defeating. I wouldnt dream of breaking a registration law.
I agree Mike, but as I remembered it, it was a hammer, and it was the body laying on the street that dissuaded the KGB from entering that building.
The 12 gauge would be more persuasive if it were loaded with slugs than with shot.
Last week I was riding with a similarly-aged coworker (I’m 32) in a work truck, and we saw a tree service company picking up storm debris that was still stacked up curbside from Hurricane Irma. A small machine with a boom and claw apparatus was picking up tree limbs and trunks and depositing them into the bed of a dump truck. Against the mountains of tree debris, their work looked pretty laborious, and they were making headway ever so slowly. Half joking, I suggested that the people just burn the piles of wood. My coworker poo-poo’d the idea because of all the “carbon that would be released”. I was floored. What does she think happens to the carbon in the wood if we would let those logs sit there and rot? Sadly, it was not the first time I’ve heard remarks from young coworkers about how burning something (with prescribed fire or a dedicated “trash” fire) would add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
Those in power have done a great job of demonizing carbon dioxide. Like you said, Eric, it’s impossible to define and win a war against CO2, which means that regulations, taxes, and other means of control will be ever-increasing. It’s getting ridiculous. I wonder how long it will be before I’m lectured about making a fire in my fireplace.
Kingfisher, “I wonder how long it will be before I’m lectured about making a fire in my fireplace.”
You and I both know it is not about “lecturing” us; it is about taxing us.
If not about controlling us by making us all criminals, legally.
“I wonder how long it will be before I’m lectured about making a fire in my fireplace.”
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that threshold was crossed a long time ago. Burning firewood for heating purposes is actually discouraged where I grew up (Sacramento, California) and is even forbidden on “no burn” days when the air quality is bad.
And forget about having a wood burning fireplace or stove in a new build home in the more populated areas of Arizona. They are prohibited in homes built after 1999. And even if you buy a older home that still has one, there are fines if you have a fire on a no burn day.
On another front the feds have been hard at work making sure no one will be able to use a wood stove as a heating source in the future. They are regulating the emissions of them, with of course the goal the same as IC cars, making them impossible to have. Go to sites talking about wood stoves and you will see the complaints about new woods stoves that don’t work. Seems to be a growing market for pre 1990 stoves (pre regulated) for those that depend on them for heat.
Hi Rich,
Indeed. Here (in VA) as well. I have an older wood stove without the got-damned catalyst (yes, the new ones have catalytic converters – which is why they suck and why they cost so much). Almost everyone here has a wood stove. I wonder what the reaction would be if the government announced people couldn’t use them anymore… would hey submit and obey, as they have with everything else?
We may be close to pushback time. My sense of it is, we are. The DC/NY/SF people don’t recognize the signs.
They can have my old wood stove, high flow toilets, pre-DEF diesel and incandescent light bulbs when they pry them from my cold dead hands.
Pre-DEF and post-DEF diesel are identical. Diesel exhaust fluid never gets in the fuel chain. Its purpose is to burn off the particulates that would otherwise clog the exhaust filter. If you are still using incandescent lights, where will you get replacements, since they aren’t being made by many anymore? LEDs are cheap and extremely efficient, and you can run them off any DC voltage above 1.5VDC, although large numbers of products are available that are designed to operate from 12VDC, like a car battery.
Where will your wood come from when it is a felony to possess it?
Yeah, I can understand skipping the CFLs, but LED bulbs are the bee’s knees for those of us in hotter climates who want to run our central A/C units less.
I can’t fathom why no one has designed a line of refrigeration equipment based on Peltier devices, which are solid-state heat pumps of very high efficiency. So far their only applications have been in thermoelectric ice chests that don’t need ice.
Bill, I can hook you up with a plethora of shops that need your expertise cause they play hell trying to figure out what’s wrong with new DEF/EGR/Catalitic diesels. I’ve seen big rigs sit in the shop for 2 weeks and factory reps come by and virtually stay on the phone hours a day trying to figure out the problems. I’m telling you, you can make big bucks, really big bucks just as a trouble-shooter. Ford Dodge and Chevy will pay your weight in gold to fix those warrantied vehicles and pay you to keep your hands off those out of warranty.
I am not a certified diesel mechanic, I’m a well-experienced truck driver with a clean MVR since 1990. Ford, Dodge, and Chevy don’t make anything as big as I have driven for pay. If the manufacturers don’t know how to service their own vehicles, perhaps they should learn how to or quit making them. The DEF nightmare began when I was still doing driveaway, and the biggest idiots work for Volvo.
Possibly worse than the law itself is how fast one of your neighbors will call 911 when they see smoke from your chimney.
Those who believe that carbon dioxide is a pollutant need to stop breathing since they emit carbon dioxide every time they exhale. And, plants need that carbon dioxide to flourish. I take great pleasure, living in the Texas Hill Country, with burning trash, wood scraps and any other refuse that does not contain any real toxic chemicals every chance I get. I feel that I am helping the plant life when I do that.
You shouldn’t expect a return of the favor.
They don’t want to burn the wood to get it out of the way. The wood has value even if only for mulch or firewood.
There are simply too many uses for wood to just waste it by burning it to get it out of the way. These companies have revenue streams for the wood they collect.
Can we just burn Clovers for heat then?
They’d have to be very well dried to get more heat than smoke.
I work in an industry which consumes such materials as lithium oxide, nickel oxide, & cobalt oxide. The cost of the lithium oxide and cobalt oxide has gone up dramatically.
Hey Eric…just wanted to share something regarding electric vehicles I noticed this morning which I thought you might find interesting. I work for a pretty big company that has a 20 story headquarters and there is no shortage of Tesla vehicles seeing as how the top execs love to waste their money on these things. I was doing my morning walk in our parking deck and when I got to the roof level I noticed a Tesla parked up there and next to it was a service van for Tesla. Guess the guy was having some kind of problem with his car that warranted an on-site service call. Do you think the service van was an electric vehicle? It most definitely was not. It was one of these Dodge Sprinter cargo vans that was painted up with the side all red with the Tesla logo, so I’m pretty sure that is one of their authorized service vehicles and not just some independent shop that services all makes of electric vehicles. I was really tempted to ask the service tech if Teslas and electric vehicles in general were so great, why did their company service vehicle have an IC engine as opposed to having been one converted to electric…but he left before I got close enough to act on my urges.
Anyways, thought you might find that little tidbit of info interesting as I did. So Tesla, despite all their hype about how their electric vehicles are so great is using gasoline powered Dodge Sprinter vans to make on-site service calls when one of their crappy electric vehicles has issues. Doesn’t seem that green to me. I wonder if they’re paying their carbon emission offsets to algore for this offense to our precious environment.
TM doesn’t have dealerships so it’s authorized service people drive to the customer for most things.
There’s a whole lot of interest in batteries because people don’t like that their “wireless” phone needs to be attached to a wall outlet for several hours a day. Engineers were tackling that problem from both ends, by creating more efficient phones and by improving batteries. On the efficient circuit design side things are moving along at a very nice clip. On the battery side, well, not so good.
The main reason for batteries not advancing like electronic circuits is just plan physics and chemistry. But I’ll recon another reason is because Uncle. You see, under the Obama administration taxpayer money was allocated for research into advanced batteries. I’m sure more than a few boards of directors at chemical companies saw this and put the kibosh to their internal research, knowing that they’d just get favorable patent licenses from Uncle if anything came of it. And of course if these companies were to compete with Uncle I’ll bet some big hedge fund manager would start questioning the R&D expense on the earnings calls.
So now, instead of dozens of companies all working on advanced batteries, we have two or three countries’ national labs working on the problem. These countries (US, China and S. Korea) probably aren’t going to be able to motivate engineers with stock options and patents the way private industry will, while still crowding out private investment. Lots of people in the US government looked at Bell Labs and IBM in the 1930s-1980s and thought that basic research should be centralized and governmentalized. We’re obsessed with efficiency, and watching many different companies compete isn’t efficient. Not even close. And what happens to the highly motivated guy in the garage, the one who looks at things in a completely different way? Those are the ones who really change the world, not the guys in the big research labs.
It seems odd to me that we continue going down this path.
My flip phone held a charge for 9 days with moderate use, call the boss lady once a day on way home and that was it. Rugby II. Only had to move the Sonim as we changed providers, it lasts the same amount of time but has a clunky and slow Android OS though, not a smart phone, doesn’t accept apps.
Batteries cannot be miniaturized like transistors.
Yup, and virtually nobody is looking at doing something different then batteries either. Just keep shoveling in more and more money tax dollars.
Even Apple has likely spent hundreds of millions trying to come up with better batteries for the iphones and has largely failed too.
Hi Rich,
I keep harping on this one word… why?
We could throw endless resources at pyramid building, too – but don’t because it’s obviously wasteful. So why all this bum’s rush to build electric cars when there is no need for the damned things because IC cars are more practical and economical?
Eric,
Why is pyramid building wasteful but skyscrapers not? Their pyramids have outlasted anything else made by man.
Hi ill,
Skyscrapers multiply living/retail space; pyramids serve no functional purpose other than as monuments (assuming they are, in fact, monuments).
Skyscrapers also multiply maintenance and construction costs in a world where vacancies are growing faster than new business opportunities.
If the World Trade Towers had been pyramids, they’d still be standing.
Hi Bill,
Yes, they have high maintenance costs; but that’s not what you asked about. You asked why they are not wasteful while the pyramids are considered to be so. The pyramid of Cheops/Kufu holds one dead king and some artifacts. A tall building houses thousands of people for whom there would otherwise not be room (as on Manhattan island). It is an efficient use of space. Durability is another question!~
No corpse was ever found in the great pyramid. It’s use as a tomb is debatable. The proof of its assignment comes from a desperate for funding archeologist who found a hidden cartouche. But get this, when this same man was exploring the pyramid with explosives and claimed to find an iron plate the establishment said he planted it. When he found the cartouche that confirmed their beliefs that was declared legitimate.
I could go on, but the age and purpose of the great pyramid isn’t actually known. Just a bunch of guesses. Some better than others.
As to sky scrappers if what I learned in materials science class means anything the steel will lose its strength in five thousand years give or take. The older less advanced ones might actually last longer. But that’s if they aren’t abandoned and left to rot. Otherwise they probably won’t even last anything close to that.
It does make one wonder why they have never thought of fuel cells, particularly if they are hot about hydrogen.
Eric, I wish you and Pete De Lorenzo could do a podcast together….
http://www.autoextremist.com/
Hi Handler,
Pete’s another heretic excommunicate. There are a few of us; we’re like automotive Dr. Mengeles… hiding out in Argentina…
If only Pete knew about the overall plan….
Hi Handler,
I’ve never met Pete – which surprise me, given we swim in the same pool. Then again, I don’t travel nearly as much as I used to – and I don’t think he does, either.
The both of us are on the Enemies List at this point, methinks.
I know for a fact Pete is loathed by GM, Elon, and the anti-automobile cult. He used to a be the co-host of the Autoline After Hours podcast I used to watch. With John McElroy being a clover and a shill for the anti-automobile cult, Pete didn’t last long. There was also another car guy that was a regular on the podcast that disappeared around the same time Pete did….
Hi Handler,
Hey, you’re up late! (I don’t sleep much anymore – what’s your excuse?)
On Pete: I like his stuff – and I’m not surprised he is loathed by the same people who loathe me. The industry is no longer safe for car people. I am hopeful, though, that there will be a correction – soon.
Did you catch the latest Tesla news?