Nostr

Ok two things here. First, theft is theft. Someone steals my shit and I get nothing for it. Taxation funds a lot of stuff, but also the provision of public services—to you and also to other people. We can argue until the cows come home about whether that’s right or wrong, or whether you get enough in return for your tax dollars, but show me a person who is aggro about their taxes and I’ll show you someone else who benefits from a government program. The fact is it’s a value exchange. This is a core belief of mine, however lop sided the value exchange might be today.

Second: sure, if there was some massive public version of kickstarter that could direct my funds to the things that matter most to me, hot damn, sign me up. But—keeping the examples to public works, since that’s my jam—to my knowledge there is no way for me to contribute to redevelopment of the northeast corridor, or expansion of New York City sewer capacity, or public schools or the construction of a nuclear plant. So for now my best bet is to pay my taxes and vote for the people that care about the things that I do while I stack sats.

Jeff Swann 2y ago

Theft & extortion are distinct from trade in the same way that rape is distinct from consentual sex. It's consent that makes the difference. It has nothing to do with what comes after. If i steal your car & then mow your yard, that doesn't make up for the fact that I stole your car. And I don't get to then tell you that you were going to owe me something for the mowing that I didn't want from you in the first place.

When a violent organization monopolizes industries that are critical to survival it's pretty easy to claim people couldn't survive without them, that doesn't make it any more true. The things they monopolize were often privately developed before being taken over.

A slave doesn't owe thanks to a slave master for shelter & food. The slave would have more (in one form or another) on his own. The richest societies in the world were the ones that had the smallest & most restrained govts & also those that ended slavery first. Free markets are the only way to make people better off. Societies that collapse always do so under the burdens of too big a govt. Govt is the only thing left of N Korea or Venezuela or Cuba, it's just a govt & slaves. And with our govt printing trillions that's exactly where we are headed unless Nostr & Bitcoin & individuals with low cost productive tools can turn things around.

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Discussion

The Fockin’ Fury 2y ago

So I have nothing else to add here because this gets at a fundamental disagreement between us that we simply can’t get past. I think guns in too many hands is bad, government is not inherently extortive, taxes are not inherently coercive, and I don’t think violent revolution is the answer to anything because when does that ever work out well for the people?

But I will say that were this exchange to have happened on Twitter, one or the other of us would have resorted to name calling or Hitler references before the third volley.

I admit I’m a fish out of water on Nostr in terms of my political views but this is a good place 🫂 💜

Jeff Swann 2y ago

"An armed society is a polite society."

You cannot disarm people who do not obey laws, you can only disarm good people & make them easier victims for criminals. People who support gun control are quite literally working to make it easier & safer for criminals to terrorize innocent people. Thankfully, there are enough good people in the US who believe in natural rights, & who know the intended law of the land, so they will also disobey bad laws in order to protect themselves & others.

Stop paying the govt & see what happens. The extortion is not really debatable. Even when they create a virus (with your money) & then lock you in your home & threaten your livelihood & print trillions driving costs way up (making life dramatically worse for everyone) they still demand payment at the threat of force. They don't work for you, they quite literally force people to work for them. We are tax livestock that govt officials seek to control, manipulate, & cull.

I do agree that violent revolution is almost never a good thing. Guns are primarily a deterrent. I would very much prefer the revolution be a peaceful & productive & so completely decentralized & localized that govts basically have no way to effectively fight it. That said, the American revolution worked out fairly well, even if the American experiment in limited govt was ultimately a failure. The problem was the legitimization of theft via taxation that allowed the govt to grow without consent. Once that seed of evil is planted it cannot be restrained. So my hope is for a breakup of the US (& most other countries) into many pieces & that some areas will ultimately renounce taxation entirely.

Florida vs California or Texas vs New York already make for decent demonstrations of more freedom vs more govt, but I think a real national collapse & breakup would be much more revealing. One would think N Korea vs S Korea or East vs West Berlin would have been enough that we wouldn't need to keep repeating these mistakes, but apparently people are retarded.

Enjoyed the convo 🤙