LIBERTARIAN: I beleive that individuals have a right to do anything that doesn’t impinge on the common-law rights of others

Friday, November 1, 2024

https://internationalman.com/articles/doug-caseys-top-five-reasons-not-to-vote/

Doug Casey’s Top Five Reasons Not to Vote
by Doug Casey

<< EDITOR ADDED DATE 2024-10-31>>

*** begin quote ***

Democracy is vastly overrated.

The national elections this November 5 (Guy Fawkes Day, FWIW) have every chance of turning into a chaotic catastrophe. I’m not, therefore, going to discuss either candidate. Let’s instead talk about principles. That’s something few people discuss these days.

“Democracy” is not like the consensus of a few friends agreeing to see the same movie. Most often, it boils down to a kinder and gentler variety of mob rule, dressed in a coat and tie. The essence of positive values like personal liberty, prosperity, opportunity, fraternity, and equality have little to do with democracy. Those things exist because of free minds, free markets, and limited government.

Democracy, by contrast, focuses people’s thoughts on politics, not production, on the collective, not on their own lives. That’s not good.

*** and ***

A libertarian believes that individuals have a right to do anything that doesn’t impinge on the common-law rights of others, namely force or fraud. Libertarians are the human equivalent of the Gamma rat, which bears a little explanation.

Some years ago, scientists experimenting with rats categorized the vast major ity of their subjects as Beta rats. These are basically followers who get the Alpha rats’ leftovers. The Alpha rats establish territories, claim the choicest mates, and generally lord it over the Betas. This pretty well corresponded with the way the researchers thought the world worked.

But they were surprised to find a third type of rat as well: the Gamma. This creature staked out a territory and chose the pick of the litter for a mate, like the Alpha, but didn’t attempt to dominate the Betas. A go-along-get-along rat. A libertarian rat, if you will.

My guess, mixed with a dollop of hope, is that as society becomes more repressive, more Gamma people will tune in to the problem and drop out as a solution. No, they won’t turn into middle-aged hippies practicing basket weaving and bead stringing in remote communes. Rather, they will structure their lives so that the government—which is to say, taxes, regulations, and inflation—is a non-factor. Suppose they gave a war and nobody came? Suppose they gave an election, and nobody voted, gave a tax, and nobody paid or imposed a regulation, and nobody obeyed it?

*** end quote ***

Credit for the picture to where I found the definition.

https://americanhandgunner.com/our-experts/guncrank-diaries/year-of-the-gamma-rat/

I hope I’m a gamma rat.  Wish we could all be such. 

Dona Nobis Pacem

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GOVEROTRAGEOUS: Biden, and his inept team; has managed to fuse China and Russia while destroying the USA as a power in the world

Tuesday, March 28, 2023

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11889045/Democracy-Western-leaders-paving-way-autocrats-world-author-warns.html

EXCLUSIVE – The DEATH of democracy: As Xi Jinping declares ‘change is coming that hasn’t happened in 100 years’, expert explains how inept Western leaders are paving the way for autocrats to take over the world by failing to tackle domestic issues

  •     Democracy is in a fight with autocracy for control of the future, author warns
  •     Charles Dunst says it is in danger of losing unless it rapidly gets its act together 

By Chris Pleasance for MailOnline
Published: 03:45 EDT, 22 March 2023 | Updated: 07:07 EDT, 22 March 2023

*** begin quote ***

Taiwan has fallen to China. The war lasted years, cost tens of thousands of lives, and ruined the economy – but that was a cost Xi Jinping was willing to pay to write his name into history.

America fought back, but despite having the superior military there was simply too much political division at home and amongst its allies to put up a proper defence.

Beijing’s iron will won the day, and the world has taken note. Autocracy has triumphed over democracy. The war of ideals has been lost. 

It is Xi’s world now. We just live in it.

That is the apocalyptic vision put forward by expert Charles Dunst in his new book Defeating the Dictators as he warns that democracy is now in a fight with autocracy for control of the future, and is in danger of losing unless it rapidly gets its act together.

*** end quote ***

I think Biden has eclipse Jimmy Carter as the “worst” in my life time. 

By failing to cut spending, he has destroyed the dollar.  By his sanctions, he has empowered Russia to form global coalitions to the detriment of the USA.  And, probably worst of all, he has exposed the USA and NATO as powerless in the Ukraine.

One can assume that the bio labs in Ukraine and the meddling of the USA in the Ukraine leadership forced Putin to take action to protect his people and country. The bribery from the Ukraine and China has created a fog of mixed motivations.

It’s hard to imagine ANY actions that the next President can do to reverse this disaster.

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POLITICAL: Picking “legislators” by lottery — couldn’t be any worse?

Wednesday, November 16, 2022

https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-case-for-abolishing-elections/

The Case for Abolishing Elections
They may seem the cornerstone of democracy, but in reality they do little to promote it. There’s a far better way to empower ordinary citizens: democracy by lottery.
Nicholas Coccoma

*** begin quote ***

Why lotteries and not voting? The Athenians weren’t fools; they learned through bitter trials that elections are tools of elites. Having seen the Athenian experiment himself, Aristotle noted as much. “The appointment of magistrates by lot is democratical,” he observes in Politics, “and the election is oligarchical.” Lotteries go straight to everyday people and bring them into power; they circumvent the designs of aristocrats, resist corruption, and don’t favor one group of citizens over another.

*** end quote ***

I think that we should pick US Senators the osd fashioned way by eliminating the Seventeeth Amendments.  And US House Reps by a random drawing like the Lotto.  Everyone who’s willing can get one ticket and, if they win, they get a small salary to represent the district; one term limit for sure, then they return to their real life.

It couldn’t possibly be any worse than what we have now.

I’d like the Pepuls Republik of Nu Jerzee to have a lower house selected by a random draw from the general population and an upper house selected by a random draw from only taxpayers.

Like any of this could happen!

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VOCABULARY: new definition of “Democracy” — rule by a self-identified elite, or people endorsed by that elite

Wednesday, October 5, 2022

https://mailchi.mp/tomwoods/denew definitimocracymeaning?e=39307912ab

*** begin quote ***

This is how their modern counterparts can say, in all seriousness, that they’re “saving democracy” even when they’re sabotaging officials who won democratic elections. In case it sounds like they’re contradicting themselves, they’re really not. They are democracy. They and their colleagues and cronies and so-called experts are democracy, and the stupid rubes who won’t just bend the knee to them and do as they say are the enemies of democracy.

Have a future in mind that doesn’t involve crippling energy prices, eating bugs, having your kids brainwashed, and watching central banks siphon away your wealth? Why, you may be a danger to “democracy,” citizen.

As Sam Francis wrote back in 2004, “What they mean by ‘democracy’ is nothing more than the system of dominance that came to prevail in the United States and the Western world in the last half of the last century. That system has nothing to do with elections, opposition parties, civil and political rights, or ‘liberty,’ nor does it have anything to do with political theory, ancient or modern. ‘Democracy,’ as the neocons and the President and most others who are enthusiastic about it use the word, means the centralized leviathan state under the firm and unqualified control of the managerial bureaucracy and those political forces able to influence it.”

*** end quote ***

Certainly not the old definition of “democracy” which was basically mob rule.

Argh!

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POLITICAL: Using the Electoral College model to eliminate “democracy”?

Friday, June 3, 2022
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4065581/posts

GOP Candidate’s STATE-LEVEL Electoral College Idea Could Help Rural Areas — and Kill Vote Fraud
The New American ^ | May 21, 2022 | Selwyn Duke

Posted on 5/23/2022, 12:17:44 PM by Ebenezer

*** begin quote ***

In 2019, the Democrat-controlled Colorado Senate joined a liberal-state pact designed to eliminate our nation’s Electoral College system. Now a Colorado gubernatorial candidate is, far from just mounting a defense against this, taking the offense:

He has proposed instituting an electoral college within his state.

It’s an idea that not only could help rural Centennial State counties, but also could virtually neutralize vote fraud’s effectiveness. The Washington Examiner reports on the story:

One candidate in Colorado’s gubernatorial election has called for eliminating its one-person, one-vote approach in favor of a state-level electoral college….

Greg Lopez, a Republican candidate for Colorado’s governor, has pitched the idea of using an electoral college-based approach for statewide political office, arguing the current system favors large cities at the expense of more rural counties.

*** end quote ***

The Dead Old White Guys hated “democracy”.  They saw the French Revolution mob chopping off heads.  

So this fellow seeks to have a similar construct to the Electoral College at the State level.

(I have no idea why the pundit class thinks that it’ll be unconstitutional. Since we have it at the Federal level.)

It would be interesting to try somewhere.  

The Pepuls Republik of Nu Jerzee has 21 counties and the “rural” ones are always out-voted by the corrupt city Democratic machines.  Imagine if each county got one vote tor governor regardless of the popular vote.  Might change the election calculus?

And, while we are at it, let’s repeal the Seventeenth Amendment (direct election of senators).  The old system was cheaper and gave the States their voice on unfunded mandates. 

Argh!

Not like any new idea will succeed until secession begins in earnest.

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INTERESTING: A gang with an institutional structure

Sunday, September 9, 2012

http://dailyreckoning.com/fifty-shades-of-government

Fifty Shades of Government
By Jeffrey Tucker

*** begin quote ***

This is the great tragedy of living under leviathan. People have different ideas about how it ought to conduct its affairs. Who should be rewarded? Who should be punished? Who gets the privileges? Who must bear the cost? It becomes a war of pressure groups, everyone seeking to live at the expense of everyone else.

What is this thing we call government? It consists of the gang with an institutional structure that makes the rules, enforces the rules, and lives by rules that are different from those it imposes on the rest of the population. We can’t steal, but government can. We can’t kill, but government can. We can’t counterfeit, kidnap, and engage in fraud, but government can. This thing called government, obviously, has a strong interest in maintaining its power, prestige, and funding.

This is true no matter what the structure of the government happens to be. Oligarchy, absolute monarchy, constitutional monarchy, presidential republic, parliamentary republic, democracy — all of them have one thing in common: They create a special caste of citizens that live at the expense of everyone else.

*** end quote ***

The essence of Libertarianism is that we need no such class. 

Each man, and woman, of course, is their own sovereign.

Responsible to keep their word and a free to bind themselves in any way they see fit.

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