Several people have sent a link to this post on the Time Magazine effort to push national service. In an addition to violating liberties on a massive scale, this program would be a colassal waste. It will rob young people of their most important years early in life, taking them out of productive work and making them less able to offer anything to the marketplace after: an extension of an already catastrophic system of publicly funded education, which already drains brain power and time. That both the left and right favor this scheme perfectly illustrates the intellectual bankruptcy and state-worshiping mentality of these people. Fear the future under their rule.
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/8319/national-servitude/
National Servitude
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Amen.
it’s always amused me that the us draft board (the sss!) has never been disbanded. god forbid the pilot light go out.
…And here my sister-in-law thought she had LEFT Cuba!
The irony of calling it “Voluntary” service is incredible, but also very cunning.
Voluntary gets it around the Thirteenth Amendment forbidding involuntary servitude.
So, the new voluntary means you are required to serve, you just get to “volunteer” to whatever organization will keep you in slavery until your service is over.
Slavery == Freedom, War == Peace, Voluntary == Mandatory.
Stimulus Package “Deja vu”, Not really!
As the brains of our economy continue to brainstorm how to get us out of the mess the real estate market first got us in and now high gas prices and a declining economy over all the easy way out seems to be again, an economic stimulus package.
Not so fast, not again.
First president bush opposes it.
Second, according to the experts only 20 percent of the people who got stimulus package number one said the rebate led them to spend more and the rest, well it seems that the rest just took the money and put it into their savings account.
Economic stimulus package number one was suppose to get our slow economy going, by then president bush had not heard of a 4 dollar a gallon of gasoline.
By now that’s old news and as he put it on he’s own words “he’s heard of it now”.
Well now mr president one gallon of gas almost hits the 5 dollar mark, have you heard of it?
Anyhow, the 100 billion dollars in checks that circulated among many Americans (600.00 for singles, 1,200.00 for couples) apparently didn’t help.
The money went out on time and gas prices went up just on time as well.
With gas prices, food prices also went up.
Isn’t that how it usually works?
Gas prices go up everything goes up, after all business have to make up for the extra expenses and they just pass the check onto us.
Here’s an idea!
How about lowering the tax on gasoline?
Do we really know how much money we pay on gas taxes in the u.s?
Aren’t this taxes imposed by our government, well maybe our government can really give a stimulus to our morale and lower the taxes we pay on gas prices.
A lower tax in gasoline prices will stimulate business and consumers, it’s not rocket science!
Source for this quote: Wikipedia
“Fuel taxes in the United States vary by state. For the first quarter of 2008, the average state gasoline tax is 28.6 cents per US gallon, plus 18.4 cents per US gallon federal tax making the total 47 cents per US gallon”
A year of national service will further the indoctrination that is all too prevalent in this nation’s “education” system. Reason number one for the existence of the public education system is not to educate or train our children, but to make them good and compliant citizens.
Wake up call number 6? IndyMac is not the first one to go.
American’s woke up to another slap in the face, IndyMac.
The bank giant where many people deposited their life savings is going out of business.
There you had them!
People waiting in line to take their money out, only to be rejected later by other bank institutions when trying to deposit their money or what they could get of it because the letterhead of the cashier’s check had the infamous word: Indymac.
It was reported in the media that a california woman tried to deposit a cashier’s check from Indymac at a washington mutual branch in pasadena and she was told that it could take up to eight weeks for her funds to be available
Other bank institutions said that they are following the federal guidelines in regards to availability of funds on the new deposits, and that those same guidelines apply to checks from indymac.
The truth of the matter is that failures like indymac’s have name: greed from the Real Estate boom.
Now banks are paying the consequences, first it was Countrywide that have bailed out by a purchase from Bank of America, not without having the ceo (angelo mozillo) walk away with a multimillion severance package.
Now indymac is under investigation by the fbi for possible fraud in the subprime market.
According to the media reports, the investigation is focusing in the company and not in the individuals who run it.
Apparently, indymac officials approved loans to people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to qualify for one, leaving now thousands on the verge of foreclosure.
I took the time to look at the primary material, and this stuff is scary! The amount of support it’s receiving is very concerning.
I would hope Mises could keep readers updated on this, it would be unthinkable if the United States brought about another round of slavery such as this National Service Act certainly would.
If happens! no problem, good by usa, gone to Hong Kong or Singapore!
Jeff,
to be honest, I expected something more…
It’s not just another item on the long list of the evils of extreme statism. It’s a wholly new and much more sinister thing than what they did before.
Up to this point, they only wanted your money, and wanted you to refrain from doing certain things. Up to this point, you could pay your taxes, go home, close the door, and do more or less what you want. Your time was yours.
Now they are after your time. Now you cannot escape them, cannot retreat into your home and spend the part of your money they left for you and your time the way you want, now they want to force you to do things, to spend your time the way they want.
This is not just another statist evil. This is THE border between an annoyingly big state and outright tyranny.
Keeping half of the money you earned, going home, deciding to order a pizza and read a book – you still have a good amount of freedom. Being forced to put that book down, cancel the pizza and do work they want you to do – there is no freedom left.
THIS is it. THIS is the last straw. If you ever wondered where is the difference of a too big state and tyranny, it is HERE. When you cannot spend your time the way you want, when you are forced to do work you don’t want to do, that is the difference between a big state and tyranny.
If there is something that makes a violent revolution moral and acceptable, it is THIS.
Mr. Hollender, I would have thought that the confiscation of the entire nation’s privately held gold in 1933 would have been enough. Or the draft in 1917. Or how about the National Firearms Act?
No matter how abominable this “National Service” insanity might be, it’s only the latest in a long line of abominations.
Try http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2008/tle477-20080720-06.html
“taking them out of productive work”? While you are certainly free to oppose these programs, it’s sad to see that there are people who are unable to even comprehend of “productive work” which doesn’t involve profits or exploitation. This perfectly illustrates the moral bankruptcy and corporate-worship mentality of the author. Evidently power is only to be feared if it comes from government (i.e. power accountable to the people), not if it comes from big business (completely unaccountable to the people). “Fear the future under their rule.” Yes the common people can be troublesome, they just can’t seem to grasp how crucial an economic aristocracy is to the health of a republic. Let them eat cake.
If such a thing is passed, I think that might be the line at which I leave the country.
Nicholas, business, whether big or small, is fully accountable to people qua consumers.
Nicholas,
Even as neophyte when it comes to economics and political theory I feel I must comment on some basic misconceptions you seem to have.
1. “Productive work” – Do you not realize that when one works to attain profit they simultaneously satisfy the demands of a consumer? By ‘productive work’ the author merely means work that satisfies the demand of the people and not some government bureaucrat (and is undertaken by choice and not under threat of force).
2. Accountability. It’s odd that you think that government is accountable to the people and that business is not. In reality, it is the other way around. Businesses are entirely accountable to the people, for where do you think they get their money (this is of course excluding corporations who do business with the government and profit from tax money)? Government, on the other hand, is only accountable every four years, and only accountable in so far as people can gauge just what they have done and what effects they cause (not to mention that fact that the system is rigged so that people only have the choice between two essentially identical, parties).
p.s. Maybe you were being sarcastic. If that’s the case then I apologize.
Nicholas,
Even as neophyte when it comes to economics and political theory I feel I must comment on some basic misconceptions you seem to have.
1. “Productive work” – Do you not realize that when one works to attain profit they simultaneously satisfy the demands of a consumer? By ‘productive work’ the author merely means work that satisfies the demand of the people and not some government bureaucrat (and is undertaken by choice and not under threat of force).
2. Accountability. It’s odd that you think that government is accountable to the people and that business is not. In reality, it is the other way around. Businesses are entirely accountable to the people, for where do you think they get their money (this is of course excluding corporations who do business with the government and profit from tax money)? Government, on the other hand, is only accountable every four years, and only accountable in so far as people can gauge just what they have done and what effects they cause (not to mention that fact that the system is rigged so that people only have the choice between two essentially identical, parties).
p.s. Maybe you were being sarcastic. If that’s the case then I apologize.
Could this be another end result of blowback?
Because of ‘blowback’ it is now unsafe for Americans to go around the world carrying the message of ‘good will’ to entice impoverished peoples around the world to look at American democracy as a healing medicine. It’s a trick, a placebo at best, but a poison. American democracy is a two class system like all totalitarian systems.
Now instead, enlist the youth to carry the message of ‘good will’ to the dead spots created by socialism itself! This time there is no one to convince since “what you see is what you get.” At the end of the year of numbing limbo some drones may find the soulless social hive of government bureaucracy a good place to incubate their ego-driven interventionism.
Will Time Magazine tell its readership not to waste the idealism of youth on Marxism, Keynsianism, socialism or facism? Will Time Magazine pick Putin as the Man of the Year and then pretend to be something other than a propaganda tool?
Christopher
Not only is it thinkable, someone is thinking of it, and doing it! Or at least planning to do it…
Whilst we in Australia are not heavy libertarians, we have not had a civil war to cement our attachment to our current form of Government, either. Therefore, we might be more pliable on the subject of individual freedoms. If a lot of libertarians came here and voted, you could free up our thinking in all sorts of ways!
Or you could move to the independent Principality of Hutt River, ruled over by the owner, Prince Leonard, in Western Australia. It has been free for 38 years now.
Or you could move to the Kimberleys, and help us to secede as a truely-free libertarian society!!
(Does the US have any microstates within its’ borders, or have the Feds crushed them all?)
“Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats. “
“While you are certainly free to oppose these programs, it’s sad to see that there are people who are unable to even comprehend of “productive work” which doesn’t involve profits or exploitation. This perfectly illustrates the moral bankruptcy and corporate-worship mentality of the author.”
Damn, I wish these people would stick around long enough to get a little bit of exposure to new ideas. I would like to think that we could actually change minds that are so warped by lies the state tells us. So here is my little rant for the benefit of the swiftly-departing Nicholas.
The state is inept, corrupt, and incredibly wasteful. “Productive work” is an oxymoron in government. If you want to discuss moral bankruptcy, you need only look to welfare and child support, programs that actively subsidize (and incentivize) single parent families. Look at the war in Iraq. Look at the Drug War, pork barrel spending, the sad state of the social security “trust” fund. Compare the efficiency and performance of private schools and public schools. Compare public schools and homeschooling, then think about the fact that California is poised to ban homeschooling. Look at the FEMA response to Katrina and compare it to the greedy, heartless pigs at Wal-Mart that donated $20 million in cash and enough food for 100,000 people. Look at the hopelessly inept and invasive TSA. Look at how government bends over backwards to accommodate the wishes of lobbyists (Google “pharma lobby medicare” and read the first result).
Government is the LAST institution you would want to entrust 2 freaking years of your life to. You REALLY need to spend some time observing how things in government really work. Most people are blissfully unaware just how bad it really is. I have a friend who works in government that would be happy to enlighten you. Going to work some days just about makes him physically ill.
Once you’ve had your illusions of government as protector of the people shattered, you’ll need a find a new worldview that explains why we’re all as well off as we are, despite the predations of government. We’ll be here and ready to help explain it.
Many businesses today are not accountable but they bought that lack of accountability by selling themselves out to the government.
THIS is it. THIS is the last straw.
You may want to hold off on this declaration until you see what life under martial law is like.
hah! They actually call them CHANGE AGENTS! Its an open conspiracy!(the best type!)
So this is the draft ? I guess all the kids are fully trained (Americas Army) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America's_Army
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…..National Service Act that will encourage all Americans to step forward and take the lead in bridging our divides, strengthening our communities, and building a more vibrant democracy.
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Funny,I thought the US was a constitutional Republic?Am I wrong?
What is scary,is how popular the reception has been. Just look at Obama – prancing around like a new messiah.
Is it a case of the hegelian dialectic –
We are offered two choices and hes the “less warlike nice guy/underdog” !
Change the textbooks, distract the adults with bobbles and trinkets(sports and TV) and tyranny here we come.
It isnt at all surprising to me,after investigating some of the links behind the “left vs right’ paradigm
(CFR Trilateral Federal Reserve…)
Actually here’s an interesting article from someone who’s pro-draft, anti-war and believes it’s better than volunteering.
http://www.johntreed.com/militarydraft.html
Such as:
“The military is about killing or seriously wounding people in large numbers. That’s a necessary evil at best. It seems to me that volunteering for such activities is akin to volunteering to be the executioner at your state prison. Somebody’s gotta do it, but no one should be eager to do it. And if a person is eager to do it, that person is almost certainly ignorant of what it means to kill or maim others or risk being killed or maimed, or they are mentally defective.”
and
“In fact, I found the opposite was true. That is, as a group, the draftees were much better soldiers than the volunteers. How could this be? The draftees were a cross section of U.S. society. At that time, the volunteers tended to represent the lower socioeconomic layers of society. I have never seen any scientific studies of this, but it was sufficiently evident when I was in the Army in the sixties and early seventies that I am confident that such a study would confirm my impressions.
The knock on draftees is that they are sullen and resentful about being forced into the military and do a lousy job as a result. In fact, I found no such thing. The sullen and resentful ones were the volunteers. They were sullen and resentful because they felt they had been scammed into enlisting with promises of adventure and war-movie glory. The reality of being in the military as a private is mind-numbing boredom, hurry up and wait, dysfunctional bureaucracy, ritual harassment by often-moronic or martinetish sergeants and officers, and so forth.”
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