At 9:05 PM -0500 11/9/98, Jim Choate wrote:
Forwarded message:
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 15:27:14 -0500 From: Petro <petro@playboy.com> Subject: Re: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone (fwd)
No, it's that facists & socialists like yourself think we should be happy letting you decide what our social responsibilities are.
Actualy, no. I'm perfectly happy to let you run around paying no taxes on your income. The part you're not going to like is that I'm also not going to let you reap one iota of benefit from those systems that are built and
Like I said (it's that reading and comprehension thing, kinda like my spelling thing), I don't mind paying fair costs, I do mind paying extortion at the point of a gun.
developed by those of us who do pay taxes without a cost. And the cost will be more than what the necessary taxes would have been. Hell, a free-market
Prove it. Prove that in a competitive market certain goods and services will be MORE expensive than in a Government-as-Supplier. How many Corporations you know buy $300 hammers, or $1000 toilet seats?
capitalist shouldn't begrudge a tidy profit anyone under any situation.
I don't begrudge a profit where it's due. Bill Clinton isn't due. Neither is Newt Gingrinch, or any other Feeding at the government trough pig.
I am perfectly willing to pay for a police force. A police force that arrests ALLEGED rapists, treats them like human beings until found guilty and then deals with them as the law indicates. I am NOT willing to pay for a police force that spends most of it's time (well, aside from eating doughnuts, drinking coffee and collecting bribes) chasing after teenagers with illegal chemicals. I am not willing to pay for a police force that extorts money from these same teenagers. I am not willing to pay money for a police force that thinks it needs to arrest people for "loitering", "Mob Action", when it's defined as more than 4 people standing together in a public place, and ESPECIALLY when EVERY TIME THEY ARREST SOMEONE, IT'S THROWN OUT OF COURT.
Neither am I, unfortunately paying taxes or not won't resolve those sorts of issues. What is required is public over-watch groups (as was recently implimented in Austin, pisses the cops off big time) and a change in the way we run our prisons. As to the way people are currently treated prior to being found guilty at a trial is an abuse of power on the part of those parties involved and clearly cruel and unusual punishment for an innocent man.
So, they don't get fired (usually) they don't get more than censured.
Of course the *REAL* problem isn't the police. It's the people who make the laws that the police are sworn to uphold and the judges with a social agenda
No, the problem is the police. To quote (IIRC) Lydia Lunch: "Neo Nazis with night stick dicks, no brains but banging into yours in the middle of the night looking for whatever don't fit in with their ideologically unsound version of reality". Also known as "You wanna act like a fuck'n gang banger, I'm gonna treat you like a fuck'n gang banger" to two teenage black males who (like every other black male in the neighborhood) had learned to walk around the corner when the cops drove by. The cops in the larger cities are so fucken dirty that a "citizens oversight commision" will either be a politically packed joke, or wind up changing members every couple months from attrition.
That process *is* most certainly an ideal place to inject consideration and respect for civil liberties and the purvue of government institutions.
Oh, and that has been working OH SO WELL thus far.
I am willing to pay for the streets I use. I am not willing to pay the same fees to ride my bicycle (my current primary form of transportation) as you do to drive your 2 ton SUV.
And you probably don't now (Does a Bronco II weigh 2 tons?). In actuality you don't pay the gas taxes, the vehicle registration, license fees, inspection, requisite insurance, etc. for your bicycle. I bet you don't even have to license your bike to ride it on the city streets.
No I don't. but check the numbers, there is a $6000 LESS collected in road taxes (average) PER CAR for each car in america. That $6k comes out of my pockets as well, and as a bicyclist I my share is MUCH less than that of a Bronco. Not to mention that I don't pollute anywhere near as much, if at all.
I am willing to pay for fire protection. I am not willing to pay for "universal health care", "welfare", and other such nonsense.
The Constitution happens to mention that the federal government is detailed with taking care of the general welfare. If you don't like that sort of stuff then get a Constitutional amendment passed.
If that is the interpretation, then the document is morally flawed.
In other words Jim, Fuck You. I, and I'd bet most people here, including Mr. May, are perfectly willing, and hell even eager to pay their share, to assume their social responcibility, they just get very, very angry at having to pay OTHER peoples social responcibility, and get very,
Unfortunately, that is what social responsibility is - giving with in personal gain. That ultimately is what drives the bee up your butt.
Yeah, having to support the lifestyle habits of others really DOES beef me. I pay *MORE* than my way, and I *WORK HARD FOR IT* (all jokes aside). Others do NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO MY LABOR. That is slavery, pure and simple. No constitutional gobblygook can change that.
very angry at having to pay for other shit (Senate Luncheons and Swimming Pools, the Militaries greatly inflated budget, all the waste that is todays federal government). Agreed. Throwing the Constitution away won't fix that and going to a free-market monopolistic no-social-responsibility-at-all system such as anarcho-capitalism is sure won't do it.
Sure it will.
Yes, but a state can kill those who don't wish to be governed. Can and does routinely.
Oh what hyperbole. You make it sound like the Nazi's have invaded. They haven't. Yes, there are misguided people out there. Yes, there are just plain old corrupt people out there. That won't change irrespective of the political system (or lack of one). They don't just go out and pick people off the street and shoot them you're over-reacting and succumbing to a paranoid delusion of persecution.
How many millions have died in the last 100 years IN wars started by and for the advantage of the state? How many died at the hands of Stalin, Hitler. and other dictators? The state, whether here in the US, or in other countries tends to treat the humans that comprise it with little concern for their health or livelyhood, and the ugly truth is that the same characteristics that are necessary to keep a government in line are the same ones that make a government unnecessary. If you have citizens that are honest, principled, and willing to assist those around them, you have no need for a "state". Without honesty and principles you have Slick Willy.
Unless you kill somebody or move a few tons of coke your individual chances of being killed by the state is less than being struck by lightening.
There are 1.7 million people struck by lightning every year? I am not going assume that our country is any better just because it's subjects are my neighbors. No, we don't kill as many, but name one country that has jailed more of it's subjects, and the truth is, we are getting worse. -- "To sum up: The entire structure of antitrust statutes in this country is a jumble of economic irrationality and ignorance. It is a product: (a) of a gross misinterpretation of history, and (b) of rather naïve, and certainly unrealistic, economic theories." Alan Greenspan, "Anti-trust" http://www.ecosystems.net/mgering/antitrust.html Petro::E-Commerce Adminstrator::Playboy Ent. Inc.::petro@playboy.com