Joe Spoor tells the story of how the state tried to rope his newborn into the system.
“Approximately 5 hours after Nolan’s birth we received our first non-relative visitor. It was a nurse carrying a packet of information instructing us how to apply for state financial assistance to pay for various medical bills, as well as continuing care for our newborn. We also received a letter informing us we must submit information for his Social Security card, as well as details on the wonderful programs like Help Me Grow from the great state of Ohio.
“Perhaps the most surprising thing in all of this was the attitude of those who were trying to peddle public assistance. They actually looked offended at our polite refusals, at our sense of responsibility in all of this. This entire experience of helping my son dodge the draft of Uncle Sam’s new public assistance army has been quite an eye-opener. Our nation is slipping away fast, and they are using our children as the crack in the door.” FULL ARTICLE
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I am actually suggesting that we end ‘free’ lunches.
And the vast majority of American’s DO want taxpayer funded lunches for school children. They save money over the long term. A child who stays in school, who otherwise wouldn’t due to lack of nutrition, will more likely end up as a productive citizen.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics:The median income for a high school graduate who had not continued to secondary education was $8,943. For a high school drop out, that income fell to $6,778.
From Urban Education, Vol. 26, No. 4, 401-422 (1992)
Dropping out and its Ultimate Consequence
A Study of Dropouts in Prison:
In a New York state prison, 79% of convicted male felons are high school dropouts.
And why should we provide this program through the government? Because government can tax everyone. Taxpayers benefit from educated neighbors (higher tax revenue, lower prison rate), but free riders wouldn’t pay by definition. Therefore it is in the interests of the members of the state to have the state compel said members to pay their taxes for this purpose.
Nelson, I would love to refute what you’ve written, but to do so would be pointless; it’s your entire worldview that needs refuting.
You view the state as the sheltering hand that protects us in our warm haven from the cold and fathomless evils that lie unseen beyond.
I view the state as the barbed wire walls of a tiny squalid cage forcing us upon each other to huddle in filth and hunger.
Why is my view right and your view wrong? That requires more exploration than a few paragraphs can provide, but I suppose it comes down to the non-aggression axiom – or the golden rule, or even karma, if you prefer. They’re really just different expressions of the same truth: what goes around comes around.
If you provide for your wants by way of violence, then no matter how indirect the chain, and no matter how many mob together with you, you WILL NOT escape the consequences of that violence.
Maybe someone else can argue this more convincingly in a line or two?
Nelson said, “And why should we provide this program through the government? Because government can tax everyone. Taxpayers benefit from educated neighbors (higher tax revenue, lower prison rate), but free riders wouldn’t pay by definition. Therefore it is in the interests of the members of the state to have the state compel said members to pay their taxes for this purpose.”
Taxpayers benefit from educated neighbors, but neighbors benefit from educating themselves. It is a mistake to assume that subsidized education causes crime rates to decrease just because criminals are uneducated. Correlation does not indicate causation. And if increasing tax revenue is good, increasing it even more is better, and in theory all production can be confiscated through taxation.
But the issue is one of morality. The benefits of an educated populace are not evenly distributed through taxpayers, and the benefits of a subsidized education are not equally beneficial to students. This means that there are taxpayers paying for benefits they can’t receive (Can one avoid the tax if economic conditions force you to go to a public school with criminals who are subsidized but haven’t dropped out yet?), and there are taxpayers receiving benefits that they don’t need (Is a high school diploma necessary to become a felon?) Because the benefits from education accrue mainly to the educated, students should pay for their own education. That way people who will not benefit from school don’t waste the resources of those who would benefit. In fact there is no reason to assume that schools don’t breed crime. After all, subsidizing felons so they remain in school hardly seems an improvement over holding them in jail.
If someone produces a good and it is known that it will have positive externalities, they have no right to force the recipients of these benefits to pay for them, unless said recipients in fact request their provision.
Nelson, are you a libertarian even?
So say the madmen:
“Quickly, more fire! The house is still crumbling! It’s working, but the crumbling is going faster than we can add fire to stop it! We don’t have enough fire yet! We must add fire faster! More fire! We must add more fire before the house collapses!!!!”
“Quickly, more government! Society is still unravelling! I think it’s working, but the unravelling is going faster than we can add government to stop it! We don’t have enough government yet! We must add government faster! More government! We must add more government before society disintegrates!!!!”
!!!!!! (shrieking)
PANIC!!!!!!!!!
Jean Paul:
It is quite improbable to reverse years of statist indoctrination in just a few lines.
Those that do not believe in liberty simply believe in the illusion that some mystical entity – a dictator or an institution which exists outside themselves and their neighbors will right wrongs and bring about a better world rather than than the reality that this entity will simply serve as just another life absorbing parasite.
Jean Paul, re your comments to Daniel (me), I just can’t agree that GOVERNMENT caused us to
worship celebrities via tabloids because it has somehow made us into zombie-like wage slaves. Nor will I try to “knock down the state” as you advocate. Rather, I believe many corporations will exploit us for profit to the edge of whatever limits we rationally impose upon them through elected government. And I will work to ask citizens to elect leaders who believe the rights of human citizens take priority under our constitution to the rights of paper entities.
Corporations are just another arm of the State, most of them anyway. They merely cater to the population’s desires. In a sense, JP is correct; the State is the client in that it plays a crucial role in shaping up future generations via the educational system.
And BTW, elected governments are themselves chief exploiters – they in fact aid statist corporations in pushing their agenda.
Daniel, like I said, the government didn’t do the specific things you protest. The government just set the stage. These things would be improbable at worst, and impossible at best, in a world without a violent tyrant enslaving us all.
‘Paper entities’ get priority over citizens because an armed state recognizes and subsidizes them – and that same state will ultimately kill you if you don’t fall in line with it’s worldview.
Corporations will exploit us to the limits we impose as consumers. The state has tricked us into waiving our power to set those limits, and now holds us hostage.
It’s a simple thing: corporations are as strong as the consumers that support them. When the state compels that support, even though you wish to withdraw it, the corporation becomes as powerful as the state. It is a simple thing, yet people attack the symptom while praising the disease.
The state is the disease. From it all evil flows. You may realize this one day, if your anger is ever enough to lift the blindness from your eyes.
When I hear people talk about whether children want to or should be allowed to work — which itself is not one question but two — the teenage people are the ones who usually say young people do want to work and should have the choice. The old, who remember when kids normally did work, generally agree. Those in between panic over visions of three-year-olds chained to giant greasy iron gears 16 hours a day, 365 days a year, for three cents an hour. But are adults working like that now? No. When children worked in such conditions, so did adults. Now that adults usually work in offices, restaurants, call centers, grocery stores and department stores, 40 hours a week, at about 12 dollars an hour, I hink kids given a choice will work in similar places, say, 15-20 hours a week, at maybe eight an hour after an initial lower-paid training time. Effective homeschooling takes so little time that it should hardly affect the schedule, and no expensive materials are necessary. One simply shows the child how to read, add, use logic and look things up, and get around town without danger.
The term “productive citizen” upsets me. I prefer “creative citizen” or “free citizen” but it’s really supposed to be up to the child which of these is most important.
Jean Paul, I guess I underestimated you guys when I took this site’s admonition “post an intelligent and civil comment” seriously on my these, my first visits to this nutball blog war. I sort of imagined (wrongly) this might be a place for serious debate.
But being called blind because I won’t join you in some backwoods conspiracy to “knock down the state” is a pretty good sign I’ve run into some “regulars” here who must prefer bully-mouthing to sense. As much as you (and maybe some others) may think you can pretend to be embattled hermits independent of a society with a government, it just ain’t so. I’ll bet tonight you’re drinking government-protected water, sleeping in a place with government police protection, in a government fire-protection district, driving places on government streets, and possibly even eligible someday for government
Social Security and Medicare–even if griping about all of it.
My point with the insidious effect of control that some corporations exert upon our lives is not that we should invoke intellectual or economic warfare upon them or upon the government, but that we should fill the Congress and White House with people who legislate for people first–not for “entities” first. As for your comment that the government may “kill me” if I don’t fall in line with its worldview, I just haven’t been running with vigilantes long enough, I guess, because I not only don’t believe it, I find myself thinking of that ole phrase, “crazy as a hooty-owl”. Thanks for the introduction to the asylum. I’ll show myself out.
Daniel: OK. Go vote on someone’s life or something.
We do not even use the public school system but I would be stupid indeed if I thought that these programs were not there for the greater good
You know what the road to hell is paved with?!
The government gives and takes away economic power according to its whims, contrary to public (consumer) demand. Corporations are neither iherently good nor inherently bad, despite what you might thing – but their morally-neutral nature is purely to satisfy their customers – and today the customer is NOT you, but the state.
As for drugs, the state controls what substances you can put in your body. It makes a big mess of things by prohibiting many safe substances, so more dangerous and addictive alternatives gain popularity instead.
Government also distorts research and development with its regulations and subsidies, and overall suffocates innovation through the IP system, meaning we all wait longer to discover the harms of existing substances, wait even longer for safer alternatives or technologies to be developed and placed in consumer hands, and finally we pay exorbitant prices, if the alternatives are permitted at all (which they typically aren’t, due to scandalized and ignorant protest from the ‘moral majority’).
That’s why you have an underground market in dangerous drugs. Not because there isn’t enough government regulation – but BECAUSE the regulation and ineptitude of the state makes an aboveground market in safe alternatives literally illegal.
Ditto the grocery checkout thing – the government didn’t put the tabloid there… They just created the social pressures that turn people in credit-addicted, zombie-like wage slaves, with so little of genuine value in their lives that they fill the void with empty pursuits such as celebrity worship.
Final and general point – coprorate domination is made possible ONLY through government power. If you truly want to declaw the corporations – as I and most here do – then it’s the government you’re truly after.
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“I am very proud to be a father again and to be populating the earth with another little libertarian”
In this universe of tyranny and oppression against the soul, you should be ashamed of yourself to feed the beast with fresh flesh. The earth is already populated, and already has 7 billion people, one person more is not even a drop in the ocean, a waste of your time and ressources. How naive can you be ?
If he really is a libertarian, than he has the right to become whatever he wants to be, he might decide later on the be a socialist scumbag and enforce his agenda on the rest of us using force and as a libertarian yourself, you will have to respect his decision.
” Our nation is slipping away fast, and they are using our children as the crack in the door.”
That’s why you should not have children in the first place, again SHAME ON YOU for feeding this monster with fresh flesh. If they don’t draft your kid now, they will probably destroy him on Ritalin later on in school when state psychiatrists force you to drug him to death. He will have to pay taxes and obey every dictates of the government in the future.
Shame on you for feeding the government.
Stacy,
“What about the father of five that was laid off because his company now does most of their business in China? ”
I’m sorry Stacy but if that father was stupid enough to make more children he can feed, tough luck for him.
Look at me, I am single with no kids and I earn just enough money to feed myself. If I can make responsible choices so can him.
He deserves no help.
Jean Paul et al,
In Quebec, the people there are bound by what they call the Quebec Parental Insurance Regimen.
Under this regimen, the government retains 1% of your earnings in order to pay for luxurious parental leave and child care.
It doesn’t matter if your single, have no kids and hate kids and hate women and want to remain single with no kids until you die. You HAVE TO pay Parental “insurance”.
Mothers have the right to go on leave for a year and a half at society’s expense and the employer must contribute 50%. Fathers can go on leave for 1 year.
How can they call this “insurance” since it was not an accident if people decided to have kids ? This is hypocritical and corrupt. Now they will increase the wage retentions because Quebec is breeding more kids than ever since this measure was instituated.
Quebec is a socialist hoplophobic feminazi shit hole.
Ppl like you get all the brains. I just get to say tshank for he answer.
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