🚀 go-pugleaf

"Lady Libertarian" <Lady_Libertarian@FreeWorld.xxx> wrote
> "Who is a libertarian?
> A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right,
> under any circumstances, to ***initiate*** force against another
> human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who
> act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether
> they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with
> it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim." -- 
> L. Neil Smith

You know, Neil's a nice guy and everything (love his stories), but there's 
not enough semantic rigor in that quote to make water in your eye.
Of course you 'have the right' (whateverthefuck *that* means), under some 
circumstances (however defined contrasting with 'any') to 'initiate' 'force' 
(whateverthefuck *that* means), and the rest of the hooey.
And he has no standing from which to define 'libertarians' in any case-
I know him a little, and I'll guarantee that he can't make it stick either.

> It sounds simple yet the implications are profound.

No shit-
it's like a gyroscope going slowly, irrevocably, predictably, further and 
farther out of plumb with every re-telling.
Or a train wreck- the band plays right up until the track runs out.

> It would mean you'd have to implement voluntary government: Only
> the amount of government that the people would willingly support,
> and that wasn't allowed to initiate force.

What is this 'allowed' of which you speak?

> Before you scoff at
> the idea and start saying that no one would support it, think
> about it some. Everything the government currently does, which
> people wouldn't support it doing, all the waste and pork would be
> gone, leaving maybe 5% of the budget the government has now,
> which would only be used for the essentials that people would
> willingly support. Therefore they'd likely have more funding for
> the things the people really wanted, without all the waste and
> oppression of human rights that the government does now.

Whoa,...... *dude*; that's so *cool*.
Just cut out the 'non-essentials'; do the stuff that 'people would willingly 
support', like 'things the people really wanted'.
That's so, like, insightful.
You know, if you get all 300,000,000 of us moving in a similar direction.

> That's the whole problem. Once people find out they can form a
> mob and enslave others to pay for every frivolous whim they can
> think of, it grows into the kind of out-of-control-monster we
> have now, until it eventually collapses.

Crap.
It used to be that the toffs owned it all, and it passed from hand to hand 
by inheritance by bloodline. If you weren't born into it, you'd never get a 
sniff of the production from your work.
They ignored the old, the sick, the crippled- your family took care of you 
or you died like a dog. The operation of government's forays into testing 
much of anything was for the benefit to the hereditary elite.
They instituted corporations, and gave them the rights of an individual, and 
you have another immortal elite forming.
Why you see a benefit to the greater numbers of the population that makes up 
our
government of, by and for the People, is quite curious to me.

> Go look up how much debt this country has now.

It isn't held by 'the People'; it's held by the corporate elite; same guys 
that incurred it, and the same guys the principal was spent with.
Nothing to do with 'coercive collectivism'; more like 'exploitation by the 
hereditary elite'.

> And all the government has to do is keep running those printing
> presses and printing money.

That's like blaming wire companies for crank calls on your phone.
The USMint only prints the money for the Federal Reserve (a private 
organization for profit that sells us credit represented by the paper- each 
dollar bill represents a negative 5% premium on the face value. A dollar 
costs us $1.05 or so, so we've always got less money than needs to pay it 
off.
The slavers own the FedRes; not the slaves.

> "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It
> can exist only until the voters discover that they can vote
> themselves largesse ( gifts ) from the public treasury. From that
> moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising
> the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that
> a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always
> followed by a dictatorship. - Alexander Fraser Tytler (later Lord
> Alexander Fraser Woodhouslee), in "The Decline and Fall of the
> Athenian Republic," published 1776.

Yes; written by a nobleman resentful of being held to any responsibility to 
the populace. He hopes the Protection of the Crown continues to keep the 
poor in their hovels, and his loot from their expoitation by force, secure.

> A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man,
> which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. -- G. GORDON
> LIDDY

'Yes Officer, I know the way to my cell'-- g. gordon liddy

> More like: A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his
> fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your
> enslavement.

Rather than just stick it in his pocket and watch the kids turn the cranks 
till they die at thirteen- like the toff 'conservatives'.

Chas