Friday, July 27, 2012
TEST
I am having trouble accessing "Blogger." Any ideas? Also, when attempting to read a Blog post sent to me as a link I was not allowed to log in.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Famous Pirate Ronald Jerky Post (archive relic)
Sun Sep 30, 2007 10:31 pm Re: jerky
Jerky comes in a great variety of seasonings. There is a place here that serves quite a variety made fresh and soft and tender, but it is not true jerky as the higher moisture content also makes it require refrigeration and have a shorter shelf life and they do tell the customers that and that it is perishable.
Some of the seasoning ingredients such as salt and sugar or honey are functional in preserving the meat to last as food for trips and adventures, but even at best it is not a storage food and is still somewhat perishable. Other seasonings are for flavor and variety. Smoke is often used and it helps to preserve, but mainly it is dryness and osmotic pressure with salt and or sugar that retards the growth of microbes.
I have made various kinds of jerky. The sugar can do as much to be a preservative as the salt. It is hard to eat much if it is salted too much, so I use a lot of brown sugar. I combined sauces for flavor and the sauces also add sugar. I soaked the dried meat in teriyaki sauce and that added plenty of salt with the flavor I desired. Then I dried it again which also concentrated the salt and sugar with very little moisture content which is a combination for it to last long or as longas jerky can be trusted to last which should be just for a trip and prepared just before.
When smoke was used by Indians for drying meat, very lean meat was cut very thin and draped over a cool smoky fire. The smoke does a little and it does add the smoky flavor, but it's greatest purpose was to keep the flies away from the meat.
The most effective part of preserving the jerky meat for a time is drying. Meat should also be cooked as the drying temperatures or if smoked those temperatures are not sufficient to kill parasites. Drying is the removal of moisture and without moisture microbes of spoilageare much less active.
Jerky lasts the longest when all of the three dryness, sugar and salt are combined. Still the jerky should only be trusted to last for a trip or excursion and should be consumed and should not be storage food.
The Indians made their jerky last longer and at the same time become a more complete food and of particularly high energy for the trail or to sustain them through battles by making it into pemmican. They would dry the jerky to remove all of the moisture content and pulverize it by pounding it on a buffalo skin with rocks to make it into a powder. To that they mixed in hot melted fat and dried berries and sewed it into askin.
It rings very true to me with my studies of nutrition and my personal tests of bicycle racing foods that this would be a particularly high energy food. Carbohydrates should be consumed for bicycle racing, but the pemmican is a very sustaining food. I experimented with it by chopping up beef jerky and mixing it with dried cherries from the health food store and drizzling it with hot coconut oil. Both coconut oil and palm oil are my choice of healthful oils. They are tropical oils which we can find or trade for with the locals of tropical placeswe visit as Neo-Swashbucklers. The pemmican I made was very tasty and didn't last long before I ate it all. It was a great snack and just a little was satisfying for replacing lunch when I was very busy at work,so I can see it served the Indians well when traveling light and far under adverse and strenuous conditions.
To make meats storage food, I pressure can them in canning jars with apressure cooker. Then meats last easily for years. I have quite a variety stored this way and will use caning jars again and again and have my pressure canners with me as very important preparedness supplies.
Jerky comes in a great variety of seasonings. There is a place here that serves quite a variety made fresh and soft and tender, but it is not true jerky as the higher moisture content also makes it require refrigeration and have a shorter shelf life and they do tell the customers that and that it is perishable.
Some of the seasoning ingredients such as salt and sugar or honey are functional in preserving the meat to last as food for trips and adventures, but even at best it is not a storage food and is still somewhat perishable. Other seasonings are for flavor and variety. Smoke is often used and it helps to preserve, but mainly it is dryness and osmotic pressure with salt and or sugar that retards the growth of microbes.
I have made various kinds of jerky. The sugar can do as much to be a preservative as the salt. It is hard to eat much if it is salted too much, so I use a lot of brown sugar. I combined sauces for flavor and the sauces also add sugar. I soaked the dried meat in teriyaki sauce and that added plenty of salt with the flavor I desired. Then I dried it again which also concentrated the salt and sugar with very little moisture content which is a combination for it to last long or as longas jerky can be trusted to last which should be just for a trip and prepared just before.
When smoke was used by Indians for drying meat, very lean meat was cut very thin and draped over a cool smoky fire. The smoke does a little and it does add the smoky flavor, but it's greatest purpose was to keep the flies away from the meat.
The most effective part of preserving the jerky meat for a time is drying. Meat should also be cooked as the drying temperatures or if smoked those temperatures are not sufficient to kill parasites. Drying is the removal of moisture and without moisture microbes of spoilageare much less active.
Jerky lasts the longest when all of the three dryness, sugar and salt are combined. Still the jerky should only be trusted to last for a trip or excursion and should be consumed and should not be storage food.
The Indians made their jerky last longer and at the same time become a more complete food and of particularly high energy for the trail or to sustain them through battles by making it into pemmican. They would dry the jerky to remove all of the moisture content and pulverize it by pounding it on a buffalo skin with rocks to make it into a powder. To that they mixed in hot melted fat and dried berries and sewed it into askin.
It rings very true to me with my studies of nutrition and my personal tests of bicycle racing foods that this would be a particularly high energy food. Carbohydrates should be consumed for bicycle racing, but the pemmican is a very sustaining food. I experimented with it by chopping up beef jerky and mixing it with dried cherries from the health food store and drizzling it with hot coconut oil. Both coconut oil and palm oil are my choice of healthful oils. They are tropical oils which we can find or trade for with the locals of tropical placeswe visit as Neo-Swashbucklers. The pemmican I made was very tasty and didn't last long before I ate it all. It was a great snack and just a little was satisfying for replacing lunch when I was very busy at work,so I can see it served the Indians well when traveling light and far under adverse and strenuous conditions.
To make meats storage food, I pressure can them in canning jars with apressure cooker. Then meats last easily for years. I have quite a variety stored this way and will use caning jars again and again and have my pressure canners with me as very important preparedness supplies.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Kingfish Beer Summit post
The news has spent so much time on this contrived beer summit. No one has really gotten into the heart of the matter.
The police report clearly shows that professor Gates needed to be arrested. He was uncooperative and abusive.
The reason why Obama has taken such a huge hit in popularity is simple. Obama made prejudicial remarks about the arrest. Obama made his prejudicial remark for one of several reasons. Either he showed his dislike of police, his dislike of whites, his siding with the black guy without facts or his siding with the professor based on them being friends. Obama has sold himself through the entire presidential campaign has the one who is above partisan politics, the candidate with the moral high ground, or the great healer of all wrongs etc. His packaging himself like some "above it all" messiah has been why so many believed him andvoted him into office.
Once Obama made a prejudicial remark like he did, he revealed himself and forever pulled the foundation out from under the image he has been selling for so long. It's a 15 percent downhill grade from his speech in Cairo until this incident and the downhill grade will continue. Obama will never regain the fake adulation he once enjoyed.
The situation got worse because Obama is too arrogant to atone for the violation. A prejudicial remark coming from both a lawyer and a president requires atonement. He should have apologized and retracted immediately.
Instead he minced words like that he should have "calibrated" what he said and then he brought up racial profiling as a defense. His third attempt at avoiding atonement was to claim that emotions were high on both sides. In other words,Obama tried to muddy the waters by spreading the blame evenly on Gates and the cop. His next attempt to avoid atonement was to chuckle it off and talk about having a beer. Amazingly the poorly contrived beer summit came to pass with the honest cop sipping a beer with the two black perpetrators.
Obama took the actions that he did and revealed himself for what he truly is,angry, prejudicial, chip on his shoulder and a very small man with a lot of arrogance. This shatters the fake image the media created for him. Obama has infected a poison into his relationship with the American people. The toxin will lower but will never go away.
It would be like me coming to your house and then suddenly hauling off and slapping your dog and then leaving and explaining nothing. It would forever alter our friendship. I would have to step forward and explain that I was deathly afraid of dogs and that I overreacted, or profusely apologize and explain that I was once attacked by a similar dog, or I could say I was in areally bad mood and I thought the dog was going to bite me etc etc. As a solution I couldn't fix our relationship by volunteering a few hours a week at the local animal shelter. Without atonement, the relationship is poisoned.
Pride, arrogance, conceit and superiority will stop someone from atoning aviolation. These qualities were not supposed to be in Obama. He was sold as all-caring and sensitive.It's a downhill grade that Obama is traveling. He cannot regain what he once had. It's the same dismal feeling of the President Carter years.
Kingfish
The police report clearly shows that professor Gates needed to be arrested. He was uncooperative and abusive.
The reason why Obama has taken such a huge hit in popularity is simple. Obama made prejudicial remarks about the arrest. Obama made his prejudicial remark for one of several reasons. Either he showed his dislike of police, his dislike of whites, his siding with the black guy without facts or his siding with the professor based on them being friends. Obama has sold himself through the entire presidential campaign has the one who is above partisan politics, the candidate with the moral high ground, or the great healer of all wrongs etc. His packaging himself like some "above it all" messiah has been why so many believed him andvoted him into office.
Once Obama made a prejudicial remark like he did, he revealed himself and forever pulled the foundation out from under the image he has been selling for so long. It's a 15 percent downhill grade from his speech in Cairo until this incident and the downhill grade will continue. Obama will never regain the fake adulation he once enjoyed.
The situation got worse because Obama is too arrogant to atone for the violation. A prejudicial remark coming from both a lawyer and a president requires atonement. He should have apologized and retracted immediately.
Instead he minced words like that he should have "calibrated" what he said and then he brought up racial profiling as a defense. His third attempt at avoiding atonement was to claim that emotions were high on both sides. In other words,Obama tried to muddy the waters by spreading the blame evenly on Gates and the cop. His next attempt to avoid atonement was to chuckle it off and talk about having a beer. Amazingly the poorly contrived beer summit came to pass with the honest cop sipping a beer with the two black perpetrators.
Obama took the actions that he did and revealed himself for what he truly is,angry, prejudicial, chip on his shoulder and a very small man with a lot of arrogance. This shatters the fake image the media created for him. Obama has infected a poison into his relationship with the American people. The toxin will lower but will never go away.
It would be like me coming to your house and then suddenly hauling off and slapping your dog and then leaving and explaining nothing. It would forever alter our friendship. I would have to step forward and explain that I was deathly afraid of dogs and that I overreacted, or profusely apologize and explain that I was once attacked by a similar dog, or I could say I was in areally bad mood and I thought the dog was going to bite me etc etc. As a solution I couldn't fix our relationship by volunteering a few hours a week at the local animal shelter. Without atonement, the relationship is poisoned.
Pride, arrogance, conceit and superiority will stop someone from atoning aviolation. These qualities were not supposed to be in Obama. He was sold as all-caring and sensitive.It's a downhill grade that Obama is traveling. He cannot regain what he once had. It's the same dismal feeling of the President Carter years.
Kingfish
Monday, May 18, 2009
Response to idle rich discussion on NS Island board
Bill Gates has paid billions in taxes precisely because he did the work and took the risk. Bill Gates is the perfect example of the type of individual most screwed by the current system. The government asks nothing of existing wealth,it takes everything from wealth that is being built. Old wealth would apply to some future great grandchild of Bill Gates. Let's pretend that Bill Gates is not giving away all of his money to the Bill and Linda Gates foundation. Under those circumstances he would have a great grandson in 2060 who would do nothing with his life but sit around a pool sipping frozen drinks and chasing women. The great grandson would be extremely rich but would never pay taxes throughout his life because he would never have a job or create wealth.
Wayne, study the year 1913. The great entreprenuers of the 1880s were dying off. Their children and grandchildren were getting nervous about the children of all the European immigrants who came into the US in the 19th century to do the labor of the industrial revolution. The old rich were paying more and more into philanthropy to avoid problems with the children of the immigrants. They knew that they could not sustain a social welfare safety net forever (because they were slackers) and not building new wealth. They feared communist influence from thinkers like Lenin and Trotsky in Russia and the socialist influences in Europe. Plus, they were simply getting tired of being burdened by philanthropy.
Meanwhile, the rich brats were paying more and more in salaries to their plant managers, property managers and financial managers. So they hatched a plan. Instead of taxes being paid on wealth (the defacto result of philanthropy), why not have taxes on income? This way, the hard workers who were the managers of the wealth, the factories, the banks, etc. would have to pay all the costs of the masses' socialwelfare system needed for all the huddled masses that were still here after building all the cities and factories.
So what about new entreprenuers? Well,the rich kids could kill two birds with one stone. The new income tax would also be used to tax the growth of new companies and, thereby, prevent new rich from emerging to compete with the old rich! Furthermore, the old rich wanted to divide the underclasses. They knew an income tax would make the productive members of the middle class resent those that they perceived as being non-productive. The lower middle class thinks the upper middle class is greedy for not wanting to pay more taxes. The upper middle class feel weighed down by the lower middle class. Meanwhile, everyone has forgotten about the old rich because they are not really involved in the income tax system since they do not have jobs.The income tax is the result of a diabolical scheme by the idle rich.Of course, the other scheme by the idle rich was the creation of the Federal Reserve. This allowed them to make even more money without working - by charging interest on money that the US is printing and by being able to manipulate recessionary and inflationary waves. The rich knew they were in control of the Fed and could control when inflation occurred and when recessions occur. So all they have to do is buy depressed property during recessions and sell these properties during inflationary bubbles.
The country was actually destroyed between 1913 and 1917 but the US economy was so strong that it has taken until now for the problems to really be felt fully. Ironically, the swine flu of 1918 killed off many of the immigrants that constituted the huddled masses; as did WW1 and WW2. Also, the Great Depression forced many of the huddled masses into lifestyles that required less help - like dependence on extended families - but through all the trials and tribulations the idle rich have simply kept their heads low. I agree with Wayne that we need to do all we can to protect and defend the rights of the productive to create wealth. We just need to remember that wealth is not always the result of productivity.
Wayne, study the year 1913. The great entreprenuers of the 1880s were dying off. Their children and grandchildren were getting nervous about the children of all the European immigrants who came into the US in the 19th century to do the labor of the industrial revolution. The old rich were paying more and more into philanthropy to avoid problems with the children of the immigrants. They knew that they could not sustain a social welfare safety net forever (because they were slackers) and not building new wealth. They feared communist influence from thinkers like Lenin and Trotsky in Russia and the socialist influences in Europe. Plus, they were simply getting tired of being burdened by philanthropy.
Meanwhile, the rich brats were paying more and more in salaries to their plant managers, property managers and financial managers. So they hatched a plan. Instead of taxes being paid on wealth (the defacto result of philanthropy), why not have taxes on income? This way, the hard workers who were the managers of the wealth, the factories, the banks, etc. would have to pay all the costs of the masses' socialwelfare system needed for all the huddled masses that were still here after building all the cities and factories.
So what about new entreprenuers? Well,the rich kids could kill two birds with one stone. The new income tax would also be used to tax the growth of new companies and, thereby, prevent new rich from emerging to compete with the old rich! Furthermore, the old rich wanted to divide the underclasses. They knew an income tax would make the productive members of the middle class resent those that they perceived as being non-productive. The lower middle class thinks the upper middle class is greedy for not wanting to pay more taxes. The upper middle class feel weighed down by the lower middle class. Meanwhile, everyone has forgotten about the old rich because they are not really involved in the income tax system since they do not have jobs.The income tax is the result of a diabolical scheme by the idle rich.Of course, the other scheme by the idle rich was the creation of the Federal Reserve. This allowed them to make even more money without working - by charging interest on money that the US is printing and by being able to manipulate recessionary and inflationary waves. The rich knew they were in control of the Fed and could control when inflation occurred and when recessions occur. So all they have to do is buy depressed property during recessions and sell these properties during inflationary bubbles.
The country was actually destroyed between 1913 and 1917 but the US economy was so strong that it has taken until now for the problems to really be felt fully. Ironically, the swine flu of 1918 killed off many of the immigrants that constituted the huddled masses; as did WW1 and WW2. Also, the Great Depression forced many of the huddled masses into lifestyles that required less help - like dependence on extended families - but through all the trials and tribulations the idle rich have simply kept their heads low. I agree with Wayne that we need to do all we can to protect and defend the rights of the productive to create wealth. We just need to remember that wealth is not always the result of productivity.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Psyche 16 and universal health care
Psyche 16 is an asteroid that contains millions of tons of nickel-iron and platinum metals. Psyche 16 has enough iron to feed the earth's steel production at 2004 levels for 1.5 million years.
Why not tether Psyche 16 and tow it to earth orbit, or even to the orbit of the moon, and mine it at our leisure? The government could do it and the government could profit from it. In addition to using the wealth for national health care,the government could also use it to pay off the national debt.
The answer to all of our problems are right here in our solar system.
Why not tether Psyche 16 and tow it to earth orbit, or even to the orbit of the moon, and mine it at our leisure? The government could do it and the government could profit from it. In addition to using the wealth for national health care,the government could also use it to pay off the national debt.
The answer to all of our problems are right here in our solar system.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
1932-2008 RIP
It is getting difficult for me to talk with conservatives lately. Many, probably most, of my friends are fiscal conservatives. When I give them my current assessment of the situation in the US I have tobe careful in the way that I explain my views.
The great debate started either in 1913, with the introduction of the federal income tax, or in 1932 when FDR was elected as president. The debate has been, to use an old analogy, between the "people who are pulling the wagon and the people who are riding in the wagon." Reagan used to always warn that there was an urgency to getting the government under control. There were the arguments in the 1950s against "creeping socialism." There were warnings since the 1960s that entitlement programs were growing too fast. Now its too late. The wagon has already plunged off a cliff and it matters only to historians who was pulling the wagon and who was riding in the wagon.
Fiscal conservatism is dead. Even if we added zero new spending to the federal budget, our obligations are too much to be paid by the federal income tax. The reason is not the national debt, the reason is the interest on the national debt. Taxes cannot be used for a national health care program, for example, because all of our income tax revenues will be needed to pay for the inevitable expansion of social security, the growth of costs in medicare/medicaid and interest on the national debt. The people riding in the wagon have already destroyed us. It is too late to "halt the growth of government." By the end of 2009 I predict that the federal debt will be about $13 trillion. The projected growth in SS/MC/MC will mushroom that debt to $40 trillion by 2022. We are going to be paying about $500 billion in interest on the debt by 2010. By 2025 we could be paying $2 trillionin interest on the debt every year. This is assuming that there will be no new programs like national health care. The middle class will be slaves to the interest on the debt. There will be no wagon pullers. All the wagon pullers will be paying interest on the debt.
Can Congress pass a law enabling national health care? Oh, sure. They might even pay for it for a year or two by issuing government bonds (taking on more debt). Here is the problem, though; someone has to buy the bonds. People who buy bonds know how to do math too. At some point, very soon, potential bond buyers are going to realize that the US will not be able to pay interest on the bonds and will never pay off the debt or even get the debt under control. People and governments who buy bonds are not idiots. Not only are the buyers going to dry up, the current bond holders, including the government of China, are going to start getting nervous and selling bonds. Then what we we do?
I think the die was cast on this when GHW Bush was president. The die was cast about 1991. Clinton actually staved off doom by having budget surpluses, largely due to Newt Gingrich taking over Congress -not because Clinton was smart. But then GW Bush has more than made up for any gains in the 1990s by adding $5 trillion to the national debt since 2001, first with all the GOP earmarks and now with the bailouts.
You can have whatever opinion you want about how cool national healthcare would be, but there is no way to do the math.
There is only one way out of doom. Since it is too late to stop government growth, the only hope is that the government somehow findthe money or the platinum. The government can prevent doom if it can find about 250 million tons of platinum. Shrinking the government is pointless, we need to let government be big enough that it has thewherewithall to find, mine and bring back 250 million tons of platinum.
Its simple. They either find the money/platinum or we attack them with torches, pitch forks and molotov cocktails. They could also find themoney by becoming the world's energy supplier using space based solar power. Or they could do both. Who cares? The point is that they either get the money or prepare themselves mentally for the gallows. They will wish they had listened to fiscal conservatives over the last few decades, but that time is past.
The great debate started either in 1913, with the introduction of the federal income tax, or in 1932 when FDR was elected as president. The debate has been, to use an old analogy, between the "people who are pulling the wagon and the people who are riding in the wagon." Reagan used to always warn that there was an urgency to getting the government under control. There were the arguments in the 1950s against "creeping socialism." There were warnings since the 1960s that entitlement programs were growing too fast. Now its too late. The wagon has already plunged off a cliff and it matters only to historians who was pulling the wagon and who was riding in the wagon.
Fiscal conservatism is dead. Even if we added zero new spending to the federal budget, our obligations are too much to be paid by the federal income tax. The reason is not the national debt, the reason is the interest on the national debt. Taxes cannot be used for a national health care program, for example, because all of our income tax revenues will be needed to pay for the inevitable expansion of social security, the growth of costs in medicare/medicaid and interest on the national debt. The people riding in the wagon have already destroyed us. It is too late to "halt the growth of government." By the end of 2009 I predict that the federal debt will be about $13 trillion. The projected growth in SS/MC/MC will mushroom that debt to $40 trillion by 2022. We are going to be paying about $500 billion in interest on the debt by 2010. By 2025 we could be paying $2 trillionin interest on the debt every year. This is assuming that there will be no new programs like national health care. The middle class will be slaves to the interest on the debt. There will be no wagon pullers. All the wagon pullers will be paying interest on the debt.
Can Congress pass a law enabling national health care? Oh, sure. They might even pay for it for a year or two by issuing government bonds (taking on more debt). Here is the problem, though; someone has to buy the bonds. People who buy bonds know how to do math too. At some point, very soon, potential bond buyers are going to realize that the US will not be able to pay interest on the bonds and will never pay off the debt or even get the debt under control. People and governments who buy bonds are not idiots. Not only are the buyers going to dry up, the current bond holders, including the government of China, are going to start getting nervous and selling bonds. Then what we we do?
I think the die was cast on this when GHW Bush was president. The die was cast about 1991. Clinton actually staved off doom by having budget surpluses, largely due to Newt Gingrich taking over Congress -not because Clinton was smart. But then GW Bush has more than made up for any gains in the 1990s by adding $5 trillion to the national debt since 2001, first with all the GOP earmarks and now with the bailouts.
You can have whatever opinion you want about how cool national healthcare would be, but there is no way to do the math.
There is only one way out of doom. Since it is too late to stop government growth, the only hope is that the government somehow findthe money or the platinum. The government can prevent doom if it can find about 250 million tons of platinum. Shrinking the government is pointless, we need to let government be big enough that it has thewherewithall to find, mine and bring back 250 million tons of platinum.
Its simple. They either find the money/platinum or we attack them with torches, pitch forks and molotov cocktails. They could also find themoney by becoming the world's energy supplier using space based solar power. Or they could do both. Who cares? The point is that they either get the money or prepare themselves mentally for the gallows. They will wish they had listened to fiscal conservatives over the last few decades, but that time is past.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
SLF Position on Secession
There are about 5000 cultural, ethnic, racial and linguistic groups in the world. There are only 189 nations. Many communities and regions would secede from their assigned nation states if given the choice. Many of these sub-groups have secessionist movements (by one name or another) and they have millions of adherents. Besides cultural/ethnic/racial movements; there are also secessionist groups based on ideas. Libertarians, survivalists, communalists, radical pacifists, devolutionists, anarchists, futurists and religious groups that are geographically concentrated may wish they could secede. These groups tend to have a commitment to liberty and believe that they should be able to enjoy self determination.
Why do you belong to a nation state? Were you born into it? Were you forced to join it? Did you voluntarily select it? Your relationship to the nation state is slave-master. If you were born into it then you were born a slave. If you were forced to join then you are a captured slave. It is impossible to enter into an agreement to become a slave, so joining a nation state (without secession rights) is invalid. All nations are oppressive, by definition, if they do not recognize secession as a human right.
The modern nation state has existed for about 500 years. What has been the result? Are we not on a course that will inevitably lead to intentional or accidental nuclear war? Are we not in a situation where nation states are used to benefit certain elites at the expense of the common people? Merely having a few democratic institutions and regular elections does not prevent rule by elites.
Social Libertarian Frontierism has an inherent flaw. It is designed to fix one particular nation state – the United States. Currently, the United States government is in deep trouble. There is a huge national debt. There are entitlement program obligations that will be impossible to fulfill because the growth of the economy is not matching the growth of the program costs. Even without any additional discretionary spending, entitlements and interest on the debt could sink the US government. Yet the government views itself as an expanding entity that can grow forever; using the income tax, capital gains tax, and corporate taxes as the fuel of the expansion. It is truly insane. All government will accomplish is the slow strangulation of the private sector. The good news is that government’s successful effort to doom itself is a de facto protection of individual rights. In simple terms, the government will lack the discretionary funds necessary to take away liberty. Social Libertarian Frontierism shows government how to gain the funds to right the ship of state, so we are inadvertently giving them the resources to enslave us. Additionally, SLF allows limited socialism (albeit in a regulated form, under control of the Socio-Economic Supreme Court). Certain activities will be government owned and government controlled, which is socialist. The socialist aspects of SLF are necessary to enable the national treasury to capture profits and replenish national public wealth. Another problem is that SLF will create segmented pockets of socialist behavior, socialist thought and a socialist management structure which hopefully will confine itself to frontierist projects. These are risks of SLF and the widened risk requires additional checks and balances.
The three major checks against tyranny follow. Note that the Constitution is not included, because determined tyrants could bypass the Constitution much like current politicians do when it suits their beliefs:
Voting. Voting can be an important check, but only if the real will of the people is represented by the majority of voters and people are not being massively manipulated by false advertising, a biased media and an elite that can spend more on media than other constituents. Without campaign finance reform, voting is a very weak check on tyranny. The two party system undermines the effectiveness of voting as a check on government. SLF requires actions to enhance the degree to which voting can protect our liberty while also adding demands for better outcomes of government activity. This may include campaign spending limits and public financing.
Guns. Each and every home in the United States should be heavily armed. This is a key guarantee of liberty. The government must fear the people. The government must realize that there are strict limits on the use of police power. The second amendment should be reformed to guarantee that the citizen is free to arm himself or herself to the same degree that an infantry soldier is armed. Automatic weapons should be legal. Grenades should be legal. Maybe there should be restrictions or a line drawn with weapons capable of shooting down commercial passenger aircraft, but citizens must have the weapons to resist oppression and should not be technologically disadvantaged.
Secession. Remember, SLF will dramatically strengthen the US as a nation state. We must ensure that this nation state does not tend toward tyranny and the ultimate check against tyranny is the legal right to orderly, non-violent secession. A secession right will create tremendous pressure to be placed on the nation state and force the nation state to treat citizens as customers. If customers are displeased then they will shop at other stores or open their own stores. Secession should probably be made slightly difficult to prevent the secession option from being used in the heat of the moment over a single dispute. Perhaps a supermajority should be required. Certainly, the correct mechanism for secession is the referendum and the referendum should pass with 67%, lets say.
Why do you belong to a nation state? Were you born into it? Were you forced to join it? Did you voluntarily select it? Your relationship to the nation state is slave-master. If you were born into it then you were born a slave. If you were forced to join then you are a captured slave. It is impossible to enter into an agreement to become a slave, so joining a nation state (without secession rights) is invalid. All nations are oppressive, by definition, if they do not recognize secession as a human right.
The modern nation state has existed for about 500 years. What has been the result? Are we not on a course that will inevitably lead to intentional or accidental nuclear war? Are we not in a situation where nation states are used to benefit certain elites at the expense of the common people? Merely having a few democratic institutions and regular elections does not prevent rule by elites.
Social Libertarian Frontierism has an inherent flaw. It is designed to fix one particular nation state – the United States. Currently, the United States government is in deep trouble. There is a huge national debt. There are entitlement program obligations that will be impossible to fulfill because the growth of the economy is not matching the growth of the program costs. Even without any additional discretionary spending, entitlements and interest on the debt could sink the US government. Yet the government views itself as an expanding entity that can grow forever; using the income tax, capital gains tax, and corporate taxes as the fuel of the expansion. It is truly insane. All government will accomplish is the slow strangulation of the private sector. The good news is that government’s successful effort to doom itself is a de facto protection of individual rights. In simple terms, the government will lack the discretionary funds necessary to take away liberty. Social Libertarian Frontierism shows government how to gain the funds to right the ship of state, so we are inadvertently giving them the resources to enslave us. Additionally, SLF allows limited socialism (albeit in a regulated form, under control of the Socio-Economic Supreme Court). Certain activities will be government owned and government controlled, which is socialist. The socialist aspects of SLF are necessary to enable the national treasury to capture profits and replenish national public wealth. Another problem is that SLF will create segmented pockets of socialist behavior, socialist thought and a socialist management structure which hopefully will confine itself to frontierist projects. These are risks of SLF and the widened risk requires additional checks and balances.
The three major checks against tyranny follow. Note that the Constitution is not included, because determined tyrants could bypass the Constitution much like current politicians do when it suits their beliefs:
Voting. Voting can be an important check, but only if the real will of the people is represented by the majority of voters and people are not being massively manipulated by false advertising, a biased media and an elite that can spend more on media than other constituents. Without campaign finance reform, voting is a very weak check on tyranny. The two party system undermines the effectiveness of voting as a check on government. SLF requires actions to enhance the degree to which voting can protect our liberty while also adding demands for better outcomes of government activity. This may include campaign spending limits and public financing.
Guns. Each and every home in the United States should be heavily armed. This is a key guarantee of liberty. The government must fear the people. The government must realize that there are strict limits on the use of police power. The second amendment should be reformed to guarantee that the citizen is free to arm himself or herself to the same degree that an infantry soldier is armed. Automatic weapons should be legal. Grenades should be legal. Maybe there should be restrictions or a line drawn with weapons capable of shooting down commercial passenger aircraft, but citizens must have the weapons to resist oppression and should not be technologically disadvantaged.
Secession. Remember, SLF will dramatically strengthen the US as a nation state. We must ensure that this nation state does not tend toward tyranny and the ultimate check against tyranny is the legal right to orderly, non-violent secession. A secession right will create tremendous pressure to be placed on the nation state and force the nation state to treat citizens as customers. If customers are displeased then they will shop at other stores or open their own stores. Secession should probably be made slightly difficult to prevent the secession option from being used in the heat of the moment over a single dispute. Perhaps a supermajority should be required. Certainly, the correct mechanism for secession is the referendum and the referendum should pass with 67%, lets say.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
