Face Mask Tyranny is Here — Egged on by Lawless Politicians

Communists! Socialists!

Denying these anti-American commies from allowing business owners from maximum money in from minimum effort!

This plan are ending America's capitalist success!

 

In the face of that devastating pandemic, the judicial branch seemed to adopt a non-justiciable, political question-type approach to local health measures in an emergency. Typical is the Supreme Court of Arizona’s pronouncement, “Necessity is the law of time and place, and the emergency calls into life the necessity … to exercise the power to protect the public health.” In 1905, the U.S. Supreme Court had called for just such deference in Jacobson v. Massachusetts. In the midst of a small-pox outbreak, local authorities could mandate vaccination on penalty of a fine for refusal: “Upon the principle of self-defense, of paramount necessity, a community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members.”
https://www.acslaw.org/expertforum/face-covering-requirements-and-the-constitution/

 

I used pond because it is easier to picture, but maybe a river would be more realistic - I am sure, as a farmer, you could see a situation where multiple farms use the same river and pollution from one could very easily impact others downstream.

The classic "tragedy of the commons" example that I used is a hypothetical collective action problem that assumes people will only choose to do something when the benefit outweighs the cost. And, of course, in the real world many people are not going to simply abide by that very strict analysis or perhaps it is more accurate to say that the benefit in many situations is a lot harder to define.

So, for example, the rec center that you mention - the benefit to those volunteers and the people cleaning the facilities is pretty much non-existent in terms of monetary or other tangible rewards like prizes. Instead, the benefit is probably more vaguely related to a sense of pride in "doing the right thing" or being seen as a "good neighbor" by the community. Some people probably do it because they are simply bored and get pleasure from the cleaning of a place that isn't their home. Either way, of course that type of situation can be a very good thing.

But it can also go south quickly in the absence of a central authority or enforcement of payments. I am sure you might know of some people, even within the group of volunteers, who does more cleaning than the other volunteers. What if that person gets resentful at the fact that they aren't being rewarded more for their disproportionate efforts? What happens if those few stop cleaning and the rest of the volunteers refuse to start working harder because they have other things to do? If a couple of groups refuse to clean up after themselves, what motivates the next group to come in and clean up multiple events worth of crap?

 

I think most people are ignorant of what government does. They don't even think about it.

 

I’m a raging socialist. One of maybe 3 on this whole site. You and others just don’t see it because you are scared to death of real socialism. You hate it with a passion because it requires exactly what I’ve outlined with my example—responsibility.

 

Contrary to what you’ve obviously been led to believe, farmers don’t trash everything they own. An intermittent river runs through almost every piece of property I own or lease. It’s headwaters are in my pasture about 15 miles from where I live. If I throw trash around in my pasture at the headwaters it ends up in my fences at home. If I pollute the river with chemicals or fertilizer upstream it can harm me or my animals at home 15 miles away. I understand your looking for a good analogy but you are using weak analogy and that’s considered by many to be fallacious argument. Pick something you know enough about to form a strong analogy.

So let’s recap quickly. You offer weak hypothetical analogy to show there has to be central control. I describe a real situation that shows the opposite of your premise is true. My example has been common continual practice where I live since the early 1880’s. As I said, none of what you think will happen has happened.

You’ve now offered another weak analogy to address my post and presented hypotheticals about bad things happening. But in 140 years of existence those things haven’t happened.

What motivates us to keep this successful for 140 years? The things you dislike. It’s kids growing up with responsibilities at home. Responsibilities like caring for young animals. Animals that will grow up to feed you or fund college. But if you neglect to care for them once, just once, that animal you spend hours a day grooming and training and have grown to love will die.

What motivates us? Moral principles on property rights. Because our very existence depends on our property/land we respect our own property and the property of others. Because we understand what that property means to our neighbor we treat it like our own. Community centers are both our property and the property of others. We respect that.

What motivates us? We worked for what we have. Each new generation sees the work that goes into building or maintaining anything. Some community centers are in very old buildings. The one closest to me was built in 1890 I believe. I could be off a year either way. There are pictures on the walls of the fathers, grandfathers and great grandfathers of today’s volunteers. The oldest generations built the buildings with their own hands. Because we know who are fathers were, we wish to maintain what they built in their honor.

Give a kid a toy. See how he treats it. Make a kid work to buy his own toy and see how he treats it differently.

I suppose I could go on some more but hopefully you get the idea. You believe what actually works here can’t work because you despise the very things that make it work. You have attempted to remove from society the things necessary for such things to work. There are openly stated attempts happing right now aimed at destroying the foundations of successful decentralized socialism I’ve outlined above. They are praised by progressives. It’s clear there is a hatred for real socialism. Thanks for helping me shine a light on that fact.

 

Seat belt tyranny is here! No shoes no shirt tyranny is here!

 

Actually, what you describe is anarchy which is the perfect form of government. Sadly, for it to work greed has to be largely eliminated first so socialism is a step in that direction but has to be done in such a fashion that "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is respected. Towards that end the baby step is closing the wealth gap. When people recognize there is value in everyone we'll be much better off.
I had an argument in college with a Professor of Education Policy Studies. He argued that vocational-ed was used to track non college bound students from courses that could better help them intellectually. "Don't know what else to do with him, put him in shop." And since very few High Schools have the resources to do real vocational training he has a point. I taught machine tools (metal shop for adults) in a community college and my budget for drill bits was more than the same town's high school entire metal shop program. However, I contended that while true that extra math and science helps all students overall I felt that integrating shop into math and science classes would help the "tracked" students appreciate the subjects AND help the college bound understand that blue collar jobs take more smarts than they realized. A good mechanic can tell you what's wrong with your car by the time you park it in the bay, can tear down the engine, fix it and put it back together without ever consulting the net for instructions. Think just how much actual thought processing goes into that.

 

True. Sad but true. I think it varies by individual but believe it is apathy, modern distractions and the education system.

 

I think if you look closely at your links, you will see that they apply to the internal affairs of the governing body, and not to the external affairs of the general citizenry. The general citizenry might be secondarily affected by the EO, but not directly so.

For example, Trump is currently trying to cut the payroll tax by EO, which would directly affect the inner workings of the US Treasury and their revenue stream, but would only indirectly affect the general citizenry, since they would not be required to do anything, other than to reap the benefit of lower taxes.

However, I think raising the payroll tax would be outside the limits of an EO, because that would actively require the citizenry to pay higher taxes without a legislative act to justify it, a form of tyranny IMO.

 

Trump also says he can extend the extra $600 ( that his Chief if Staff Mark Meadows has been sabatoging) by EO

I doubt he has that power

 

Sounds like Wickard v Filburn, the end of enumerated powers and beginning of tyranny.

To the extent that both find excuses to expand central control

 

Sorry to be unclear!

I was being very sarcastic in my post, that post was eminently sensible as far as I am concerned.

I feel about half of everything should be socialized, like health care.

 

I won’t argue that point. But I steer clear of the term because it stirs up images in people of riots, destruction and chaos. The concept of anarchy has been intentionally destroyed. Sad, but that’s how it is.

Can’t agree with that. Anarchy, if that’s the term you want to use, exists in my real world example in the midst of greed. What you are really referring to that can’t exist in large measures is envy. Greed can drive individual success, and envy can as well. But it’s usually envy that leads to violation of property rights. And your quote in bold is textbook violation of property rights.

Nope. In my real world example, after a function involving the whole community, there are multi millionaires working alongside people who don’t know where next month’s rent is coming from. And there is harmony and camaraderie. The wealth gap is an excuse for the envious to violate property rights.

I agree wholeheartedly with this.

 

Cool. But I’m a “voluntary socialist”. I’m for socialized healthcare for those that want it. But I expect the people that want it to pay for it! That’s where the wheels usually come off for most people who think they are socialists.

 

Yeah, I see.

Kind of like if someone's house is burning down the firemen will put it out as soon as the homeowner writes a certified check to pay it, or if a baby needs heart surgery mom and dad gets the money out, or if a neighboring country decides to annex a county in a adjoining part of Texas or California to take over their oil wells, the oil well owners need to send many to the Marines to sent troops to Mexico to stop the incursion!

Oh, wait, this last example is wrong. In fact, ALL Americans will be required to pay to stop the Mexican annexing of the oil company owners, those owners won't have to spend a DIME to be able to get their oil wells back.

And which is socialism? I get confused.

 

I agree. Presidential edicts should be about procedure in the administrative branch. It should never involve the powers of other branches. Taxation is in the domain the House of Representatives.

 

LOL, no you probably never will, but we’ll keep offering you the opportunity.

In the same block or one over from the community center in the towns I’m describing sits a building housing the all volunteer fire department.

No, others who have joined the same medical cost sharing organization pay.

So you support paying for a fire department you will likely never need. You support forcing others to pay your medical bills. But you hate the oil industry benefiting from public funds. How is that logical? If it wasn’t for fossil fuel industries you would be out hoeing corn and potatoes on your sustenance farm. You would have started at daylight and stop after dusk. This winter you would ration those potatoes so you didn’t starve to death.

You don’t like subsidizing the industry that makes all the great things in your life possible—transportation, food variety on the cheap, housing, communications, well, everything. Yet you support the fire department that you will likely never benefit directly from.

And I’m guessing you don’t know why you are failing to grasp how illogical that is. It’s because of envy. You don’t envy the fireman or covet what he has because it’s similar to what you have. Even though you will likely never benefit from his services. Conversely, you covet what the oil executive has because he went out and did something you weren’t willing to do to acquire wealth. He provides you with a service millions of times more valuable to you than the fireman, but you still have feelings of envy.

Textbook definition, none of what we’ve discussed is socialism as @StillBlue correctly pointed out. Socialists never agree on what the true definition of socialism is. But it almost always boils down to “I want what I’m not willing to earn for myself”. That’s where I’m different. I don’t care what you call it. Anarcho-capitalism? Voluntary socialism? Who cares. I’m not concerned about definitions. Just showing voluntary associations that benefit the entire association are not dependent on wealth equality, central control, or absence of greed.

 

Individual success can and should be driven by ambition just as innovation can and should be driven by curiosity. Greed is just a mindset that we've come to accept. Take your community center. You've collectively made it clear that selfishness and greed are not acceptable and it works. Ambition drove man to the moon, curiosity got him there.

Since what I've been saying is anarchy is the ultimate government, ie none at all, we're discussing utopia and it requires that mankind leave behind the old paradigms.

For those new to the concept. Anarchy is not chaos and library bombings. It can be highly efficient and productive. For it to work though all people have to have a mutual respect for each other. Total respect for the individual's right to property for example. Let's say it is decided that for the good of society a new road needs to be built through farmer Joe's property. They can't just declare eminent domain as there is no state so they need farmer Joe to go along. He could refuse but then at the same time he should realize that he should agree to the construction because it's for the benefit of all his neighbors. Mutual respect and cooperation. The library bombings and chaos was because some thought that the only way to achieve anarchy was to eliminate the existing infrastructures. A better way in my view is to work towards building mutual respect for all and to reject greed as a driving force.

 

I’m open to you making a good argument for being able to separate ambition from greed. I maintain you can’t in reality.

Anarchy is not utopia. Nothing is utopia. Utopia is rainbows and unicorns and has no place in these discussions. Anarchy isn’t even the absence of rules, only the absence of rulers.

Agreed.

The actions of these looters and arsonists prove they aren’t interested in anarchy. If you don’t have the morals to respect property today, you aren’t going to respect property tomorrow just because the rulers are gone. The best way to anarchy is to form voluntary associations and start practicing it. I’ve shown how effective it can be. We don’t have to eliminate all existing government to start practicing anarchy at the interpersonal and local level. Some is better than none and none is what we are going to get from the clowns in the streets today.

 

Masks? What about all the Karen mask monitors?

 

Why do we need a mandate for this? Has anyone not seen a store or public building that has a sign saying you have to wear a mask to enter?