The point here is that if one only has a right so long as it is in accordance with the public interest, then that is tantamount to saying one does not have a right at all, because it is entirely contingent on the authorities’ view of what the public interest entails. If they have a plausible-sounding reason why depriving one of one’s property is in the public interest (spoiler alert: they almost always will have such a reason), then they can do so irrespective of one’s ‘rights’, and one’s rights therefore are of no real practical or legal consequence.
This is the position we find ourselves in, then, with respect to A1P1. We have a right to property but only insofar as we can be deprived of our possessions when it is in the public interest. We do not then really have a right to property at all, at least insofar as the ECHR goes, but more a liberty to enjoy peaceful possession of our property on the sufferance of the State. We are on implied notice that as soon as it is in the public interest to deprive us of our property, the State can do so.
Strongly recommend you real the whole thing.
The state doesn’t really respect a citizen’s rights and will impinge on them with impunity and claim it is in the public interest to do that? The devil you say.
I’m shocked, *shocked* I tell you!
That’s not what makes the article interesting, it’s the cogent description of the shape and form of the coming total state. It’s also a solid refutation of the people who think ECHR somehow protects our rights rather than providing a legal framework for their abridgement.
Don’t we already have digital currency for everyone who wants it? How is digital currency” different from a debit card?
But the next step from (insert here) for those that want it is (insert here) regardless of if you want it.
A central digital is to ensure it gets used even by those who don’t want it, that’s the absolutely massive difference.
So the ECHR doesn’t abide by the UDHR, specifically Article 17 ?
Overstretch.
The more of this sort of thing they reach for, the more they push the envelope? It’s like putting more and more pressure into the boiler or the balloon. You’ll eventually exceed the strength of the containment, and then… BOOM.
The idiots running everything today think that since they’ve managed to get away with all their multiple manifest fiddles, they’ll continue to get away with them. Forever.
Ain’t happening.
Even if it did? What, I ask you, are the lessons of history about the eventual state of the unowned commons? Ever been to a housing estate? I think that’s what they call a “project” in the UK, right? Ever notice the utter lack of care, taken by the non-owners? Extrapolate that, why don’t you, to this ideal world of the globalists, where “no one owns anything”.
Yeah. Does that strike you as a good idea, looking at how well all those “owned in common” things are? D’ya think that’s “human nature”, that they’re somehow able to overcome in these new, enlightened days?
Or, will this likely all end in tears and wretchedness?
I learned a lot from examining the microcosm of human existence that is the US Army. One thing that I learned was that the things that belonged to no one? That nobody “owned”? Didn’t get cared for, ‘cos there were no responsibilities laid down. Communal property isn’t cared for, because it’s communal. It’s always “someone else’s problem”, which means that it is no ones until the long arm of the draconian system hammers on you. Without the UCMJ, I can about guarantee you that the average US base would look about like the average Housing and Urban Development “project”.
You can’t have socialism or communal anything without some sort of really intrusive and really coercive oversight and discipline. And, even then? If the control mechanisms (leaders…) aren’t any good, and don’t care? Things will not get kept up. That’s how you identify problem units, in the military: Look at the common areas. If the unit is messed up, and the leadership is bad, those common areas will be a horror show.
The more control you reach for, the less you actually have. Law of nature… Which is why, even if the globalist freak elite is successful, it simply won’t last. Not until they manage to engineer human beings into insects, which also ain’t too likely to happen. Anyone remember the “New Soviet Man”, the Stakhanovites? Seen any of them, of late?
Watch and observe what happens in China, with all these “social controls”. I guarantee you that they’re being subverted as we speak, and will soon be as meaningless as the Imperial Court edicts forbidding the importation of opium. If not? Then, ready yourself for a huge social explosion as all the people they’ve pushed out of the system come to realize they have no stake in things, and just don’t give a flying f*ck any more. Apathy is a terrible thing on a population-scale; you don’t give a damn about your life…? That’s absolutely amazingly fertile ground for some very nasty social ills, like, oh… Say… Dare we name it? Revolution. Ya know what they say… Freedom is just another way of saying you’ve got nothing left to lose.
One of the major idiocies that the current elite has gotten up to is that they’ve lost sight of one of the really key, essential, and important things that a society has to do: Insure that people “buy in” to the whole enterprise. You don’t get a loyal military by saying “Yeah, all those military families that have contributed soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines? We don’t want ’em…” You don’t get solid families having kids to replace this generation with the next, when you tear down the domestication mechanisms for young men that make them want to buy in. You want to know where Japan’s “Hikikomori” come from? Simple: What, might I ask, does a young man get out of participating in the enterprise that is modern Japan? Not a damn thing he wants, that’s for sure. So, he goes apathetic and catatonic, and everything winds up feminized. The women aren’t any better off, either in traditional Japanese society or the modern mess it has become. You can see, if you’ve the wit to look and observe with clear eyes, the same syndromes taking place in most Western societies. Your fertility rate tells the tale. Young German males have been emasculated; ya wonder why all the German girls are looking at those manly, masculine Moslem invaders and getting wet panty syndrome…? Sitzpinkler. You try telling some young Afghan male he needs to sit down to pee, guess the consequences? You think that the effete and effeminate German males aren’t taking notes? Seeing how all this new-age modern bullshit is working out?
I really don’t think the current regime is going to last out the century. If nothing else, it’ll all die out and be replaced by the invading hordes they’ve brought in because they couldn’t get people to “buy in” hard enough to want to have kids in today’s environment.
Overreach. We’re in the midst of it, and the denouement cannot be far off.
If contracts, a “trade”, can be cancelled after-the-fact (after the trade has taken place) then the “market place” or “exchange” is corrupt – no one should do business there.
This sort of thing, contract breaking by “laws”, is forbidden by the United States Constitution – but that was overturned by the Supreme Court ruling, in 1935 (by five votes to four) that the 1933 breaking of the “gold clauses” in all contracts, public and private, was acceptable. Essentially the Corporate State, the Federal Government and its Corporate allies, can cheat ordinary people whenever it feels like it. Roger Sherman warned, at the Constitutional Convention, that unless the wording was tighter, future corrupt judges would find wriggle room – and, tragically, he has been proved to be correct.
London is now just as much a corrupt, political, “market place” as Wall Street is. People who think that either one have anything to do with a free market are sadly mistaken.
And Perry is correct – as with the Covid lockdowns, this metal exchange case shows that the “European Convention on Human Rights” is not a force for good – it is a force for evil.
Jeremy Bentham would be delighted – he claimed that “rights are nonsense” and that natural rights were “nonsense on stilts”, the only rights, according to Mr Bentham, are goods or services from the state (goodies the state chooses to give some people – at the expense of other people), and Mr Bentham wanted 13 Departments of state to control all aspects of human life.
That is where we are going. Such a system will not work, not here and not in America either, it will collapse – but it will do terrible harm in the run up to that economic collapse, and in the collapse itself.
As far as I know, no country on Earth has honest markets now.
Switzerland had a fig leaf of honesty, ten per cent of notes and coins (not bank credit) had to be backed by gold – basically notes and coins were worth one tenth of what the government said they were worth – but one tenth is better than worth nothing at all (the total con trick, swindle, that modern currencies are). But even that fig leaf of honesty was ended with the new Constitution (a worthless document which puts no real limits on the size and scope of government) in 2000.
For the last 23 years no currency on Earth has been anything other than whims and threats of violence. “Men with Guns” as Professor Krugman puts it (and this “Noble Price winning economist” thinks that this is a GOOD thing) – and the markets are now dominated by endless Credit Bubble fraud pushing wealth into the hands of a small and corrupt elite.
I was recently asked why the Board of BlackRock (which controls TRILLIONS of Dollars worth of shares) are such a bunch of scumbags – the answer is simple, OF COURSE they are, with a system like it is in 2023 that is exactly what one should expect. It would be a shock (a very big shock) if they were not scumbags.
We can guess what will happen next – people who think they have bought gold or silver on the various Western markets will, in a crises, ask for physical possession of that gold and silver. They will find that the gold or silver they think they have bought does-not-exist, and when they turn to the courts for justice – the authorities will laugh at them, perhaps offering them paper “compensation”, or perhaps just cancelling the contracts after-the-fact.
Why should not the Corporate State not behave like this? Who is going to stop them?
Hell, we were on notice of this the day variable tax rates were introduced.
In most of our nations, we have certain rights that are untouchable – by government. However, we remain free to contract away those rights in private transactions as we deem fit.
But, who reads the fine print? Who reads the user rules for internet use, for banking, for home ownership? We give away our rights daily, irrevocably, without a second thought.
Because it’s easier.
All of the members of the LME signed on with a copy of those rules in their hand. “But they’d never use it against me!” Until they did.
And they will continue, in more and more interesting ways.
It’s an extension of the “logistics versus strategy” arguments. Rules and regs are the logistics in this situation. We didn’t pay enough attention the them when they were being written, thinking they’d always be enforced in good faith. Oops. Same way we let in the “vote by mail” rules.
Frontal attacks on rights stir up opposition. Accomplishing the same thing administratively and privately is easier, and no one notices until it’s too late. Because it makes life easier and more predictable.
But at a very basic level taxes deprive us of our property in the name of public interest. Building codes deprive us of our property in the name of public interest. Federal drug regulation deprives us of our property in the name of public interest. The SEC and HHS and HUD, and DOT, FICA, Medicare, and Homeland Security, and DoC and on and on are primarily there to deprive us our our property, or how we use it, in the name of public interest. There is an argument to be made that most of what we call “government” is “depriving the citizens of their property (or its utility) in the public interest.”
So I’m not sure much has changed, except that the brokers of power are more brazen and unrestrained in their venality and mendacity.
(Full disclosure, I didn’t read the link above, but I will when I get a moment.)
Yeah, but…
What happens when people cease to willingly participate in the rigged system? “Irish Democracy” and “White Mutiny” are all concepts that the high-and-mighty seem to have forgotten all about.
There’s a saying about being unable to police without the willing consent of the policed. What happens when the masses withdraw their consent? How do you propose to get them to give it, again, if you’re one of the WEF that thinks anyone owning anything is a bad idea… Except for them?
The other thing is this: What the hell happens when the question goes on the other foot, and the masses decide to cease recognizing the fact of ownership by the high-and-mighty? Anyone remember what happened when Henry VIII took back the monasteries, or when the French Revolution decided to take the aristocrat’s estates…?
Property rights are a mutually-agreed-upon fiction. If the elites decide to renege on their end of the bargain, there ain’t nothing stopping the masses from doing exactly the same.
As well, you harass anyone enough, what do you do when they just go catatonic and apathetic on you, the way that the Japanese Hikikomori have? You can’t drag people like that into participation… What do you do when you’ve driven most of your working-class population into that state? Work miracles?
Regarding China and its micromanaging of everything and anything.
The Tian Minjian incident was hushed up and not well known but essentially, the One Child Policy was the root cause of it and the State aborting a second child and killing the wife in the process.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tian_Mingjian_incident
I can see that if enough people say “enough” and take a similar course of action, then the Ceaucsescu solution might be on the cards for the Chinese elites.
What a combination that will be: a group of people who believe that there are things so “hateful” that you must not be allowed to say them, even in your own home, and a currency system that allows those people to make it impossible for you to buy or sell anything if you dare to disobey them.
Won’t that be nice?
EDIT: The worst bit for me is that it might not even be a government that imposes this dystopia. Imagine a cabal of woke bankers who decide that they simply don’t want to do business with anyone who refuses to use the correct pronouns when speaking with zers and zims. The fact that there is no non-digital currency available isn’t their problem. Too bad, hatespeaker.
That’s when the US decides to hire 87,000 new IRS agents.
@bobby b,
I seem to recall the French aristos going down a similar path, and that being a major contributing factor to the Revolution.
As well… Great. You have 87,000 new IRS agents.
Where do they live? Are they safely ensconced in some walled enclave somewhere? Are the police supporting them living with their families behind barbed wire, away from the people they’re to oppress…?
They can’t govern a damn thing once the public decides to withdraw their consent. They think they can; do you believe them to be correct? I don’t.
Right now, we’re in the FA phase of FAFO. When the transition is made to FO, it’ll happen so fast that it will take your breath away. Observe the casual disobedience displayed in nearly every major US city; the cops are afraid to even act, when they encounter a “street takeover”. What, do you suppose, they’re going to do when they encounter genuine resistance? All the time, every day, in every way?
You really have to marvel at the halfwit nature of the people running things: Where are the legions of oppressors they’re going to need? What are they doing to capture the loyalties of their goons? D’ya really think that the average street cop, witnessing what happened to Derek Chauvin, is gonna do a damn thing when the mobs come for those District Attorneys? Think they’re gonna stand guard on their isolated homes, out in the suburbs, and then do a good job of it?
The level of idiocy demonstrated by those in charge is on a level I can’t even begin to enumerate, and if you stop and think about it, you’d be marveling at it yourself. Template what the various totalitarian states did, taking over: Russia, after the Revolution, Germany after the Nazi takeover. Do you see any of these multitude of idjits taking any of the same steps? Are they building out the loyalty of their regime supporters?
These are some of the most half-ass half-witted wannabe tyrants in the history of the world. Their antecedent fellows are looking up at them from hell, and going “WTF, man… Just… WTF? You don’t do it like that…”
What happened to the American town that wanted to resume a person’s house and land so they could build a mall and get more in taxes to spend ‘for the public good’? It generated notorious news-stories around the world.
Kirk – the French aristocrats had no power, Louis XIV (the “Sun King”) had stripped them of their power a century before the French Revolution.
It was Britain where the landowners, aristocratic or not, had power in the 18th century.
However, it is true that the French aristocrats were exempt from most (not all – but most) taxation, so most of them did not care that Louis XIV turned them into painted clowns, the few that did care enough to fight back – were eliminated. Still “almost no tax – in return for being servile ornaments” may be what you meant.
The “Sun King” also made many aristocrats live at his palace (far away from their landed estates) and made them run up absurd debts – so they did not end up saving money (rather the contrary) – but most of them lacked the foresight to see what his game was.
The vast Corporations in America are also given ways to avoid much (although certainly not all) taxation – Corporation Tax is lower than Income Tax (and most shares are NOT controlled by individuals – Milton Friedman fan boys please note, so it is not “Double Taxation”) and Corporations can deduct their local Property Tax from their Corporation Tax anyway.
This is one of the reasons why the Corporate elite do not oppose the growth of government – in fact they support the growth of government, both the government spending (which they do not have to pay for – due to the twisted nature of the tax system) and the endless regulations – which they use to prevent competition.
The Corporate elite also get endless Credit Money from the system – which they use to buy up real assets, such as land (“Cantillon Effect”).
If and when the Marxists and others slaughter the Corporate elite, it will be very hard to care.
The Corporate elite have acted as the handmaidens of tyranny – they are putting in positions of power the Marxists who may destroy them.
Of course, the Marxists may also slaughter a lot of ordinary people.
As the economy (American economic statistics are rigged – as are many other statistics that come out of the government), and society, collapses – we shall have to see who takes power.
But it will not be the present international Corporate State elite – they are finished, whoever wins the struggle for power.
Because there is no such thing as the public interest. It’s a meaningless term.
Nicholas, if you’re talking about the Kelo v. City of New London case, the city won, Supreme Court precedent say what they did is okey doeky.
https://sgf.senate.ca.gov/sites/sgf.senate.ca.gov/files/KELODECISIONPAPER.pdf
In reply to Paul Marks:
That is indeed the message that i got from Tocqueville’s book on the ancien régime. Very much worth reading.
I am confused by this — and i do not mean to say that Paul is wrong, i actually fear that i have misunderstood something basic.
I thought that a tax on corporations is a tax on pension funds (ie a bad thing). I also thought that Trump lowering corporation tax was a good thing.
Agreed. But the events of the last couple of months might have opened the eyes of some corporate executives about the dangers of mob rule.
I might write something more tomorrow, about the philosophical substrate of David McGrogan’s essay. In particular, about the relationship between the Xenophon text that he mentions, and Machiavelli’s Principe.
I guess I don’t understand this point.
Sure, we the fund-share-owners have given control of our proxy shareholder votes to the fund-runners, but we’re still the beneficiaries of the share profits. We’re still paying CG taxes on share appreciation, after the corp has already been taxed on its profits. How is this NOT double taxation?
@Paul Marks, who said:
When I used “aristos”, I thought it’d be pretty clear I was talking about the entire class of the beasts, which included the king the last time I looked at “aristocracy” in the dictionary.
Ya might want to take a look at the genuinely Byzantine French taxation system, which is what I’m talking about when I said that was a contributory factor to the Revolution happening. The ferme générale were what they were called, and they made the IRS look positively cuddly and rational. If you want to look for proximate causes of the Revolution, I’d say you’d not be too far wrong to look at the ferme générale as being the major one, and that was what paid for the whole system of debauched and remote aristocrats living in the immediate orbit of Louis the XVI.
Pre-revolution French taxation is a remarkably fascinating subject, if you’re a student of human folly. The almost-deliberate goading of the French people into revolution is easy to make out; you read about things like the gabelle, the salt tax, and you are left thinking that the people doing that had to be either incredibly stupid or incredibly detached from the daily reality of life for the French people. Salt was a necessity of daily life for everything from food preservation to diet, and they made it so expensive that people couldn’t afford to use it in either role. Add in the draconian enforcement by the troops of the French tax authorities…?
You’re left thinking “They wanted revolution…”
Which is what I’m left thinking, looking at all too many of today’s policies and procedures. It’s as if the French aristos were similarly disconnected from the reality of their times, which was, actually, the point I was making.
@bobby b
“What happens when the masses withdraw their consent?”
That’s when the US decides to hire 87,000 new IRS agents.
I think also it is worth pointing out that the masses will NOT withdraw their consent. The masses largely voted for this stuff. They love “tax the rich” they love “cradle to grave” benefits, they love the “I’m too irresponsible to save for my own retirement so government please do it for me.”
Not all, but a significant majority.
FWIW, I am one of those unfortunate people who have accountants on speed dial, and have several who are good buddies. If you ask them about this “87,000 new IRS agents” they usually fall over laughing. Why? Because IRS agent is the WORST job a CPA can get. Very poorly paid, and very lowly regarded. And most of them have a shockingly poor understanding of the tax code.
Consequently even if they had the money to hire that many agents they couldn’t even hire 10% of that number, because no qualified people want to work for the IRS. There just aren’t enough people. I think it is probably a big power play by the IRS to boost their budget, and, as with most things the IRS does a sort of veiled threat “you’d better get your taxes in order or we are going to catch you.”
To be clear, I am meticulous with my taxes. I think the IRS are kind of like terrorists. They are very unlikely to target you, but if they do, and you don’t have your shit together, it can be a nightmare. But that 87,000 new IRS agents is a bit of a joke among the accounting cognoscenti.
If they were truly going to try to hire 87,000 accountants, yeah.
My fear – borne of what an IRS buddy tells me – is that a big chunk of the 87,000 will be enforcement types.
Not very good at ferreting out numbers, but at chasing and catching and hounding and levying.
And they will be armed.
(I do agree that the majority of the people in the US won’t rue this new harsh IRS – they voted for it, they’ll keep voting for it. But the 40% who disfavor it – well, they’ll be the targets of enforcement. Heck, 82,000 of the new agents will probably be assigned to Elon Musk, pour encourager les autres, you know.)
@bobby b
Heck, 82,000 of the new agents will probably be assigned to Elon Musk, pour encourager les autres, you know.
How many do you think will be assigned to that known tax cheat Hunter Biden?
Y’all keep saying that “the masses” voted for this stuff, and won’t be angry when it’s imposed.
That, my friends, is one of the most egregiously lunatic and just plain wrong things I’ve ever seen written, just about anywhere.
People did not vote for this crap to happen.
What they actually voted for were the things that the politicians promised them, without ever telling them the true costs. A lot of that crap was outright lies, and the unfortunate fact is that the bills for all those lies are coming due.
Case in point: Here in Washington state, they voted in, through an initiative, a law that banned “transfer” of firearms. When the the law was described to the public, and laid out in all the literature, they very, very carefully did not tell people what that term “transfer” meant. The way everything was described to the average voter, to include in the pamphlet for that year’s election, the term “transfer” was taken by nearly everyone to mean “sale”. That’s something even I’d have voted for, if they had made doing the transfers free; I mean, I’d love to have my ass covered for liability if I were to sell a gun unknowingly to a felon. However, comma… The sad reality is that “transfer” as it was defined in the actual legislation was not equivalent to “sale”. It was equivalent to “Hand firearm to someone on a range”, more-or-less. If they really wanted to press it, and my reading is correct, without doing the background check and waiting period, I’m really not supposed to handle a gun in a store, in accordance with the law. Transfer, it turns out, is pretty much anything involving handing a gun to someone, like lending it to them for a hunt or shooting on a range. Do it once? Misdemeanor. Do it twice? Felony. So, you’re out on a range, guy wants to borrow your gun, and he’s not a member of your immediate family? You do it, he hands it back? That’s two transfers, and Hey! Presto!!, the two of you are felons. If they chose to enforce the law…
Nobody who voted for that law understood that. It was passed under false pretenses, because even a lot of anti-gun types could see the issues with all that. They did it, anyway.
Much of the laws we’re having problems with are just like that: The politicians and bureaucrats stand up there, say that the law is this, it’s gonna do that, and everyone claps. Hardly anyone is really on board for the second- and third-order effects of that law coming on after five years or so, and that’s where the rub comes in. You can say “Yeah, they voted for less prison time for crimes…”, but what you didn’t vote on was “Yeah, let’s put all the retail businesses out of operation in the inner cities…”, simply because the actual effect of the law was not stated when they voted on it.
And, yes, most of this was foreseeable. Social Security? Anyone who’s ever done basic math should have seen the problems with it, but the people who voted yes for it and cheered FDR didn’t do that, and now that we’re where we are, and they’re seeing how much money is coming out of their paychecks for it…? Think they’re happy about it? And, add in the fact that Social Security was voted in by the pre-WWII folks, who got exponentially more out of it all than the kids of today ever will? Ya think today’s “beneficiaries” are on-board for paying those bills?
Yeah, people voted for that crap and the politicians that did them, but the problem is that the actual long-term impact and effects were emphatically not laid out, not agreed to, and will not last.
Personally? It’s a lot like when I enlisted at the height of the Cold War. I was on-board for that, and would have gone off to die in WWIII with a certain fatalism. Today’s expeditionary cretinistic military endeavors? I was dubious of the proposition when it was described as the “Global War on Terror”, and after having seen how they executed it all, while transferring billions to the assholes that financed killing a bunch of my friends in Iraq? Nope. Withdrawal of consent, right there: Were I still on active duty for Afghanistan’s debacle-fest 2021, I’d have dropped retirement papers as soon as I could, or I’d have done whatever it takes to get the hell out. I’ve an acquaintance who used the COVID shot refusal as an excuse to get out of his contract, and he’s not going back. Ever. Afghanistan was the last straw for him.
Y’all can say “People voted for this!!!” all you like, but the sad fact is that they voted for the shiny promise, not the filthy reality. Which, when said filthy reality slaps them in the face? They’re gonna do exactly what I’m saying they’ll do, and it’ll all end in tears.
Raw facts are that all those goodies you say people voted for? They were never told they’d be paying the bills for them, and there is going to be a bunch of buyer’s remorse coming along, and the simple fact is, they’re not gonna do it. Think of “free healthcare” as one of those shiny new Dodge Challengers that the new soldier buys, discovers he can’t make the payments on, and then just leaves somewhere with the keys in it and the engine running, so that it’ll get stolen and the insurance company or dealer gets stuck with the bill for it all.
That’s a pretty good metaphor for how all this is going to work out, in the end: Ain’t nobody voted for the piper’s bill, but everyone damn sure voted for the party when they thought they’d never have to actually pay for it. Nonetheless, the piper will be paid…
Yeah, but, Kirk, if they replaced Biden with someone younger and he/she promised to keep in place all of Biden’s and Obama’s and Hilary’s dreams, I bet they’d win by a significant percentage in 2024.
I live in Minnesota, amongst the most woke of the woke, and they LOVE everything the Dems have done, including how they passed off radical programs as weak in order to get them past the voters. Taqiyya isn’t just a Muslim thing. Lying to the less faithful is also a woke thing, and all of the woke seem to be in on it.
By Any Means Necessary is a mainstream Dem philosophy.
I’d love to think that the American people just need to wake up and take action, but I think they know exactly what’s happening, and like it. For now. Until they see that they’re going to have to pay for it themselves.
My hard-core range buddies are all excited – “they have to see it now, and the people are gonna rise up!” No, I don’t think they will rise up.
bobby… My friend, you’re basing your projections on the way things are. What, do you suppose, will happen when things are no longer “the way they are” because the inherent contradictions finally catch up to them?
You can only BS reality for so long, to so many people. Once reality sets in, well… Then you’re screwed.
The money will run out. The crime will rise. Things will become unlivable. Then what?
You’re seeing the early stages of this in Portland and Seattle, right now. When the tax base ain’t there, any more? Fiscal collapse, followed by all the ramifications thereof. What then, do you suppose, happens to all of this?
The fatal flaw to what you’re saying is this: It’ll only remain operable for so long as it is operable. Then what?
This isn’t Venezuela, with a tyranny-complacent population and tradition of governance. You can’t graft Venezuelan governance into the average US community without a lot of resistance, and even though they’re trying to bring in a population that’s used to that sort of thing, I don’t think it will take. We’re in for a long period of dislocation, but I really doubt that the long-term situation is going to be anything like what the idiot elite thinks it will be. They’re really not all that bright, and the sad fact is, they’re doing none of the things that would make their plans workable. Sure, there is all the breakdown in public order, but where, pray tell, are the regime forces to take advantage of it all and force order on an unruly population? Have you any idea at all how manpower-intensive that sort of thing really is? How much ideological power you’d need to motivate those forces? There’s nothing like that out there; the situation is decaying into anarchy, with great deliberation and intent. But, the idiots are like the Underpants Gnomes from South Park. They’ve got a plan, but that plan consists of “1. Anarchy and disorder 2. ????? 3. We run everything”. They’ve got no damn idea how to get from “We done tore everything up…” to “Halcyon golden uplands of our utopia…”.
Not that I can see, at least. I mean, Hitler at least had all his little Hitlerjugend, and was careful to man the Gestapo and every other little state organ of control. What are they doing, here? Christ on a crutch, if there’s a functional major city police force here on the West coast, I’d love to see it. They’re rebels without a plan, and their cause is very poorly thought-out.
My guess is the whole thing devolves into inner-city anarchy, and then they don’t do anything because they’ve got no plan past that, which will be followed by an epic period of chaos and vigilante action out in the rest of the country. Lots of little self-organizing folk will gradually wind up re-imposing order on a vastly diminished US, probably in pieces. I can’t see this working out, the way they’re going.
I’d almost prefer they had half a clue, because I’d prefer someone that could get things done being in charge. As it is? It’ll be sheer chaos.
Can’t wait to see how they take Trump out. My guess is they’ll be so frightened of him by about June that they’ll likely martyr his ass, and then who the hell knows what happens? I think he’s probably our Gracchi, but I’ll be damned if I see our Caesar anywhere in the wings… Sadly diminished age that we live in. I really doubt there’s going to be an Imperial America.
Thanks, George. Yes, Kelo v New London was the case I had in mind. Shame about the Supreme Court.
Because there is no such thing as the public interest. It’s a meaningless term.
It’s one of those famous concepts used by leftists to detach a collective noun from the collection it is describing.
“The public” infers all the individuals it encompasses, if one of those individuals is impacted then it cannot be in “the public” interest.
So, for example, if an individual loses property in “the public” interest, then they, by definition, have been somehow excluded from the collective concept.
This can only be achieved elevating and detaching “the public” from the individuals it represents, it becomes a autonomous and spurious entity only vaguely related to what it originally meant.
Standard leftist thinking.
Do we need the inner cities? What for?
“If you do not like government policy – then vote for a new government”.
That does not work in the United States – where the Biden-Harris regime was installed by a blatantly rigged election (many millions of “mail-in ballots” far too many to check – which was the excuse given for not checking them), and where candidates get kept off the ballot if they do not follow the agenda of the Corporate State, but the United States Supreme Court may still reverse the evil that has been done. Although this is the same Supreme Court that allows a police officer to be sent to prison (to be abused and cut-up) for the “murder” of Mr George Floyd – who died of the drugs he consumed.
And the same Supreme Court that, so far, has allowed the corrupt “Justice” Department and the Fascist Scum of the FBI (the harsh language is fully justified) to put someone in prison for a common meme (both sides did the “vote by text” meme in 2016 – it was a well known joke), and has, so far, done nothing about Civil judgements where the jury (the politically selected jury) left the court room giggling (yes actually laughing – may they burn in Hell) knowing full well that the person they had helped victimise had done nothing wrong, no one believes that President Trump sexually assaulted a random woman, and they know very well that Rudy Giuliani told the truth about the rigged 2000 election, but he was not even ALLOWED to present his defence – thus violating every set of principles of jurisprudence since the Great Charter of 1215.
In the United Kingdom two Home Secretaries and the Court of Appeal have ordered the British police to stop recording “non crime hate incidents” – but they just carry on regardless, because the Hendon Police College says it is a good idea.
I am old enough to remember when the Police College did not teach Marxism, Frankfurt School or any other variety.
Talking of “Woke” Marxism – leading Corporations (the other half of the Corporate State) now compel employees to believe such things as “only white people can be racist”.
This is because “racism” is defined as being about “power structures” and “privilege”.
When I have pointed out before that “Woke” means Frankfurt School Marxist some people have dissented – would you like to deny the obvious now?
Western institutions, including some courts – and including Big Corporate Business, are increasingly dominated by Marxist doctrines – often without them even knowing it. This is what the late Antonio Gramsci called “ideological hegemony” – where doctrines could so saturate a society (or at least the elite part of a society) that people would serve the doctrines without even knowing it, so we have reached a stage where “capitalist big business” serves the cause of its own destruction.
Kirk – as you may know the leading military engineer in the time of “the Sun King” took some time off to research the tax system. He worked out that a single tax of 10% on income (what he called the “Royal Tithe”) would raise more revenue for the Crown, whilst being much less of a burden on the people than the endlessly complex system of taxation that they had.
But his proposed reform threatened too many entrenched interests, both officials and private “Tax Farmers” (the corrupt Corporations of the day) – so the book was publicly burned by the hangman, and the military engineer was lucky to escape with his life.
Although it is true that areas of France where local Estates General were in charge of collecting taxation (such as Brittany) were much less of a mess than areas of France where versions of modern BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard were in charge.
Louis XVI was a much nicer man than Louis XVI had been almost a century before – but he would not bite the bullet of reform, he tried (several times) but backed off when officials made a fuss.
Of course, by 1789 it was too late for tax reform – with half of all spending going on servicing the national debt DEFAULT was inevitable.
But Louis XVI would not default on the national debt – he thought that would be dishonourable.
So the new regime de facto defaulted (after murdering Louis – and murdering hundreds of thousands of mostly ordinary people – largely in the Provinces, the murders in Paris were a tiny proportion of the total number of murders) by “paying” the debt with worthless fiat money – rather than gold (gold they did not have).
America is following the example of the French Revolutionaries.
Perhaps the only decent thing the French Revolutionaries did was to abolish the compulsory GUILDS in 1791.
The guilds had been made compulsory by King Henry IV – the grandfather of the Sun King, the guilds were a principle reason why France fell behind Britain economically over time.
There is no chance that the corrupt and despicable people who control modern America will abolish the guilds – on the contrary they love “occupational licensing” and “business licenses”. The more regulations the better – from their institutionally corrupt Corporate point of view.
Turgot tried t0 abolish the compulsory guilds in 1776 – but the King (who had supported Turgot) wimped out under pressure. When Turgot resigned, because none of his reforms were really carried into effect, King Louis XVI said, in all seriousness, said “how happy you are – I wish I could quit my place” (so much for the power of the King).
The French Revolutionaries proclaimed that they had abolished the compulsory guilds on August the 4th 1789 – and I used to believe them, but, in reality, that reform did not take effect till 1791.