An accidental bullseye

Statist: "Of course YOU don't care about the government shutdown that's hurting so many people, because it's not hurting you, personally!"

Me: BINGO!!*

-

*And if you think that's an accidental quirk of fate, you'd be missing the point. I don't want the fake "shutdown" to hurt you, either, but you placed yourself in the position to be hurt. Against my advice.

_______________

Reminder: I could really use some help.

-

This blog is my job.
YOU get to decide if I get paid.

That one's a thinker!

The Facebook post stated "Claiming that income tax is moral, is a claim that slavery is moral.".

That's a completely reasonable statement. But someone then posted a comment saying, "Wealth tax is required." Whatever a "wealth tax" is.

I responded with a link to my "Theft by any other name" video.

She replied, "No taxes, no army. No army, no defence. No defence, no state. No state, no laws. No laws, no peace."

I said, 

"I don't need a theft-funded army for my defense. Why would you imagine you do?
The state is your enemy, or you don't understand what the State is. http://famguardian.org/.../OurEnemyTheState...

http://mises.org/daily/2352

There are only two kinds of "law": the unnecessary and the harmful. Which type do you imagine promotes peace?

"Laws" against actual wrongs (murder, theft, rape, kidnapping, assault, trespass, etc.) are unnecessary. These "laws" aren't necessary for you to have the right to defend yourself from these acts.

"Laws" against anything else (vices, trade, tools of defense, resisting government theft and aggression, etc.) -- AND "laws" allowing government employees to commit the actual wrongs in the first list as long as they are called something else (taxation, war, officer safety, arrest, airport security, etc.), are harmful.

Your argument fails."

Yeah, I probably shouldn't have included the last sentence. 

Her dismissive last shot? "neat. Don't complicate a complex argument and sleep tight! 😁"

So is she saying her comment was "complex"? I guess she's too deep a thinker for me.

_______________

Reminder: I think I could really use some help.

-

This blog is my job.
YOU get to decide if I get paid.

Fear first, ask questions later

It seems the matter is settled. If a cop "fears" for its life, it can commit murder and get away with it. No actual threat is necessary.

If it's OK for a cop to shoot a chihuahua or a fleeing teen because it chants "I feared for my life", then it is OK for anyone else to shoot people and pets using the same excuse. Anything less is a dangerous double standard.

And, if that were consistently the case all cops would be dead. Good riddance!

Every "official" encounter with a cop is an encounter with an armed government molester who would face small consequences for murdering you-- if it faces any at all. If you don't kiss its boots fast enough, you'll scare it. That's as good as permission to murder you.

When this happens, you are experiencing a police state. But it can get worse. Unless the people targeted by cops act to stop it, it will get worse.

Whether or not you are in fear of your life when a cop is around, your life is in danger. They've created the situation. I wonder how they'll react when it comes to fruition.

_______________

Reminder: I fear I could really use some help.

-

This blog is my job.
YOU get to decide if I get paid.

Solar shouldn't be forced on city

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for December 19, 2018)

I'm in favor of solar energy. I'm not in favor of city commissions spending money on it, or on anything else.

The news that the Clovis City commissioners want to spend your money for land on which solar energy could be "developed" sounds like more government-as-usual to me. Once the money is spent, who is to guarantee the land would be used as promised, or that there would ever be a payoff? Spend other people's money now, benefit later... maybe, if everything works out exactly as we imagine, which it never does.

This kind of financial speculation is best left to the market rather than letting politics get involved. The market doesn't spend any money it didn't earn and any risk is voluntary. With politics, all the money is taken by threat (if you don't see the threat, refuse to pay the taxes) and the politicians assume no personal risk. The risk is passed along to you whether you want it or not.

Solar power panels-- which are what is being talked about when solar energy is mentioned-- aren't as environmentally friendly as portrayed. They use a lot of land unless they are placed atop existing buildings and manufacturing them creates toxic byproducts. Nothing is free. For these reasons, and more, governments should stay out of it.

As I say, I like solar power. I have a solar charger I sometimes use for charging my phone. Years ago when I was trying to make my first car-- an electric car-- more practical, I looked into installing solar panels on its roof to help charge the batteries while I drove, or while parked where I couldn't plug in. Unfortunately for my grand scheme, I quickly discovered any benefits were greatly outweighed by the costs, but it had seemed like a good idea at first.

Kind of like government spending your money on anything.

Had I forced other people to pay for my car's solar panels, regardless of any actual payoff, using the excuse that society benefits just because my car could potentially go a few yards farther down the road, I would have been behaving politically. This is something I won't do.

If I'd had the money I would have bought the solar panels myself. Any potential benefit would have been mine alone, but so would the risk. No one else would have been hurt if the idea was a complete failure. It's the civilized way to do everything.

-
Thank you for helping support KentforLiberty.com

It's OK to be me and it's OK to be you

It's OK to be "white".
It's OK to be male.
It's OK to be heterosexual.

To believe otherwise is dumb. To punish someone for saying so is evil.

But wait, there's more!

It's OK to be "black" or any other "race".
It's OK to be female or a hermaphrodite.
It's OK to be homosexual or whatever.

None of the above categories or distinctions are important. It doesn't matter if you are "white", "black", female, male, heterosexual, homosexual, or anything else. Not one bit.

What is important is that it's NOT OK to be an archator of any sort. Not ever.

It's hard to believe this is even controversial. That saying such things can get a person in trouble. I'll own the truth and accept the trouble.

_______________

Reminder: I could really use some help.

-

This blog is my job.
YOU get to decide if I get paid.

Prisons are a growing threat

I've mentioned before how much I hate prisons.

Prison is a racket, and it's not better to do something "privately" when it's wrong to do it at all.

Even when something isn't necessarily wrong, if I don't want it, I don't want to pay for it. That's the same reason I would never voluntarily fund a private police force. You want it, YOU pay for it and leave me out of it.

Besides, how "private" is something when it can't exist without government creating a niche for it and being its only "customer"? I don't think that's "private" at all. Just fascism, cronyism, or some other form of corruption.

Anyway, Ammo.com has a very informative and infuriating look at the prison industry. It looks at even more of the incriminating factors that make prison a net negative.

_______________

Reminder: I could really use some help.

-

This blog is my job.
YOU get to decide if I get paid.

Consent or coercion?

Looking in from the outside it can be hard to tell a non-consensual relationship from a voluntary one. Or at least it seems many people can't tell the difference.

They see people choosing to work for an employer and to them, it looks the same as a person living under a slave-master.

They see a person going to the grocery store and it looks the same to them as a person standing in line at the DMV.

They see an organized social club and to them, it looks the same as a government.

Yet, in each pair, one is voluntary and one is not. Learn to see the difference.

_______________

Reminder: I could really use some consensual help.

-

This blog is my job.
YOU get to decide if I get paid.

By excluding the good guys...

One of the justifications most commonly used by borderists for property rights-violating, violent government "border security", including theft-funded walls and such, is that it will make it harder for people to cross, and any "friction" applied to the process will reduce the total numbers of people crossing. As a result, they claim to believe this will reduce the total number of bad guys getting into America.

Theirs is a faulty argument.

As can be plainly demonstrated with drug prohibition.

Prohibition makes it harder and more dangerous to make and sell politically incorrect drugs. A clear result is that it severely restricts the number of honest "mom and pop" stores entering the drug market. This leaves the market (and yes, there is a market) open for the worst of the bad guys to be the main sellers and producers.

This is NOT an unforeseeable surprise. It is an inevitable result of adding "friction" to the drug market: more aggression and theft, more fraud and quality problems, and higher prices.

If border security makes it harder, in a similar way, for everyone who wants to get to America, won't it ensure that mainly bad guys, who are desperate enough to take the risks, will cross into America?

I think it does.

Who's going to have the stamina to try harder? The beaten down dad who just wants to get his kids to a safer, more prosperous place? Or the life-long archator who doesn't care who he stomps to get where he wants to go?

You can't reasonably justify more statism by pointing to the results of current statism.

Let people exercise their right of association, and protect their property rights (and band together to voluntarily, in unanimous consent, protect the property rights of others, including the property stolen by "taxation") and the "problem" will shrivel away.

_______________

Reminder: I could really use some help.

-

This blog is my job.
YOU get to decide if I get paid.

It's dark, but does it matter?

Here's a little sidetrack, unrelated to much of anything else I write.

I don't know why I think about these things; no doubt something I read stuck in my head and got wheels turning.

It's about "Dark Matter". You, know, the "stuff" that the evidence points to as making up most of the Universe, but which can't be detected in normal ways (other than observing its apparent gravitational effects on a galactic scale and above).

What is the evidence for dark matter?

Could all those pieces of evidence be explained by a force divorced from matter? Maybe a result of the natural topography (on a large scale) of spacetime itself, rather than a sign of something else sitting in it?

Maybe it's a force which mimics gravity, but isn't a spacetime curvature caused by matter. In other words, it acts very much like gravity, but isn't gravity.

Maybe it's a type of "orphan gravity".

No, I don't know. I'm not smart enough to know, haven't had the training to know, and probably don't have time (or the ability/equipment) to figure it out.

It probably doesn't matter, anyway. It's just one of those things I think about.


_______________

Reminder: I have a dark financial future. Does it matter?

-

This blog is my job.
YOU get to decide if I get paid.

Define "interesting"

The past few days have been... interesting. And expensive.

Had a colonoscopy yesterday, which if you've been through that you know how unpleasant the day before the colonoscopy is. That was 90 miles from home.

Then I spent last night in the emergency room in a hospital in a closer town-- only 30 miles away-- because I apparently suffered "post-polypectomy syndrome". Fever, dehydration, tachycardia, very high blood pressure. All sorts of fun stuff. I don't recommend it.

I haven't slept in days (thank goodness for post scheduling), so I'm going to take a very long nap now.


_______________

Reminder: I could really use some help.

-

This blog is my job.
YOU get to decide if I get paid.

This skeptic is skeptical

I am skeptical of everything. In fact, I'm skeptical of my own claim that I'm skeptical of everything. I'm probably wrong; there's most likely something I'm not skeptical of... but I need to be.

You've probably seen my skepticism come out on topics of statism and the "necessity" of political government, AGCC (politicized "climate change"), government "borders", and politicized "gender" issues, but I'm also still skeptical of other stuff. Even libertarianism.

I test all these things constantly-- in my mind, in my experience, and in the "thought experiments" and experiences of others-- looking for ways they might fail. One failure tells more than a thousand successes.

Sometimes people present what they believe is a good example of a failure of some idea, but when I dig into it, their example fails instead of what it was supposed to topple. And that's OK. I still want to see the attempts.

If something I trust is going to fail, I want to know it before I am in a situation where failure would hurt me or someone else.

Generally, I only write about the failures I find, which makes it appear that I am skeptical of some issues but not others. But that's just because I haven't found failures in some issues yet. Maybe they are there. If they are, I want to find them. It's just how I am.

__

Private to the person who made a donation yesterday: I have tried to thank you by email to your family email address, but the email never goes through. But I do thank you!

_______________

Reminder: I'm skeptical that I'll get enough help.

-

This blog is my job.
YOU get to decide if I get paid.

With Wilson in the wilderness

I've mentioned the business "Wilson" had which was shut down by government meddling. Well, due to our similar interests in that area he and I used to hike in the wilderness area outside of town. He wore a camo army jacket with cargo pants and army boots and I wore my buckskin clothes and mocassins-- in other words, I didn't dress any differently than normal for the hike, although I did carry extra gear.

Most people find me a frustrating person to hike with-- one former wife said I don't hike, I wander aimlessly from spot to spot. But Wilson seemed OK with it.

Those hikes gave us chances to hone some of our less-critical survival skills. We had to cross racing, ice-cold rivers on foot going in and coming out-- during the spring melt that was pretty exciting. We sometimes encountered serious mud traps. We nibbled on various plants, tracked animals, watched game, and met whatever other necessity cropped up for us to tackle.

Until we'd get a long ways down the trail, when we used the trails, we would also encounter the occasional hiker or two. When I'm out wandering like that, I tend to go a bit psychologically feral. When that happens I usually don't like encountering other people, so when we'd hear someone crashing noisily down the trail-- and that's what they all did-- we would step off the trail, sit and wait for them to pass.

When we did this we were never noticed. Not once. We especially enjoyed seeing the female hikers pass, but we never spoke to them. We didn't want to get pepper sprayed as a result of trying to be polite.

We were never more than a few feet off the path. Not hidden. Just sitting still and silent. I suspect people don't like to suddenly notice you under those circumstances.

Once, however, I was in the open, sitting on a boulder in an open area in plain sight, and still just about scared a hiker's dog to death when I said "Hi" as he came to sniff the rock. That time I was seen, but I wasn't trying to not be.

Needless to say, Wilson and I were not very impressed with people's observational skills. Of course, who's to say we didn't miss people doing the same as we hiked past. We were a lot quieter than others, though; while most of them never stopped talking, we rarely spoke. And we saw a lot of deer quietly watching us pass. But who knows.

Of all the Wilson stories, these were the times I enjoyed hanging out with him the most. It was always hard for me to turn around and come back to "civilization". But that's always been the hardest part for me.


_______________

Reminder: I could still really use some help.

-

This blog is my job.
YOU get to decide if I get paid.

Politics doesn't improve your life

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for December 12, 2018)

Occasionally I'm asked what I write about. It's a hard question to answer. Some would say I write about politics, but this isn't quite right. I don't care about politics. I want to encourage people to grow beyond politics; to find better ways.

Politics seems to be the art of making mountains out of molehills. By "art" I mean in the sense you might call pickpocketing an art; not like the Mona Lisa.

Politics is "do unto others before they do unto you".

Life is needlessly complicated when you believe you need to control other people, since they'll believe they should control you, too. You'll probably both take the short-cut of electing someone to do the controlling for you, but the results are the same, if not worse.

Your right to control someone else ends where their actions no longer harm you. If you try to control them beyond this point, you're the one causing harm.

Politics is the only reason immigration is seen as a problem. Someone set up a coercive tax-funded welfare system, criminalized defense of person and property except in very limited circumstances, and crippled the economy with taxes and bureaucracy. A molehill was made into an ever-growing mountain.

Politics is why crime is a more serious problem than it would be. If people were truly free to defend their life, liberty, and property from bad guys there would be less crime for government to pretend to protect us from.

Why tax people for things which aren't popular enough for people to fund them voluntarily? Allow people to use their money as they see fit. If something is important, people will pay for it. Just because you feel something is important doesn't mean it is. Its true importance will be shown by how many volunteer to fund it. Politics interferes with choice.

I would voluntarily fund a fire department or library, but not a police department. If I needed an investigator for a specific situation I would hire one for as long as the service is needed, and no longer. For me to force you to pay for a service I want would be antisocial, but I wouldn't stop you from funding whatever you value.

I can't think of a single way in which politics improves life. Quite the opposite. It's middle school drama writ large. If that's what you enjoy, have at it. Just leave the rest of us out of your magnified molehill mountain range.

-
Thank you for helping support KentforLiberty.com

Good intentions, or not

I have no doubt that many "citizen" statists have good intentions. They are misguided by their ignorance but their intentions are mainly admirable. They may even align with mine.

However, that doesn't apply to politicians.

Especially those who have been around a few years. I no longer give them the benefit of a doubt.

They know what's up. Through experience, they know better.

Yet they keep doing the same old thing anyway. That they keep using politics instead of the economic means shows me they have no good intentions left. Even if they did, once upon a time.


_______________

Reminder: I could really use some help.

-

This blog is my job.
YOU get to decide if I get paid.

Partial "knowledge" and flawed motives

On many topics, the reason people want to "know more" is so they'll have an "informed opinion" they can try to get government to follow.

People want to know if AGCC is "real" so they can know in which direction to ask government to act.

People want to be "informed" about the issue of a "border" wall so they can know which way to push government to act.

People want to know how much "gun crime" [sic] would be prevented with anti-gun "laws" so they can advocate accordingly.

I don't have that problem, because I know theft and aggression are wrong, and that no matter how I feel about something it is wrong of me to ask government to do anything about it. Additional "knowledge", contaminated by a political agenda, can't change that.


_______________

Reminder: I could really use some help.

-

This blog is my job.
YOU get to decide if I get paid.

Liberty isn't Utopia

Statists. You can't even get them to ask (or acknowledge) the right questions.

Whether the topic is "borders", drugs, guns, rights, or socialism, they address all kinds of peripheral questions which seem to legitimize more statism when answered, but they avoid the real questions which would completely invalidate statism.

Is it intentional or are they really that ignorant? I honestly don't know, and suspect it is some of both.

For example, I recently heard one arguing against ending prohibition because when the "laws" against Cannabis are loosened and the cartels' profits go down, the cartels turn to smuggling opioids. What? How does that justify propping up the failure which is prohibition? All you've managed to point out is that if you relax prohibition in a piecemeal way, the cartels will focus on those areas where the profit motive is still high due to continued prohibition.

When you sink that deep into statism, you can't seem to see beyond statism.

So, look at my crude graph above. Sorry, it's not to scale or painted (a lame Back to the Future joke).

See how I readily admit there are still problems with a condition of zero statism (total liberty)?

So?

Utopia isn't an option.

But statists don't like that admission and it's a deal-breaker for them. Liberty would have to be Utopia with no problems at all for them to accept it in place of their favored statist Dystopia-- no matter the specific issue.

Obviously, death-- with no more problems for the dead-- will result from increased statism long before total statism (whatever that may be) is achieved, but the exact place where that happens will vary from individual to individual and is hard to pin down. Use your imagination to adjust the exact scale of the graph.

We live somewhere along the line between zero statism (liberty) and total statism. The exact spot is debatable, but it's irrelevant for my point. Wherever we are, there are problems-- more problems than there would be under liberty. But statists don't like liberty so that option is unthinkable and invisible to them. They advocate more statism to solve the problems which exist; most of which are worsened due to statism. They will claim that with added statism, the total problems will decrease. That's not reality. More statism equals more problems.

But, because there are problems, and they can see ways to justify more statism because of those problems, they are blind to solutions which don't mean more statism. They won't even ask questions which might risk opening their eyes to the reality.

_______________

Reminder: I could really use some help.

-

This blog is my job.
YOU get to decide if I get paid.

Immoral walls and dishonest manipulation

Sarcasm only works for me when you don't demonstrate dishonesty while attempting it.

I listen to Scott Adams' "periscopes" to keep an eye on what some of those on the pro-government side are thinking. He's right about half the time-- when he isn't in his pro-government box, unable to see beyond its horizon. But sometimes it amazes me how dishonestly he frames an issue. I wonder if others notice.

Of course, since he is a trained hypnotist, it may be intentional on his part; an attempt to manipulate the opinions of his listeners. I don't criticize him for that-- it's what I hope to do with my blog. But I hope to do it honestly, without deception. I am not trying to be sneaky about it.

A day or so ago he was mocking Nancy Pelosi's absurd contention that "walls are immoral".

I agree conditionally; walls are not, in and of themselves, immoral. Unless your particular morality is somehow anti-wall, which I seriously doubt. Morals being what they are ("situational ethics") I can see how someone might have a set of morals which doesn't allow for walls, but it's not likely. It's more likely to be political posturing.

The real question is whether or not walls are ethical. For simply being walls. The answer is: walls are ethically neutral.

You can almost always use your own money/resources to wall off your own property from adjacent property without any ethical problem.

Or you can help wall off "collective property" in the very rare cases where you have part-ownership in some actual collective property and there is unanimous consent to build and fund the wall.

There is an ethical problem if you wall off property which doesn't belong to you, or if you force others to pay for a wall they don't want to pay for.

If you wall off a neighbor's property a few doors down, you have unethically built a wall.

If you force someone to help pay for a wall around your own property, you have unethically built a wall.

You could say those particular walls, under those circumstances, are unethical walls. Probably even immoral walls.

"Government land"-- dishonestly referred to as "public land" in the same way kinderprisons are called "public schools"-- is not yours to wall off. It isn't true "collective property", and there is not unanimous consent. Nor does it really belong to the government. Everything government claims it either stole from the rightful owner or bought (and maintains) with stolen or counterfeited money. A thief does not own the stolen goods he possesses, so government can not rightfully own anything. Any wall financed with stolen money is not an ethical wall.

A "border" wall fails on both accounts. No matter how "necessary" you believe it to be. It can not be done ethically under government.

You can sarcastically mock the truth, but the truth doesn't change to suit your wishes. Not even if you are a president or Scott Adams.

_______________

Reminder: I could really use some help.

-

This blog is my job.
YOU get to decide if I get paid.

Tampering with the data

The town I used to live near was famous for its coldness. The locals were proud of this.

Then, someone (government?) decided that the "official temperature" should be recorded at the airport instead of at the radio station just outside of town (about halfway between town and my house). So, instead of being in a pasture, the "official" thermometer was now located around buildings and a large expanse of concrete.

Guess what result that had-- it made the "official temperature" for town several degrees higher. We stopped regularly being the coldest spot in the lower 48-- at least, "officially". People complained but it wasn't switched back.

I'm not saying that one reading was more accurate than the other, just that they were different and that there are good reasons for the difference which have nothing to do with "global warming".

Yet Anthropogenic Global Climate Change (AGCC) believers would take this data and use it as indisputable evidence for global warming. It is real, scientific, and believable-- the temperatures officially recorded for that town now really are warmer than the temperatures officially recorded there in the past-- and it is misleading.

How often has this happened in other places? Has it happened this way more often than the "official thermometers" either staying in the same place or moving to a spot where the temperature would generally be lower?

It's a good reason to remain skeptical.

_______________

Reminder: I could really use some help.

-

This blog is my job.
YOU get to decide if I get paid.

Feeling good and dangerous

I don't know why, but I've been feeling uncharacteristically optimistic the past few days. Maybe I'm getting sick or I'm delusional or something.

My financial situation is not looking any brighter. I have a dreaded medical procedure coming up too soon. Nothing has changed, personally. As far as society, the same old gang of bullies is still throwing their political weight around.

And yet...

"What's this weird feeling I don't want to drink away?" ~ Princess Bean
"That's hope...THAT'S HOPE!" ~ Elfo

Here's to hope. I could get used to this.


_______________

Reminder: I could still use some help, though.

-

This blog is my job.
YOU get to decide if I get paid.

Some still awaiting return of liberty

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for December 5, 2018)

For decades I've had my doubts about whether America is still the land of the free. With rules and enforcers everywhere you look, it doesn't seem so.

I've been wrong. Most Americans are free-- as free as they want to be.

I prefer liberty to freedom. Liberty means having the freedom to do everything you have a right to do; freedom is simply doing whatever you want, without regard for others.

This is why, for most Americans, America is the "Land of the Free". They are doing what they want.

They tolerate checkpoints because they make them feel safe. They comply with the airport "security theater" gauntlet, pretending it's fighting terrorism. They are content to beg for licenses as long as they can usually buy the license they want. They are fine with economically crippling taxation as long as they can imagine the money is spent on necessities. They are happy to see the "borders" locked down, not realizing this traps them more than it protects them.

They are free as long as they have smartphones and video games; free to eat, vote, and watch sports. Free to control the lives of others. Free, because this is what they want.

You'll never reach people who are content in their chains while their chains have enough slack to let them do what they want.

So they are free. Free to be cattle. Free to comply; free of unwanted responsibility. Free of fear. They want more of this kind of "freedom". They want to be free of consequences, free of hard decisions, free of everything which makes them human.

They are also free (and encouraged) to look down upon those dangerous lunatics who don't value this "freedom" as much.

They don't want to do the things they can no longer legally do, which previous generations could. Those who complain or fight the limits on liberty are to be feared, laughed at, or even hated. They should be happy with their chains like everyone else.

Few care about their lost liberty. But the Remnant does.

Somewhere out there, mostly silent and unnoticed, the Remnant listens, learns, watches, and waits. These individuals know what has been lost and will never be satisfied until they get it back.

The Remnant has been patient, but the patience will run out one day. If something can't continue forever, it won't. That will be an interesting day for the political class and their oppressive bureaucratic puppets whenever it finally arrives.

May liberty then be restored.

-
Thank you for helping support KentforLiberty.com