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Feedback Friday – October 5th, 2012
Another week goes by, and oh how it went. Obama and Romney “debated”, with both smirking like it was their business and business was good. Pundits say Romney won, but truly, we all lost. The farce will continue, and then they'll all vote, and the USSA will continue to deteriorate.
Great feedback this week, as always thanks for making TDV your one stop shop for truth!
SMOKING IS A FORM OF SLAVERY?
IN RESPONSE TO: “The Weekend Vigilante Sept 29, 2012“
I am libertarian but this has got to be about the stupidest supposedly libertarian article I have ever read. To me being a libertarian means that one has used their intelligence and experience to come to the conclusion that liberty is a personal and public good. If one is going to use their liberty for a stupid reason that is their right but I would certainly question their intelligence if they do so. You are acting like a juvenile in crowing about your smoking habit. ”Oooh. Look at me. Man, am I the cool libertarian or what?” Is this your idea of what passes for spreading the libertarian message? This post is embarrassing to real libertarians and I am embarrassed for LewRockwell.com for posting it.
–Anonymous
Fortunately, one can be a 1,000% libertarian, anarcho-capitalist (as I think I am) without celebrating smoking or rap music. I could list a few hundred examples of fun things to do that result in degenerative diseases. Maybe you think an extended, painful death that decimates your family and debilitates your caregivers is worth the fun, Been there, done that; and I assure you that it is not worth the fun. I believe that your are in a tiny minority even among your own kind and, even were you not, that you should make no claim that such decisions are good policies for libertarianism. How childish!
–Charles A.
It boggles my mind how some people in the libertarian community hold up smoking as some sort of expression of freedom when in fact, it is a slow imprisonment of the human body. Is your hatred of “do-gooders” really that great that you need to destroy your health in a nonsensical attack against them?
–”Brainfan”
Jeff's Response:
These were just a couple of the many shocked and appalled comments in response to my taking up smoking last week.
First, let me say that one can indeed be 1,000% libertarian, anarcho-capitalist and not enjoy rap or smoking or anything else that others enjoy. You are even free to express your hatred of such things as long as you don't actively do anything to limit others' use or enjoyment of those things you don't personally like. (We'll discuss the particulars of polluting others' airspace with smoke or loud music another time.)
As far as destroying one's health, that is still freedom, not some kind of alternate slavery. I have to disagree politely with those who say otherwise. Slavery would be someone forbidding you to smoke under threat of kidnapping and violence. I suppose if you use the term as in “slave to my urges” or “slave to eating” it's kind of appropriate, but that's really stretching the definition beyond slavery in the statist and anarchist context. In any case, it's not anti-liberty for me to decide that I'd rather be here for a good time than a long time. I am not insulting liberty or anarchism by deciding to indulge in pleasures that may send me to an early grave. And I can assure you that I will not ever impose the cost of my ill health on anyone, especially my loved ones. Guaranteed.
But here I have to point out that smoking doesn't even have to be bad for you. Check out this video on cigarettes made from natural products without the poisonous additives:
I am going to San Diego next week for Libertopia. While I'm there I'll be buying American Spirit organic, natural cigarettes. I'm also looking to roll my own cigarettes from locally grown, organic tobacco. As David Wolfe explains in the video above, the Amazonian Indians have smoked tobacco for centuries and have no history of lung cancer. This may seem unbelievable to an American mind, but that's because the American mind usually only knows about the damaging products of big tobacco corporations. The additives in corporate cigarettes are the real culprits and they are what cause disease.
I also have a role model and shining example in the form of my wife's grandmother. Kena's grandmother smoked her own hand-rolled cigarettes all day, every day…and drank her own organically grown tequila every day…And she lived to be 90! (She also always had two firearms on her, which she used twice against aggressive men. She's my hero!). In fact, I discovered that Kena's relatives still grow organic tobacco and I am paying them to roll packs for me for the same prices as the store-bought, chemical-filled garbage.
All those cases of slow, painful, cancer-ridden death undoubtedly involve poison-filled corporate cigarettes. And even with those corporate cigarettes, disease is no guarantee. You have to factor in volume of use, and not just fall back on emotion and propaganda to make it seem like a dozen cigarettes a day really is as bad as four dozen cigarettes a day.
SLANTED VIEWS AGAINST COPS
IN RESPONSE TO: Border Patrol Murders US Citizen, Mother of 5 in San Diego
Dear TDV,
Your article [on the shooting of Valeria Alvarado by a US Border Patrol agent] could not be more biased.
Yeeaahh…the victim of police violence is always innocent. At least according to friends and family. I have witnessed 2 police justified shootings in my long life and the funny thing is, the victim was always “innocent” ….turns out both had prison records for violent offenses and yet….they were “good people”. Police are not the only liars in the world.
–Anonymous poster
Gary's Response:
You are right on both counts…about our bias and about police not being the only liars in the world.
But the article was deliberately biased. Like the author, Justin O'Connell, has said, we figured that Ms Alvarado could use a little bias after the prostitutes in the press tripped over themselves to present the self-serving police version of events – that wildly differed from what eyewitnesses claimed – as gospel truth.
And indeed police aren't the only liars in the world. They're just the most consistent and relentless liars who, unfortunately, have the most credibility with juries and with the public.
Make no mistake about this. We are decidely not on the side of law or law enforcement. We're anarchists. We believe “laws” are at best redundant and at worst destructive tools of the state. We are all practically born knowing all the “law” we need to: don't assault, don't steal. Everything else is political legerdemain by the state used to control you and to take your stuff.
So here we have a “Border Patrol” agent type cop pumping bullets into someone during a government agents' intrusion into a private residence serving a warrant concerning “drugs” (plants aren't drugs… pharmaeceuticals are drugs). First of all, the very presence of political borders is offensive and nonsensical. We recognize private property borders, but laugh at the borders set up by governments. These arbitrary lines restrict the ability of human beings to move about and interact economically. Geopolitical borders are essentially tariffs on human labor, preference and movement. (“Libertarians” who want to lock up employers who hire “illegals” really need to think harder about liberty and the nature of the nation-state and its imaginary lines.)
Drug laws, meanwhile, are immoral prohibitions on personal, non-aggressive activity. Like any prohibition, they result in artificially high prices for the desired but prohibited goods which are then provided by a violence-based black market. These laws also give the police yet another reason to mess with private citizens who've done nothing to harm anyone else. They increase state monitoring and policing power.
Anyone immoral enough to put on a uniform and enforce the state's will against other human beings is, in our eyes, a criminal worthy only of contempt. Some cops may still be “good guys” in the old peacekeeper sense, but the vast majority of those usually old-timers are gone and have been replaced by young, thuggish, heavily muscled, buzz cut combat vets who cut their teeth on no-knock raids in Middle East villages.
So when they gun down people for breaking “laws” like smoking marijuana, or openly carrying a weapon, or trying to cross a geopolitical border, or driving away from an armed state enforcer…we will be heavily biased against the murderous state thug. And unlike the mainstream media we will assume that it's the cops who are lying and the other eyewitnesses who are telling the truth.
ANARCHISM VERSUS THE DARK SIDE OF HUMAN NATURE
TDV,
Your anarchic philosophy has many positives and it might work to a degree and for a time period. Human nature, however, is not all that 'good' and in 'control'…which means that any groupthink collective (even if everyone starts out agreeing on the goals) will change over time. To accomplish meaningful goals and results it is necessary for some leader to spell out a plan for accomplishing these goals and results (the basics of economics are essential for survival). When this is done and human action is in progress, there will be those who disagree with the leader's methods, attitude, and ideas. When disagreement arises, dissension emerges and negative emotions emerge also. Human nature can not be controlled and the dark side of man emerges unexpectedly. The problem with any group think philosophy (including yours) is the dark side of human nature. Who can control this side and the emotions which emerge? Man has two natures within (light and dark). We witness this reality daily in the marketplace.
Donald S.
Gary's Response:
I'm trying to get this straight, Donald. Human nature is not all good and able to control itself…so the answer is to concentrate power in a few positions, which naturally attracts the most power-hungry and least restrained human beings in the entire population?
Political power draws the worst humans out of the general population. It then gives these psychopaths the power to kill thousands or millions. Without political power these psychos would have to get real jobs and satisfy their dark natures by watching bondage pornography. Those who tried to act on their dark desires would never rise above the level of petty criminal and would likely quickly be put down by the first or second person they tried to victimize.
Instead, with the presence of the state you get the darkest elements in humanity on stage and laughing about killing millions of strangers.
In the free market and without a state, losers like Hillary Clinton, George Bush, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama would be washing cars or serving coffee. They'd only be able to masturbate in private about killing strangers instead of actually having the power to do it.
Keep in mind that there was plenty of government when there was brutal African slavery. There is also plenty of government right now that sees the incarceration rate exploding for crimes that have no victim. There is plenty of “due process” that has many thousands of prisoners wrongfully convicted of crimes and still spending years as kidnap victims of the state in the state's rape camps.
There was plenty of government all throughout the 20th century, the century during which there were two World Wars and in which governments killed 262 million of their own citizens on top of the millions of others who were forced to kill each other at the state's bidding.
We've seen that the worst elements of humanity get fertile ground with the state. Do you really think that the anarchist free market, free of the state, would be worse? The free market is awfully corrective when it comes to human behavior. In the free market, you rise and fall based entirely on how useful and how likeable you are to your fellow man. This is not to say that the free market will result in utopia or some subjective perfecting of the human species. It just keeps things in check by making everyone pay the costs of their own actions. Politics bails out well connected losers, concentrates power, privatizes gain while spreading the costs to the masses of suckers.
Of course, most people excuse the slaughter of hundreds of millions by states because at least they get “law and order” on the street level, where they assume without the state there would be non-stop fighting, theft and rape. That is an assumption that has no basis in reality, but which is almost impossible to fight. I point out to people all the time that the vast majority of us just want to go along to get along, that the threat of retaliation and social and economic shunning is enough to reinforce decent behavior among us without the state-provided watchmen. Those with naturally violent natures are far more likely to avoid violent criminal action like murder, rape and theft if the threat of reprisal is more immediate in the form of personal firearms or hired personal security than cops which will only show up after the crime has been committed and write down what happened.
If it's the dark nature of humanity that you're worried about, then fear the state, not the lack thereof in an anarchist world. The state is the playground and rich soil of humanity's dark side. Anarchism is humanity's best hope of drawing out the best in humanity and restraining the worst.
TDV KEEPS ON ROCKING IN THE FREE WORLD
Jeff, Gary and all at TDV,
You guys are the best. Thank you for all you do. You impress me daily with your thoughtful and compelling work. I am wanting to climb aboard and be one who shouts from the rooftops the virtue and salvation offered in anarcho-capitalism.
There is one thing you all could do that would make my job much easier and that would be to do a synopsis and explanation of how anarcho- capitalism would work in the real world. Who/where/how do we operate our military, where do the roads come from, what kind of tax system do we have and how much tax is there, do we need driver licenses, would the number of lawyers decrease, how would congress operate, are they really needed? What I am looking for is something I can refer to that will help me defend against the “no interstates” and similar arguments.
Of course I have only scratched the surface of the issues that could be discussed in illustrating what life would be like in A-C. I leave that to you to choose the main points you have picked up over the years I have gotten bits and pieces along the way in life, with your work, and through my own research, but I don’t have anything that ties it into a neat little package that with a little effort I can get ginned up enough to be confident in taking on the dragons of statism. I think a one stop pamphlet/primer would be invaluable and it would get those of us already primed into the fray much sooner and certainly with more confidence and enthusiasm.
Keep up the good work guys, and again we thank you and appreciate all you all do for us.
Best,
Joe
Gary's Response:
Funny you should mention that, Joe…
I'm finally getting around to writing a book on exactly this kind of stuff. The material for this book will be showing up in the pages of this very blog over the next few months as I attempt to answer your questions right here in these very pages. In fact, I will frequently refer to a question in this letter over the next few weeks here in Feedback Friday. So keep an eye out.
That's it for this week's Feedback Friday. Keep those questions and comments coming (because we wouldn't have a Feedback Friday if you don't)!
The Dollar Vigilante is a free-market financial newsletter focused on covering all aspects of the ongoing financial collapse. The newsletter has news, information and analysis on investments for safety and for profit during the collapse including investments in gold, silver, energy and agriculture commodities and publicly traded stocks. As well, the newsletter covers other aspects including expatriation, both financially and physically and news and info on health, safety and other ways to survive the coming collapse of the US Dollar safely and comfortably. You can sign up to receive our FREE monthly newsletter, our Basic Newsletter ($15/month) or our Full Newsletter ($25/month) with specific stock recommendations and updates at our Subscriptions page on our website at DollarVigilante.com.
2012-10-05 22:14:57
Source: http://www.dollarvigilante.com/blog/2012/10/5/feedback-friday-october-5th-2012.html-0
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