Knitting: I finished my sister’s baby shower present and I’d love to show you pictures, but I have to wait until after the shower so she won’t find out what it is. It took me longer than expected because I’m still not a competant knitter and my gauge swatch wasn’t big enough for an accurate gauge so I had to start all over. Oh well. It’s done now and I love looking at it, with its smooth stockinette stitch. Yay! I’ve also started my husband’s scarf; he expects it some time around 2020, so I aim to get it done before Winter starts. Due to time constraints and the fact that it’s knit using fine yarn and size 3 needles, I might get it done by Christmas, but only if I work hard.
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Going outside: Haakon has decided that being outside is the BEST THING EVER. We go outside every day. If it’s raining, we try to stick to the balcony or wait for a break in the downpour before heading out, but rain or shine, he loves it. We go out once in the morning (usually to the play ground and a walk up and down our street watching animals and picking berries), once in the afternoon (to the pool if it’s warm and sunny or a repeat of the morning if not) and occasionally after dinner as well (to Livingston Park, where he can watch the dogs and then play on the equipment). Even so, he pitches a huge fit when we go inside. The outdoors are where he wants to be and I dread Winter. He’s also walking now and has officially moved past the Zombie stage to the drunk stage. I’m sure any day now he’ll be a normal human walking.
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Cooking: I rendered my own lard! I got tired of using the hydrogenated crap from the store, found a farm that has it and got a big thing of fatback for free with the skin still on. The bristles were scrapped off but it was still a bit disturbing. But the lard is awesome; white, creamy fat that has less bad fat than butter even if it has more fat overall.
I’m trying my hand at croissants today. We’ll see how that goes.
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Gardening: We have tomatoes growing! They’re still green but they’re there. We have 8 at last count and my heirloom tomato is getting ready to blossom finally. Our store bought pepper plant blossomed but has formed no peppers. It’s simply too cold and our balcony doesn’t get enough sun. We harvested our cucumber and now have two more growing large. The smaller ones seem to just wither away. I wish I’d planted more than one.
I checked out a book about gardening in northern climates and it’s filled with such gems as:
“The climate up north is often known as 8 months winter and 4 months rough sledding” and “Some days, it’s even hard to rejoice over a south wind, because just as often as not it’s only the north wind coming back.” It’s full of good advice on wind breaks, where the best place to have a garden is if you live on hilly terrain, windblocks, micro climates, etc.
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House hunting: As soon as my husband gets a full-time job, it will go “richtig los”. We’ve already started scouring NNEREN . We found a house we fell in love with and thought it was awesome, perfect, a real fixer upper, let’s ignore the fact that neither of us are skilled contractors….and then found out that it had actually sold around the same time we discovered it and the system just hadn’t updated. We were extremely bummed out, but renewed our search and have found a few more houses that have potential and hopefully we will refrain from falling in love with any of them. It will be hard though—we do this sort of thing constantly.
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Armchair politics. I didn’t go to the “Town Hall meeting” in Portsmouth. Haakon hates his car seat and I wasn’t going to subject him to an hour of it just to stand in a loud crowd when he hates loud noises. But it would have been worthless. Our dear leaders have already made up their minds; we’re going to have universal health insurance. Those of us against it are simply misinformed and obviously don’t know what’s best for us. I’d care more than I do, but I don’t because of two things:
1) At least nationalized healthcare will prevent people from pretending that the problems with our healthcare system are all due to the free market. Over half of the healthcare dollars spent in this country are from the government and the numerous regulations surrounding the health care industry make it nothing close to free market.
2) We can’t afford it anyway, so it’s kind of like my husband and I debating whether or not we should buy a BMW. or a Lexus. Who cares, we’re not going to get one. The US has $70 trillion in unfunded obligations and debt. We have no way of paying that, short of inflating the dollar to toilet paper and raising taxes to about 90%. Health care for all? Sure, why not! I’d also like a BMW with a leather interior and sunroof while we’re at it. They’ve conveniently set the healthcare to kick in in 2013 because “the recession will be over by then.” So will the next election, so Obama won’t be face with the consequences of the bill until after he’s re-elected. Or if he’s re-elected. His approval rating is about as high as Bush’s, so let’s not expect too much.
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Reading blogs: I discovered a great blog, A Homesteading Neophyte. I clicked on it originally because it said she was from Kansas and since I’m from Kanssas, I figured why not? Then I found out she voted for Ron Pau l and I fell in love. I read the blog back to 2006 before stopping and just waiting for regular updates. I can’t recommend it enough. It’s enjoyable, they have animals, they’re in Kansas. They talk about Kansas-y things. Go to places I know of (Yoder? Exploration Place? The Zoo!) and deal with tornadoes. They also get to plant outside in April. Gr. I’m not bitter….technically, we’re in the same planting zone as northern Kansas. They’re in southern Kansas and have like, an extra four weeks. Odd, it seems longer than that.
The tea parties in April were well-publicized events attempting to draw attention to the high tax rates in the United States and they sure didn’t do a very good job of it. Most people went, waived their signs around,applauded speakers and were very patriotic before returning to their real lives of going to work and paying taxes. In other words, they weren’t very serious when they said they were upset at the high levels of taxation and government spending in the U.S.
But what if you really are upset and are looking for a way to opt-out of mandatory taxes? Obviously, you can’t just stop paying them. I mean, you could, but since you’re not a high-ranking government official, you’d actually go to jail. But there are certain things you can do to avoid paying taxes and are perfectly legal.
1. Excise Taxes
Excise taxes are taxes levied on specific items; consequently, they are very easy to avoid. All you have to do is stop buying those items. Stop smoking. Barring that, grow your own tabacco for personal use. An advantage of doing so is that tabacco water is a natural pesticide. Stop drinking, or better yet, brew your own liquor. Quit driving so much and either carpool, walk or ride a bike. Remember 0-2 miles is walking distance, 2-10 miles is biking and anything above that is driving distance. This should dramatically cut down on the gasoline tax you pay.
2. Sales Tax. Obviously, no one can completely stop buying stuff, so this tax is harder to avoid. Most Americans can, however, decrease the amount of things they do buy. There’s an old saying that says “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.” This is a great way to avoid sales tax. Instead of buying a new pair of shorts when one rips, sew it up or patch it. Buy used, at garage sales or thrift stores. While you might still pay some tax, it will be less than if you bought new items. Do your shopping in states with no sales tax or a lower sales tax. In New England, this means driving to New Hampshire. If you live in Wichita, KS, it means doing your shopping outside of Sedgwick County, which has a ridiculous sales tax to fund their stupid arena. Grow as much of your own food as possible. While some states have a lower sales tax on food, a tax is still a tax and most people have a bit of land they can use for food growing purposes. It also tastes better.
3. Income Tax. This one is still harder to avoid. Unlike a lot of people, I recommend always filing your income tax return, for several reasons. First off, while you’re not required to file it if you earn under $5,000 a year (or has it gone up now?), they still withhold income tax from that amount and you won’t get it back unless you file. When I was a poor college student earning very little, I filed and they sent me a check for around $13. If your goal is to impoverish the government, making them review your law-abiding income tax filing and then pay to mail you a check is definitely worth it because they lose money on the scheme. Other than that, maximize your deductions. Ever wonder why the rich don’t protest much when the government raises taxes on the wealthy? It’s because they deduct so much, they never pay close to the percentage the government pretends they are. I’ve heard forming a LLC is a great way to do this, but I’m not a tax accountant so don’t take my word for it. Other than that, seek to minimize your income. I know, most people want to maximize it so they can be rich, but what’s the point if earning more just means you have pay more of your income to the government? Ideally you should seek to earn at a point where your deductions are maximized and your taxes minimalized, but if you want to get really extreme, you can set up your expenses so that you can get by as little money as possible. This means having no debt, and in all likelihood followin the advice outlined in the first two sections: grow or make everything yourself as a sort of modern day Thoreau. It’s extreme, but I know people who do this and who pay no taxes. There are also other taxes, such as a capital gains tax, that are closely related to income taxes but are easier to avoid. If you don’t want to pay capital gains tax, don’t invest.
4. Property Taxes. The hardest to avoid, property taxes mean that you are rent to the government for the right to continue living on your private property. If you don’t believe me, stop paying them. Just like a landlord whose tenants have stopped paying rent, the government will evict you. There really is no way to get around it, but you can minimize it by owning minimal property, owning marginal property (say, property located next to an airport, railroad track and highway), and doing very little to improve your property. Unfortunately, this might hamper your ability to become self-sufficient and avoid paying other taxes. You could always rent, but then you just pay property taxes indirectly via rent to your landlord. I guess living in your car would be a reasonable solution, but you pay taxes on it, too, in order to register it. Several homeless camped on some islands in the middle of the Merrimack in tents, so I suppose that’s one solution.
Does all this seem a little crazy to you? A little extreme? I mean, come on, who would go to those lengths to just avoid paying taxes? And, what about all the good that comes from paying taxes? The gas tax pays for our roads, for example, the property tax is for education and the income tax does everything else!
Oh, I’m sorry…you mean, the gas tax we pay despite the fact our infrastructure is crumbling and government continuously uses that money to pay for other stuff? You mean the property taxes we pay so that we can spend $8,000 a year pretending to educate children, who still remain ignorant? And the income tax? Is used to pay interest on our national debt. As far as getting all the bang for our buck, American tax payers have been royally screwed.
Taxes we pay are not being used to provide valuable services for the people. They’re being used to invade other countries and to bailout Wall Street. What we don’t pay in taxes today, we’ll pay in taxes tomorrow in the form of money our government is borrowing from other countries. Governor Meldrim Thompson of New Hampshire was fond of reminding everyone that low taxes are the result of low spending. Remember that the next time you’re at a Tea Party or the next your government insists that all they have to do is spend a few billion more dollars and the economy will be hunky dory again.
Well, I was going to write a post about how to not pay taxes, but I delayed too much and now I’m writing a post telling you about how I’m going to Germany.
I’m going to Germany.
I wasn’t going to go so that we could save money, but then I talked to my host family on the phone and realized how much I missed speaking German, being in Germany, and I really wanted to see them again. Add in the fact that this is probably going to be the last time I can travel easily, since we have one kid already and are planning more and we decided I ought to take the opportunity and go. Fortunately, plane tickets are pretty cheap still pre-memorial day. They’d be cheaper if it weren’t for stupid taxes and fees. Tickets for Haakon and I total cost $250. Taxes and fees were $300 some odd. Talk getting ripped off.
In preparation for my trip, I’ve been watching lots of German TV shows so that my German doesn’t sound like I haven’t been speaking it for 3 years. As a result of this, I have some really funny news stories my libertarian readers might be interested in.
As a result of the “Wirtschaftskrise” (economic crisis), many Germans have seen their retirement funds oblitarated and while there is a similar Social Security scheme, many have private funds as well. So, in order to ease their pain, the German government is guaranteeing all retirement funds. This means that they won’t lose any value at all, ever. They won’t sink below the amount that you put in them (if I understood correctly) and this will be in effect until the economy recovers. Kind of makes me hope it doesn’t so I can see what they try next.
But that’s not the funny part. The reporter than stated that this was causing somewhat of a divide between old and young people and they interviewed a young person who stated that he did not think it was fair that the government was doing this. Then they interviewed an old person, who said, “I think it’s completely fair, but then again, I’m already retired!” That, my friends, should sum up the entirety of transfer payments.
The second humorous report involved a bunch of cars being smashed up that had “schrott” written on them and the reporter discussed something about “Umweltprämien” and a “Abwrackprämie” and how hundreds of thousands had yet to be paid them. So I looked it up on Wikipedia and discovered that the German government has been doing what the American government is thinking about doing: paying people to get rid of their old cars and buy new ones! The perceived benefits of this act are many fold: 1) people will buy new cars that are more friendly towards the enivornment (dubious, but ok) and 2) the autoindustry will be strengthened, since obviously only cars from the European 4 (analogous to the Big Three) can be purchased.
Sigh. Bastiat is spinning in his grave. It’s been hundreds of years since he first disproved the idea that doing such things could have any economic benefit whatsoever but politicians apparently know better. I mean, heck, the people get money for new cars so they’re happy and the politicians get more power, so they’re happy. It’s a win-win situation!
That’s not really the phrase I was looking for, but it was the closest my mind could come up with to describe what seems to be happening to many Republicans since Obama’s election. By this I mean that they all seem to have rediscovered the ideas of…liberty and limited government and constitution.
Odd, isn’t it?
We go eight years under a man who passed the Patriot Act, invaded several countries, passed No Child Left Behind, Real ID, allowed the torture of POWs, and started the first massive bailouts of Wall Street companies and Republicans cheered him on. I could go through and find a bunch of quotes from a bunch of conservative columnists, but instead, I’ll just quote my own mother. She’s a big neo-con, or was, and after 9/11 was pretty much convinced that every muslim is just waiting for their chance to kill Americans because they hate us for our freedom. She wanted Rudy Guiliani to win the presidency. In my visit in January (pre-Obama’s Inauguration), I blasted Bush bailing out all those companies and her comment?
“He just did what he had to do to save our economy! He’s a decent person!”
I replied that I know many decent people and not one of them has caused the death of millions, destroyed our civil liberties or any of the other things Bush has done.
I guess hapless Bushie just made some mistakes. But it’s okay. He’s a conservative.
Then Obama takes office and suddenly I get a ton of emails from my mom on how the Obama Stimulus and bailout package is going to ruin our economy. How the democrats are going to turn us into socialists! Gasp! Because we weren’t already 80% of the way there already. Then, after a while, I start getting emails from her discussing various aspects of Austrian economics, secession, and that sort of thing. She starts praising Ron Paul, when during his election, she was 100% against him and wouldn’t let my dad put a Ron Paul bumper sticker on his car.
She’s not the only one. Among a lot of conservative Republicans I know on facebook, they’re all suddenly completely against big government and want to work with the more libertarian leaning people to stop it.
I know, I know. This is a good thing. We could use the help. An enemy of our enemy is our friend, and all that. But…the problem is, they aren’t actually pro-liberty. They’re just faking it.
While it’s true that in New Hampshire, Republicans are slightly better than Democrats on pro-liberty issues (they have an average C rating for all the years data is available compared to the Democrats’ D rating), that does not a pro-liberty party make.
Ask them how they feel about ending the drug war. “Nooo…we can’t do that! Drugs are baaaad!” Or bringing home our troops from the 130 countries they’re currently in. “Nooo, we can’t do that. We have to protect America against terrorists!” Because terrorists are rife in Germany and Italy, I guess. Gay marriage? No! Because everyone knows gays don’t have rights. Abortion? Outlaw it federally! Privacy rights? That will lead to terrorism!
The only freedom they truly care about is their freedom to control your life instead of the democrats and I think they’re kind of bitter they have been so soundly trounced in the last couple of elections. And so, they’re returning to the message of freedom…as well as they can, anyway. But their message still seems a little confused. For one, they’ve turned on the Obama hate a little too strongly. I’m no fan of Obama, but good grief. For 8 years our president could do no wrong, now he can do no right? Hypocrits much? Twenty-eight states have bills affirming states’ rights and the constitutional limits of the federal government. Coincidentally enough, these bills have passed mostly in states that are controlled by Republicans. I rather doubt they would have been drafted much less passed were a Republican still in power.
I feel like I know too well how this is going to end. They’re returning to liberty because, as Ron Paul is so fond of reminding us, Freedom is Popular and if Republicans need anything at the moment, it’s popularity. But once they regain that popularity and regain that power, they’re going to once again forget about the Constitution, forget that individuals had rights, just like they did in 1996.
The only way this might turn out differently is if enough of them genuinely realize that freedom is what matters. As the bumper sticker says, it’s not left vs. right. It’s the state vs. YOU. Unfortunately, most of them seem far too partisan to realize this truth.
My husband and I have a running joke that revolves around the fact that Finland is always number one in every international study. PISA Study? Number 1. Least Corrupt? Number 1. Best social system in the world? Finland! Highest number of school shooting deaths per capita? Finland!
After reading the news today, (you can read a German account here) it looks like Germany has a serious contender looking to retake the number 1 spot: a 17 year old killed 17 people in a school shooting in the town of Winninden.
But that’s making light of a very serious and very sad situation. I can’t imagine how scary it would be to have this happen to me or one of my loved ones, it’s bad enough to read about it in the news. In the aftermath of this shooting, surely the same questions will be asked around the world: Why do kids keep shooting up their schools? What can we do to prevent it? Does Germany need stricter gun laws?
I can answer the first question very bluntly: Because school sucks.
Okay, too blunt? Allow me to expand on my answer. While school sucks, it does not suck 100% of the time for 100% of people, but the vast majority of attendees experience its suckiness at some point during their school career. For a small minority of attendees, school does suck 100% of the time and they are offered no way out from this misery. Add to that a pschopathic personality and you have Columbine, but I wouldn’t say that all school killers have some sort of personality problem. The vast majority of them are probably having a miserable time there and a miserable time at home. So they decide to end it all and take a few others with them.
Germany being Germany, it adds a few special ingredients to the school shooter phenomenon. The most notable is that in Germany, you do not merely have the right to go to school, you have the duty. Schulpflict is written into the basic law of Germany that from age 6, all children must attend school. There is no exception written in for homeschooling or independent education for children experiencing difficulties–all education must take place inside a school. It’s popular among homeschoolers to blame this on Adolf Hitler so as to discredit it and make it seem like a nazi thing. That’s completely false—mandatory education as it’s known today originated in Prussia and spread to the U.S. (beginning in Massachusetts) in the 19th century.
How does Schulpflict relate to schoolshooting, you might ask? Simply because there is no way out for someone who is miserable. The German system allows for zero flexibility and is designed, according to Wolfgang Drautz, to prevent “parallel societies.” In other words, all square pegs will be pounded into round holes.
You start school at age 6, your work then and your teacher’s recommendation will determine whether or not you go to Gymnasium or a Realschule of somesort. Gymnasium will determine if you go to university.If you go to a Realschule, you can then go to a Berufhochschule where you learn a trade and become an apprentice or later on a Fachhochschule, which is equivalent to a community college in the US. You might, as an adult, be able to go back and get a Gymnasium degree and then go to college via night school. But for most, your entire life is set out for you by the system. If you don’t fit in the system….
I get the feeling the school-shooter in Wenninden didn’t fit in the system. One kid at the Gymnasium I attended in Germany shot himself the day before graduation (not while I was there). I asked my host sister why and her reply was something along the lines of, “he had a shit life.” He lived in a system where he had no choices and was unhappy with the options presented to him, hopelessness set in…and he killed himself.
While children in the United States can get alternative education, be it long-distance education, private tutoring or homeschooling, for the vast majority, no alternative to traditional schooling is presented. For the majority of 7th and 8th grade, I could not fall asleep Sunday nights because each time I breathed I felt a tight, panicky feeling in my chest. I dreaded going to school because I feared my peers. Some of my friends had turned on me and made it their goal to make my life as miserable as possible. I didn’t think of killing myself because I didn’t know that was an option. My parents were otherwise distracted and wouldn’t have offered a way out aside from talking to the administration–a solution that usually brings more ridicule. I had no choice but to keep right on going and to keep putting up with it.
My point is that school shootings are simply a by-product of the system. We take kids and lock them away for 12 years and tell them what they must learn and how. They are not allowed to do anything that might distract from this and are banned from working until age 16 in most places, thus keeping them economically enslaved to their parents, to the state, and to the schools. Most people who find themselves unable to quit a job they hate consider suicide. In this recession, people who are losing their jobs, their homes, and are becoming financially insolvent are killing themselves because they see no way out. Some of them might even go on rampages. And yet we act surprised when minors do the same?
The answer is not stricter gun laws because it is not the guns that are the problem. Germany already has ridiculously strict gun laws, which were made stricter after the Erfurt school shootings. What we need are looser schooling laws. Allow children to seek out alternatives. Allow children who are miserable in school and are not reaching their goals in life to drop out. Allow them to get jobs. Allow them time to choose, time to make mistakes and time to learn. Allow them, simply, to be free.
Lasse and I trooped up to Concord yesterday in order to sign against two house bills that would regulate homeschooling.
For those of you not in New Hampshire, a brief back story is necessary. About 3 years ago, homeschooling laws in New Hampshire were a bit stricter and free stater Dawn Lincoln went about changing them. She worked super hard and managed to change the laws to make it a lot easier. Now all you need to do to homeschool is notify the local school board, agree to be supervised by superintendent, private school principal or the State Department of Education, and either collect a portfolio of your child’s work or have them take a standardized test each year.
Well, enter Representative Day, who is the worst sort of politician: the One Who is Just Trying to Help (link goes to another blog post with a video of the hearing). Apparently, there might be some homeschoolers out there who aren’t actually aware of the RSAs relating to homeschoolers and they just might not be instructing their kids in all the subjects required under New Hampshire law. So, in order to help this dreadful situation, she introduced two bills. One would require parents to acknowledge that they understand the homeschooling laws andd the other would require a portfolio review and standardized assessment every year. The portfolio would have to be reviewed by either a superintendent or “certified educator,” and said educator must also administer the test. I guess homeschooling parents have been slipping their kids the answers to the standardized tests or something. And we all know that never happens in government schools. If the child doesn’t do well enough on the tests and porfolio, they have to meet with the superintendent and come up with a remedial plan and if they don’t do better after that, they can’t homeschool anymore.
Got it? Let me just note for one second that if the government had put in these policies in regards to the schools it runs, public schooling would have ended years ago because the majority of kids would have been pulled out for failing to meet standards.
Well, I guess Rep. Day learned a very important lesson yesterday, namely that it’s bad idea to mess with people who can just drive to Concord whenever they like because they have a very flexible education schedule.
We arrived at 1:30, found the hearing had been moved to the Representative’s Hall, ran over to the State House and found it was PACKED. Now, mind you, Rep’s Hall seats over 400 people. Then they have the visitor’s gallery. All packed. Apparently people were standing in the aisles, in the hall, on the stairs, and there was a long line on the first floor of the state house as well.
Never in my life have I seen so many people in the State house for a single bill, not even when gun bills are involved. Newspaper estimates reckon there were 1,000 people there, most of whom were against the bill and I’m willing to bet that the chances of it passing are nearly zero.
It really makes me love New Hampshire to see how many people turn out to defend their liberties, especially since Wednesday was our first day of warm weather in months. How many other states have such dedicated residents?
On an unrelated note, this is not the only bill this session that was intended to help. Some other hapless rep introduced a bill to require licensing and mandatory vaccination of horses. Horse owners around the state got up in arms over the bill and the rep backed down and asked for the bill to be killed. Apparently she didn’t expect horse owners would object to having to pay $50 per horse as well as pay a vet to administer shots most did on their own. She thought that paying $50 a horse was a way the horse-owning community could “band together” and help the state out, since it has run quite the budget deficit. Seriously, if she wants donations to decrease the state budget, why doesn’t she just ask for them instead of trying to pass asinine laws?
First, a short run-down of my views of voting:
I believe voting is a form of self-defense. Just as you would wield a gun to defend your life and property against a home invader, your vote can be used to defend yourself against those who would use government to steal your property. However, this is only effective if you only vote for those who are pro-liberty.
Before the elections, there was much discussion among libertarians on who they would vote for. Many said they would vote for Sununu because first of all, he is the most libertarian member of the Senate (Sununu himself addressed this issue at the 2008 Liberty Forum, where he stated “…but that’s kind of like being the best surfer in Kansas. It doesn’t mean much”) and 2) Sheehan is a lot worse. Neither of these are good reasons to vote for Sununu. He is not libertarian and his voting record, along with his answers on Vote Smart.org, show this.
“But if I don’t vote for him, Sheehan will win!” First of all, you have no way of knowing that. Secondly, if Sheehan does win (which she did), it is unlikely that Sununu would have lost by 1 vote and that that vote would have been yours. Thirdly, when Sununu wins, he will not think, “wow! People must really disliked Sheehan! That’s why I won!” No, he will think, “People like my views! They like my positions! They like me!”
You see, when you vote, you are not voting against someone. You are voting for them. You are saying, “I like your views. I like your stances. Hell, I like you! Let’s get married!” And that is the message they get. People wonder why there are hardly ever any good, pro-liberty candidates running for public office. Well, dumbass, there are. You just aren’t voting for them and if you don’t vote for them, no one is going to know that you actually don’t want the government to bail out the banks, the auto industry, invade foreign countries, increase taxes and run the dollar into the ground because when you voted, that’s what you said you wanted.
So, if you think the most effective way to spread liberty is by voting for a candidate who is anti-liberty, then please, do not vote. Take a page from our outside-the-system friends and stay home that day. Maybe read “Democracy: The God That Failed” by Hans Herman Hoppe, because your vote will do far more harm than good.
There are a lot of people in the Free State Project who don’t vote. They have a lot of reasons for this, some of which I agree with and some of which I do not. Then there are some reasons that are just plain ridiculous. For example, one of the reasons they don’t vote is because they view voting as coercion, an act of force against others. You see, one of the goals of anarcho-capitalists is to minimize the use of force against others and to create a society where all human interaction is voluntary. Voting, when seen as an act of coercion, flies against this in their minds.
Okay, fine, I can understand where they would reach that conclusion. Afterall, people voting for unconstitutional entitlements and electing people who are anti-liberty is why we have lost so many of our freedoms and find ourselves in the situation we do today.
However…
Most of these non-voters carry firearms. A lot of them open carry. They aren’t shy about it, they just do. Now, I firmly believe in the right to bear arms (and I’m not referring to the second ammendment. I consider it to be a natural right), but I can’t help but feel that this doesn’t make any sense. A firearm has the capability to not only be a show of force if you’re open carrying, but contains within it the ability to kill someone. So, they won’t vote because that’s exerting force over others, but they do carry guns and are apparently willing to exert deadly force against anyone who goes against them* . Does this make sense to anyone else?
Maybe the guns they carry aren’t actually loaded and are just symbolic of their individual sovreignty. In that case, if they’re mugged, that must create an interesting situation:
Mugger: Give me all your money! Oh crap you’re armed.
Moral Non-voter: Oh, no worries, it’s not loaded. You see, I don’t believe in the use of force against others. I believe in a society where everyone interacts on the basis of cooperation and–
Mugger: So you have a gun, but it’s not loaded?
Moral non-voter: No, of course not. That would be wrong! You see–
Mugger: Alrighty then, I’ll have your wallet and your gun! *yoink*
Moral non-voter: No! That’s immoral! You can’t do that! It’s wrong! Come back to the light!
But alas, I doubt this is how it plays out. In all likelihood the guns are loaded, and they would use that to their advantage in such a situation.
It would seem more logical if they were willing to vote to defend their rights as much as they were willing to use guns to defend themselves against those who would do physical acts of aggression against them. Afterall, self-defense isn’t immoral…is it?
*I eclude from this category those who do not vote and also do not carry arms but engage in Gandhi-inspired peaceful resistence and consider themselves pacifists. At least they’re consistant.
(Also, I know that there are other reasons people don’t vote: if you’re not voting because you don’t care, that’s fine. If you’re not voting because you don’t like anyone running, that’s even better. Don’t vote just because some dumbass celebrities make stupid commercials urging you to.)
The national elections went pretty much as I expected: Democrats swept and Republicans lost big time. I can’t help but say they earned it, but I can’t believe the gullibility of the electorate. It seems they actually think that the Democrats will somehow be different from the big spending, big government Republicans. So here are my predictions for the next four years:
1. The war will not end. Which, you ask? Any of them. Our soldiers will remain in Iraq and Afghanistan. They might even make a side trip into Iran, as President-elect Obama has not taken that off the table. You don’t think so? The Dems have controlled both houses of Congress for two years and they haven’t so muched as proposed a bill to take away funding for these illegal wars, nor voted to end them.
2. The economy will get much, much worse. Neither the democrats nor republicans have any idea what’s causing the current recession. They are hopeless Keynesians who believe that all they need to do is spend money and the economy will magically revive itself. Ironically enough, they throw in token monetarism, too, and talk about how they need to keep interest rates low…for liquidity. Apparently there aren’t enough dollars out there on the market. Sorry, guys, that’s not the issue. So, they will introduce a whole lot more government programs we can’t afford. They won’t increase taxes on anyone but big business and “the rich,” so the national debt will get worse.
3. The dollar will die. I don’t predict hyperinflation, but I know of people who have. At least there will be 20% inflation. With the money-printing presses running full speed to come up with $1 Trillion for the bailout they passed, combined with low interest rates (think back to that Money and Banking class you didn’t take in college. If the Fed wants to increase the amount of money on the market, it can do two things: sell T-bills and lower interest rates) will flood the market with dollars. If you want to prevent this, start burning cash. But wait, you can’t. That’s illegal.
4. Likely nationalization of health care and state universities. To be honest, these two are the least of my worries. I pretty much don’t care if that happens. With 2/3rds of every health care dollar already spent by the federal government, they might as well just go ahead and spend the other 1/3rd. I mean, come on, who cares? At least then people would stop blaming the free-market for making health care so expensive. Trust me, we left free market medicine in the dust years ago.
5. National Service. Obama has come out for this. For some reason, he thinks it’s a good idea. Ironically enough, the US would get national service after many countries (like Germany, for example) have made theirs optional. I care about this because I sure as hell don’t want my kid pressed into two years of mandatory slavery. If this happens, he can serve in Finland. At least the Finnish military doesn’t fight wars. He can do what my husband did and send a whole year guarding a building while raising and lowering the Finnish flag.
6. The War on Drugs will continue, unabated. I don’t see any reductions in penalties or even the decriminalization of marijuana on a national level.
There are probably other things that I could predict. But to be fair, things would still be bad even if McCain had been elected president. The Dems still would have controlled both houses by a good margin and I doubt McCrazy would have stood much in there way. When’s the last time he actually stood up for freedom and free markets? For those of you who thought you actually had a choice this election and voted for either of these morons, go commit yourselves into the nearest mental health facility. You are clearly suffering from delusions.
The downside of having a child is that, suddenly, your business becomes everyones. I was waiting in the car with Haakon the other day at the post office while my sister ran in to mail something and an older lady came and got in the car next to me. She started to pull out when she stopped, got out of the car and knocked on the passenger side window. “Yes?” I asked.
“I was pulling out and I couldn’t help but notice that,” she began and I almost interrupted her to tell her that, yes, I knew there was a dent in my back bumper and that it wasn’t that big of a deal, no one here had hit me, but I didn’t and she continued, “the sun is shining right in your baby’s eyes.” Pause. “There is no shade whatsoever.” I stared at her wondering why exactly I should be concerned by this. He was asleep. He wasn’t fussing, just lying there peacefully. As far as I was concerned, he was getting his daily dose of Vitamin D. “Um, oh, really?” I managed and figured that maybe I should make some signs of being concerned, or else she was never going to leave. So I put my hand over his face and thanked her until she left. Then I took it off and continued waiting on my sister.
Another lady at a grocery store asked me if it was safe to carry him in a sling. “Oh, yes!” I enthused, eager to share the wonders of slings versus infant car seats to the world, “he loves it.” She apparently thought I was offended, though, and immediately began to tell me that she was “being nice. I was being nice to you, I didn’t mean anything by it, I was just being nice.” I stared at her, completely confused. I hadn’t thought she was being mean. So, I just started agreeing with her and telling her that I knew she was being nice. After she left, I looked at my husband helplessly. He told me not to worry; he had seen her talking to herself earlier.
This busybody helpfulness was probably worse when I was pregnant. Every old lady I worked with took turns telling me that I shouldn’t be lifting anything from the time it became publicly known that I was pregnant (about 13 weeks along) while none of them actually offered to help me lift said object. After I told them that, yes, it was perfectly safe and to mind their own damn business (only I phrased it more politely), they kept right on doing it. Only they would ask me instead, “Should you be lifting that?” The unfortunate consequence of this is that by the time I reached the third trimester, when I actually needed to start being careful with lifting things, I was so tired of being bothered about it, the temptation was strong to keep right on lifting things.
It’s kind of annoying to be treated as though you’re no longer an independent, intelligent human being and instead are a “Vessel of Life” and uncertain hormones that at any moment could burst forth in wrath and anger and kill us all. As many would say in my presence, “Remember: don’t piss off the pregnant lady.” To which I would respond, “What the heck is that supposed to mean? People should go out of their way not to piss me off just because I’m pregnant?” People shouldn’t try to piss anyone off, regardless of their reproductive status! Pregnant or not, I never make anyone angry. Unless they deserve it, that is.
What people don’t realize is that pregnant women are still intelligent. They are still individuals. They don’t need other people making decisions for them without their consent. It’s not polite to.
But, unfortunately, no one seems to understand this. So, I had to find out from a friend a couple of months ago that they weren’t going to ask me to help with the 2009 New Hampshire Liberty Forum (it’s more or less a convention of liberty lovers, with speakers, venders, and socializing) because I was going to have a baby and wouldn’t have the time. This was news to me (the not helping out with it, not the baby part). Last I had heard I would be helping out. My husband and I had both planned on it and had been at two previous planning meetings, and at one everyone had been told that their mere presence at the meeting implied they were volunteering to help out. I told my friend that it wouldn’t be a problem; I still wanted to help out.
“Well, it doesn’t mean you can’t. It just means that we aren’t going to ask you.” Ask me what? As far as I had known, I had already consented at the meeting earlier. “If you do help out, you’ll probably want an assistant or something,” she continued, “no matter what, that baby’s going to come first.” I agreed, an assistant would be handy. Actually it would have been handy at the 2008 Liberty Forum. It was my first experience at a convention; I’d never even been to one, much been in charge of managing the vendors. My conclusion was that it had been hard, stressful, frustrating, but really cool to see it all work out at the end, and that I hadn’t completely sucked at it despite my lack of experience.
But now that it’s almost October and registration for the 2009 Liberty Forum has already opened and many of the speakers have been announced, I’m beginning to get the feeling that I really have been cut out. The frustrating thing is that no one has officially told me this, aside from some brief conversation with a friend; rather, it’s something I’ve come to conclude by a lack of emails and other contact by the organizers of the 2009 Liberty Forum. The paranoid in me wonders if maybe I didn’t do such a hot job managing the vendors last year after all and this was the most polite wat they could think of tob tell me (that is, not at all).
At any rate, it’s extremely rude. As an independent person, I do not need other people setting limits for me or deciding that I can’t do something for whatever reason, much less just because I have a baby. It is for me to decide what I can and cannot do, what boxes are too heavy for me to lift. At the very least, they could have asked me if I still wanted to help when they found out I was pregnant and let me make the final decision instead of going behind my back and cutting me out of the process entirely.
