Tag: Not So Crazy Libertarian Ideals

The Need for Civil Disobedience

Sebastian at Shall Not Be Questioned has written up a post discussing what he believes is the best strategy to restore gun rights to the entirety of the United States. It’s an interesting read but I feel as though he left out a major point:

In nearly all other civil rights struggles in this country, it’s been a combination of Congress and the Courts acting to preserve liberties. The early Civil Rights Acts, authorized by Congress’ powers under the 14th Amendment, were intended to protect the rights of newly freed Blacks during Reconstruction. There have even been government agencies created for the protection of civil rights. Even today, under Congress’s enforcement powers found in the 15th Amendment, the Voting Rights Act provides for extensive federal oversight over state election matters and over state redistricting in states with a history of discriminatory behavior. There is ample precedent for Congressional involvement in the protection of civil liberties. I would propose that when the political environment improves for us, our focus ought to be on a comprehensive bill that restores Second Amendment rights to all Americans.

What precede those events? What has preceded every advancement cheered by civil liberty activists? Civil disobedience. The labor movement, civil rights movement, and gay rights movement all started off as massive acts of disobedience.

There is a reason all of those movements began as acts of civil disobedience, it’s the only effective strategy to gain or regain liberties under a state. As an entity that exists solely off of expropriated wealth, the state has a vested interest in increasing its power over the general population. Reducing the state’s power can only be achieved in one way, rendering it irrelevant. The state knows this, which is why civil disobedience has proven an effective strategy historically. Civil disobedience accomplishes two things: it allows the immediate exercise of desired liberties and it sows seeds of doubt in the minds of the general populace. One of those things directly leads to the other. By immediately exercising desired liberties it can be demonstrated that those liberties are not dangerous to the general populace. Fear is the state’s primary weapon and it uses it to gather popular support. During each of the above mentioned movements the state produced propaganda aimed at convincing the general populace that those movements were dangerous to society. When the propaganda was demonstrated to be false the general populace began supporting, or at least caring little one way or the other, about the movements.

It was upon that swing of popular opinion that the state realized it needed to begin damage control. Great swaths of the population no longer viewed the state’s power to regulate those liberties as legitimate and if the state didn’t perform damage control the population would soon begin to question the legitimacy of other state powers. What’s the best way to control such damage? Make people believe they control the state.

The only reason the state grants civil liberties is to convince the general population that they have some say in how the government works. When people began turning against the state’s implemented restrictions against blacks the state turned and passed legislation to undo its previous damage. By doing so the general populace became convinced that they controlled the actions of the state and the state way able to maintain its legitimacy.

If those of us in the gun rights community want to remove the state’s restrictions against gun ownership we need to start by performing acts of civil disobedience. The only way to win this fight is to demonstrate how ineffective the state’s power is. Until we have accomplished that no amount of begging, pleading, or petitioning is going to accomplish anything of value. Sure, we may gain an absolutely minor victory here or there but we’ll lose in the long run. The time for begging masters for scraps from the liberty table is over, if we want to feast on freedom we must ignore those masters, sit down at the table, and eat our fill.

Another Demonstration of the Absurdity of Intellectual Property

Even though intellectual property is going the way of the dinosaurs the state continues its attempt prevent the inevitable. This week one of the state’s many courts ruled that you can’t legally sell digital music files that you’ve purchased unless you’re given permission by the copyright holder:

A court ruling has put the kibosh on reselling digital media.

In a lawsuit between Universal Music Group’s Capitol Records and MP3 reseller ReDigi, U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan has sided with the record label and said that reselling songs bought on iTunes, Amazon, or other digital music venues is akin to copyright infringement.

“The court grants Capitol’s motion for summary judgment on its claims for ReDigi’s direct, contributory, and vicarious infringement of its distribution and reproduction rights,” Judge Sullivan wrote in a summary judgment filed Saturday. “The court also denies ReDigi’s motion in its entirety.”

This ruling brings with it some interesting ramifications. Intellectual property, if you can call it property, is unique in the way it is created. Most property, under the laws of the United States, is created when somebody labors to produce something. If you use raw metal and wood to create a hammer the resulting hammer is legally considered your property. Since it is legally recognized as your property you are able to utilize, sell, or give it. Since money, at least to a point, is considered your property you are able to trade it to another person in exchange for their property. Intellectual property doesn’t follow these guiding principles.

How is intellectual property created? Most people probably believe that intellectual property is created when an idea is created. If you create a song is that song legally your property? No. That song only becomes your property when you tell the state about it. The state has a monopoly on granting copyrights and patents, the only recognized mechanisms of creating intellectual property. If you don’t tell the state about your idea you can’t claim it as intellectual property. However, once the state recognizes your idea you gain legal control over everybody who learns about your idea. This is where the ultimate absurdity occurs, intellectual property requires legally recognized control over the minds of others. If you, or somebody else, tells me about your idea I cannot choose to forget it. The human brain absorbs knowledge whether we want it to or not. After learning about your idea I am not legally allowed to use that knowledge. If, after hearing the song you created, I recreated that same song you could bring a lawsuit against me for violating your intellectual property.

The above mentioned court case demonstrates this fact perfectly. Copying a digital music file is nothing more than an act of telling another about that song. Even though the knowledge of that song is forever in the listener’s head he is restricted from telling others about it. This is why the court ruling makes sense under intellectual property laws. Selling an MP3 doesn’t transfer knowledge of the song, it merely tells another person about the song. The absurdity lies in the fact that, legally, a person who hears a song is not allowed to tell another about that song unless the copyright holder gives the seller permission. In other words when you hear a copyrighted song you, without any say in the matter, are now partially owned by the copyright holder. You are no longer legally allowed to express all of your thoughts to other people, even if you took no action to acquire the copyrighted idea (you may have involuntarily heard the song while you were at a restaurant, party, or bar).

If one accepts intellectual property as legitimate they necessarily accept a legal ability for one person to own, at least in part, another person.

Absolute Equality

The left, progressives, collectivists, or whatever you want to call them have an overall obsession with equality. They want to see a world where everybody is perfectly equal in all regards. It’s a noble goal, although one that is impossible to achieve. Being impossible has never stopped the state from attempting something, and it periodically attempts to level the playing field, at least for the serfs (the state will never create a level playing field, it wants power to lord over the serfs). The state’s desire for equality manifests in odd, at least from an outside observer’s vantage point, ways. For example, the state continues to leverage its monopoly on declaring individuals criminals to create equality by declaring everybody a criminal. Having created enough decrees to label most adults criminals the state has moving on to declaring children criminals:

During his first term, President Barack Obama declared October 2009 to be “National Information Literacy Awareness Month,” emphasizing that, for students, learning to navigate the online world is as important a skill as reading, writing and arithmetic. It was a move that echoed his predecessor’s strong support of global literacy—such as reading newspapers—most notably through First Lady Laura Bush’s advocacy.

Yet, disturbingly, the Departments of Justice (DOJ) of both the Bush and Obama administrations have embraced an expansive interpretation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) that would literally make it a crime for many kids to read the news online. And it’s the main reason why the law must be reformed.

Equality an be achieved in our lifetime. No longer will there be a lower, middle, or upper class. There will only be a ruling and subservient class. Members of the subservient class will enjoy perfect equality as they all live in tiny concrete cells, eat gruel, and work as slave laborers for the ruling class. The only thing needed to secure this future is for the state to declare everybody a criminal, kidnap them, and lock them in a cage. At the rate things are going this utopian future isn’t far away.

The Real Reason So Many Laws Exist

Anybody reading federal or state statutes would quickly realize that there are a lot of damned laws on the books. Why does the state feel the need to enact so many laws? Somebody who believed the state exists to protect the general population would likely believe that all, or at least a majority, of those laws are necessary for the protection of the people. Those who understand the true nature of the state also understand that the reason for the large number of laws on the books is so the state has a means of threatening individuals into compliance. Alfred Anaya was a victime of that very tactic:

But in late January 2009, a man whom Anaya knew only as Esteban called for help with a more exotic product: a hidden compartment that Anaya had installed in his Ford F-150 pickup truck. Over the years, these secret stash spots—or traps, as they’re known in automotive slang—have become a popular luxury item among the wealthy and shady alike. This particular compartment was located behind the truck’s backseat, which Anaya had rigged with a set of hydraulic cylinders linked to the vehicle’s electrical system. The only way to make the seat slide forward and reveal its secret was by pressing and holding four switches simultaneously: two for the power door locks and two for the windows.

[…]

Sometime in late 2008, Anaya received a call from a customer who lived in the San Diego area. The man wanted him to fix a malfunctioning trap located in Tijuana. Anaya was scared to venture across the border; as much as he hated to renege on his warranty, he refused to go to Mexico.

Anaya thought he had protected himself by turning down the job, but the damage had been done the moment he answered the phone. This particular customer was the target of a DEA investigation, and agents had eavesdropped on their conversation. The DEA decided to tap Anaya’s phone too, in an effort to identify other drug traffickers who were having traps built by Valley Custom Audio.

[…]

The agents took Anaya to the DEA’s office in downtown Los Angeles, where they questioned him at length. Anaya spoke freely about his traps, estimating that he had built 15 over the past year. He even boasted about his perfectionism, stressing that he was always careful to conceal his wire harnesses.

The agents told Anaya that he could avoid any potential legal complications by doing them a big favor: They wanted him to outfit his clients’ cars with GPS trackers and miniature cameras, so the DEA could build cases against suspected traffickers. They told him to take a few days to mull over the offer, then they released him from custody.

The next day, a dazed Anaya drove to his father’s grave to meditate on the choice before him. The epiphany he had while kneeling by the headstone wasn’t comforting. “I had a feeling that no matter what decision I made, something bad was going to happen,” Anaya says. “But I couldn’t do anything that would put my family in danger.” And while he felt he could handle jail time, he worried that any trafficker big enough to interest the DEA would have no compunctions about killing his children, nieces, and nephews. That made the decision clear.

When Anaya told the DEA that he was too frightened to become an informant, the agents made a new, more enticing proposition: They would set up Valley Custom Audio in a deluxe storefront, complete with every piece of equipment that Anaya desired. They wouldn’t ask him to place any surveillance gadgets in cars, but the shop would be bugged from floor to ceiling.

Once again, Anaya refused.

On December 10, Anaya was arrested and subsequently charged in Los Angeles Superior Court for “false compartment activity.” He was initially denied bail, in part because an illegal assault rifle and a bulletproof vest had been discovered in his house during a police search. (“Y’know, hey, I like to shoot guns,” Anaya says unapologetically; he has two large pistols tattooed on his chest.) His lawyer advised him that, given his totally clean criminal record, he was unlikely to spend much time behind bars for such a minor offense.

But in March 2010, Anaya received grim and surprising news: The federal government was taking over the case, and it was going to prosecute him in Kansas—a state he had never set foot in.

Although Anaya did nothing illegal the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) used California’s law against building secret compartments to first coerce him. State agents gave him two options to avoid cage time: bug customer vehicles or work in a bugged garage. Both options carried a great deal of risk for Anaya and his family. Drug runners aren’t generally known for being nice people. They are attracted to the high payout that drug running offers and not put off by the fact that they could suffer a great deal of state violence. In fact knowing initiated violence is a likely outcome many of the people attracted to the drug trade are individuals who hold very few moral quarrels with using violence themselves. To protect themselves from state violence drug runners often employ violence against individuals who they fear will turn them over to the state. Thanks to the state the drug market is a vicious cycle of violence. Thanks to the DEA Anaya only had two options: face the violence of the state or face the potential violence of drug runners. He chose the violence of the state.

The reason for the vast number of laws on the books is simple; it gives the state a tool to coerce individuals with. If California didn’t have a law against creating secret compartments the DEA may not have had any leverage to use against Anaya. Thanks to the law they had a tool to threaten him with. Since Anaya didn’t fold under the threat of violence the DEA decided to make an example of him. Now the DEA can tell future compartment builders about Anaya, which may convince those builders to take their chances with the potential violence of drug runners instead of the state’s demonstrated violence.

Nothing is Free

With the demise of Google Reader those of us who depend on Really Simple Syndication (RSS) for collecting and reading news articles have been scrambling to find a replacement. A couple of prospective replacements that have take on Google Reader refugees are Feedly and Feever. My primary concern in finding a replacement has been compatibility with Reeder, which I use as my RSS client on my iPhone, iPad, and Macs (Yeah, I’m a bit of an Apple whore, want to make something of it?). Via Reeder’s Twitter account I found out that the developer was planning to include support for Feedbin. When I looked into Feedbin the thing that immediately caught my attention was the subscription fee, in order to use Feedbin you need to either pay $2.00 a month or $20.00 a year. The part of me that has become accustomed to free online services was quickly taken aback. Would I be forced to pay a monthly or yearly fee just to use my preferred RSS client? Why should I pay money to use something that’s free?

Most of us use online services and most of us pay nothing for them. My reaction to seeing that Feedbin charges a monthly fee is mirrored by other Reeder users and that really woke me up to something I seldom think about: we denizens of the Internet have become so accustomed to free services that we become upset when somebody has the audacity to charge money for an online service. We often fail to remember that there are no free lunches. Providing an online service isn’t a costless endeavor. Servers, electricity, Internet connectivity, development and maintenance time, and providing enough infrastructure for users are all costs associated with providing an online service. This blog, if anything, is a loss for me. I don’t count the costs of the server and electricity when calculating the costs of running this blog because that server is providing other services I use (Virtual Private Network (VPN), e-mail, CalDAV, etc.). But it does costs me time in writing blog posts and maintaining the website. Since I enjoy writing and server maintenance (to a point) neither of these are a higher cost than the blog is worth. However, if I was offering a service with a decent number of subscribers, I would need to charge money in order to make providing the service at least break even.

When an service provider offer its “product” free of charge it is almost always recouping costs elsewhere. Google, Facebook, Twitter, and most of the other major online service providers recoup their costs by selling data. Specifically your data. When dealing with these service providers you must think of yourself as the product and the entities buying your data as the customers. If the collected data isn’t purchased by the customers it isn’t useful to the service provider and will likely be discarded. I’m sure Google dropped Reader because its customers weren’t interested in the data collected by the service. I understand that and don’t hold it against Google, they’re in business to make money and there’s no point for Google to maintain a service that isn’t making a profit.

For some time I’ve become less accepting of being a product for Google. Part of this stems from my innate desire to control my data. If my data is hosted on Google’s servers I have no control over it. There is no way for me to know if that data will be preserved or who will be given access to my data (we know the United States government periodically demands user data from Google). I do know that Google is selling my data to its customers. The only way a service provider has any motivation to keep its user data private is if its users are also its customers.

The other method for a service provider to monetize its services is to charge money for its services or provide another product that ties into its services. Apple chooses the latter. iCloud isn’t provided free of charge out of the goodness of Apple’s heart, it’s provided free of charge (at least for the first 5GB of storage) because it’s a feature that allows Apple to sell iPhones, iPads, and Macs. Feedbin has chosen the former. Instead of offering a free service and monetizing user data the people behind Feedbin are asking users to pay a monthly or yearly free. There are two advantages for users under this model: as a user you are also a customer and Feedbin has motivation to keep your information private and Feedbin is more apt to keep the RSS service running since its business model relies on it.

While my initial response to Feedbin was one of distaste I’m beginning to realize it may be a better model for me. I want three things: an RSS service that works with Reeder, motivation for my RSS service provider to keep my information to itself, and an RSS service that won’t suddenly disappear overnight. Being a customer instead of a product will takes care of desires two and three.

Since the costs of providing an online service are generally hidden from users it’s often difficult for a service provider to charge money. This is why most service providers monetize user data. Trying to charge users money for a service is usually met with outrage. Unfortunately there are no free lunches. If you don’t pay money directly you’re going to pay by being a product. Since I’m concerned with control over my data I would prefer to be a customer. Due to this services that directly charge me money instead of monetizing my data are appealing. For most people, those who think little about their data, services that monetize their data are likely more appealing. Either way it would do well if denizens of the Internet stopped responding in outrage when a service provider asks for money from its users. Scarcity is the ultimate law of economics and ensures nothing is every entirely free.

One Positive Outcome of the Recent Ammunition Shortage

The ammunition shortage brought on by the recent push for gun control has left many gun owners empty handed. Uncle linked to a story that shows the positive side of the ammunition shortage, the state’s costume-clad thugs aren’t able to acquire ammunition either:

Dayne Pryor is the chief of police in Rollingwood, Texas, a small suburb of Austin. “I’ve been in law enforcement for 31 years and I’ve been a chief for eight years,” he sighs. “And it’s just one of those things that I never thought I’d have a problem with, especially being in Texas.”

Pryor’s problem, he explains to Salon, is that he’s having trouble finding ammunition and firearms for his officers, thanks to a national shortage. The cause? A run on supply from gun lovers afraid that Congress or state legislatures will impose new gun control laws in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting.

“Everyone is thinking, they’re going to stop manufacturing, or they’re going to be taxing and all this, so it’s just this mentality of, let’s all buy up everything now just in case. And it hurts us,” Pryor said. “This is ridiculous. This shouldn’t be happening to law enforcement.”

Economics is a mean old cantankerous bitch. It doesn’t matter who you are you’re subject to economic realities. The first rule of economics is that scarcity is a fact of life. There are only a limited number of resources available and they can’t fulfill every demand. Thanks to the gun control advocates ammunition demands have spiked and manufacturing isn’t able to meet demand. This change in the supply and demand curve means anybody wanting to acquire ammunition must either scrounge high and low or pay a higher price.

The second option is important to bring up here. When the demand for a product increases without the an accompanying increase in supply prices tend to go up. Pryor can easily acquire ammunition, he just needs to offer more money for it. Since Pryor isn’t willing to pay more (I’m assuming he’s not willing to pay more because he’s opting to bitch about the shortage instead of bitch about the high prices he has to pay) he has to go without. Fortunately that means his officers will be less able to cheaply murder nonviolent individuals. While the police may be unhappy with the current situation those of us outside of the state’s employ should be jumping for joy.

It’s nice to know that this ammunition shortage isn’t all bad.

Violent Criminals are Trying to Recruit Potential Computer Experts

One of the most violent gangs in the United States has begun actively recruiting individuals who show a high aptitude in computer skill. I would advise parents to talk with their children and warn them against joining the ranks of psychopaths such as the National Security Agency (NSA) and Department of Fatherland Motherland Homeland Security (DHS):

The secretary of that agency, Janet Napolitano, knows she has a problem that will only worsen. Foreign hackers have been attacking her agency’s computer systems. They have also been busy trying to siphon the nation’s wealth and steal valuable trade secrets. And they have begun probing the nation’s infrastructure — the power grid, and water and transportation systems.

So she needs her own hackers — 600, the agency estimates. But potential recruits with the right skills have too often been heading for business, and those who do choose government work often go to the National Security Agency, where they work on offensive digital strategies. At Homeland Security, the emphasis is on keeping hackers out, or playing defense.

“We have to show them how cool and exciting this is,” said Ed Skoudis, one of the nation’s top computer security trainers. “And we have to show them that applying these skills to the public sector is important.”

One answer? Start young, and make it a game, even a contest.

This month, Mr. Jaska and his classmate Collin Berman took top spots at the Virginia Governor’s Cup Cyber Challenge, a veritable smackdown of hacking for high school students that was the brainchild of Alan Paller, a security expert, and others in the field.

With military exercises like NetWars, the competition, the first in a series, had more the feel of a video game. Mr. Paller helped create Cyber Aces, the nonprofit group that was host of the competition, to help Homeland Security, and likens the agency’s need for hackers to the shortage of fighter pilots during World War II.

The job calls for a certain maverick attitude. “I like to break things,” Mr. Berman, 18, said. “I always want to know, ‘How can I change this so it does something else?’ ”

Between drones and these types of competitions it appears that the United States government is continuing its track record of exploiting young children by making war feel like a video game. What the government recruiters don’t talk about are the harsh realities of war. In the case of computer security working for the government means working for the entity that is actively trying to suppress free speech on the Internet. This entity has continued to push legislation such as the Stop Online Piracy Act, Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act, and Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act. In addition to pushing destructive legislation this entity has also actively worked against free speech by seizing domain names of websites it finds undesirable (without any due process, of course). This entity has even go so far as to relentlessly pursue an individual for being a proponent of free speech and free information. By every definition of the word the United States government is a terrorist organization.

If you or somebody you know is an upcoming computer expert I urge you to urge them to work on projects that help protect Internet users from the psychopaths in the United States government. The Tor Project and I2P are always looking for more developers. Those of us that want to preserve free speech, free information, and privacy online need more advocates of cryptographic tools such as OpenPGP, Off-the-Record Messaging, and encrypted voice communications. Young computer savvy individuals should work on becoming experts in such technology, encourage their friends to use such technology, and work on the next generation of such technology.

Fortunately, for those of us that work against the United States government’s continuous attempts to censor the Internet, most people described by the state as computer hackers are not fond of authority and are therefore more likely to pursue non-state employment instead of working for the monster that labels them criminals.

Asteroid Mining Rights

Popular Mechanics has posted an article asking who has the right to mine asteroids. Those of us in libertarian circles have been passing this article around as a joke. The article points out the fact that states generally maintain monopolies on mining rights and, in addition to those monopolies, implement numerous regulations on the mining industry. What the article appears to be asking is what laws will the lawyers create regarding asteroid mining:

But remember that open question. If you go get an asteroid and bring it back, is it yours? On Earth, of course, no one would open a mine without being sure they owned the land or at least the mineral rights. The same is true in space. But while mining law on Earth is pretty much settled, asteroid-mining law isn’t so clear yet.

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty prevents nations from making territorial claims beyond Earth: “Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means,” it states. But what is “national appropriation”? And what is a “celestial body”?

Those are the kinds of issues that lawyers grapple with. Space law used to be mainly an academic pursuit, but no longer—in fact, the American Bar Association just published a guidebook in the field. Most experts—including me—believe that a ban on “national appropriation” doesn’t prohibit private property rights. The Outer Space Treaty was designed to prevent the winner of the 1960s space race from claiming the moon for itself. The United States and the Soviet Union were each worried about what would happen if the other nation beat it there. They were thinking of missile bases and territorial disputes, not mines or lunar tourist resorts. The “celestial bodies” language was added by way of expansiveness, but the Outer Space Treaty doesn’t define the term, except to make it clear that the moon is one.

Who cares what the lawyers think? The question that should be asked is, who can stop non-state entities from mining asteroids? We must remember that the state accomplishes all of its goals through the use of force. When people are outside of a state’s ability to inflict violence on them they are free to act outside of its law. That is the reason people in the United States don’t comply with Saudi Arabia’s laws, the Saudi Arabian state is unable to inflict violence on those of us living in the United States. Therefore we must ask what kind of violence the states of Earth can wield against those in orbit. As it turns out there likely isn’t a lot of violence Earth-based states can inflict on spacefaring individuals. One need only look at the condition of each state’s space program to see how ineffective they are in space. No state, as far as we know, possesses armed spacecraft capable of inflicting its will off of Terra.

What good are state decrees if they cannot be enforced with violence? They’re pointless, just as every unenforceable law. In fact I would say the key to mining asteroids isn’t just getting to the asteroids but is also preventing the states of Earth from inflict their violence off of the planet’s surface. Even if miners aren’t capable of preventing Earth’s states from getting armed craft off of the planet there is still the fact that space is so vast that no entity can patrol even a fraction of it. Once you’ve escaped Earth the only thing you need to do to keep yourself outside of the state’s grasp is to run a little further than it. This fact renders the question of state regulations of asteroid mining irrelevant.

Frontiers have traditionally been refuges from state power. People fled to the American colonies to escape the British Crown’s prejudice. Eventually the American colonies severed their ties entirely with Britain and established their own government. People wanting to flee the United State’s authority began moving into the western frontier. History gives us a numerous examples of individuals fleeing state persecution in frontiers and we are now seeing the beginning of people fleeing Earth to escape the tyranny of its states.

A Better History Lesson

The history that is taught to children today leaves out all of the good parts. For instance, the Founding Fathers weren’t law abiding citizens of the British Crown, they were law breakers who became sick of Britain’s shit. Needless to say this video does a better job of portraying the Founding Fathers (and Abraham Lincoln, I’m not sure how he received the title of Founding Father but I don’t care) than any history book I’ve read:

Climbing the Political Ladder

It’s not secret that I’m not a fan of politicians, even politicians such as Rand Paul who are often considered advocates of liberty. Often when I mention my dislike of Rand I’m told by other liberty advocates that one must climb the liberty ladder one rung at a time. My question is always this: why should we climb the ladder? The only thing waiting for us at the top is the sad realization that we’ve spent so much time, money, and effort climbing the ladder that we didn’t have time to partake in things that really matter. If your goal lies at the top of the ladder then don’t waste time climbing up to get it. Instead knock the ladder over and bring your goal to you.