dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone (fwd)]

[Michael Hohensee]

To: Jim Choate <ravage at einstein.ssz.com>
Subject: Re: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone (fwd)
From: Michael Hohensee <mah248 at nyu.edu>
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 01:30:05 -0500
References: <199811100205.UAA14919 at einstein.ssz.com>

Jim Choate wrote:
> 
> Forwarded message:
> 
> > Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 15:27:14 -0500
> > From: Petro <petro at 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
> 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
> capitalist shouldn't begrudge a tidy profit anyone under any situation.

Of course not --if these services were provided in a free market.  The
problem is, they're currently provided by a monopoly which is willing to
initiate force (or threaten to do so)  against any competitors.  Look at
what happened to poor old Lysander Spooner when he started competing
with the mail carriers back in the 19th century.

This much must be obvious, even to you --after all, we've been telling
you this, in different ways, *over* and *over* again.

> >       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.
> 
> 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
> (that is not relevant to their job however much they may squeel like pigs).
> That process *is* most certainly an ideal place to inject consideration and
> respect for civil liberties and the purvue of government institutions.

You again make the argument that everything'd be fine if it weren't for
those nasty people who are abusing their offices.  Surely you remember
the flaw in that argument.  If you don't, read my last post.

> 
> >       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.

Gee Jim, you're just as bad as those other statist pricks who like to
reinterpret a word's meaning after it's been changed by decades of
propaganda.

For instance, I very much doubt that "welfare" and "forced charity" were
synonymous, back in the late 18th century.

> > 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.

You still haven't given any solid arguments as to why this is the case. 
You still ignore what we've been telling you and persist in believeing
that all anarcho-capitalists are socially irresponsible at heart.  (Even
when the only apparent difference between me and you is that I'm not
willing to point a gun at another person, or have it pointed for me, to
make him perform his "social responsibility" to give me his property for
one reason or another.)

> >       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. 

Really?  The parallels we've seen recently have been striking.

> 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). 

You were correct right up until the open-parens.

> 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.

Oh no, they haven't started doing that *yet* (as far as I know,
anyway).  They're steadily moving in that direction, however.

> 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.

What's wrong with moving a few tons of coke?  Who is harmed by coke who
does not wish to be?

> >       But did you bother to read them this time?
> 
> Actualy I read it twice before I even decide if I'm going to reply.
> 

That would explain your responses.  You read them so fast that all you
see are little hooks for you to tack on your pre-recorded statist rants
to, while your mind skims smoothly over those arguments which don't
conform to your preconcieved notions.

Michael Hohensee