“Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.” – Walter Sobchack
Libertarians often have to repeat, ad nauseam, that libertarianism is, at its core, a political philosophy, not necessarily a personal behavior one, although, to be fair, the two spheres may touch. A philosophy of liberty and responsibility can influence wide areas of one’s life. But libertarianism primarily deals with government, individual rights and individual interactions that can infringe the rights of others. It has not, as a primary concern, individual activities that are mutually voluntary, though not necessarily beneficial. The cliché position on this is “Just because I think drugs or prostitution should be legal, does not mean I approve of drugs and prostitution” (I do approve though).
I have said before in one of my older articles, which everyone probably forgot already, that I see two domains of human life: the inner sphere is the personal – what you think is right when it mostly affects you and no other unless they agree to it, or at least you do not use aggression on others. This is subjective, as the only judge is you. Eating meat or not on a Friday, drinking, drugs, BDSM, reading SugarFree post and much more come in this sphere. The second sphere, the outer one, the one where humans interact and where your actions affect others. This second domain is covered by libertarianism as a political philosophy.
As we frequently debate these philosophical concepts, I wanted to do a different post, on personal moral beliefs that are not directly to do with libertarian politics. What does Pie believe in, even if he may not fully live up to those beliefs A sort of listicle, if you will.
While these are the things I believe, it does not mean others do, nor do I expect others to live up to these beliefs. The things I talk about are things I think people and primarily yours truly should strive for. I do not necessarily judge people for some of these and I do judge them for others. That is the whole thing about libertarianism, you can do whatever and I can judge you for it. As is my right. You do you. This is the opposite of there ought to be a law. There ought to be no law. Just because you are not free unless you are free to be an asshole, this does not mean you should be an asshole. I would argue the opposite. That is, in a way, the point. It is no great virtue to do something good forced.
“I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.”― Robert Frost
To start with something controversial, I do not believe withholding the truth or outright lying in itself is immoral. It depends on the context. I do not have to tell everyone at all times the truth. This may change with close family or friends, where I can see a sort of an implicit contract to be honest – even if no one really benefits from your wife knowing about that one drunk night with her sister.
To start with the previous conservative statement, more broadly the vices, my main view is I have no inherent problem with them, as long as they are voluntary and manageable to the person. This includes drinking, drugs, gambling – although I would put heroin and crack on the bad list. I do not think sex work is bad, although people on both sides of the deal need to be careful. I accept questions like “would you like your daughter to be a sex worker” only from people whose greatest wish is for their daughters to scrub toilets in a strip mall for a living.
Moving on from vice to more general things of life, the universe and everything. I think you should strive to do no harm, in general. To be, as a rule, nice and polite, as long as it is warranted and not longer. Try going about your day without bothering or inconveniencing others– you know don’t park over two spots, put the gym weights back in their place, clean up after yourself. Don’t be an asshole, if you will.
Help people who need and deserve it. This may include friends, family, neighbors, charity, or simply give your seat to the elderly on public transport and other small acts.
In life you should contribute and pull your own weight. Make enough money doing things other find useful. Try to leave the world better off. Build more than not destroy. Try to leave for the next generation a little more than you received. You know plant a tree though you may not get to rest under its shade or some such hippie nonsense.
Fuck whoever agrees to it while single – age of consent may vary. If you commit to a person, be faithful, as long as you are not in an open relationship. Your kink may vary, but it’s all good when consensual.
If you don’t want a family, you should save enough to cover your needs in your old age. If you do, take care of them properly. Raise your children right. And by this I do not mean strict, or severe nor do I mean lax. Find a balance. And as long as your parents raised you right, take care of them in their old age.
In general, try keep a measure of control of yourself. Avoid alcoholism, severe drug or gambling addictions and so on. Educate yourself. Take some risk on occasion. Take care of your body, at least to a point. Basically don’t be obese and lift weights. Running is for socialists, libertarians deadlift. Also practice hygiene and body odor control.
Be a good friend to your good friends. Keep your word and pay your debts.
All this in general of course. I could go on, but leave the rest as an exercise to the readers. I realize people have bad luck, make bad choices, take risks and lose. This does not necessarily make them bad people or immoral or anything. I have my failings and do not live to all these principles (When I look back upon my life… It’s always with a sense of shame). But I think these things are to strive for. One may fail but one must have a goal, something to aim at.
So how about you fellow glibs? What are your principles beyond the boundaries of “fuck off, slaver.”
I like this article, makes a lot of sense, but
Some thing are beyond the pale.
Also, First!
Without broadly shared values in line with what you list, Pie, there will be an insatiable demand for a Total State of some kind, as a society without those kinds of values can only continue if people have a boot on their neck. Somebody here posted that “Russians seem to believe that freedom means freedom to commit crimes” – that kind of society will demand a dictatorship.
As far as your question, I live my life like a SoCon, but I’m not religious.
I also have no tolerance for people I can’t trust.
I recently had to get a new AC installed for my downstairs and my boss told me that when his went out he called a home warranty company and waited a month and then they installed it for him. He cancelled as soon as he was eligible.
To me, this was a dirtbag move and I couldn’t bring myself to do it, so it cost me $5500.
Part of me felt stupid, but my wife said she was glad I’m not that type.
To me, this was a dirtbag move
Yeah, it was, even if it was technically allowed under the contract. I also suspect he had to lie about when the AC broke, since I don’t think home warranties cover stuff that was broken when you signed up.
“was broken when you signed up”
Wait until we get the Affordable Home Warranty Act passed.
His defense was that it’s not his fault they didn’t check it when he signed up.
He also seemed genuinely confused that I wasn’t going to try it.
“I did nothing wrong because I didn’t get caught”. Sounds like a sociopath to me.
I know a guy who bought an AC motor and returned the package with the old motor to save himself maybe eighty bucks. Scumbag.
I was at a birthday party for one of my 10 yo son’s friends and the host told us about buying a shed from Home Depot.
He loaded it himself from the lot and because of a mix up they called him a week later to tell him it was in.
He went there and picked up another shed free of charge. He was laughing because they called him on it the next day and when he tried to deny it, they told him they had video of him loading both of them so he returned it.
This guy was a Captain in the Navy!
I figured out pretty quick we would never be friends.
Shockingly, he got divorced a couple years later because he was cheating.
“Sorry, bub, I’m just not comfortable buddying up to someone who tried to commit a felony. I’m old-fashioned that way. Oh, and don’t bother asking to borrow anything from me, either.”
I don’t understand doing it, and I also don’t understand talking about it.
I would think he would be too embarrassed, but apparently not.
A non-hypothetical parallel, what would be the appropriate response in this situation:
A customer (me) orders a custom shirt from an online retailer. The package ships and vanishes into a void at FedEx with really wonky tracking results (constantly leaving a location and never arriving anywhere). After a month said customer trys to get help from FedEx, fails gets fobbed off by every helpdesk he can reach, then contacts the retailer. Retailer created duplicate of original order and ships it, new order arrives promptly. Months later, FedEx finds the original package and delivers it. Shirt is one unit of custom stock that would be difficult for the retailer to sell to a different customer.
I would contact the retailer and see what they say.
In this case you acquired one through no fault of your own, not actively trying to steal a freebee.
Exactly. The odds are very high the retailer will just say to keep them both. The (other) difference being you asked, and they agreed.
That was exactly my experience with Land’s End, and it was a reasonably pricey set of hiking boots. Customer for life.
“Bank error in your favor: collect 1 shirt”
I’ve had that happen with several packages over the years (usually around the holidays). I’ve always contacted the shipper, in several cases they’ll provide a shipping label to return it. Others, they’ve said to keep it.
Eh, there’s a difference between fraud and lucking into a situation. Granddad didn’t make the distinction, with the result that he once turned a twenty dollar bill that he’d found in a parking lot over to the store manager. That’s absurd. And maybe I’m rationalizing, but it surely more of a headache for the retailer to deal with you again just to return a shirt.
I agree it’s a shitty thing to do. On the other side Home warranty company’s are generally terrible to deal with. We got one when we purchased our house(paid for by seller). AC went out just before a heat wave. HW company sent out a contractor. They were required to attempt to repair the appliance before requesting a replacement. Contractor knew right away that it needed replacement but he had to attempt replace it. 5 days later after the repair didn’t work he was able to order a replacement. Replacement unit had to come from the HW company so it took another 2 weeks for delivery and install. Temperature ranged from 90 to 100 during those two weeks. HW company abruptly canceled our policy shortly after.
Companies* before I get a smart ass comment.
In before Ted. Wise move.
*points and hisses at error*
Damn it! I quit! Just need to stop posting from my phone.
That’s why I would never get a home warranty.
Better to save your cash for when you need it so you can make all the decisions.
Yup, only took it because it came with the home purchase. I was very close to just paying for it out of pocket just so I could get a better unit and have it installed by someone I know. I will say the contractor did a great job with the install. So I lucked out there.
The first year in my current house, I had a home warranty from the realtor. The only issue I had that year was that the heat stopped working in the middle of winter. They sent somebody out, but the cost of the diagnosis was under the deductible so I paid for it out of pocket. It turned out there was something wrong with the flue. Whereupon, I then learned that home warranties don’t (or at least, my policy didn’t) cover chimneys and flues. So I then had to shell out for that to get fixed. I did not renew the policy.
Thanks, Pie.
I really like most of what you wrote, but I’m gonna challenge the part about lying. It seems to me that it is a habit that does as much harm to the liar as to the mark. Also, living a better life generally requires less lying (to use your sister-n-law banging example), so I think a lot of lying usually comes with a bunch of other issues.
Don’t be an asshole, if you will.
Pretty much sums up my thoughts. Really fucking hard to live it, though.
Sometimes being an asshole is the best option.
I try never to be the first one to be the asshole. But if you come at me as an asshole, you are gonna get that back twice as hard.
No euphemisms.
#ditto
I see a lot of people around me who go out of their way to be an asshole and just SMDH. How can someone live like that?
I used to go to township/county board meetings, sometimes to fight for what I thought was an unjust infliction upon me and sometimes to remind the board that it was taxpayer money they were using to support what I considered frivolous. Ex: The local library wanted a township donation, I argued against it and laid $100 on the table and asked the board members to personally match it rather than use tax payer money. No one did but the motion died. Same thing for a fireworks donation, motion was tabled. I didn’t even go to the fireworks display. My presentation was in an asshole mode but I wanted to show that those things were not a function of government.
I argued against zoning laws and won one time.
Ex: The local library wanted a township donation, I argued against it and laid $100 on the table and asked the board members to personally match it rather than use tax payer money. No one did but the motion died. Same thing for a fireworks donation, motion was tabled.
/furiously scribbles notes
Well… that’s a different kind of asshole 🙂
I mean asshole just for the sake of it – generally in pursuit of some selfish*, unearned goal. Examples: Blocking the exit door on a subway car. Taking two seats when people are standing. Stirring shit up and causing unnecessary drama. Etc. etc.
*and not the good kind
You knew the risks when you took public transit.
I’ve noted there are plenty of assholes on the road, too.
Yeah, well, I know the risks whenever I start my car.
I’ve said it before, I’m a social and fiscal conservative.
*jugemental glare at the degenerates around me*
Me, too, for values of social conservatism that don’t include using the Almighty State to enforce my preferences. I tend to have old-fashioned values about a lot of things, and I wish others did as well. As long as their crap values don’t step on my toes, though, I don’t care that much. And, yes, me having to bail you out for the foreseeable results of your crap values counts as stepping on my toes.
Do you have your glaring gloves?
Also, I finished Beyond the Edge of the Map.
Really enjoyed it, looking forward to the sequel.
I’m glad you liked it. Feel free to recommend it to anyone else you think would enjoy it.
Sequel is in progress, about 1/5-1/4 done being drafted.
“You’re not a real Libertarian!”
I’m not a libertarian, period. Never claimed to be.
GET HIM!
How many libertarians will respond to that call?
Too local?
https://reason.com/2019/07/16/dumb-minnesota-beer-law-punishes-successful-breweries/
Note to self: finish next damn beer history article.
It is actually relevant to this, as it is a discussion of post-pro 3 tier laws.
Practitioners of proselytizing religions and/or religions with imperial ambitions, which comprise right around 2/3 of the human population of planet earth, can’t very neatly separate the two (I’d argue they can’t really separate them at all, but people can rationalize anything). Which is among the reasons why libertarianism remains confined nearly exclusively to the subset of secular humanists who have not accepted dialectical materialism as their political philosophical framework.
I’d argue they can’t really separate them at all
Nope. “The personal is political” is the motto of totalitarians.
Or perhaps the motto of zealots, which is precisely what a religious person should be. Christianity can have it both ways in some regards since Christ’s kingdom is supposed to be of the world to come rather than the present, although the call to proselytize even to the point of martyrdom is clear and unambiguous. Islam is explicitly political.
I don’t know. I’ve known plenty of religious folk who are willing to live and let live.
Hi!
Hello
I know that you didn’t single out any religion, but I would argue that nothing about what JESUS said demanded an enforced morality or lifestyle over non-followers. We, Christians, were to follow his teachings and help lead and shape us. Even Paul (not my favorite apostle) in a letter to one of the early churches said the Christian lifestyle was not to be forced on non-practitioners as it would make no sense to a non-practitioner.
Certainly there are centuries worth of examples of Christians or people claiming to be Christians using the Bible to dictate, judge, marginalize, torture, etc others. I think for many people that thought process is still there first knee jerk reaction
True that Christianity requires no political statehood in the same way as Islam, however, the instruction of Christ himself to preach the gospel to every corner of the earth is not truly compatible with a philosophy of non-intervention. Christ never called for state persecution of the non-believer (although the historical circumstances of Christianity’s birth probably had as much to do with that as anything, and he never really explicitly precluded it either), but every believer is obligated to, at the very least, have no personal tolerance for immorality and to admonish the non-believer to change his ways. Moral relativism is not really an option for the proselytizing believer.
That’s why you wouldn’t catch Jesus dead with a bunch of thieves or prostitutes.
There’s a colossal difference between ministering to sinners and tolerating their sin. Jesus never told the thieves, tax collectors, prostitutes, money changers, and adulterers “Here’s what I think about morality, but I mean, you do you bruh”. You can be peaceful about telling someone that their behavior is going to send them to hell if they don’t repent (although Christ wasn’t always that either), but you can’t really be accepting, pluralistic or tolerant.
Snake aside, I think we’re talking different levels of tolerance then. I see nothing inherently illibertarian about telling someone they are wrong and what they do is wrong, as long as you don’t seem to impose “righteousness” on them through the sword.
Snake aside…
The asshole that started it all.
I tend to agree. I don’t think “non-intervention” means “never say nothing to nobody”.
It’s not so much the non-intervention, it’s the separation of the moral from the political. It’s possible to compartmentalize and rationalize away any inconsistencies, and most Christians in the West certainly do, but it’s definitely not the way Jesus lived his life. He wasn’t in favor of putting the sword to the non-believers, but he was in favor of subsuming them into a Christian fellowship. As a practicing Christian, if you’re unbothered by the immoral behavior of your neighbors, you’re not really all that Christ-like.
“he was in favor of subsuming them into a Christian fellowship”
I think you are confusing Christians and the Borg.
“if you’re unbothered by the immoral behavior of your neighbors, you’re not really all that Christ-like”
I think you have a point in that loving your neighbor, a Christian should be considerate of their fellow man’s salvation, but I think their is an emphasis on loving your fellow man rather than busybody zealotry.
As a practicing Christian, if you’re unbothered by the immoral behavior of your neighbors, you’re not really all that Christ-like.
Being bothered by something, and making it political (in the sense that it should be the business of the state to put a stop to it) are two different things. Not enough people see that, true.
Christ didn’t say “Do whatever Caesar tells you”. He said something much more nuanced: “Render unto Caeser that which is Caesar’s”. Even the reading of this as meaning something more than “Pay your taxes” poses the question of just what is, properly, Caesar’s. And he sets it up by following up with “Render unto God that which is God’s”. He was pretty clear, I think, that there is a limited sphere for the state.
“Go and sin no more” is advice, it isn’t a violation of the NAP.
It’s an ultimatum, really. And it’s certainly an imposition of one’s moral philosophy. Traditional Christianity just isn’t pluralistic. No religion worthy of the title is.
Context:
At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. 3 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4 and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
9 At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
11 “No one, sir,” she said.
“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
It’s an ultimatum, really.
Only if He said “Go and sin no more, or else.”
Traditional Christianity just isn’t pluralistic.
Its not. But being “not pluralistic” and being “not tolerant” are two different things. You can believe that your religion is the one true faith without persecuting non-believers. A definition of “tolerance” that requires you to never say nothing to nobody is way too narrow. You can tolerate somebody’s wrong ideas and still try to persuade them to change their ways.
Contra the SJWs, “tolerance” of something doesn’t require celebration of it. It merely requires non-interference. And I don’t count persuasion as interference.
There’s a pretty big “or else” there in that it means you’re going to suffer eternal damnation. That’s the implication inherent in all Christian ministry.
That’s the crux of it I guess. I don’t think you can really separate the two in the moral sphere. You’re either a moral absolutist or a moral relativist. If you’re a moral absolutist in your personal religious philosophy (and you should be, or else your religion isn’t worth a hill of beans), it’s difficult to shift into moral relativism where public policy is concerned. The ability of post-Enlightenment Christianity to acclimate itself to moral relativism is in large part why you’re now seeing Christians so surprised to find themselves getting kicked in the theological nuts by the political boot in most of the Western world.
The golden rule doesn’t require moral relativism.
I want to be left alone to live as I want, so I will leave you alone to live as you want, you dirty sinner.
I still have to disagree. Jesus and the early Church and current missionaries are non-interventionist*. The current approach by the Lutheran church and I think other traditional synods is to be present in a community. Creating a medical missions and schools that are open to all and using the opportunities in those institutions to build relationships first and then introduce Christianity. Completely voluntary, no force involved.
Considering that Jesus dined, spoke, and hung out with the margins of society Mary (was a prostitute), Matthew the tax collector, the poor and ritually unclean, and that he elevated a Samaritan (the arch-nemsis group of Jews at that time) in his parable of the Good Samaritan show that his style of proselytizing was not to exclude, ridicule and deride. Violence was not his way and his words and actions show that.
I have my own personal morality that is my own. Based upon the teachings of Jesus. Churches locally and nationally have covenants and expectations of behavior, speaking for the Lutheran church this is for the leaders. So this would be the only time morality is foisted on another. But this is no different than any other community groups rules and expectations that they develop for themselves.
*Yes I purposely left out the Church from 300 to 1950. Constantine’s conversion to Christianity was probably the worst thing for the Church and helped marry the State and the Church leading to much bloodshed and twisting of Jesus’ teaching (or outright making things up) for centuries.
Largely non-interventionist, sure. But not tolerant, not pluralistic, and not relativistic. Those are post-Enlightenment additions to Christianity (which I strongly suspect will result in the total disappearance of Christianity from Western society probably within my lifetime, almost certainly within 2 generations). Jesus himself took the strap to the money changers and made no illusions about his purpose in Matthew 10.
Jesus himself took the strap to the money changers and made no illusions about his purpose in Matthew 10.
Honest question: was that because they were money-changers, or because they were defiling a temple?
Little from column A, little from column B probably. In those days lending for interest was proscribed in the Jewish tradition (and would be so for the next 1500 years in the Christian tradition as well until the Catholic church realized that the world’s largest horde of assets plus compound interest made the power of Christ seem downright pedestrian).
Not just defiling a temple. Defiling HIS temple. He was claiming ownership as God incarnate.
I don’t know what is more tolerant than Jesus eating with tax collectors and prostitutes. You can tolerate something AND tell them they are wrong at the same time.
Tell them that their behavior is wrong because of the harm it does them – the individual.
That’s a pretty loose definition of tolerance, IMO. Christ went to the sinners for the same reason Willie Sutton went to the banks, but he was anything but tolerant of their sinning. Of course being god incarnate as the theology goes, he was pretty persuasive in his conversion efforts.
he was anything but tolerant of their sinning
That’s an important point, He would not abide the sin (the actions / motivation) in their life and loved those people enough to appropriately and boldly call them out on it.
That is a tough nut for us mere mortals to crack.
Live within my means, while striving to make my means greater.
Be a good father to my children and a worthy husband to my wife.
Try and continue to learn.
Be as nice and polite to others as they have been to you.
Don’t be dishonest in any business dealings.
Work hard.
That about sums up my personal moral code. As far as a code for anybody else, my preference is that everyone follow my lead, but as that is not going to happen, I just want everyone else to follow the NAP. Dont steal from anyone and dont agress against anyone. As long as they do that, their lifestyle choices wont affect me.
Yesterday my wife was watching some English TV show about a Vicar and his personal struggles mixed in with the usual TV drama. I think the story takes place in the 1950’s. I noted to her that I hated every character in the show. Why? The lead character, the Vicar, has a woman in love with him and he with her I suppose. She has been disowned by her family for having a child out of marriage. She needed a husband, her child needed a father. Rather than stand up and be a man the self absorbed little chickenshit moans and whines about himself agonizing for a whole season of the show and in the end is unable to resign his position in the church and face possible scandal. I don’t know who wrote the script but Christ, how is that guy a sympathetic character in any way?
After I put it that way she agreed with me.
I have little respect for a man who won’t raise his own kids.
There are a lot of shitty things one can do that I can overlook, but abandoning your progeny is not one of them.
Generally speaking, if you are the kind of person who wont take responsibility for your children, there are going to be tons of other things I will find detestable about you too.
It is shockingly common, at least where I live, for children to grow up without their father as a significant figure in there lives. It is sad, and heartbreaking, and infuriating.
I told a story on these pages about damn near having to kill one of these deadbeat motherfuckers a few years ago.
One thing though, Suthen’s synopsis never said the Vicar was the father of the child.
I don’t actually disagree with anything else you said.
I assumed. Possibly incorrectly.
I agree 100%.
Once I got into a discussion when a coworker claimed he was as good of a father as I was because he paid child support to his two “baby mommas” every month, even though there was no court order.
He saw no benefit to him knowing the kids or being involved in their life.
Also he was proud that his current girl was pregnant.
“It’s different this time”
Real dialogue alert: That was the real dialogue.
“he paid child support”
We didn’t even get that after my parents divorced. Never saw my father after the age of 3.
He saw no benefit to him knowing the kids or being involved in their life.
Sounds like he may have been correct.
When you put it that way, you might be right.
I fought and got sole custody of my kids. My wife/wife’s family had problems that were insurmountable and the judge agreed.
Then came alimony….
Lachowsky, I’d revise only one thing in your statement: …if you are the kind of person who won’t take responsibility for your actions…
My biological grandfather was a deadbeat who left my dad and his family when he was little. I’m named after my step-grandfather who came in and gave my father love and attention. It made a huge difference in his life to have a male figure in his home.
One of the things my sister and I learned from him was how important it was to raise your kids and be around.
Pie,
We seem to share similar outlooks on life. I didn’t think this was unique in others, but when one starts to scratch off the surface veneer, it seems more rare. Once you start learning more about someone you find lots of exceptions to their live and let live attitude, honesty, and or integrity.
Little things like the insurance fraud mentioned above or statements like “I don’t care what anyone does with their lives as long as it doesn’t affect me or hurt others, BUT XXXXX is where I draw the line.
There are others that are outwardly shitty people and seem to be proud of it. My neighbor is waiting for another neighbor’s felled tree to fall completely prior to contacting the owner, so it damages his fence and he can get him to buy him another for example. I call this everyday shittyness.
have you thought about calling the neighbor yourself?
I have though about it. The guy who owns the land has trees on his property that cross over my fence and touch my shed. Every fall I shear off and prune everything hanging over that will interfere next year. I toss the limbs on his property. There is a tree that seems to by dying this year that would fall into my bedroom and crush all of my vehicles. So I’m going to try to contact the owner. He is an ambulance chaser lawyer, so I have concerns.
I’m contemplating buying the lot and building a garage on it.
If that was my lot, I’d be grateful that somebody contacted me and warned me that I was in danger of having to pay for a lot more than cleaning up some trees if I didn’t get on it. The trick would be phrasing your warning as a friendly reminder, rather than a threat.
“Man, you’ve got a tree that I’m worried about. Looks like it may come down and land on my bedroom and garage.”
v.
“If you don’t take down that tree you are going to be buying me a new bedroom, garage and a couple of cars.”
I would as well. I’m hoping he feels the same. Once I have a free day or two i’ll look up his business address I’ll try to contact him. I’ve seen the big tree next to my house as nice enough but poorly maintained (it’s a cat piss tree as well; Bradford pear). Now its has little to no leaves compared to most years and is starting to look sickly.
I think Bradford Pears are notoriously short-lived and prone to dropping branches. Nasty things. I’ve never had one, but even though I love me some trees (as someone who grew up in the Texas Panhandle where there are very few trees), I would cut one down on my property in a heartbeat.
I never met anyone from west Texas that I didn’t like; something about high desert folk
Thanks Dean. I remember the shocking lack of trees in SE Texas, Mesquite was more like a large bush.
One of the few things I don’t like about Tucson is the lack of real trees. When we lived in West Texas, we were close enough to the Hill Country to have live oaks. I had some real grandfathers on my property. That’s a proper tree.
Sheesh, I’m just waiting for the power company to cut my neighbor’s tree, so I don’t have to foot the bill directly for trimming branches touching my roof that are tangled with power lines. (They’re supposed to be doing tree cutting in our area for the next month starting yesterday). If that thing fell over, it’d probably cost more to extract the money from my neighbor to cover the repairs than I’d manage to get.
I mean, I’m footing part of the bill every month, even for other people’s powerline trees.
The power companies around me are brutal in their tree trimming ways. You see trees that look like the letter Y going around the lines. There’s a couple of streets where it looks like someone put a cube around the power lines and just chopped off any branches that would have been in the cube. They’re nearly all cut with a perfect rectangle around the power lines.
They’re nearly all cut with a perfect rectangle around the power lines.
That’s . . . impressive.
Just checked the street view images, they show the trees going around the power lines. I’ll see if I can snap a picture. It’s amazing, it’s like someone put a woodchipper on the power lines and just sent it down the street.
I can only hope. Because all of the branches that are reaching my roof are also entangled with the power lines. If they clear them out, I only need to clean up my house rather than find someone who’ll even touch that job.
http://imgur.com/gallery/5simu9j
Power company did this to the best looking tree in my yard last year.
The aggravating part is they typically won’t take the tree down when you ask them to. As it was put to me, “It’s cheaper if it falls over and we just have to replace the pole and clean up.”
That’s hideous.
I did laugh at the title though.
Scrolled down and saw this one:
https://m.imgur.com/gallery/8DzqSYA
Reverse driving skills, legendary
You might as well cut it down. What direction is prevailing winds? I see that thing tipping over or simply dying. The roots on that side will be affected and won’t hold ground properly anymore.
I assume the tree was there before the power line, but best advice is never plant a tree such that full grown crown and line easement intersect.
A lot of trees are not intentionally planted, and just managed to survive to grow in that spot. We’re not all Ents (sorry, Suthen)
I was going to reply to myself and add something like “or allow trees to that grow wild to achieve such height that they are more expensive to remove”. I guess I should have with you around…
/pokes harmless fun at UCS
“Once you start learning more about someone you find lots of exceptions to their live and let live attitude, honesty, and or integrity.”
That’s no shit right there. I would go so far as to say that their appearance as a decent human is all an act, an act they put on just enough to keep out of jail or being shot.
Sadly, familiarity all too often breeds justifiable contempt.
“an act they put on just enough to keep out of jail or being shot.”
If that’s the case then I guess we really do need a big strong government to keep all the crazed masses in line.
“If men were angels…”
Once you start learning more about someone you find lots of exceptions to their live and let live attitude, honesty, and or integrity.
I have a lot of skeletons in my own closet that persist to haunt me, even unto this day. I will carry those secrets to my grave.
Was a reply to Timeloose back in 9. Forgot the quote marks around the first paragragph. Now more skeletons, hope Ted’S doesn’t catch it
He is probably still busy going through my paragraph up top. I left a lot of typos in it.
I’m not usually on the noontime posts because of work.
Consider yourselves lucky. 😉
You should be ok, you didn’t type skeleton’s or anything like that.
I think everyone does. The striving is to try not to add any more.
One of my acquaintances asked why I forgive people so easily and my response was that I’ve fucked up quite a bit myself.
My forgiveness is limited to those who are actually trying to change. I’m not able to let someone skate forever on endless “I’m sorry, I’ll do better”s. At some point, you run out of second chances.
As I said to my son, I don’t want to discuss the past behavior, it’s of no use hashing out exactly who’s responsible for what. What I want to know is what you’re going to do from this point forward.
My Mom used to always say that she’s okay with mistakes, but what she wasn’t okay with was us making excuses. Own up to your fuck up and strive to never do it again.
Please! Please! This is supposed to be a happy occasion! Let’s not bicker and argue about who killed who. We are here today to witness the union of two young people in the joyful bond of the holy wedlock. Unfortunately, one of them, my son Herbert, has just fallen to his death.
But I don’t want to think I’ve not lost a son, so much as… gained a daughter!
Sorry, got a little carried away.
Stoicism should be the default philosophy of the libertarian.
Oh yeah. That’s why my brother and I don’t talk anymore. I can deal with you fucking up a couple of times, but if it becomes the norm, the I sorry’s lose any sort of value to me.
That was a reply to UCS.
Who hasn’t hit the wrong reply button at least once?
…oh, right, Brooks. He’s never hit any reply button.
I think he’s accidentally replied before and was not happy with himself.
I have a lot of skeletons in my own closet that persist to haunt me
I hear ya. Although I like to think that I haven’t been adding them at quite the rate I used to.
*drafts letter telling patient I will have her arrested if she sets foot on hospital property again*
What?
Well, if said patient endangers others or impedes their care in a manner that endangers others, or perpetuates fraud against the hospital, or fraud against people in the hospital, I can see needing to ban them.
We all have things were not proud of, but I’m referring to habitual dishonesty in business and personal affairs with no remorse. Typically some half assed justification like “they can afford it” when they defraud.
I learned from having two trees fall in my old neighborhood at separate times. It is generally considered an act of God and your own insurance pays for damage.
My tree destroyed neighbors pool. His problem.
His tree destroyed my deck and gutter. My problem.
We agreed to stop throwing trees at each other after that.
What are your principles beyond the boundaries of “fuck off, slaver.”
Treat the orphans well.
Keep the monocle polished.
Copious amounts of drug-fueled, latin-american anal coitus.
Guns guns guns.
Under that heading, I just got one of these as an early birthday gift for myself. I took it shooting this weekend.
I like it a lot.
Treat the orphans well.
You go too far, sir. Too far!
Do a cost-benefit analysis. With the current price of orphans, and the reduced productivity as their health wanes, it costs less to maintain them at some basic level of livability than the have to keep sourcing new ones.
*instructs accounting orphan to do ROI on gruel rations and current orphan acquisition rates. approves 10% increase*
I find that having a set of principles limits me in future endeavors, so I tend to avoid them whenever possible.
AOC I’d that you?
Personally, I’d say that I don’t particularly approve of vices, although I won’t pretend I don’t exercise a host of my own. What can I say? Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays virtue. But, as you say, just because I don’t approve of something doesn’t mean I think it should be illegal. The key element of it is that a man’s got to at least try to live with the consequence of his choices. And, too often, people get into the habit of lying to themselves about what the source of those consequences is. Beyond that, I’m pretty much in agreement with you. Don’t be a jerk. Try to be a good person. All the usual.
One of the things I never really got was that there seems to be a segment of libertarians who think that, unless you actively approve of a particular vice, you’re somehow not credibly a libertarian on the issue. This seems to me to get it completely backwards. Any deranged statist can be okay with people doing something he likes. It takes no commitment whatsoever to personal liberty to go along with it. The real test of someone’s commitment to personal liberty is his willingness to accept people doing something he finds totally abhorrent (provided, of course, that it doesn’t violate anyone else’s rights).
“Go right ahead. Its your funeral.”
“Not my circus, not my monkeys.”
Like that?
Pretty much.
*cough* cosmos *cough*
The secular humanist origins of libertarian philosophy that I mentioned above has a lot to do with it. An anything goes morally relativistic philosophy is going to be of primary appeal to iconoclasts and libertines. For those of a more traditional bent the only thing offered by libertarianism is liberty to do things they’d never do in the first place, and it’s hard to get most people to care real deeply about that.
A logical consistency was the appeal for me, not tacit approval for my hentai habit.
The same for me, to the extent I’m a libertarian anymore (or ever was I guess). Most can live with some cognitive dissonance though. Libertarianism is almost like a reductio ad absurdum of traditional liberalism, and even if it works as a thought experiment for a lot of people you’re going to run into special pleading and just plain apathy. It’s well and good to say that you ought to be able to ingest whatever you want or sell your body for sex on the principle of self-ownership, but where that intersects with most people’s actual day to day lives is that they don’t really want hookers and crack heads accosting people at the corner of Pleasant Lane and Happy Drive out in suburbia where they are raising their kids, and you can’t really blame them.
It’s not that they’re hookers and crack heads, it’s that they’re accosting people on our street corner.
they don’t really want hookers and crack heads accosting people at the corner of Pleasant Lane and Happy Drive
That’s true. But, a big part of the reason the hookers and crack dealers are accosting people on the corner is the fact that their work is illegal. In a legal regime, you’d probably see them gravitate to online sales or some other less obtrusive marketing technique.
some other less obtrusive marketing technique
We’ll know we’ve arrived in libertopia when we get crack-head hooker robocalls.
This is always the claim, but I doubt how true it would be in practice. The illegality guarantees that a given occupation is ceded to the seedy, of course, but it doesn’t necessarily run the other way ’round. It would, however, probably become more manageable – the way that adult video stores and liquor outlets work now. Nobody wants one next door, but as long as they stay in a seedy corner of town and it doesn’t spill into the neighborhoods where the people who pay the property taxes live then it’s tolerable.
Are you sure? Because the liquor stores are not relegated to seedy areas where I live.
Though the upmarket ones do stock a lot of fermented grape juice to cover up the fact that 1/3rd of the floor space is hard booze.
There may well be some variance. Where I used to live we had state monopoly liquor stores that looked like something out of 1940s USSR, and where I live now pretty much everywhere except the exclusive gated communities is seedy anyway. I’d still say as a general rule though that it’s one of those things people would rather not have in their backyard.
There’s an adult store in Norfolk.
The sign says “Romantic Boutique” and it’s name is the Pink Banana.
Makes me laugh every time I drive past.
Do adult video stores even exist anymore?
Ron’s story reminded me of when I used to work across the street from a bar called The Pink Pony, which was painted bright pink. This made almost everyone assume it was a strip club, but it was just an ordinary bar.
We have an Adult Superstore warehouse that’s about 4x the size of the local Walmart out here, but then we also have 3 legal brothers within 20 miles.
No autocorrect, I really meant brothel, not brother
“Because the liquor stores are not relegated to seedy areas where I live.”
Also not in NYC. I think we just have so many of them that they are found in all kinds of neighborhoods.
Are you saying the internet killed the video store?
Where I used to live we had state monopoly liquor stores that looked like something out of 1940s USSR,
I think I found your problem.
it’s one of those things people would rather not have in their backyard
By “one of those things”, do you mean any retail establishment? Because from what I’ve seen, NIMBYs can and do object to anything. I think the group of people who would object to a liquor store, but be perfectly fine with another business with the same traffic and hours, is very small.
Hell, we had a multi-year struggle with NIMBYs about adding a couple of floors to a wing of our hospital.
I actually think it stems from the same thing you talk about above. A lot of people think they are libertarian but want celebration of their lifestyle. It’s not enough that you don’t interfere.
For those of a more traditional bent the only thing offered by libertarianism is liberty to do things they’d never do in the first place…
But, that seems to me a static, one-time, view of things. And one that doesn’t really capture reality. I mean, if you take a look at libertarians generally, well, consider Ron Paul. There’s about as traditional, old-fashioned a personal life as you’re going to find. And there are a lot of guys pretty much like that (Tom Woods comes to mind.). And, ultimately, I think it libertarianism makes a lot more sense for a traditionalist than any other approach when you look on it on an iterative basis. You can expand the role of government to try to make people be good. But, doing so changes the rules. It says the government can get involved in people’s personal lives to push policy. And who’s going to have the more intimate relationship with government, the people who make solid life choices that lead to happiness and success or the people who make poor life choices that wind up requiring subsidy.
Ron Paul is an interesting example. He’d pretty well exemplify that traditionalist libertarian, but that’s not much what his support base looked like at a national level. Traditionalists generally think he’s a kook even when they agree with him while the hippy college kids went wild for him. I think that’s probably typical of a traditionalist mindset. You might get agreement in principle, but you’re probably going to get very little practical buy-in because it’s very easy to tolerate or ignore injustice perpetrated against someone else for something that will never affect you personally.
“… the only thing offered by libertarianism is liberty to do things they’d never do in the first place.”
For me it has always meant self-ownership and the liberty to make my own decisions….and live with the consequences of those decisions. I really don’t have time for libertinism or infringing on other people’s rights, I am too busy trying to keep my own shit in order.
^ This. In spades.
For those of a more traditional bent the only thing offered by libertarianism is liberty to do things they’d never do in the first place, and it’s hard to get most people to care real deeply about that.
I have to disagree. Libertarianism allows everyone, even those who have high personal standards, the liberty to do what they want provided it doesn’t interfere with the rights of others. The unrestrained state is capable of, and has, outlawed and punished all kinds of things that even a traditionalist would say weren’t immoral. And that’s without even getting to the ability of the unrestrained state to require you to do things you believe are immoral.
Right, I should say more specifically that the traditionalist in a more or less traditionalist society generally doesn’t have anything to gain personally from a libertarian governing philosophy, and at the same time there are seen benefits of certain vice laws (vs. the unseen consequences). Nowadays you are starting to see traditionalists adopt some libertarian language and postures (if not general principles) as they begin to find themselves in the minority. Everyone’s an individualist when it’s their ox being gored. But seeing as the most visible libertarian policy consequences concern vice, it’s a hard sell for people with few vices. The old Mencken quote about constantly defending scoundrels comes to mind.
the traditionalist in a more or less traditionalist society generally doesn’t have anything to gain personally from a libertarian governing philosophy
I would agree with that. In that society, the state is unlikely to step on the traditionalist’s toes because they share values.
The wise traditionalist understands that they share values, for now.
unless you actively approve of a particular vice
This is part of the corruption of the meaning of “tolerance” in contemporary society. It’s no longer live and let live, it’s now “Goddammit, you had best enthusiastically endorse the actions of every freakshow on earth or else you’re a racist/bigot/homophobe/whatever” Personally, I often found potheads to be annoying and I never got much from the stuff the times I tried it in my youth (opiates and amphetemines, now that was another matter). If/when it finally gets fully legalized, I’m not going to take up the habit. The point is, however, that other people getting high doesn’t affect me. If they want to do it, then good luck to them. I don’t want anyone imprisoned for doing any substance they freely choose to take, I don’t want money taken from my pocket to prosecute and jail them. I’d be perfectly happy if no one chose to do anything more than the alcohol I drink in moderate quantities. I prefer to stay in control of my wits and emotions. If others don’t, though, who the hell am I to tell them not to?
I try to be courteous to the people whose paths cross mine, to be honest in my dealings, and to show gratitude to those who perform a service. Those are the things that are within my control.
Not sure I understand this bit:
If the best she could do is either hooker or toilet scrubber, I would prefer toilet scrubber.
Does that make me a bad person?
What are the hours?
Toilet scrubbers work more hours to make the same rate early in their career, but more stable earnings long-term, as most hookers suffer a dramatic drop-off in earnings after five to ten years.
Toilet scrubbing hookers retain their appeal for older men.
One of the odder clips I’ve found online was a homemade one with the guy plowing away from behind while the woman continues to scrub the floors. Everyone’s got their turn ons, I guess.
Middle-aged guy is sitting at the bar when a beautiful, young prostitute approaches him.
“Hey there, just want to let you know. For a hundred dollars, I’ll do anything you want.”
“Anything?”
“Yes, whatever your dirty little mind comes up with.”
Guy reaches into his pocket and pulls out a hundred bucks.
“Here you go, paint my house.”
Toilet scrubbers tend not to be found strangled in dumpsters. Hookers, on the other hand….
Just tell all the hookers to stay away from suburu’s and they should be alright.
I took it as a variant of the old saying, “Just because you can do something doesn’t mean it is to be done.” I want my daughter to discover the cure for cancer and then become filthy rich from her memoirs, but that doesn’t mean I think if she decided she wanted to be a hooker that she should go to prison.
No where in there did I say hookers should go to prison.
I hold them in the same regard as strippers.
Should be legal, but I think that kind of work destroys your soul.
I have known far too many strippers to believe that.
Of course, there’s always the possibility of selection bias — that the current and ex-strippers I maintain relationships just happen to be the ones with regenerating souls.
I admittedly haven’t known many, but the ones I did know were just kind of empty.
There’s probably a better way to describe it, but I’m not very eloquent.
Train wreck. (although my n is only 2)
There are strippers that are like that, of course. And there are women who’s life was and once again becomes normal that get into the stripping biz when their life has gone off the rails if for no other reason that it’s a job that you can do while having a chaotic life.
The mother of my goddaughter was a stripper for… 4 years? when she was late teens to early 20s and had a shitty deadbeat (but extremely charismatic — he actually won Forged in Fire one season) boyfriend. When she ditched him and didn’t have to deal with his “I’m an artist!” drama, she got into a different line of work and eventually got a degree in mathematics O.O
On the other hand, one of her friends is STILL a stripper after…a decade? But for her it was always just a job, not a lifestyle.
the current and ex-strippers I maintain relationships
You people lead more interesting lives than me.
I managed a band in Austin. Strippers came with the territory.
Thanks for the article Pie!
I try to live a stoic/Christian life and sometimes I’m successful and other times I come up short. I’ve failed myself and others at times but what I’ve learned is that you’re going to fuck up or make mistakes despite having the best intentions. But the worst thing you can do is not learn from those fuck ups and try to improve yourself as an individual.
To me the political is: what would I be personally willing to use violence to get done.
The personal is much more complicated, but excludes the use of violence.
+1
excludes the use of violence
Except in defense of myself or others.
Well… Yes. I think I confused the two points, but I was saying that political philosophy/morality inherently touches on what I would use violence to enforce vs personal philosophy which I might advocate others follow, but don’t force.
One of my econ professors said it best: If you aren’t willing to put a gun to your neighbor’s head if they broke the law that you’re advocating for, then maybe that law shouldn’t exist.
Why would I do that, when all I have to do is call the sheriff?
Its the outsourcing of violence to the state that makes all the myriad laws we live under possible. No individual is ruthless enough to enforce .01% percent of what’s actually in the books.
Even in a minarchist state that would probably still be the case though. Few have a constitution for violent confrontation. If you don’t outsource the violence you just end up with the most ruthless guy bullying the rest into submission. 6 of one, half a dozen of the other.
“you just end up with the most ruthless guy bullying the rest into submission”
AKA “the state”
Exactly, that’s the whole point. It’s the linchpin of anarchy too, IMO. You can either have the state, or the state by any other name. The only advantage of the state is that you might at least get some input into the administration, and it’ll be horribly inept. The only advantage of the state by any other name is that if you can buy a bigger army you might be able to displace it someday.
“The state is the mafia, pretending to be a human rights organization.”
/Dave Smith
In a proper minarchist state, I would probably be willing to ruthlessly enforce a good 50% of the laws myself. Maybe more.
Billboard: “Barking dog problem?”
Actually I like to hear my neighbors’ dogs barking, I know the dogs are at home and dogs are doing what dogs are supposed to do.
I didn’t blame the bear that got my bees, I blamed myself. He was only doing what bears are supposed to do.
My Grandfather: “You don’t blame the wolf for being a wolf, but you still have to shoot him.”
I feel better now.
But do you blame the bear for pooping in the woods.
The bear is like my kids, spends 1/2 his life asleep.
Government is just the guns that we put to peoples heads together
I’ve heard a variation of that except it was your grandmother instead of neighbor.
Always made a lot of sense to me.
It seems like most people trust the system too much to ever envision that happening.
This is why libertarianism is so hard to get people to understand. People (right, left, liberal, conservative, socialist, communist, Team Red, Team Blue, etc.) view the government through Statist lenses. The government exists to make prescriptive limitations on people’s lives. Libertarianism is the *absence* of any such prescriptive aspect, save the NAP which is really just this absence of coercion expanded from a governmental level to an individual one. Beyond that “do what thou wilt, that is the whole of the law”. Thus:
1) People can’t grasp the difference between tolerance and prescription (“Legalize heroin?! Why would you want to encourage people to shoot smack?!?!? WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN?!?”)
2) (Most) people are extremely uncomfortable with freedom. Since true freedom requires responsibility, most people would rather give up the freedom as long as it means they can give up their responsibility at the same time. It’s a fundamentally infantile approach to life, but it’s easier and gives people the peace of mind that someone else is piloting their life.
Earlier, I talked to a coworker about the guy arrested in LA with 1,000 guns, not sure why he brought it up today.
He was flabbergasted at the number and could not wrap his head around the fact nothing he did should be a crime. (as far as we know, it was possession of “assault rifles”, short barrelled rifles, and unlicensed selling)
It also blew his mind that in Virginia, there is no limit on the number of guns you can own, and none of my guns are registered.
“there is no limit on the number of guns you can own,”
I wonder what people would say if you questioned them on why limiting weapons is a good policy? It doesn’t make sense. Should we limit the amount of cars a person can own?
Should we limit the amount of cars a person can own?
Proggies everywhere just orgasmed simultaneously.
Don’t ever say that out loud again.
Rules are rules. Lots of jurisdictions don’t want vehicles/trailers parked outside. I guess that huge motor home you have makes the locals jealous so they force you to park it over at the storage unit.
Even though I live in the woods I like a little neater yard, want all the stuff inside and out of sight. There are a lot of other opinions but not my problem but I don’t want any rules for them either.
/Sarc/
I asked if he would be ok with cops going to everyone’s house to count weapons and I think that helped him realize it’s unenforceable without the Stasi or some equivalent.
An equivalent like your co-worker?
Things like that are disheartening and scary.
People are disheartening and scary. That’s why this socialism bullshit needs to be clipped right the fuck now.
What Tundra said. The people advocating for it have no idea what the fuck they are talking about…except the cynical sociopaths that know it and want it.
The people who advocate it always think that they will be on the right side and the bad things will only happen to people they consider enemies. I’m sure men like Trotsky, Bukharin, Zinoviev, and Liu Shaoqi never thought the beast they created would turn on them.
Chip: That is because they are morons. All they have to do is look at history. It ALWAYS turns on them. The people who hunger for power can never have enough. At some point they acquire the power to kill off any potential competitors. That’s when people start turning up with ice-axes in their heads or in a gulag in front of a firing squad.
“If you see some…”
I was pleasantly surprised at the Hanover Tomato Festival this past weekend by how many people I saw wearing “Guns Save Lives” stickers being handed out by VCDL members at their booth, including quite a few minorities.
Precisely. I came to the conclusion a while back that if each one of us lived by the Golden Rule, or the Confucian version of it and abided by the ramifications thereof, 99&44/100% of government would be unnecessary.
If men were angels, laws would be unnecessary.
And Victoria’s Secret would suck.
Took me a minute, but I got it.
And since men aren’t Angel’s, we damn well better not entrust one group of men to rule over the others.
It’s such a simple concept, yet people willfully refuse to see what’s plainly true. Everyone thinks Congress sucks, a lot of people think the president sucks, yet almost all of them fall all over themselves to advocate giving more power to those people they can’t stand.
It’s different when my side does it!
If we all lived by the golden rule we would not need any government at all. Garbage collection, water, ambulance….all of the functions of govt could easily be privatized.
A fun discussion I’ve had is with people who are A-OK with legalizing pot but recoil in horror when I tell them I support legalizing every substance on earth that humans inject, snort, smoke, or swallow. Your first point is a universal response – “You would want your kids to shoot up/snort coke/smoke meth????”
Well, no, of course I wouldn’t. I don’t want them to be drunkards either. I hope they see the value in sobriety and always being in control of yourself, which is a lesson I had to learn through occasionally painful experience. I just recognize that taking away someone’s freedom for doing something that doesn’t directly harm anyone but themselves is wrong. If my kids DID go down the wrong path, I certainly would do everything I could to help them leave that behind. I would want them to understand how self-destructive many drugs are. Know what I wouldn’t want? I wouldn’t want them to be imprisoned for making such a mistake. I wouldn’t want them to carry the black mark of a criminal record around for the rest of their lives, costing them other freedoms such as the freedom to own weapons with which to protect themselves. And, from a purely utilitarian perspective, prohibition certainly hasn’t kept anyone away from narcotics despite costing obscene amounts of money over the past 80 years or so, so what’s the point?
That’s right. Prohibition has not kept anyone off of drugs and honestly, that isn’t the purpose of it anyway.
“You would want your kids to shoot up/snort coke/smoke meth????”
“No. Do you want your kids thrown in jail if they do?”
prohibition certainly hasn’t kept anyone away from narcotics despite costing obscene amounts of money over the past 80 years or so, so what’s the point?
Wasted money is the least of prohibition’s sins.
Very true, which is why the utilitarian argument is a minor bit tacked onto the end.
I would add:
3) People are now conditioned to government taking care of those truly in need. Without government programs, and your tax dollars to fuel them, people would die in the streets.
Nah they wouldn’t.
Some would, undoubtedly. These structures weren’t put in place because no one was suffering any negative consequences. You have particularly tough cases with the chronically mentally ill homeless, for example. Government systems fail them just as surely, but the abstraction means that nobody has to feel any direct responsibility.
While the premise that government welfare causes dependency is something I can buy, I think you’re exaggerating.
My mother was a social worker. Used to run Catholic Charities of Dallas. They hooked people up with government services when available and helped them when they weren’t (which sometimes happens because the rules are arbitrary and shitty).
Ain’t no fucking church in America that is just going to let some hungry person starve to death. People aren’t just going to step over those who are dying and go about their business.
We have not fallen that far yet.
I agree w/ the philosophical idea that the state removes personal responsibility, but we aren’t there yet in our own.
The church I grew up in would have. While simultaneously shipping off tens of thousands of dollars to central America and lecturing the congregants about how America’s poor haven’t got shit on the third world and therefore don’t really deserve our efforts. But they were pretty special pieces of shit in that and most every other way.
Good grief. What kind of church is that?
*The joke in most of Latin America is that if you want to find missionaries find out where the 14yo hookers are.
Those same people are dying in the street now.
Too many choices of deodorant to stand a chance of acquiring food.
Well I can’t just sit idle while people are doing things of which I do not approve even if they do not affect me, now can I?
“Indeed not, sir. And we have a wide range of political parties that agree with you – you can be a Democrat or a Republican. Both are eager to go after people who do things they don’t approve of regardless of whether it affects anybody else. Why, even our irrelevant fringe parties are mostly on board with that – even the so-called Libertarian Party will tell a baker to bake that cake.”
And John McAfee wants you to know Cuba doesn’t have any homeless, but America does.
Pretty sure I’d be better off being homeless in the US than lower middle class in Cuba
*facepalm*
Did he really say that? I bet they get all of the free healthcare they need and there is no squalor either.
I. guess they are not going to extradite him if he keeps up the spin.
Yes he did:
John McAfee
@officialmcafee
·
Jun 24
I have none. Communism here in Cuba was never given a chance to reveal its potential of lack of it. It has been strangled by the US for 63 years. I will say this – Cuba has no homeless. America has millions.
In the interest of further shitting up this thread, another obvious problematic intersection of personal morality and politics would be abortion. If you believe abortion is the deliberate taking of a full human life then there are obvious political implications that can’t be handwaved away under the NAP (as the Libertarian Party attempts to do in its national platform on the issue). With that I must bid you adieu.
Algebra.
Just beating Neph to this post.