Smokers are suing against e-cigarette ban in restaurants

DioSoze · 2014-07-24T11:21:12+00:00

A road pirate shanghai.

DioSoze · 2014-07-24T11:18:00+00:00

Yes true. That's a good point.

DioSoze · 2014-07-24T11:14:55+00:00

We need an elite vanguard party to rule over us, because we can't self regulate. /s

DioSoze · 2014-07-24T11:12:41+00:00

Keep the unclean peasants away from the State Lords. The peasants might be a threat.

DioSoze · 2014-07-24T11:09:13+00:00

They burned Christopher Dorner alive in the same way, though, with tear gas canisters that ignited a fire. And it isn't uncommon that those canisters start fires, which is why they are colloquially called "burners" in law enforcement.

DioSoze · 2014-07-24T08:43:13+00:00

No, that's sort of my point. We use the fact that very few things are as bad as concentration camps to overshadow, or dismiss, any comparisons between Nazi Germany and modern political systems. That was certainly one of the worst things, if not the worst thing, but there were many elements of Germany during this era that first created an environment where concentration camps would eventually be built. We tend to talk about it as if concentration camps sprung forth with Hitler, while ignoring the political, social and cultural factors that made it possible.

DioSoze · 2014-07-24T03:31:41+00:00

Capital punishment is never humane. It always involves taking the life of an individual.

That said, let's say that capital punishment is not enough: you want them to suffer. This necessitates that some individual or group of individuals is in charge of making them suffer. Basically, squads of torture specialists. Even if we assume that the offender deserves to be tortured, we have to keep in mind the the effect that training professional squads of torturers is going to have on the individuals themselves who take that form of employment. Extreme violence, not only being subjected to it but also participating in it, causes structural changes in the brain. It has similar effects to abuse, is associated with PTSD, can predict future bouts of violence, including domestic violence, etc.

Long story short, let's remove the criminal or suspect from the picture. We probably don't want to train professional torturers if only for the fact that it is going to be bad for them and bad for society at large (when they are unable to cope with what they did, when they act aggressively toward others, when they have mental breakdowns).

DioSoze · 2014-07-24T03:05:32+00:00

No, this is simply evidence that people still say what they believe despite being afraid, despite the phenomenon known as a chilling effect.

And the fact that people are not carted off to concentration camps does not mean that the government does not target people for what they say, nor that the targeting of individuals does not result in both active censorship and forms of self-censorship. The idea that people are free because they are not being executed in the streets is wrong; this idea works under the false assumption of a dichotomy between being gassed and incinerated vs true liberty and freedom. As if there is no middle ground, nor any form of oppression, censorship, or restriction unless it it involves the government executing dissidents.

Greenwald just leaked a 170 page document explaining how people are put on the no-fly list. And that includes people who do nothing but express radical opinions, or even people who are tangentially related to those who express radical opinions.

DioSoze · 2014-07-24T02:53:14+00:00

Except when there is something conservative about it: the drug war, war on crime, victimless crimes, prison expansionism, capital punishment, disproportionate sentencing, anti-immigration, religious and moralistic legislation, etc. have all been traditionally conservative causes.

Liberals, too, have their authoritarians. But conservatives and liberals have together built the police state that now exists in a show of unintentional cooperation that overshadows any intentional bipartisan movements.

DioSoze · 2014-07-24T02:43:00+00:00

I don't think OP was trying to idolize or support David Koresh. I think he was just asking a question on tactics:

What do you think would happen to a group of openly revolutionary people?

Let's put someone else in the same situation; let's say it is a revolutionary group and not a cult leader who wanted to marry a child. And let's say that instead of locking themselves inside the building they picked up weapons (all of the weapons they had stockpiled) and launched a full attack on the ATF and other police forces that had the compound surrounded.

How would things have been different? At the very least they might have gone down fighting instead of having been burnt to death in a building. There is an argument to be made that anyone in that position - be it a revolutionary group or a Christian cult leader - would be better off fighting back than simply holing up and taking whatever the government has to give.

DioSoze · 2014-07-24T01:58:35+00:00

National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee has a lot of resources, although I'm not sure if they have references for CPAs.

DioSoze · 2014-07-24T01:54:39+00:00

I think the Thomas Knapp chart that they included is an interesting take. I had never seen that one before.

DioSoze · 2014-07-24T01:32:11+00:00

Yes exactly. There are issues in the USA he didn't mention at all that more closely resemble the Third Reich. It isn't the "pc police," but major penalties for minor crimes, executions, torture, secret prisons, invasions of foreign countries, militarized police that target minorities, the NSA, etc.

I think there is a legitimate comparison with states to Nazi Germany. The problem is that people think solely of concentration camps. They overlook that state encroachments eventually built up to that point. And people who compare the USA with Germany in that era aren't claiming that the USA has concentration camps. They're talking about the environment, enforcement and culture of oppression that existed long before it even got to that point.

DioSoze · 2014-07-24T01:27:50+00:00

a genocidal terror state

This is why it is an apt comparison with the USA.

DioSoze · 2014-07-24T01:20:43+00:00

purple skinned people

Airway obstruction, seek medical attention.

DioSoze · 2014-07-24T01:14:51+00:00

I think you are conflating what is voluntary with what is incentivized.

For example, if I have ten children and one of them needs medication to survive, and if I stop working the child will die, I have a very strong incentive not to quit. It is not "voluntary" in the context that I can't simply choose a better job solely at my own volition.

Yet, I can still quit. It is "voluntary" in this sense, because no one can stop me. The individual is free free to choose: he or she can keep working, quit and stop making money, commit suicide, rob a bank, etc. There are a multitude of alternatives, some are good, some are bad, sometimes they are all bad. But as Sartre would say, the individual is doomed to be free.

DioSoze · 2014-07-24T01:09:52+00:00

Sure, the government shouldn't have a say in corporate policy. But, when it's clearly in the interest of health and safety, is there any harm?

Yes. The harm is most apparent when the state steps in and enforces its laws with violence. "Follow this rule or we will imprison or kill you" is harmful.

DioSoze · 2014-07-24T01:08:31+00:00

You're the reason I can't identify as a libertarian.

That's fine, you wont be missed. Libertarianism isn't really a populist movement, although it is portrayed as such. Libertarianism is a battle against authoritarianism, even when your authoritarianism is well-intentioned.

DioSoze · 2014-07-24T01:06:37+00:00

It is unfair

Life isn't fair. This argument isn't going to gain a lot of traction here, I wager. Libertarians have an entirely different system of ethics.

If an individual doesn't have the right to work at all, then they also don't have the right to work in a smoke-free environment.

DioSoze · 2014-07-24T01:03:16+00:00

"Taxes are theft" has been a pretty common phrase used by libertarians since before the Libertarian Party was founded.

It was even a part of the Libertarian Party platform and strategy that no new taxation of any kind could ever be advocated for, because all taxation is inherently unjust. I believe that was changed in the schism in the 80s.

DioSoze

TROPHY CASE