Political discourse is an open-access activity. Anyone can have a say. Among those whose opinions and allegations receive the most notice are celebrities — especially entertainers, actors, TV news figure and pundits, athletes, and people who are famous only for being famous — and politicians. The prominent attention that these persons’ statements garner is unfortunate, to say the least.
Tag: government
Another Set of 2018 Predictions
In 2018, we will see: POTUS commits a gaffe; POTUS spends taxpayer funds on golf; POTUS eggs on North Korea…
Radical Ideals Aren’t the Same as Utopian Visions
If I have one ethical ideal for how human beings should relate to each other (“politics”), it’s this – non-violence. There’s a lot more to say about ethical societies and ethical human behavior, but when it comes to politics, I’m really not much more complicated than that. My views are actually pretty mundane.
Maintaining Victim Fluidity
The difference between crimes and non-crimes is that with the former, you have a real, identifiable victim, but with the latter, you don’t. Therefore, the government stands in place and assigns itself victimhood in order to bring charges. The more charges it brings as a victim (eg. The State vs…), the more revenue it generates. The more dynamically ambiguous it identifies itself as a victim, the richer and more entrenched in the fabric of society it gets.
Stock Exchange
Congress blamed insider market abuses and inadequate disclosure of financial data for the Great Depression, and reacted by creating the SEC. In truth, the Great Depression had more to do with tariffs and poor Federal Reserve policies. I feel like I’ve heard this story before: the government causes a problem, and uses the problem as a reason to take more power.
Cancerous Cartmanism
If you as an individual have no right to do something, a bigger group of individuals can’t magically make the right pop into existence, and can’t turn that magical “right” into “authority” to imbue someone else with. It just can’t happen.
Country Living, Pelatarchy, Privatization, & Policing (22m) – Editor’s Break 042
Editor’s Break 042 has Skyler giving his commentary on the following topics: submitting questions or comments for the podcast at the top of Everything-Voluntary.com, country living vs. city living, a new word coined by Skyler: pelatarchy, hyperbolic criticisms of privatizing government services, trusting people with power vs. trusting people with freedom, and why policing is an insult to justice.
A Matter of Scale
At what scale do you suddenly think that human interaction and peaceful coexistence requires, or is even helped by, giving some people permission to forcibly rule everyone else?
Only the Rich
The government gives an excludable good away for free: roads, parks, education, medicine, whatever. Then some economist advocates privatization of one of these freebies. Technocrats may offer some technical objections to privatization. Normal people, however, will respond with a disgusted rhetorical question: “So only the rich should have roads / parks / education / medicine / whatever?”
Discussion with a Cop Supporter
Here is a discussion I had with a supporter of cops a while back. It may be educational to see the lengths people will go to when they are desperate to excuse the inexcusable and justify that which can’t be justified.