Tag: Your Government Doesn’t Love You

Hate Potholes? Blame The State.

Although I’m pleased as can be that most of the world has moved beyond blaming the Jews for everything I’m not happy about society’s continued need to create scapegoats to blame everything on. In this case millennials have become the new scapegoats. Millennials are blamed for the failures of everything from Social Security to roads:

Millennials, they even drive different.

This key group of Americans is inadvertently creating unsafe conditions on America’s roads, according to a new report from Standard & Poor’s. That’s because this younger cohort is driving less than older groups and driving in more fuel-efficient vehicles when they do.

As a result, their gas consumption is lower so they pay less in federal gas tax, which is pegged at 18.4 cents per gallon. This means they contribute less to the Federal Highway Trust Fund, which helps pay for infrastructure maintenance in states.

Here’s the thing, it’s not the fault of millennials that the roads suck. It’s the State’s fault. The State has decreed a monopoly on transportation infrastructure and, like all monopolies, has run it into the ground. Consider the way the State funds transportation maintenance: gas taxes. Now consider the decrees the State has issued mandating more fuel economical vehicles. It really tied its own noose but forcing automobile manufacturers to build vehicles that use less of the very substance that is used to pay for transportation infrastructure.

More importantly though is the State has done almost nothing to increase its own efficiency. Look at any technology that exists in a freer market (one that entirely monopolized by the State). Every year the products either become cheaper, better, or both. Consumers expect better products or a lower price. Producers want to increase profits, which requires improving its manufacturing efficiency and technology.

While personal electronics, automobiles, fabrics, kitchen knives, and basically everything else have gotten better, become cheaper, or both the same can’t be said for transportation infrastructure. Roads today are nearly identical to roads from decades back. Road construction technology has almost improved very little over the decades.

Judging by every non-monopolized technology we have access to roads today should be phenomenally better than the roads our parents drove on. Road construction technology should be at a point where building new roads or replacing old roads is cheap and fast. The fact less plunder from gas taxes is rolling in should be a nonissue because the entire process surrounding transportation infrastructure should be a lot cheaper.

If you hate potholes blame the State for failing to improve the efficiency of its declared monopolies.

ISIS Has Been Defeated

I’ve got some great news. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) has been defeated once and for all! I guess their headquarters was located in that hospital the United States blew up. Anyways, now that the threat of ISIS is gone the Department of Justice (DoJ) has time to focus on the real threat facing this country: the citizenry!

Washington (CNN) — Domestic terror groups pose a greater threat to America than ISIS or al Qaeda, a Justice Department official said Wednesday.

To help combat them, the department has created a new counsel that will coordinate the investigation and prosecution of anti-government and hate groups.

Adam Yahiye Gadahn, an alleged al Qaeda propagandist from California, was indicted in 2006 on charges of treason and offering material support for terrorism. He was believed to be killed in January in a U.S. counterterrorism operation.

Assistant Attorney General John Carlin, who oversees national security at the Justice Department, announced the new position — the Domestic Terrorism Counsel — following a number of violent attacks or plots against the U.S. that he said were motivated by “anti-government views, racism, bigotry and anarchy, and other despicable beliefs.”

Emphasis mine. It appears the DoJ views the philosophy of anarchism, which is the philosophy that believes nobody should be a slave, on the same level as racists and other forms of bigots! I love it when the State demonizes my existence, it lets me know I’m on the right path in life.

But it’s this part that really makes me bust out laughing:

More Americans have died at the hands of domestic terror than the international terror groups that federal law enforcement focuses so much attention on, Carlin said, pointing to such high-profile attacks as the racially motivated Charleston church shooting in June or the murder of two Las Vegas police officers by anti-government extremists last year.

Do you know what’s killed more people in this country than anti-government extremists? Pro-government extremists (that’s right, the police in this country have almost killed their 1,000th person this year!). But, hey, who am I to judge?

Socialized Loses, Private Profits

A quip about government bailouts of private corporations is “Socialized losses, private profits.” When these companies fail it is at the tax victims’ expense but when they succeed it is to their personal profits. But government bailouts aren’t the only situations where this phrase is applicable. Public universities receive a great deal of tax victim money and often profit from it tremendously:

Apple Inc could be facing up to $862 million in damages after a U.S. jury on Tuesday found the iPhone maker used technology owned by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s licensing arm without permission in chips found in many of its most popular devices.

The jury in Madison, Wisconsin also said the patent, which improves processor efficiency, was valid. The trial will now move on to determine how much Apple owes in damages.

Representatives for the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) and Apple could not immediately be reached for comment.

WARF sued Apple in January 2014 alleging infringement of its 1998 patent for improving chip efficiency.

Ask yourself this, why should a publicly funded university be allowed to declare a legal monopoly on an idea? Taxes, which is to say the public, paid for the research so the only fair trade would be for any findings to be placed in the public domain. But that’s not the case. Universities can socialize the losses of research and privatize the profits.

Why do so many people whine when private corporations get away with this shit but say nothing with a public university does? I’m part of the club that views both with equal revile but, sadly, it is a very small club.

Drone Assassinations: The Only Thing Besides The TSA With A 90 Percent Failure Rate

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is no longer the only government program to achieve a 90 percent failure rate. Thanks to an unknown whistleblower, who will hopefully remain unknown, we now know that the United States’ drone assassination program enjoys an abysmal failure rate as well:

On Thursday the Intercept published a groundbreaking new collection of documents related to America’s use of unmanned aerial vehicles to kill foreign targets in countries ranging from Afghanistan to Yemen. The revelations about the CIA and Joint Special Operations Command actions include primary source evidence that as many as 90 percent of US drone killings in one five month period weren’t the intended target, that a former British citizen was killed in a drone strike despite repeated opportunities to capture him instead, and details of the grisly process by which the American government chooses who will die, down to the “baseball cards” of profile information created for individual targets, and the chain of authorization that goes up directly to the president.1

90 percent of the people killed by drones in a five month period were innocent bystanders. I can’t imagine how that could possibly create backlash. Surly all of the people in the Middle East understand that we have to bomb innocent bystanders in order to defend ourselves from terrorists!

The documents reveal a frightening fact: the United States government has almost no mechanisms in place to verify targets. It’s basically dropping bombs willy nilly. Based on the success to failure ratio it appears that the United States only succeeds by random chance.

News From The Frontline

The United States has been in a state of war since 2001 (actually it was in a state of war before that but the war on terror is the war I’m primarily addressing here). In those 14 wars the United States has dropped bombs on a large number of Middle Eastern countries, held prisoners in secret prisons without trial, and expanded a pervasive surveillance apparatus that spies on foreigners and domestic people. Fortunately Obama declared an end to the war effort in Afghanistan. But that was then. This is now. As it turns out the United States isn’t actually planning to leave Afghanistan:

WASHINGTON — The United States will halt its military withdrawal from Afghanistan and instead keep thousands of troops in the country through the end of his term in 2017, President Obama announced on Thursday, prolonging the American role in a war that has now stretched on for 14 years.

This should come as no surprise. Obama has continued to drop bombs on the two countries he’s claimed to have ended wars in. But everybody needs to recognize the new definition of war. War no longer carries the implication of two militaries fighting one another in an attempt to achieve some mutually exclusive goal. Today war implies an expansion of empire through military occupation. The United States is playing the same game Britain did at the height of its empire without the honesty of just calling itself an empire. Instead the United States “brings democracy” and “liberates” the citizens of foreign countries from “brutal regimes” and “terrorists.”

Since there is no defined goal an occupation, unlike a war, has no winning condition and therefore is perpetual in nature. This war will not end until the United States can no longer afford to wage it.

Law Enforcement And Security Provision Are Separate Jobs

Whenever you make a critical statement about a police officer it’s only a matter of time before some neocon piece of shit wishes ill on you. “I hope a burglar breaks into your home and shoot your family!” “I hope a rapist rapes your wife and daughter in front of you!” “I hope you get into a car accident!” The implication is anybody critical of police deserves the consequences of not having police. It’s an implication that can only be made by people who have fell for an all too common trap: the assumption that law enforcement and security provision are the same.

To illustrate this fact let’s consider a scenario that frequently plays out on roadways: a car accident. I’m using this scenario, in part, because it’s one where all three common public safety personnel; fire fighters, ambulance crews, and police officers; respond. The primary task of fire fighters is the make the scene as safe as possible and to rescue any trapped occupants from vehicles. Ambulance crews are primarily concerned with the medical needs of the individuals involved in the accident. But the primary purpose of police is to determine who broke which laws so they can be cited.

In this scenario the fire fighters and ambulance crews are providing security services. Police are providing law enforcement services. The first two are primarily concerned with the wellbeing of the individuals involved in the accident whereas the last one is primarily concerned with the profits of the State.

Did one driver run a red light? Neither the fire fighters or ambulance crews concern themselves with such matters (and if they do they’re powerless to do anything about it). Police officers, on the other hand, care very much because running a red light is against the law and therefore a citation can be issued to the driver who did it. As a quick aside a byproduct of raising revenue is the generation of a report that insurance agencies will use to determine who was at fault and therefore liable (except in states like Minnesota that have no-fault insurance) but that’s not the primary task of the police and culpability an easily be determined by a party that isn’t a law enforcer.

When somebody speaks out against law enforcement they’re not usually speaking out against security provision. Unfortunately the two have been merged into a single job and this merger has existed long enough where a lot of people mistakenly believe they cannot exist separately. But we see the fact these two jobs are not dependent on one another everyday. In fact a lot of businesses hire security providers that aren’t law enforcers.

Consider a loss prevention specialist. Their job is to prevent the theft of goods. One way they often go about doing this is placing a guard at the front of a store. The guard serves two purposes: to be a psychological deterrent to thieves and to prevent thieves from leaving the building with stolen merchandise. Loss prevention specialists aren’t concerned with whether you pay your taxes, smoke cannabis, or otherwise break any laws.

Some businesses even hire armed security providers. These providers are generally tasked with protecting people and high value property. Armed security can often be found at high risk businesses such as banks or driving and guarding armored trucks filled with cash. A lot of hospitals also hire armed security personnel to, in part, escort doctors and nurses to their vehicles because their shifts often end at oh dark thirty, which is when the risk of being attacked is notably high. But again, the armed security providers aren’t concerned with whether you pirated music, violated the sugar tariff, or did some other unlawful activity.

If you’re unsure if a particular task falls under law enforcement or security let me give you a general rule of thumb. Tasks involving protecting people or property from harm generally fall under security whereas tasks involving the threat or use of force against people whose only crime is violating a government decree falls under law enforcement. The former can be done without the latter as demonstrated by the existence of fire fighters, medical personnel, and private security guards. That being the case it is possible to criticize law enforcement without criticizing security.

Only In A Socialist Paradise

A lot of soft socialists (my name for your typical socialist who is too timid to just go full socialist) cite Nordic countries as being a veritable paradise. Free healthcare! Free education! Free everything! All of this comes at a cost though. The most notable is positively brutal personal income tax rates. A lesser considered but more insidious cost is ridiculous economic controls. Where else but a socialist paradise could you find police being tasked with wielding State violence against people who sell pizza too cheaply?

The new campaign, which is being publicised on police social media accounts, asks people to inform officers if they spot a pizza on sale for under six euros (£4.50), national broadcaster Yle reports. “Unless a pizza is on temporary sale there is no way a legitimate establishment can offer pizza for less than six euros,” Det Insp Minna Immonen of the Uusimaa police department is quoted as saying. Police are trying to crack down on the “grey economy”, which costs the country millions of euros in lost tax revenue each year. They also want people to make sure they get a receipt for their pizzas, regardless of value.

There is no legitimate way an establishment can make a profit by selling pizza for less than six euros? Odd. I can think of many. Pizza can, for example, be used as a loss leader at an establishment that makes its real profit from alcohol or cannabis sales (I’m not sure if cannabis is even legal in most Nordic counties but their status as a veritable paradise leads me to believe it must be).

Even more interesting than the idiocy of tasking the police with enforcing this ridiculous restriction is the reason. According to the broadcast the State is merely protecting businesses from themselves (because, apparently, they’re too stupid to know how much they can sell a pizza for and still profit). But the real reason is the loss of plunder from taxes that aren’t stolen.

The cost of free shit is so high that a person can’t even sell a pizza for less than six euros because the State won’t get a big enough cut.

Libertarianism: Simultaneously Impotent And The Most Dangerous Force On Earth

The best thing about being a libertarian is that you’re simultaneously accused of being completely impotent and the most dangerous force on Earth. Making the situation even better is the fact libertarianism is often blamed for things it has absolutely no part in. Take this recent article by statist economic stooge Will Hutton:

Yet there is a parallel collapse in the economic order that is less conspicuous: the hundreds of billions of dollars fleeing emerging economies, from Brazil to China, don’t come with images of women and children on capsizing boats. Nor do banks that have lent trillions that will never be repaid post gruesome videos. However, this collapse threatens our liberal universe as much as certain responses to the refugees. Capital flight and bank fragility are profound dysfunctions in the way the global economy is now organised that will surface as real-world economic dislocation.

The IMF is profoundly concerned, warning at last week’s annual meeting in Peru of $3tn (£1.95tn) of excess credit globally and weakening global economic growth. But while it knows there needs to be an international co-ordinated response, no progress is likely. The grip of libertarian, anti-state philosophies on the dominant Anglo-Saxon political right in the US and UK makes such intervention as probable as a Middle East settlement. Order is crumbling all around and the forces that might save it are politically weak and intellectually ineffective.

We’re seeing signs of the very economic turmoil libertarians have been warning about for decades. This turmoil is the result of unsound monetary practices, namely the reliance on debt instead of wealth for economic activity between nations. No matter how much evidence libertarians point to or how loudly libertarians scream the statists seem entirely unwilling to adjust their monetary policies. Instead they continue trying the same thing — only harder.

So who’s to blame for the current turmoil? Libertarians, of course!

There’s so much to laugh at in this article but the insinuation that libertarian, anti-state philosophies have any kind of old on the political right of the United States (US) or United Kingdoms (UK) is a real gut buster. The political right and left can best be defined as anti-libertarianism. Libertarianism is about individual empowerment at the expense of state power. Strong centralized militaries, militarized domestic police forces, national surveillance apparatuses, fortress-like borders, fiat currency, and other such nonsense the political right has a raging hard-on for are anti-libertarian in nature. Likewise the redistribution of wealth, heavy-handed market controls, widespread censorship, restrictions on voluntary association, almost zealous opposition to self-defense, and other politically left ideas are equally anti-libertarian in nature.

The economic philosophies, which Mr. Hutton claims to be libertarian, of both the US and UK are entirely statist in nature. Libertarians advocate for wealth-based currencies, usually in the form of gold or silver backed warehouse receipts, whereas the US and UK both use fiat currencies that are backed by little more than each nation’s respective capacity for violence against anybody who doesn’t recognize their full faith and credit. Debt, the US and UK’s preferred excuse for printing more worthless paper, is the antithesis of libertarianism’s advocacy of spending within one’s means.

The current economic turmoil is the result of authoritarian, pro-state philosophies. If libertarianism actually had a grip on these nations we almost certainly wouldn’t be facing this economic crisis.

But, of course, libertarianism is the boogeyman of statists everywhere so it must be blamed for all things, whether or not those accusations make sense.

Assange Wins The Waiting Game

After spending three years effectively imprisoning Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy the British police, after spending £11.1 million, have finally called it quits:

Scotland Yard has called off its multimillion pound 24-hour surveillance of the Ecuadorian embassy where Julian Assange has been living for 40 months, having decided the operation is “no longer proportionate”.

The WikiLeaks founder, an Australian national, sought political asylum at the embassy in June 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden, where prosecutors want to question him over rape allegations. In August they dropped their investigation into two other claims – one of sexual molestation and one of unlawful coercion – because they ran out of time to question him.

Metropolitan police officers have maintained a constant watch of the embassy in Knightsbridge, central London, at a cost of at least £11.1m, according to figures released by Scotland Yard in June.

This doesn’t mean Assange is a free man. British police have stated that they will arrest him if he leaves the embassy. But it’s nice to know that even the State has limits to how much money it’s willing to spend to nab one man whose only crime is leaking its dirty secrets (the rape allegation, due to the lack of any formal charges, still seems more like a play to get Assange into the State’s hands then a concern over an actual crime).

Good On Apple For Withholding Taxes

It has once again come to the media’s attention that Apple (and other technology firms the media doesn’t care about) is holding a lot of cash overseas, which means it isn’t required to pay Uncle Sam a cut. Any sane person would celebrate this as it means less money for the United States government to buy bombs to destroy the Middle East with, military equipment for domestic police to murder even more people with, and build out its surveillance capabilities to spy on everybody with. But most media sources, and a lot of American people, are griping because they believe the taxes Apple isn’t paying is hurting everybody here:

One tax law professor told Ars that this untapped revenue source could stand to significantly benefit the United States.

“Losing $90 billion of potential tax revenues every year is a very big deal,” Neil Buchanan, a professor at George Washington University, said by e-mail. “That money could be used to reverse recent cuts in Head Start, and/or assistance to state governments to fund education at all levels, or increase the Earned Income Tax Credit, and on and on. Politicians who respond to proposals to fund these programs by saying that ‘we can’t afford it’ are simply saying, ‘I’d rather cut Apple’s tax bill than educate our children.’”

First of all let’s correct the language being used by these quisling. The United States government isn’t losing potential revenue. Taxes aren’t revenue. Taxes are plunder. What the United States government is losing is the change to plunder wealth from Apple and other technology firms.

Now that we’re dealing with accurate language instead of doublespeak, let’s analyze the situation. The implication, of course, is that the lost plunder means Uncle Sam will either have to cut back on its programs to murder people or plunder more from the people living within its borders. This is the quintessential flaw in statism, the general argument boils down to, “Since I’m getting fucked everybody else should get fucked to.” But does Apple have a moral obligation to get fucked itself just because Uncle Sam is fucking his people? No. That would be like saying a victim who managed to escape an armed thief was morally responsible for that thief robbing other people. Just because you were able to dodge being a victim doesn’t mean you’re in any way morally responsible for other people who are victimized.

Instead of trying to ensure everybody is getting fucked over as hard or harder than you try building a world where nobody is getting fucked over.