Tales From SYL Ranch

Registering the C.L.I.T.

2010-03-06T17:55:00.010-06:00

This is quite possibly the stupidest thing I've seen come from a government -- and that's saying a lot, given the dimwits we've had running the Federal Government for the last hundred years or so.

The State of South Carolina actuallly passed a law requiring subversive organizations to register with the State.

For a five-dollar fee, no less.

This is why I have such a difficult time taking terrorist threats seriously. The gaping holes in logic that would allow the stupidest State legislator to spend more than a picosecond's time considering this legislation are so stark that it's not even worthy of comment.

Think of this for a moment: not only did it make sense to one legislature, it made sense to both the South Carolina House, Senate, and its Governor. Really. You can't make this up. No one would believe it if you did.

I want to be clear that I'm not in any way suggesting or condoning subversive activity, fraud, or anything illegal. That in mind, I'm curious what would stop someone from downloading the form, filling it out out with bogus information, and then mailing it in -- without the required fee?

Think about it for a moment: in a country in which we now have a KGB (sorry, that's Department Of Homeland Security here in the U.S.) what would the State of South Carolina be forced to do if they started receiving these forms?

Lacking the five-dollar fee, they couldn't file it. They couldn't just throw it away, either. It would need to be investigated, both by the State and then passed on to Federal officials.

I'm simply curious how much KGB manpower might be thrown at it, should the State of South Carolina suddenly start getting huge numbers of these forms?

It's just an idle thought. I'm explicitly not suggesting that anyone download the form; fill it out using an organization name like "Coalition for the Liberation of Itinerant Tree-dwellers"; use "Bubbles the Chimp" as the chief agent's name; and use the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals' mission statement for the organization's goals.

The reason I'm not suggesting that is because it would be fraudulent. And having mentioned the details in public, the next knock on my door would be from men in dark suits from the FBI.

So honestly, don't. Besides, 300 million Americans have a lot more creativity than anything I could suggest.

So don't do it. Really.

Do not download the PDF form that you can find at this link

And whatever you do, please do not send it to:

South Carolina Secretary of State’s Office
Attn: Corporate Filings
P.O. Box 11350
Columbia, SC 29211.

If for some bizarre reason you're a member of a subversive organization and you want to register, do not forget to include the five-dollar filing fee.

You also shouldn't wear gloves when handling the paper and envelope used to send the form. Don't mail it from a random mailbox or post office so out-of-the-way that you'd never been there before in your life and couldn't find your way back without a GPS.

Just don't -- because that would no doubt be illegal. After all, isn't everything?

Hey, Al, How's All That Global Warming Working Out For You?

2010-01-13T10:05:00.000-06:00

This is the most awesome thing I've seen:

This past week, I was having lunch at a restaurant in midtown Manhattan when my colleague noticed Al and Tipper Gore dining across the room with another couple. It was a frigid day, with record-breaking temperatures keeping most people indoors, and we were the last two tables in the restaurant.

As the Gore party started walking out of the room, my colleague called out, "Hey, Al, how's all that global warming working out for you?" Gore turned around and stared at us with a completely dumbfounded look on his face. He was speechless. With a smile, my colleague repeated the question, again to a hapless look of dismay.

Finally, Gore mumbled under his breath, "Wow, you sound awfully angry." I responded with a thank you, explaining to him that we were actually extremely amused. The encounter concluded with Gore's friend mouthing a very animated "f--- you" at us, and they skulked away. My only regret is that no one at the table asked Gore, "What's the matter? The polar bear's got your tongue?"

What struck me the most about this meeting was Gore's complete inability to utter a sentence addressing his life's work. The former Vice President, Nobel Prize laureate, and Academy Award-winning producer standing before us was a moron, unable to articulate a simple comeback to address all that he has stood for since leaving office. He could have simply ignored us and kept walking, as he does with reporters, but by stopping and standing there dumbstruck, he looked like a fool.

Would that everyone who saw him would do the same.

Motorola Droid Is Rooted

2009-12-09T12:35:00.013-06:00

Well, our friends over at AllDroid have succeeded in rooting the Motorola Droid. I have performed this operation successfully.

I don't endorse this procedure and no doubt it voids all kinds of warranties. If you do it and brick your phone, it's your own stupid fault for believing everything you read on the Internet.

If you don't know what rooting is or what it might be used for, please, for the love of Ghu, do not root your phone. There are a million ways for a n00b to brick a rooted computer or for the computer to be exploited.

If you don't know what this means, just don't do it.

The procedure is as follows:

Update to Android v2.0.1

Please note: if your phone has the Android v2.0.1 update, you do not need to perform this section. Skip immediately to Apply the Root Hack.

If you already have v2.0.1 and perform this section anyway, you won't harm your phone. It will, however, be a pointless waste of your time.

Download the OS update file.

Do not extract this file.

Rename the file to update.zip.

Connect your Droid to your computer via USB.

On the Droid, go to the Notifications bar and select USB Connected then tap Mount.

Once the device is mounted, the SD card will show as a removable device on your computer

Copy update.zip into the root directory of your SD Card (/sdcard).

Unmount the device from your computer, and turn the Droid off.

Hold down the "X" key on the physical keyboard and while doing so press the power button. Hold both of them down until you see a Triangle with an "!".

Press and hold the Vol+ button, then press the camera button. This will present a menu at the top of the screen.

Using the D-pad on the physical keyboard, select the option to update with the update.zip file.

This should take a little bit. Once it's done select the option to reboot the phone.

The phone will take much longer than normal to boot, don't worry as it is normal.

Apply the Root Hack

Download the droid-super_user.zip file.
(md5sum cf653352967253e99d967498ffd9ce69).

Do not extract this file.

Rename the file to update.zip.

Plug your Droid into your computer via USB.

On the Droid, go to the Notifications bar and select USB Connected then press Mount.

Once the device is mounted, the SD card will show as a removable device on your computer

Copy update.zip into the root directory of your SD Card (/sdcard).

This will overwrite the file placed there in the previous section.

Unmount the device from your computer, and turn the Droid off.

Hold down the X key on the physical keyboard and while doing so press the power button. Hold both of them down until you see a Triangle with an !.

Press and hold the Vol+ button, then press the camera button. This will present a menu at the top of the screen.

Using the D-pad on the physical keyboard, select the option to update with the update.zip file.

This should take a little bit. Once it's done select the option to reboot the phone.

When this is finished, you should be able to run a terminal emulator and enter the command: su -

There's an interesting theory on how it was hacked:

Look at the zip file. The file contents are only about like 300KB, but the file is 10MB.

About the same size as the actual 2.0.1 OTA update.zip

The OTA update zip file has some RSA certs in it, yet the droid root update lacks them. Somehow the hacker must have used this unused deadspace in the zip file to fool the Android updater into thinking the zip file was signed, when the actual contents of the zip file don't contain the update but just contain the su binary.

In any case, I'm one step closer to being able to SSH to my Droid ...

Motorola Droid Preview

2009-10-27T21:47:00.003-05:00

The Motorola Droid looks pretty much like the computer I've been waiting for my whole life.

Be A Servant??

2009-09-09T11:26:00.002-05:00

This is fairly nauseating ...

The Great Office War

2009-08-21T15:04:00.002-05:00

U.S. Police State?

2009-08-05T17:31:00.003-05:00

Facts indeed.

The relevant portion of the text:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Facts-Are-Stubborn-Things

Happy System Administrator Appreciation Day!

2009-07-31T09:22:00.004-05:00

Friday, July 31, 2009, is the 10th annual System Administrator Appreciation Day. On this special international day, give your System Administrator something that shows that you truly appreciate their hard work and dedication. (All day Friday, 24 hours, your local timezone).

Let's face it, System Administrators get no respect 364 days a year. This is the day that all fellow System Administrators across the globe, will be showered with expensive sports cars and large piles of cash in appreciation of their diligent work.

The Emperor Has No Clothes

2009-07-31T02:08:00.002-05:00

Last year, in response to Congressman Ron Paul's attempt to adhere to the Constitutional requirement of declaring war before the President may act as Commander-in-Chief, Speaker Hastert declared that the Constitution was "no longer relevant to modern society."

Admittedly, he didn't intend to include the entire Constitution, simply that section that specifies that it is the function of Congress to declare war. The problem is that once you start being selective in your application of the Constitution, it becomes possible to ignore all of it.

Last week, in response to questioning by reporters, United States Supreme Court Justice Scalia announced that the Constitution was only a list of minimums. We can now expect, according to Scalia, that our liberties will be curtailed to be more consistent with those minimums.

One need not even mention President Bush. Even the dimmest bulb can perceive that he spends virtually all of his waking hours violating the Constitution that he swore to protect and defend.

We are at a unique point in the history of the Republic: all three branches of the Federal Government are now in complete agreement that the Constitution is no longer relevant.

Forget for a moment that a Federal elected official who ignores the Constitution is in violation of his Oath of Office. Forget that such a violator must by definition be a traitor. If you're religious, forget that in the majority of cases the Oath was sworn to God, placing the violator's immortal soul in peril of eternal damnation.

Instead, let's consider what it means if the Constitution is, in fact, no longer relevant.

The Constitution is the document that defines the Federal Government: it's powers and functions versus those reserved to the States and the People. The Constitution does not have a "spirit." It does not have an "intent."

I realize that there are individuals who call themselves "Constitutional scholars." I realize that they've been in existence since the founding the the Republic. With all due respect to them, the Constitution isn't a philosophical statement in need of interpretation. Rather, it's a rule book in need of adherence by those in office.

As a parallel, consider this: the company for which I work has an Employee Handbook written and maintained by the Human Resources department. In it are rules set down by my company. As a term of my employment, I agreed to abide by these policies. Failure to do so—even accidentally—can be grounds for disciplinary action, suspension, and even termination. I do not have the option to ignore the parts I dislike. I must either obey it in its entirety, or I must quit my job.

The Constitution is the Federal Government's "Employee Handbook." It explains how the Federal Government operates. Adherence to its edicts is not optional by those in government. If they find that they cannot abide by its rules, their only recourse is to resign their office or to amend the Constitution.

Were those wandering the halls of government not fixated on one goal above all others (the attainment and perpetuation of personal power), violation of the Constitution would carry with it disciplinary action: suspension, ejection from office, and imprisonment. For the better part of a century, those in power have slowly but surely inured the voting public to Constitutional violations. Today, the Speaker of the House can go on record saying that it is no longer relevant.

As I listen to the Republican whores on talk radio, it's becoming more frequent to hear them opine about what parts of the Constitution may be ignored, or to insist that the Constitution doesn't really mean what it says. I find this particularly amusing, because only a few short years ago, they made a pretense of being Constitutionalists in favor of limited government. When they whine about the Unconstitutionality of campaign finance reform in one breath and then declare that it's perfectly Constitutional to lock up American citizens as "enemy combatants" in the next, I tend to burst out laughing.

Just precisely what goes on in these idiots' heads? Admittedly, the best of them is a self-proclaimed half-wit, but does even he not realize that he's been reduced to the level of professional wrestling ringside commentator? When President Clinton was in power, it was easy for them: he was a traitorous pig, after all. When their own traitor is in power, the Republican whores turn into mindless raving cheerleaders, utterly bereft of any principles they might have had under Clinton.

Of course, in reality, the Republican whores aren't that stupid. They know perfectly well that what they're saying makes no sense. For them, the Constitution is something you root through like a pig at a trough, occasionally dragging out snippets in order to bolster an argument. Any leavings that don't support the argument are simply tossed back into the trough for later use.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. You can't selectively apply the Constitution. It either exists as a whole, adhered-to in all respects, or it's no longer relevant.

In point of fact, I agree with Speaker Hastert: the Constitution is no longer relevant. It hasn't been relevant for at least half a century. The only difference today is that all three branches of government admit it.

The Constitution defines the Republic. If the Constitution that defines it no longer exists, then the Republic itself no longer exists.

As a parallel, the V8 engine in my gas-guzzling SUV defines the vehicle. If I pull it out, I don't have a car any more: I have a very expensive lawn ornament.

Without the Constitution to define it, the Federal Government cannot exist. The Federal Government is no longer legitimate. The Emperor has no clothes!

Ponder this for a moment: less than one-eighth of the governed populace participates in elections. Less than one-half of registered voters show up at the polls; one-half of eligible voters register; and one-half of the governed populace is eligible.

Less than one-eighth of the populace actually supports the current regime—which itself no longer recognizes the document that called it into existence!

Speaker Hastert is right: the Constitution is no longer relevant. The Federal Government is no longer legitimate, and seven-eighths of the population knows it.

In the favorite words of President Bush, the Federal Government is an outlaw regime.

The pertinent question then becomes: what shall we do about it? The answer is simple:

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

This is exactly what we wish the FedGov to be doing. By ejecting the Constitution, those in power have ejected the Federal Government itself. This is a wonderful thing! It means that we may now begin the process of building a free society, in which individuals self-govern guided by the Zero Aggression Principle.

The Emperor has no clothes. All we need do now is point, laugh at the poor sap, and go on with our lives. We may ignore those pitiable fools in Washington and the befuddled one-eighth of those around us who think Washington's "laws" still have relevance.

Government has removed itself from our lives. Thank you, Speaker Hastert, Justice Scalia, and President Bush, for voluntarily returning control of our lives to us. Each and every one of your former subjects owes you a debt of thanks. We're about to embark on the most extraordinary period of freedom in the history of planet Earth, and it was made possible because you ejected the Constitution—and in the process, de-legitimized yourselves.

The Emperor has no clothes. Let's leave the naked fool standing in the town square and get on with conquering the stars

Law Versus Reality, Part III

2009-07-31T01:51:00.003-05:00

It's not often I'm called a communist. "Right-wing," "fascist," and "pacifist" are insults I'm more familiar with — though how someone could regard a gun-toting individualist as any of these is a mystery to me.

Nevertheless, I was called an "information communist" by no less than three individuals during the last week, all on the basis of my statement that there is no such thing as "intellectual property."

Allow me to reiterate my basic argument:

The purpose of any storage media (be it books, records, CDs, videotapes, stone tablets, or cave walls) is to augment the imperfect memory of human beings. The intent is either to store or to transmit information. If all human beings had an eidetic memory, storage medium would be utterly unnecessary.

For purposes of example, I'll continue with multiple Grammy-award-winning vocalist Shania Twain, whose music I really enjoy. Modern law holds that Shania owns the title track of her newest CD, "Up!" regardless of its storage medium. It doesn't matter if the song is spoken, sung, written, recorded on vinyl or magnetic tape, digitized to a bitstream on CD or MP3, or any other format. Regardless of medium, Shania owns "Up!"

Since that is that case, the only logical conclusion is that Shania owns my memory of the song. If the medium is irrelevant, then by logical extension, the medium of my brain is also irrelevant. The portability of the storage medium isn't an issue, nor is the fact that my brain cannot be replicated like an MP3.

At least, not yet. Though you can be sure that when the technology becomes available to record thoughts, memories, and feelings, government will decree that memories of Shania's performance are her sole property.

The distinction of the storage medium of my brain being unique from other storage medium is totally arbitrary and illogical. If Shania owns "Up! regardless of medium, then she must own my memories of the song.

Clearly, the concept of sole ownership of ideas collapses when the argument is taken to its logical extreme. If one objects to the notion of Shania owning the memory of the song in my brain, then logically one must object to the notion that she owns the song on other media that I also own, such as CD or MP3.

Shania Twain released three separate CDs with different mixes of her recent "Up!" songs: Country, Pop, and World. They're the same songs with different mixes for different markets.

In North America, only the Country and Pop versions were sold, and these were the ones I purchased in a local music store. I really enjoyed them. There literally isn't a track that I don't like, and I outright love most of them. It's the only CD I've not mastered myself that I can listen to from beginning to end without skipping tracks.

There are a whopping 28 tracks on two CDs, for slightly over twenty dollars. I don't know of another singer who's providing that kind of volume and quality of work at that price.

As much as I enjoyed the Country and Pop mixes, I decided to get the World version. However, as it was a European import, it was very expensive. I wasn't certain I wanted to pay the money before having even heard the mixes.

Enter Kazaa, the incredibly popular peer-to-peer file-sharing service. I've used this service to find old TV shows, music, and reading material.

One word of warning: if you're going to use the service, do not use the client from Kazaa.com — it's full of adware and spyware. Get Kazaa Lite K++ instead. I can't recommend a Linux client as of yet.

Using my Kazaa client, I ultimately downloaded all 19 tracks of the world CD at no cost to me beyond my Internet connectivity. Excitedly, I fired up XMMS.

I was shocked and disappointed. The Country and Pop versions were worth every penny I paid for them, but the World version really sucks — a word I almost never use in print. They suck badly. They're horrible. You really can't listen to them. They're mind-bogglingly and staggeringly revolting.

If you've ever heard "Up!" on the radio or watched the video on VH1, imagine that it was performed to a Reggae beat!

The other songs — with the possible exception of "Forever And For Always" (apparently not even an awful mix can destroy a song that good) — are even worse. I have no idea who thought this was a good idea, but I'm very grateful that I didn't spend my hard-earned cash on an expensive import.

People have a difficult time with this issue because they're so used to being told by socialist media outlets — that they otherwise shun — that "Up!" is Shania's intellectual property, and that only she has the right to dispose of it.

Forget for a moment that copyright law exists — divest yourself of the idea that since government defines a right, it must exist. Just sit for a moment and ask yourself: "How does it initiate force against Shania Twain for Bill Stone to listen to MP3s of her songs that he downloaded from a file-sharing service as opposed to paying for a CD in the store?"

The impact on Shania of my doing so is: it reduces her income and consequently makes her upset. That is all.

Negatively impacting Shania's income does not initiate force against her — all businesses routinely negatively impact each others' income. Making her unhappy does not initiate force against her — all businesses routinely make each others' members unhappy.

If one further examines the idea of "intellectual property" and asks, "Could this concept exist without government to enforce it?" The answer is, "No, it couldn't."

Functionally, it doesn't exist even with government to enforce it, something the very existence of the Internet proves. Show me something you think is intellectual property, and I'll show you ten Web sites devoted to it.

Other property rights do exist in absence of government. You can buy a diamond, put it in your pocket, and say, "This is mine, not yours." If I then initiate force against you by taking the diamond against your will, you can shoot me, cut me open, and take your property back.

You can't do that with ideas. The best you can do is initiate force against others by killing them in order to keep the information secret.

Not only is there no initiation of force against Shania to download and listen to her songs, there is actually a case to be made that she would be initiating force against me if she attempted to prosecute me for doing so.

Firstly, if the socialist argument is correct and medium is irrelevant to the status of ownership, Shania owns the memory of her song in my mind. This is a clear Initiation of Force. One of the underlying tenets of the ZAP is that homo sapiens is the most territorial animal on the planet, and that territory starts first and foremost with our minds and bodies. For Shania to claim ownership of my mind would initiate force against me.

Secondly, she would be delegating initiation of force to government, since this is clearly not an initiation of force that she could perpetrate on a wide scale without government to do her dirty work for her.

While it is not only not an initiation of force for two individuals to be in possession of the same information, treating information as property defies all physical logic:

What is the nature of property?

It has at least four dimensions: height, width, breadth, and it moves through time.
It is unique. You can hold it in your hand or put a fence around it and declare, "This is mine!"
Most importantly, real property has a one-to-one relationship of property to owner. One piece of property only has one owner. No piece of property may have multiple owners — a one-to-many relationship of property to owner.

Any property that appears to have a one-to-many relationship is one of two things:

Property whose "owners" are pretending they all own it, or property owned by no one.

Property jointly owned in marriage, "public" property, and "community" property all collapse without an external institution to force the one-to-many relationship. If a married couple divorces, the one-to-one relationship of property to owner becomes quite obvious, for example — the couple was actually simply pretending they both owned it. Similarly, if a government falls, the illusory nature of "public" and "community" property becomes readily apparent.

Ideas and information do not share the basic attributes of property. They do not have dimensions. They are not unique. They have a one-to-many relationship to those who are aware of the information.

Property is inherently unique. Information is not. Therefore the analogy of information as property simply doesn't hold up.

There are three types of information: known, unknown, and secret. Unknown information can be discovered, and if kept secret, it's functionally your property. However, one can't stop other people from discovering that information independently. Nor do you truly have ownership of the information as soon as you tell someone else about it. You can get them to sign an NDA and seek restitution if they violate it, but functionally, the information is outside of your control the moment you divulge it to another person.

This isn't even on the level of any moral issue. It is literally and technically impossible for Shania to have any control over the disposition of material she makes so broadly public, and it is nothing more than cognitive dissonance to behave otherwise. Once Shania released "Up!" modern technology took over, and thousands of teenagers the world over are able to burn CDs from the MP3s they download.

Regardless of the law, she has functionally given up sole ownership of her songs by virtue of singing them in public and by distributing them for sale. The only functional way for her to maintain "ownership" of songs released for public consumption is to institute a police state even worse than exists in the United States right now.

No doubt they'll ultimately get around to trying. When they do, the functional end of the United States will be reached.

One might question how an artist like Shania will continue to make money in a free society in which her work is not considered her sole property regardless of medium.

I don't claim to know precisely what the coming free society will look like. I have a lot of ideas, the most positive of which are based on libertarian science fiction author L. Neil Smith's extraordinary Galactic Confederacy series of novels.

However, one thing history teaches is that proprietary technology and information doesn't have long-term viability in the free market. The Beta videotape format and the Apple and Amiga computers, are all examples of extraordinary technology that died because it was proprietary. Open technologies create competition, and competition creates higher-quality goods and services at a lower cost.

Modern technology is forcing the entertainment industry back into reality and the free market.

In the case of CDs, I would predict that the coming free society will see a dramatic drop in price in order to compete with other technologies. We'll probably also see far more new works created, since the "shelf life" of the current one will be significantly less than we're used to. Where Shania now releases a CD every three to five years, in a free society, she may have to release new ones every six months.

Shania might add value to her songs by singing material she didn't write but that there is demand for. I have a grainy video (thank you again, Kazaa!) of a capture of some home video of Shania performing "Somewhere Out There." I would be thrilled to hear her sing this song on a CD, teamed with an extraordinary male vocalist.

Perhaps she'll add value with "collector" tracks. For example, the current release of John Williams Star Wars (the original movie, or "Episode IV" for you purists) include a "bonus track" with no less than six alternate versions of the main title music. One of them includes a mistake — ten points to the first person to e-mail me which take number it is.

It would be fun to listen to flubbed takes or orchestrations Shania didn't like as much as the "official" one.

Perhaps she'll release more videos, adding value through effective marketing or special features. It would be fun to watch her recording her songs in the studio — again, with mistakes and out-takes of the kinds seen in modern DVDs.

And these are just my ideas, from the armchair of someone who doesn't work in the industry. No doubt the unfettered creative power of millions of free individuals will come up with notions I'd never dream of.

What modern copyright law is attempting to protect is a flawed notion, something that modern technology makes readily apparent. There never was any intrinsic property right over known, public information: the best you can do is keep previously unknown information secret as long as possible, and exploit that information to your advantage.

Law Versus Reality, Part II

2009-07-31T01:47:00.002-05:00

In my essay entitled "Law Versus Reality, Part I," I made a claim that is no doubt startling to may libertarian thinkers:

"Intellectual Property" does not exist.

In all fairness, I should have written Part II of this article first, as an introduction. However, I was so incensed by the sheer gall of the money-grubbing socialist presently in charge of SCO that I believed his actions warranted immediate comment.

That out of the way, it's important to explain why, from the perspective of the Zero Aggression Principle, "intellectual property," patents, and even copyrights are nothing more than legal fiction. Ideas are not property. They never have been, they never will be, and it is a horrible mistake to behave as though they are.

Firstly, the Zero Aggression Principle states:

"No human being has the right -- under any circumstances -- to initiate force against another human being, nor to threaten or delegate its initiation."

As has been explained so many times previously, this is the sole defining philosophy that need be adhered-to by individuals who wish to interact peacefully. We can disagree about literally everything else: religion, sexual orientation, use of chemicals, etc. As long as we agree that the only moral use of force is as a response to someone else's initiation of force, then we can at least live together without killing each other.

It must also be pointed out that one need not have a "critical mass" of individuals who adhere to the ZAP in order for it to be implemented. I have adhered to this philosophy for nearly ten years while others around me may not.

If one defines basic morality to be the Zero Aggression Principle, there is simply no basis for any form of intellectual property. In fact, in the context of the ZAP, all arguments in favor of sole proprietorship of ideas collapse instantaneously.

We must first begin with basic principles: what is intellectual property? It is an idea, or more correctly information. Information is of three types: known, unknown, and secret.

Known information can be discovered -- or in the specific case of ideas or works of art, such information can be created. As long as the information is kept secret, known only to the discoverer, it is his or her sole property. The moment that the information is divulged to another individual, it is no longer the sole property of the discoverer and can never be returned to his sole proprietorship.

For purposes of argument, let's use the most common form of intellectual property on the market today, the music CD:

Firstly, why do music CDs (or any form of storage, from the printed word to the computer disk) exist? Simple: because the human brain isn't capable of retaining or recalling every piece of information to which it is exposed. The CD is an augmentation to our memory.

For example, I enjoy the music of Shania Twain -- particularly her latest CD and its title track, "Up!" If CDs, magnetic tape, or vinyl record albums were never invented, the only way I could hear Shania's music would be to attend a concert. If I wished to recall the song, I'd have to rely on my imperfect memory of the concert.

Fortunately, however, modern technology allowed Shania to bring her band into a studio and engineer a recording of what she felt was the optimal orchestration of her songs. This was then burned onto CDs by the millions and put into stores for public consumption.

Modern copyright law holds that Shania is the sole owner of the content of that CD. However, this copyright law is nothing more than legal fiction, and for one simple reason:

If Shania is sole owner of the song, regardless of its format, then by logical extension, she is sole owner of the memory of the song in the listener's mind.

This is clearly impossible. Shania cannot own someone else's mind or memories. By extension, she cannot own the contents of a CD intended solely for the purpose of augmenting the listener's memory.

Many libertarians would be outraged at this notion. Traditional thinking holds that since Shania went to the trouble of creating and recording the song, she is entitled to any income derived from that song -- hence copyright law.

The problem is that there is no basis for this in the Zero Aggression Principle.

Imagine that some other band were to sing "Up!" in a concert -- or even record it for distribution via CD. This does not initiate force against Shania.

Certainly Shania would not be happy about it. No doubt it would impact her income. Nevertheless, negatively impacting Shania's contentment and income do not initiate force against her. Many competing businesses routinely make each other unhappy and impact each others' income. It is not an initiation of force to do so.

This argument can be equally applied to any form of "intellectual property," from software code to CDs to books ... anything that in modern law may be copyrighted or patented.

Patents in particular represent a government initiation of force: it essentially grants to an individual sole use of a law of nature. There is absolutely no reason under the Zero Aggression Principle to prevent another individual from exploiting the same law of nature once it has been discovered. Exploiting the basic operation of the universe is the birthright of every sapient individual -- indeed, there is no way to survive as a human being if one does not exploit laws of nature.

Certainly this makes complete mincemeat of modern patent and copyright law, but the entire notion is flawed in the first place. It is based on an immorality, the idea that government may use force to grant rights that never existed in the first place.

Thomas Jefferson suggested precisely this same idea two hundred years ago in a letter to Isaac McPherson:

It would be curious, then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.

Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening mine. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature. When she made them like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.

Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.

Since Jefferson's time, what limited copyright and patent law the United States had until the beginning of the 20th century allowed ideas and inventions to spread like wildfire. The action of those limited laws combined with the free market and millions of free individuals brought more prosperity and technological innovation in a mere century's time than had been seen in the entire preceding history of humankind.

Today, there has been a significant decrease in the level of innovation possible in the United States. This is, as I suggested in my essay, "Why Johnny Can't Get a Job," in no small part due to socialist regulations that have made it impossible to create new industries. However, a large measure of blame rests squarely at the foot of the country's ever-expanding copyright and patent laws.

Ultimately, of course, the increasingly unstable economic, social, and political realities of modern socialist America will cause the Federal Government to collapse. There is no socialist state in the world that has not ultimately collapsed, and it is self-indulgent folly to believe the United States is any different.

Some day, sooner than any of us think, the monstrosity our government has become is going to keel over dead -- there is, after all, only so long you can keep a thousand-pound freak of nature alive. When this occurs, there will hopefully be enough devotees of the Zero Aggression Principle that we'll learn from the preceding several thousand years' history and replace that freak of nature with nothing.

How will Shania make her millions without a government to sponsor an immoral monopoly on "ownership" of a song she intentionally distributed to millions of individuals? I don't know for certain. Perhaps she won't be as rich. Perhaps she'll come up with some kind of non-disclosure agreement regarding performance of her songs. Perhaps she'll add value to her version by being a more talented singer or by offering better recordings of other popular songs -- I can certainly think of many I'd like to hear her orchestrate and sing.

What will occur is that a quarter of a billion individuals, each 100% in control of their lives and destinies, will create all manner of new ideas and inventions. They'll use the free market to further their own separate interests, self-governing guided by the Zero Aggression Principle. It won't quite be a world we recognize, without patents and copyrights.

It will be far, far better.

Law Versus Reality, Part I

2009-07-31T01:46:00.000-05:00

Every day, it's becoming increasingly obvious that what is termed "intellectual property" or "IP" bears no more resemblance to reality than American capitalism does to the free market.

"IP" is bandied about a lot with respect to high-tech items like computers and computer operating systems. It's a hold-over from patent and copyright law, made at a time during which the printed word and machined parts were the most-high-tech form an idea could take.

The real problem is this: there is no such thing as intellectual property, and it's a denial of reality to behave as though ideas are property.

This position places us unquestionably at odds with many in the freedom movement who make their living creating works of art -- something generally considered an "intellectual property" -- but reality is reality. Ideas are not property. Thomas Jefferson knew this two centuries ago, when he noted in a letter to Isaac McPherson:

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.

I would heartily recommend that one read the entire passage from which this is quoted, because it's utterly brilliant. Jefferson makes the case against IP far better than I could.

To sum it up in modern terms, "Intellectual Property" is a legal fiction. It does not exist. Information exists, and it is of three kinds: known, unknown, and secret. Unknown information can be discovered, and once discovered held secret. The moment you tell someone else about it, the cat is literally out of the bag, and you have no real control over it any more. You can ask -- even contractually require -- someone to keep it secret, and seek restitution should they violate their contract. But a contract won't stop someone from violating it any more than a law will stop someone from committing a crime. There is also no way to stop someone else from independantly discovering the same information.

For example, if you discover the means by which it is possible to split an atom and in so doing use its force for destructive ends, and then you blow up a couple of cities with atomic bombs, there is no way to prevent others from observing what happened and duplicating it.

In my "day job," I am a computer geek. I presently hold the position of Linux Engineer with a major computer manufacturer. It is the first time I've held a position that is exclusively devoted to Linux, something I've wanted for ten years, since I first ran Linux in production while with AT&T.

Linux, for those who are unaware, is a computer operating system, often abbreviated "OS." If you don't understand what an operating system is, there's a good analogy to be had with automobiles:
Imagine your computer was a car. The operating system is its engine. Without an engine under the hood, a car can look beautiful, but all it will ever do is sit in your driveway. A computer operating system is the same: without one, your computer is nothing more than an expensive paperweight.

The most common consumer computer "engine" is Windows, manufactured by the Microsoft Corporation. Any computer mechanic who's been under the hood of very many "cars" will tell you that Windows isn't very well-constructed. You can think of it as being a 4-cylinder engine that's been heavily tricked-out and modified to move an SUV- but it leaks oil, transmission fluid, and water from the radiator. Fortunately, in the computer world, oil, transmission fluid and water are all cheap and easy to replace, and the engine comes with virtually every car ever made. But the engine itself isn't a great engineering feat, and whenever UPS wants to make sure a package gets somewhere on time, they use something better.

In the computer world, there are two better engines. One is IBM's mainframes. You can think of mainframes as jet engines. When UPS wants to make sure your package gets from New York to Los Angeles overnight, they don't fill their cargo planes with cheap, 4-cylinder engines. They use big jet engines.

The other engine is UNIX, which is sort of like a diesel truck engine. When UPS takes your package from the airport to their sorting center, they don't put a 4-cylinder engine in the semi truck, they use a big diesel engine.

In the computer world, the car -- without the engine -- is incredibly cheap. It's also capable of holding either a 4-cylinder car engine or a big diesel truck engine. In fact, in the computer world, every land vehicle sold can almost as easily be a sportscar, and SUV, or a semi truck, depending on how you equip it. The real difference, however, is what engine you put inside it.

Not only that, but in the computer world, the price of parts for the engine is so cheap that it's now possible for people to build their own. Imagine it like this:

Three hundred years ago (in computer time), a company called AT&T manufactured the first truck engine. They called it UNIX. They wanted to sell it, but AT&T held an immoral government charter which forced every American to use them whenever they wanted to haul certain kinds of freight (e.g., make a phone call). The government (always underestimating the power of the computer) decided that as long as they were forcing people to pay AT&T for freight, they wouldn't let AT&T make money selling trucks engines, too -- that seemed like too much of an immoral monopoly in government "ethics."

AT&T found that making their own truck engine was a lot cheaper than buying it from someone else, and to make things even better, after they built one, building more was really cheap.

Since the government had forbid them to sell the engine, they decided to just give it away. They gave it to government agencies, government schools, and even some private schools. Mechanics could look at it in detail, see how it worked, take it apart, put it back together again, add things on, take them off, and so on.
People did this for a long time -- so long, in fact, that whole generations grew up being trained in how to take apart and put back together this engine. It's been so long (in computer years) that we call the engine that AT&T gave away "Ancient UNIX."

The inner working of Ancient UNIX are as well-known in computer circles as the general workings of the internal combustion engine are to mechanics. It's so well-known, in fact, that many of its processes are now an industry standard. Making a modern computer engine without using some of Ancient UNIX's components would be like trying to build a car engine without using water in the radiator.

Eventually, via many varied (and occasionally twisted -- click here for details) means, other companies copied the original UNIX engine or bought pieces of it outright, and started selling it. In fact, AT&T even stopped using its original UNIX, selling it to a company who sold it again to a company that bought another company whose management eventually took over that company.

It's been three hundred years, after all, in computer time.

Many companies who made UNIX came and went, and today there's really only two or three left:

IBM, who sells an engine called AIX.

Sun Microsystems, who sells an engine called Solaris.

There's one more company of note -- not because they sell any real volume of their product, but because they ultimately ended up owning the original UNIX made by AT&T: The SCO Group. SCO isn't a profitable company and hasn't been for some time. It's been through a couple of mergers and acquisitions, but has rarely turned a profit. It certainly has never competed meaningfully with IBM or Sun.

During the last century (computer time -- it's actually only been about ten years) the price of building an engine has gotten to be virtually nothing. Gear-heads sometimes do it in their garage, just for the fun of it, to see if they can think of some new way to trick it out and make it better. One such computer gear-head was Linus Torvalds, a college student from Finland.

Torvalds liked UNIX. He liked some of the other home-made, tricked-out versions. He had a brand new car -- a very popular model, and a direct ancestor to the most popular car today -- that the engine wasn't capable of fully exploiting. He thought it would be fun to build his own engine, and make the car that was originally a 2-door sedan into a semi truck. What Torvalds did different was that he had something most car gear-heads don't: the Internet. He told his gear-head friends on the Internet about his new, home-brew, tricked-out engine. Since a lot of those friends owned the same car, they saw that what he was doing could really make their cars smoke, too. Torvalds thought that it made a lot more sense to share what he was doing with everyone, let them make additions and changes, and eventually evolve the engine into something even better than he could make it alone.

There was another gear-head named Richard Stallman. For a long time, Stallman had been talking about how it makes sense for gear-heads to work together to make more efficient engines. Under the auspices of his organization (the Free Software Foundation), he sponsored GNU, a method by which lots of the pieces of the UNIX engine get tooled by gear-heads.

So with Stallman and his gear-heads working on the pieces of the engine and Torvalds and his gear-heads working on tooling up the pieces in a new way, the truck engine Linux (or GNU/Linux as Stallman prefers) was born. Linux looks and act a lot like UNIX, borrows lots of its methods, and maybe even some of its parts -- parts that have been available for three hundred years, computer time.

Now the thing about Linux is that no one actually owns it. There are maintainers, gear-heads who tweak the various individual pieces or make sure that the pieces fit together efficiently. Because of the Internet, the gear-heads don't live close to each other and they don't work for the same companies when they're not being gear-heads. Because of Stallman, the pieces they make are available to anyone to look at, re-tool, and make work.

This has resulted in a really slick engine that is currently going into 20% of the trucks being sold in the world. In fact, the likelihood is that the "truck" that lets you read this essay has Linux under its hood. Anyone who has the financial wherewithal can make CDs with Linux on it, add their own particular branding, and sell it.

Today, the two leading Linux companies are American-base Red Hat Software and German-based SuSE. Even UNIX vendors such as IBM and have made motions toward ultimately abandoning their own UNIX in favor of Linux.

Meanwhile, back at SCO, ( ... remember SCO, the company that now owns the UNIX AT&T sold off, way back when? The unprofitable company that doesn't compete well with other companies that sell UNIX?) CEO Darl McBride noticed that between IBM and their engine, AIX, and Red Hat and SuSE with their engine, Linux, the old, original UNIX isn't selling so well. In fact, it's selling badly. In fact, unless something is done, SCO is going to go belly-up -- probably sooner rather than later.

So what did McBride do? Did he improve SCO's engine so that it's clearly and obviously better than IBM's or Linux? Did he cut prices in order to entice customers to use SCO's engine? Did he adopt Linux the way other companies did and use lower prices and effective marketing to convince customers to use it?

No, McBride did none of that because that's not the kind of person McBride is. He has no interest in competing in the free market, because Darl McBride is a businessman of another stripe. He's a socialist. McBride decided that when you can't compete in the marketplace, you should use government to force the marketplace to come to you.

McBride noticed that American copyright and patent law bears no relationship to the modern world. Century-old law is being applied to modern computer "car engines" in a pointless attempt to protect IP rights that never existed in the first place.

McBride began a long campaign to stamp out Linux. He started claiming that the pieces and parts of Linux that look and act so much like UNIX are actually stolen from the UNIX that SCO now owns.

McBride didn't mention the fact that the UNIX car engine has been around so long that its methods, pieces, and parts show up in every other car engine in existence -- Windows included. He didn't mention that back when AT&T owned it, the pieces and parts were routinely handed over for free, and anyone could get under the hood to tweak it. He didn't mention that AT&T never tried to keep it secret. He didn't mention that so many people worldwide have been trained on it, played with the pieces, and tweaked the parts that his entire argument appears ludicrous to anyone who has the slightest knowledge of cars. He didn't mention that the people who originally designed and built his engine are dead or retired, the few who are still around think he's a money-grubbing little weasel who's using the law as an excuse for poor business management, and no one with any legitimate interest in the creation of UNIX thinks they're being harmed.

McBride essentially claimed that his company owns the intellectual property behind the diesel truck engine, therefore anyone who uses a diesel truck with an engine that resembles his should pay SCO.

Late last week, McBride actually started a lawsuit against two major companies, AutoZone and DaimlerChrysler. McBride claims that since both companies use Linux, and since Linux uses pieces and parts of the engine that was once given away free of charge by AT&T and now owned by SCO, AutoZone and DaimlerChrysler are violating SCO's intellectual property.

The tragedy in all this is that because people believe that knowledge and ideas can actually be owned by a single individual, the law in this case actually works in SCO's favor.

This is what happens when reality is ignored by the law. What will happen is simple:

Reality will win. McBride may be successful with his socialist money-grab sceme in the near term, but in the long term, the market will react and put his company out of business. In the long term, the Federal Government and State Governments that make his case possible will collapse of their own weight and inherent instability.

There will be a sudden -- and rather dramatic -- correction. We'll all be a lot more free, very quickly.
With luck, we'll learn from our mistakes, and understand that the American Experiment to limit government was a dismal failure. Government cannot be limited. Having "a little government" is no different than being "a little pregnant." You can ignore it for a while, but eventually it starts to show. There's a lot of screaming and pain, and then you get rid of it.

The only way to really avoid the effects of pregnancy is to not get knocked up in the first place. Similarly, the only way to avoid the effects of government is to not have one in the first place.

With luck, the next time we have an opportunity to get "knocked up" with government, we'll learn from all of prior human history and decide to abstain.

Revenge Of the Nerds

2009-07-30T23:32:00.003-05:00

The "Homeland Security Act" is the usual kind of atrocity that we've all come to expect from the would-be slave-holders in Washington. In an astounding violation of their Oaths of Office, lawmakers have passed a bill that violates every single one of the Bill of Rights.

In a marvelous display of ignorance (explained to me by a coworker who is a Russian expatriate), one of the Russian translations of "Homeland Security" is "KGB." For brevity's sake, the Act and the Unconstitutional, immoral Federal offices it creates will hereafter be referred to as "the American KGB."

Under the KGB, Americans no longer have any Constitutional guarantees. None.

Not that this comes as a surprise to anyone who's been paying even the slightest bit of attention to American political discourse over the last century. Federal officials have been in the process of murdering the Constitutional Republic since the Lincoln Administration. The American KGB simply pounds the final nail into its coffin, creating the de facto police state about which politicians have always dreamed.

What the American KGB proves – beyond a shadow of a doubt – is that we can no longer depend on government to safeguard our liberties. With the passage of this Act, it becomes clear that government is the primary violator of our liberties.

We can no longer believe that government will help us out of this mess. Government is the mess.

One of the central tenets of the American KGB is the creation of the "Total Information Awareness" (TIA) program. Masterminded by the aptly-named criminal John Poindexter, TIA will be a vast, centralized government database that will monitor the actions of every man, woman, and child in America from cradle to grave.

The American KGB will monitor all your financial transactions: credit card and white market cash purchases, ATM transactions, cash withdrawals or deposits, checking account transactions, investments, IRAs, etc. It will monitor your medical data, your travel habits, your Internet usage, and your phone calls.

It will monitor what books and magazines you read. It will monitor and store your private and business correspondence.

Particular attention will be focused on your defense choices, making the TIA program a de facto Federal gun registration database. The hobby of reloading is essentially over, as the American KGB establishes new rules for "explosive" purchases that will make it illegal for reloaders to obtain the necessary chemicals without a Federal license.

Is there be any doubt that the Republicans are just as dedicated to victim disarmament as the Democrats? In the name of "fighting terrorism," a Republican administration has single-handedly guaranteed more innocent deaths via "gun control" than every Democrat in the collective history of the nation. This in the face of the irrefutable fact that September 11 would not have been possible had the individuals aboard the hijacked aircraft not been Unconstitutionally prohibited from exercising their natural right to self-defense.

Once more, the Republicans prove that America doesn't have two political parties, but rather identical political cousins played by Patty Duke.

TIA is the "permanent record" that your grade school principle always threatened you with. That it is unspeakably evil is obvious.

Contrary to what most individuals believe, the FedGov does not presently have the technology to track this kind of information. As a computer nerd employed by a major credit card issuer, I can categorically state that neither my company nor any other financial institution is currently sending customer records to the FedGov. Similarly, your doctor, travel agent or airline, magazine, library, and ISP are not presently mirroring this information to the FedGov.

This means that all of the TIA systems – both those in the FedGov and those that providers will use to send the data – must be be constructed. This process, even using private-sector talent (invariably several orders of magnitude superior to that available to government) will take years.

This is where the FedGov has made its critical mistake in the attempt to create a police state. The systems won't just magically appear, they'll be constructed. Nor will they be constructed by laymen using Microsoft Excel, but by professionals.

Our hope – as always – lies in the individual. It lies in a place that should leave any government toady quaking in his boots:

Our hope now rests on the nerds.

Understand, please, that I intend no malice when I use the word "nerd." I myself am an Information Security professional, one of only two holders of the coveted "CISSP" certification in the state of South Dakota. I've proudly been a nerd since 1979, when my father bought his first computer for his business.

The TIA systems will be built by the nerds. We control information systems and the Internet, not some Federal agency. This evil abomination of a law is only possible if we nerds cooperate in creating it.

Do you hear me, Presidents, Senators, Congressmen, and your lackeys? We control these things, not you. Your systems exist solely because we choose to cooperate.

It's now time for you to learn the truth of that statement. It's time for we nerds to become the front-line warriors in the cause of individual liberty.

My friends, fellow nerds, we must refuse to cooperate.

If you work for a bank, as I do, when your employer assigns you the task of creating the system to mirror customer data to the FedGov, you must refuse.

If you work for an ISP, and are ordered to track and mirror Internet traffic and e-mail to the FedGov, you must refuse.

If you work for a travel agency, magazine, or library and are ordered to mirror information to the FedGov, you must refuse.

If you work for a gun store (or other retail store) and create the systems used to track customer purchases, you must refuse.

If you work for the FedGov and are ordered to create the systems to house the data sent to you, you must refuse.

Understand the consequences of non-compliance, potentially far more deadly than at any time in American history:

Under the American KGB, any refusal to cooperate in the hideously evil TIA program will brand us as terrorists under Federal law. We will therefore no longer be subject to normal proceedings, such as an attorney or trial. We will be termed "enemy combatants," meaning that the American KGB may do anything they like to us.

Many of us will lose our lives and fortunes. When my employer is ordered by regulatory agencies to comply with FedGov edicts, failure risks the end of his business. He will therefore want to fire me when I refuse to cooperate.

It may be that the KGB will want to make an example of me. They may whisk me away in the dead of night (as is common practice for gun owners, individuals with unusual religious practices, drug users, prostitutes, and other persons whose "crimes" harm no one but themselves). They may wish to beat me into submission and make me recant my words. They may simply take me out and shoot me. Under the American KGB, there are no pesky Constitutional guarantees to get in the way.

If they don't do it to me, no doubt one of my fellow nerds reading this column will become such a victim.

Know this, however: while we can and will lose our lives and fortunes, refusing to cooperate with the American KGB is the only way to retain our sacred honor. In the immortal words of Mohandas K. Gandhi:

"They may torture my body, break my bones, or even kill me. Then they will have my dead body, not my obedience."

My friends, my brother and sister nerds, my comrades-in-arms: we are called. This is our time. We must step forward to the challenge, to do our part to see that our children are not burdened with the chains of slavery our governments wish to place on them. We must stand together, united in our cause, and refuse to be the spineless lackeys that the FedGov believes us to be.

We are our nation's, our children's, our entire way of life's best hope. If we fail now, the only recourse our children will have is bloody revolution.

That is our choice: stand now or force revolution on our children.

I invite you to join me in a solemn vow, a covenant between ourselves and those we protect:

Come what may, we will not submit to this evil law.

The FedGov has just made this our war. Let them cower in fear before the revenge of the nerds.

When Star Trek Was New

2009-07-30T23:26:00.003-05:00

You know, I think I'm getting old.

I've had this feeling increasingly, particularly when talking with newer fen – the ones who find the original Star Trek (no bloody A, B, C, D, E, or NX-01) quaint at best and ridiculous at worst. I admit that it bothers me to hear the TV show that I've been following for my entire life dissed by kids who can barely remember the premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The particularly surreal part of it is that it puts me in mind of when Star Trek – and Star Trek fandom – was new. It wasn't always fashionable or socially acceptable to be a Star Trek fan – a "Trekkie," as we called ourselves in those days.

(No, not "Trekker" – that particular fannish argument didn't come along until the mid- to late-1970s. In the beginning, we called ourselves "Trekkies," and it's still the term I prefer.)

Only with the advent of the Star Trek movies in the 1980s did it become acceptable to be a fan of an in-production movie series as opposed to a dead TV series.

Now we have to face social derision again – only this time not from our peers who don't understand what we see in a silly "sci-fi" show about a guy with pointy years. Now we face it from our own "offspring," the fans of the later series of the Star Trek Franchise, who don't understand what we see in a hokey-looking old show.

I think these youngsters lack something of a sense of perspective – not surprising or unusual, considering perspective requires age and experience in order to obtain it.

If you'll indulge me for a moment, let's step through the Guardian of Forever and take a peek at the world 1972. I choose this year because I, myself, am a member of Star Trek's "Second Fandom."

(By way of brief explanation, Star Trek's First Fandom is are those old enough to have watched the original show during its original broadcast on NBC from 1966-1969. Second Fandom are those Trekkies too young to have watched Star Trek's original run, but discovered it in the 1970s during syndication.)

In 1972, there are only three TV channels. Well, four if your count PBS – but almost no one does. PBS is considered children's fare for before or after school or highbrow stuff like Masterpiece Theater that almost no one watches.

The three TV channels hit your TV set after being broadcast through the air, and the picture quality is dependant on:

The distance between the TV station's transmitter and your TV.
Your antenna – specifically its orientation. If you have a good roof antenna, the three stations probably come in fairly well (except during periods of high wind when the screen will vibrate with the antenna). If you have rabbit ears (a portable TV antenna that sits on top of the TV), then you probably find yourself adjusting its position for clearer reception every time you change channels.
Local electromagnetic conditions, such as your mom running the vacuum cleaner. Broadcast TV is highly succeptible to electromagnetic interference, so during storms, high sunspot activity, or use of the vacuum cleaner, the screen turns into a mass of jumbled images and static.

There is no Internet.

There are no computers – at least, none outside the local college data center. As soon as I discovered them, I cultivated a couple of computer science majors as friends specifically so that I had access to computers.

Even if you're lucky enough to have a couple of older CS friends who get a kick out of the gradeschool kid who follows them around begging to be allowed to play with the computer on their user account, you don't have a screen, mouse, and keyboard. You have a teletype machine as a terminal – essentially an electric typewriter plugged into the mainframe.

This is state-of-the-art equipment. In 1972, you thank your lucky stars that you're not working with punch cards. If you thought hanging chads was interesting in the 2000 American Federal election, try dropping a box full of punch cards that must be inserted in the correct order for your program to run.

Any output the computer generates is printed, line by line, on extra-wide green-and-white computer paper. In the world of 2002, imagine being at a DOS prompt or Bash shell – only everything is typed out on paper rather than viewed onscreen.

(Also in 2002, somewhere in a landfill near Lincoln, Nebraska will be ream after ream of paper with "Super Star Trek" battles on them.)

A few years later in 1979 (shortly before the release of Star Trek-The Motion Picture), my father will purchase his first business computer. He'll let me use the word processor to write reports for high school and college.

His computer will represent the state of the art, inasmuch as the display will be a CRT – an actual screen and keyboard! Of course, the screen will be a portable black-and-white TV plugged into the computer via an RF modulator, but it will be far more advanced than a teletype machine.

The fact that it will have an actual display will open up a wealth of new games. I'll spend hours playing the ASCII version of "Tank."

And it will have two – count them, two – nine-inch floppy drives! No more having to keep print-outs of everything: I'll save files on my very own, portable, 180K floppy disks! There will be no hard drive (or DASD, as it's called in the early 1970s) because even the largest IBM mainframes can only be equipped with – at best – a 200MB drive. A pair of nine-inch 180K floppies will be wonderful, because you'll boot the OS from a floppy, remove it to put in the word processor floppy, and save your files to the other disk.

High school teachers and college instructors will be impressed when I turn in actual typed reports from a state-of-the-art dot-matrix printer. My classmates will be stuck with typewriters until the early- to mid-1980s, meaning that they'll have to manually type multiple drafts of the same document, correct mistakes with liquid paper, and generally engage in far more effort than I will in order to do the same work.

The word processor itself will be somewhat more primitive than UNIX's "vi" editor. Its name will be WP6502, used so often that the name will be burned into my memory at least until 2002. This demonstrates the superiority of using a word processor as opposed to a typewriter – even though the word-processor will be non-GUI and will require formatting codes that make HTML look simple.

My first formal computer training will be in the mid-1970s: a junior high (middle school) summer school class in BASIC. We'll all bus to one of the high schools, which will have a bunch of teletype machines in the computer lab, each of which will dial up at 300BPS to the public schools' mainframe downtown.

Of course, in 1972, all of this is in my future. Right now, I'm just a young Trekkie with a lot of life ahead of him.

There are no MP3s or CDs, and not even much in the way of cassette tapes.

Music is on vinyl. In the mid- to late-1970s, there will be a brief (and rather dubious) flirtation with 8-track tape before cassettes become economically viable.

There are no cell phones. Hell, there are no cordless phones. And no satellite dishes.

There are no malls. You heard me right, children of the new millennium: there are no malls in the world of 1972.

There are some places where a few stores have congealed more or less in the same place, and one day these may become malls. The largest such conglomerations will be found "downtown," where the taller buildings of your city or town are located. Later in life, I'll ask my father if I can go downtown with my friends. He'll ask why, and lacking any more constructive purpose other than "to hang out with my friends," he'll wisely forbid me from doing so. Just as "hanging out at the mall" won't an advisable activity for a teenager of 2002, "hanging out downtown" is no more advisable in 1972.

The concept of "anchor stores," food courts, and totally-enclosed walkways between stores is a concept for the 1980s. There is a McDonald's downtown, but it's next to the main bus stop and a haven for all kinds of disreputable individuals. If you want to get from one store to another, you use the sidewalk outside.

There are no convenience stores. There are no self-service gas pumps. There are "service stations" that employ a mechanic or two that pump gas in between performing tune-ups, rebuilding engines, and replacing trannies. You might be able to buy a map, cigarettes, soda pop, or candy bar at a service station, but that's all. Service stations exist to service cars – if you want groceries, you go to the local IGA, Safeway, or Piggly Wiggly.

There are no theater complexes. Movies are shown in huge theaters that were themselves converted from live theater. In Lincoln, Nebraska in 1972, the Grand Old Lady of such theaters is the Stuart Theater (by 2002, it will have become the Rococo Theatre), a beautiful, ballroom-style, three-balcony affair. In 1977, I'll watch Star Wars (what post-millennial fen will call "Episode IV" in 2002) from the first row of the Stuart with a packed crowd, and leave remarking that this movie was much better than Logan's Run.

On December 7, 1979, I'll stand in a line three blocks away at the Stuart's main competitor, the State Theater. I'll stand there from 2:30pm when school lets out until 6:30pm when the doors open for the primiere of Star Trek -The Motion Picture. By the time the doors open, the line wil extend all the way around the block – I'll be fifth in line and will be able to talk to the people at the line's end.

I'll also be in the first phases of contracting Chicken Pox. In the world of 1972 and 1979, there is no Chicken Pox vaccine, and it's a routine childhood illness. That I will escape it until almost 1980 will be something of an oddity.

In 1979, I will have a fever of approximately 101 degrees – a fact that I'll neglect to tell my parents. Over the course of the next two days, I'll susequently expose 1200 people to the virus by virtue of watching the movie four times to packed houses of 300 people each. I'll ultimately have to leave the fourth screening halfway through, by virtue of being too feverish and dizzy to stay. I'll spend the next week home in bed, with my mother remarking that I'm getting what I deserve.

In 1998, during a visit to my parents' house, I'll take my daughters to watch Episode I from the same seat in the Stuart that I saw Episode IV. I'll be astonished at the theater's dilapidated condition and sadly remark that the days of real theaters are clearly gone.

There are no VCRs, not even in TV studios. TV stations send out camera crews that shoot actual celluloid film that takes time to transport and develop. Hence, it's not uncommon for the local news anchor to tease a story during a station break by ending with the phrase "film at eleven." If they shoot a story in the afternoon, the film won't be transported back to the station

and developed in time for the 6:00 evening news, but will have to wait for the 11:00 broadcast.

If you want to watch Star Trek, you watch it the moment that it aired, or you don't watch it.

A few years later, when portable cassette recorders become viable, some of us will hang the recorder's portable condenser microphone down from the channel knobs to the TV's speaker, and thereby get an audio tape of the episode for later review. God help any family member who will make the mistake of speaking during an episode, because we'll have to wait the entire 78-episode cycle to get another crack at a good recording.

In 1972, all isn't lost, however. Since Star Trek was cancelled in 1969, the demands of advertisers have required local TV stations that show Star Trek in syndication to cut minutes out of the show. Since the stations use 35mm film to show the episodes, that means that they are literally cutting out pieces of 35mm film and throwing it away.

Enterprising fans discovered this, and by 1972 had approached local stations to help them dispose of the film. They snip the footage into single-frame sections called "film clips," bind it in a slide board, and then show the frames as part of a slide-show at the local Star Trek fan club meeting.

The local fan club in Lincoln is Star Base Andromeda, which I joined in 1972. I will remain a member for many years and will still be on speaking terms with some of the members until at least 2002. In 2002, the club will still be holding meetings. In 1972 and for years to come, there will be weekly slide-shows of episode film clips.

There is no SF on television. Well, there was some, actually, but it's Lost In Space, Land of the Giants, and similar fare that no self-respecting SF fan wanted to watch.

Between Star Trek ending in 1969 and Star Wars (Episode IV) in 1977, the only weekly TV SF of note will be Space: 1999. Gene Roddenberry will try to recapture some of his glory with Genesis II, Planet Earth, The Questor Tapes, and Spectre. One of these in particular (The Questor Tapes) will be excellent and provide the genesis for the character of Data in The Next Generation. None of them will every be anything other than a movie of the week, however.

The only SF movies of note will be the Planet of the Apes movies and Logan's Run.

Consider also the political climate of 1972, of which I'm largely ignorant (though I'll later ask my parents what President Nixon did wrong):

The Cold War is in full swing. The Cuban Missile Crisis isn't long in the past, and most people lived with the expectation that they would ultimately die by nuclear fire. The Kennedy assination is still very fresh in everyone's mind, and the news is filled with images of young American men being brought home in body bags from Viet Nam.

Such is 1972, when Star Trek is new.

For its time, it is an astounding TV show. By the standards and production values available in 2002, it will appear dated and occasionally childish, but in 1972, it's certainly no worse than any of the cop shows, westerns, and sit-coms on the air.

As far as SF goes, it is light-years beyond anything anyone ever cooked up for TV. Hard as it will be for the youngsters of 2002 to believe, its visual effects and set design are considered state-of-the-art. They won't be surpassed by TV SF until the advent of Space: 1999.

In 2002, some of the alien planetscapes look a bit hokey – like they were shot on a soundstage with a scrim behind it that was lit with an odd color.

In 1972, I can catch a rerun of Bonanza and watch Hoss and Litte Joe climb off their horses onto a soundstage that's just as obvious by 2002 standards.

In 1972, however, it's just not possible to have the kind of location photography you saw in Lawrence of Arabia. Viewers don't expect that from a TV show. What Star Trek gives them is at least as good – and often better – than what other shows do.

My first memory of Star Trek is of the Mugatu from "A Private Little War." In 1972, I watch the episode from the family room of my father's Lincoln, Nebraska house. I remember it from his 1967 Vermillion, South Dakota house when I saw it in it original run: the used color TV had black wooden case, wooden legs, and white channel knobs with glossy black lettering.

The Mugatu scared the crap out of me in 1967. But now, in 1972, I'm fascinated by the notion of a group of space explorers, far from human civilization, whose mission is to "boldly go where no man has gone before."

This in and of itself is a departure from a lot of TV and movie SF of the time. Consider Star Trek's major contemporary, Lost in Space: a story about a group of people who didn't want to be where they were at all. Even the later Space: 1999 – unquestionably a superior show on a production level (though hideously stupid scriptually) – will be a show about how stupid humans had caused the moon to be blown out of orbit, causing its inhabitants to wander the universe rather aimlessly.

For a high-quality SF show to go on the air and specifically say, "We made it past all that and got to the stars," is not only a breath of fresh air, it is a brief, hourly ray of hope in an otherwise dismal world.

How could you not be a fan, in a world like that?

The President Is Insane

2009-07-30T23:23:00.002-05:00

At one time or another, you've stared at someone and wondered, "What in the heck are they thinking?" More and more often, this happens when I see government functionaries: Presidents, Congressmen, Senators, their staffs and sycophants. "What are they thinking?" is not a frivolous question: in a very real way, no human being can ever truly see the perspective of another, simply because it is impossible to actually step into another person's shoes. We can imagine what the other person's life is like, but we can never truly know.

This is, of course, exactly why libertarianism and the Zero Aggression Principle works as spectacularly as it does. The ZAP as a personal philosophy recognizes that we cannot truly know what the other guy is thinking: all that matters is that he doesn't harm others in the process of pursuing his goals. Libertarianism as a political philosophy works because it is derived from the ZAP and applies it on a political level.

Nevertheless, the Statist mind refuses to accept the rather obvious fact that one person can never really get inside the mind of another. They believe that the complex problems, motivations, and goals of every individual are easy to understand, therefore it is the province of government to assist the individual in any way possible.

Statists simply cannot understand that individual lives are far too complex for anyone but the person living it to understand. For this reason, it is impossible for someone else's life to be as important as your own.

This is an important distinction between the Statist and the libertarian. Failure to understand this concept is indicative of a serious disconnection from reality.

Indeed, this marks Statists as insane.

To justify this idea, let's look at the leading Statist in the United States, the President.

The individual in the office is largely irrelevant. The chief executive has been insane since the ink was wet on the Constitution, though it's clear that in the last century they've become increasingly paranoid and psychotic. Nor is insanity specific to the United States: every President, Prime Minister, and King since the dawn of time has shared the delusion.

On the subject of the President, consider this: for the power afforded him by the office, the most powerful individual in the world is willing to become a prisoner for the duration of his term of office -- and for most of the rest of his life.

This is no exaggeration. Do you think that the President can hop in the Ford and run down to the local Seven-Eleven to pick up a six-pack at 2:00 in the morning if the mood strikes? Never mind that there are servants to perform this kind of task -- the fact is that the President cannot do it. Case in point:

During George II's reign, I worked as an international courier. As was often the case, one evening found me at Pierson International Airport in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was about midnight, and I was lounging around the deserted cargo docks of the airport, awaiting my deliveries to clear customs. Bush had been in Toronto that day and was leaving at about the same time I was lounging around the outer customs door.

There was a helicopter circling overhead, which I knew was part of the Presidential security.

Ordinarily, a major airport like Pierson International has a constant background hum of jet engines, either idling, taking off, or landing. Suddenly, every jet on the ground cut its engines and the airport went eerily silent. I glanced up and around, wondering what had happened. I reflexively looked off toward the horizon and up into the distance, scanning for the line of aircraft lights that would be planes on final approach. There were none -- traffic was orbiting well away from Pierson. Neither were any aircraft taking off.

I took several steps out into the parking lot. The helicopter circling over me instantly halted and trained a floodlight on me. I had the good sense to freeze and keep my hand by my sides.

The noise of a single aircraft engine powering up, taxiing, and then finally taking off became audible. I watched Air Force One leave the ground. Within seconds of takeoff, the floodlight winked out, the helicopter sped away, and every aircraft on the ground powered up its engines. I glanced into the distance and could see aircraft lining up for landing again.

All of this was deemed necessary by the President's guards simply so that he could fly from Toronto to Washington. Hundreds of thousands of dollars lost due to the procedure, and force was initiated against literally thousands of individuals.

Clearly, the President is a prisoner of his office.

Further, in order for the Secret Service to adequately guard the President, they must know his whereabouts and activities twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for four to eight years.

Do you want to know why Bill Clinton was so keen to keep the Secret Service from testifying before the Grand Jury? Because they knew exactly what he was up to. They had to, in order to protect him.

Think of it: the President is watched and monitored -- for security reasons -- 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. No wonder King George III had absolutely no qualms about subjecting the rest of us to the kind of constant surveillance that he endures: he was inured to it himself that he doesn't understand that it's totally immoral.

It goes far beyond that, however: if you're the President, your guards know when you and your wife went to bed, how long you had sex, and -- in all likelihood -- if you were both satisfied. This is not an exaggeration. In my relatively small household of myself, my wife, and two daughters, it's difficult to keep the generalities of my sex life from the children. They don't even want to know what we're up to, yet they have inadvertently interrupted our activities on occasion. By comparison, the White House is filled with Secret Service agents whose sole job is to know where the President is and what he's doing 24x7x365.

These represent restrictions on freedom and intrusions of privacy that any normal, sane individual would find impossible to live with.

Anyone who wants the power of the Presidency so badly that they don't care who knows the details of their sex life is either power-mad or a potential guest on the Jerry Springer Show.

Why would anyone put up with such intrusions of privacy? Certainly sheer, raw, naked power is an important factor. If you derive pleasure from making life-or-death decisions that impact hundreds of millions of individuals around the world, then the Presidency might look attractive. Unrestricted access to sex with anyone at any time also drives them, something that Clinton so aptly demonstrated. He was hardly the first: a sizable percentage of elected representatives keep mistresses and/or have sex with their subordinates.

However, it's clear that some individuals aren't power-mad or sex-crazed -- at least not when they first arrive in Washington. What motivates them?

Insanity. They believe that human beings function best when they are given a list of rules and regulations to be followed. They believe that humans need to be ruled, either by individuals in the local town hall, the state Capital, or Washington. Their minds are so twisted that they block out a thousand years' worth of evidence to the contrary.

Politicians -- with only a tiny handful of exceptions -- overlook the evidence of reality in favor of a clever fantasy that they've devised.

They are insane.

What other word is there for individuals who block out and ignore reality, engaging in activities that are actively harmful to themselves and others? The fact that their fantasy is widely-accepted is irrelevant. Imagine for a moment that a sizable portion of the population believed that the Earth was flat, in abject denial of several hundred years' evidence to the contrary. Such individuals are clearly insane, since they reject reality in favor of fantasy.

Politicians are no different. They reject reality in favor of a self-indulgent fantasy. They are insane.

Remember this the next time some Statist gives you a list of how they will make your life better by all the laws they'll pass if only they're elected:

Laws don't make your life better: they make it worse. Any politician who promises to make your life better by making more laws is insane.

A New Strategy

2009-07-30T23:20:00.001-05:00

I'm not a very good member of the Libertarian Party. I'm a strict observer of the Zero Aggression Principle, and the current LP, sadly, is not.

Despite being a poor Libertarian, it hasn't escaped my notice that national Libertarian Party likes to talk and yell and rant, but never actually seems to accomplish anything tangible.

This is not to belittle the efforts of the dedicated people in the field who ensure donations and ballot access. Indeed, most of them work tirelessly, and their ultimate reward is to see their candidate lose, year after year.

From one perspective, the fact that the LP can't get even an endorsement from the National Rifle Association is perplexing. Almost any Libertarian candidate would be a better enforcer of the Second Amendment than a Democrat or Republican. Similarly, why are they unable to get massive campaign contributions from a company like Microsoft? Microsoft has every reason to want to halt unconstitutional harassment by Federal officials. A Libertarian President would do that, while the best they can hope from a Republicrat is to pay "insurance money" for four years.

In fact, there's a very simple reason the LP can't get anything meaningful from non-libertarian sources: they will only bet on proven winners. So far, the LP is a proven loser.

Assume for the moment that the NRA is anything other than the nation's largest gun control lobby. The NRA only has so much money to contribute. Their endorsement will trigger additional contributions from individuals who also have limited funds. Why should the NRA waste its money on a party with a track record of zero wins? Why should they ask their membership to waste their money on such a party?

And a waste is what it would be. I'm no fan of the NRA's stance on the Second Amendment, mind you: too little, too late, from my perspective. From their perspective, however, they're backing candidates who have the most chance of having the impact that they want. Libertarians can have no impact if they can't even get elected – and they've never been elected. Giving Libertarians money simply because they hope they'll get elected someday is a gamble the NRA isn't going to take.

Yes, I know the argument: "But, Bill, if we got more money, we wouldn't keep losing! We have to start somewhere!"

It's a valid argument. It's just not the way the universe operates.

The NRA and Microsoft are going to put their money with proven winners, period. It is an unfortunate fact of life that Libertarian Party members simply must accept: they are in a catch-22. They need money to win, but can't get that money without winning first.

You don't have to like this fact, but as Robert Heinlein noted, "The universe is what it is, not what we want it to be."

The National LP has chosen to want the universe to be something other than it is, with predictable results. It's time to look at the universe clearly. We must understand what we can't change about it, and then set about to change what we can.

This is not to say that we should compromise our principles. We must never compromise our principles. We must change our tactics to fit reality.

We cannot change our ability to field a winning Presidential candidate. We can change how we use what money and endorsements we have. We must focus on a smaller goal, something that's attainable with the limited funds and support available to Libertarians. We must focus on a Congressional seat from a low-population state with a libertarian culture.

Specifically, we must get a Congressman elected from South Dakota.

I'll even volunteer to run, if the LP will actually back the plan I'm proposing.

South Dakota is a good candidate for a number of reasons:

South Dakota is low population, with a single Congressman-at-large.
There are two population centers, on the Eastern and Western sides of the state. The larger of these is less than a quarter of million people.
There are only a handful of TV stations in the state, perhaps fifty radio stations, and two major newspapers.
The culture is largely agricultural, with a strong tradition of hunting and firearms ownership. It would be rare to find an adult male who does not at least own a shotgun, a deer rifle and a hand gun. Indeed, it would probably be unusual to find a male child over twelve who does not own a .22 rifle.
County Sheriffs will issue concealed-carry permits to virtually anyone, with essentially no paperwork necessary.
There is no state income tax.
Casino gambling is legal.

Clearly, South Dakota is a very libertarian place, particularly when compared to the megalopoli of the East and West. What's hampered Libertarian candidates in the past is lack of necessary support.

Freed from the necessity of actively campaigning for a Presidential candidate in 2004, the National Party would have the means to generate more campaign money than a Democrat or Republican candidate would ordinarily need to get elected in South Dakota. A couple of million bucks is all it should take.

The necessary funds would be used to hire political hacks, PR flacks, marketers, professional advertisements, prime-time advertising on every TV and radio station, and full-page ads in every newspaper. This is an attainable goal in a small population state.

If the National LP will face reality, we can elect at least one Congressman in 2002. If not, we will continue to be the party of principled losers.

This isn't to suggest that the LP not run a candidate for President. Far from it! A Presidential candidate must be run, if for no other reason than to maintain ballot access.

However, the LP must not run a human being, and must spend no more time and money than is necessary.

Instead, the National LP must run "None of the Above" for President in 2004.

Remember, no matter what candidate is run in 2004, they are going to lose – and probably lose huge. The Party does not "lose" anything by not fielding a human candidate. On the contrary, running "None of the Above," will garner more votes than in any previous election.

The 2000 election – like virtually every election in my lifetime – was a clear case of apathy. Bush was a fascist and Gore a socialist. Functionally, they were identical. As Bill Mahr noted in a recent stand-up routine on HBO:

"This country doesn't have two political parties. It has identical cousins played by Patty Duke."

The voters know this. The 2000 election clearly showed that they were well aware that it didn't matter which candidate won. Consequently, few people turned out to vote, and those that did were evenly split between the two candidates.

Imagine if they'd had "None of the Above" as a choice.

Also imagine the PR value of the LP running "None of the Above." The current Party Chair could spend half of every day just explaining to news agencies why the LP chose to do it. The sheer novelty would be worth more than all the national advertising in the last decade. Sure, there would be an empty podium at the third party debates, but so what? Aside from a few intellectuals and party faithfuls watching C-SPAN, who watches the third party debates? Or the socialist/fascist debate, for that matter?

Compared to, say, the Party Chair on Good Morning America explaining what the LP has done and why.

Now imagine that this occurs in the context of a Libertarian Congressman elected in 2002. By 2008, the LP might not look like such losers any more. They'd have at least one Congressman from South Dakota in office – and probably others from states like Wyoming, Arizona, Montana, North Dakota, and Nebraska. They'd have garnered significant votes in 2004 by running "None of the Above." The NRA might be forced to endorse the South Dakota Congressmen because he actually has a track record of winning. Major contributors might actually give the Party money because they have a track record of winning. News organizations would be forced to cover LP candidates as the best political story since the Reform Party. It could turn the tide.

But – and listen carefully – the tide won't turn as long as libertarians collectively ignore reality.

The first step every recovering drug addict makes is to admit that he's a drug addict. The first step that each Libertarian needs to make is to admit that the Party cannot run a winning Presidential race – yet.

I believe in this notion so much that if the LP will back me, I will be the next Congressman from South Dakota – the first Libertarian ever elected to national office. But I'll only do it if they back me. If it's done with the same blind ignorance of reality that's marked the last Presidential races, I don't want any part of it. Like Manny in Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, I want good odds that I'll win before I even start.

It's a simple choice: choose reality and win, or continue to choose fantasy and lose.

It's Time To Be Free

2009-07-30T23:12:00.003-05:00

I argue that a free individual doesn't wait to be free, rather he wakes up one morning and says, "Today I am free."

And then a free individual acts like a free individual.

Today, in the shadow of September 11 and all that followed it, it is time for you to decide to be free.

Maybe you've been putting it off for some reason. Maybe you've been waiting for "things to get better." Maybe you've been waiting for more of your neighbors to "get it" on their own.

Maybe you're just plain scared of what the State will do to you if you actually show them how a free individual lives. It's a valid concern, particularly after 9/11.

Free individuals are absolutely antithetical to governments.

If you've been waiting to be free, I suggest you note the following:

"Things" are not going to get better. They're going to get worse – dramatically so.

Using 9/11 as an excuse, the State has already put additional draconian limits on freedom – and it's going to do more. It has already formed an Unconstitutional Office of Home Security that will be responsible for Browning only knows how many intrusions into our lives.

The mere idea of a Federal Office of Home Security should make a free individual's blood run cold.

The OHS will no doubt become one of the most feared and hated State agencies. Indeed, the OHS is poised to become the Federal Secret Police, in a way that the IRS, BATF, and FBI only dreamed of.

In the immediate term – and to the positive glee of every Congress- and Senatecritter on Capitol Hill – the idea of the national ID card is in the public mainstream.

An unsurprisingly large number of particularly foolish individuals are in favor of the idea.

Longtime Statist sycophant Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, has been motivated to throw in with them. Ellison has offered to donate the technology that would make it possible for the State to track the identities, movements, and whereabouts of every American.

Predictably, the would-be slaveholders of the 21st century (including such notables as Democrat Diane Feinstein and Republican Mary Bono) are euphoric. 9/11 was exactly the sort of excuse they've waited for. They're pouncing.

The handwriting is on the wall: ultimately the State will have mandated Unconstitutional and immoral electronic "travel papers" for every American.

The story of Statist sycophant Larry Ellison and Oracle is worth recounting for two reasons. Firstly, it says something of Ellison's background. More importantly, there's a moral to his story that free individuals should take away.

As this sort of debate often borders on religious discussions in technology circles, I'm going to tell you my biases right up front:

I'm a Information Technology and Security specialist. I have an extensive background in operations, particularly from the UNIX server, Internet, and security perspectives.

I'm a Linux-head: I'm no fan of Microsoft products because of my strong conviction that – on a technical level – Microsoft consistently produces software that is buggy as an ant farm.

However, I have enormous respect for Bill Gates for a number of reasons. Not the least of these is that his marketing skills are so good that he can become fabulously wealthy selling such technically flawed products. Only in the computing industry – one of the few areas left in the U.S. economy that approaches a free market – is this possible.

Gates' ability to out-market his competitors does not make him a monopoly – not even a de facto one. The State's efforts to destroy the company were simply the usual destructive vindictiveness government reserves for anything that it cannot control.

Which is why, of course, there are 20,000 immoral and Unconstitutional gun laws on the books.

In order to control us, the State must first disarm us. They and their sycophants have positively no conscience about this, as evidenced by Bloody Tuesday. Remember this, and remember it well:

Victim disarmers would rather see three thousand people dead in the rubble than a few airline passengers with guns in their hands.

As to Larry Ellison:

He is CEO of a company that produces a relational database server that is the back end of an enormous number of applications in the world. Their product, Oracle, is the target at which Microsoft has been aiming with its own SQL Server for some time. In recent years, Microsoft has shown signs of starting to outperform Oracle.

Larry Ellison may be a disgusting Statist, but he's no fool. He was one of the primary litigants in attempting to force Microsoft out of his market.

After all, if you can't beat 'em, have the State do it for you.

Note this important fact, however:

While he was spending unnecessary billions saving his company from the State's ax, Bill Gates ignored virtually every Statist edict as to how he was to run his business.

Gates' critics clamor that he has no respect for the law. A free individual should say, "Good. If that is the law, then the law is an ass the size of Rosie O'Donnell."

Free individuals must always remember the lesson that Bill Gates taught us:

The State cannot control you if you don't want to be controlled.

Less than two weeks after the massacre of 9/11, Larry Ellison was on record as saying that national ID cards were a necessity. He suggested smart cards with digitally-embedded photographs and fingerprints.

Oracle, (as L. Neil Smith noted of Smith & Wesson before it) must now die.

However, pulling Oracle's products from the data center is the least that a free individual should do today.

Remember this clearly: if you've not been living as a free individual, today is the day to start. Things are not going to get better. Your neighbors are not going to "get it" on their own.

The State is still going to be a terrifying, vengeful entity filled with alphabet soup agencies and jack-booted thugs.

This isn't going to change. It's going to get worse – unless you wake up tomorrow morning and decide to be free.

It is time for you to decide to be free in spite of how bad it is or how much worse it might become.

If not now, when?

It's time for you to wake up in the morning, stretch, and say to yourself, "Today, I am free. I will go out and do anything I like, short of initiating force against another human being."

Here are only some of the ways a free individual lives:

We seek out and get to know other free individuals. These are our friends and potential allies in times to come.
We seek out Statists and their sycophants. We try to change their views by showing them how free individuals live. Failing that, we are simply aware of who they are. They are our potential enemies in times to come.
We carry weapons appropriate to our self-defense and to the defense of those around us. If the State makes it illegal – under any circumstances – to carry weapons, we ignore the law.

This may mean that you need to carry a weapon that isn't visible without a search of your person. There are many choices – my own current personal choice is the Taurus Model 617 snub-nosed revolver in .357 Magnum. This is by no means the only choice.

We carry our weapon at all times, regardless of local law. By definition, self-defense is personal and cannot be delegated. In particular, it cannot be delegated to the State. If the State insists on searching us in order to disarm us, we avoid places where such searches occur. This may mean that instead of flying, we take a train or bus, or drive a car.

Is there anywhere that you need to be so badly that it is worth your life or freedom?

If, in the fast-paced business world, you find yourself in a situation in which you must disarm to avoid State persecution, follow the advice of Bill St. Clair: Wear the empty holster of your preferred sidearm. If asked, explain that particularly in light of 9/11 (and because it's the inalienable right of every man, woman, and responsible child – guaranteed by the Bill of Rights), a free individual should be prepared to defend himself and those around him.

The State makes this legally impossible in many areas. A free individual believes that there should be a loaded in that holster – and that every free individual has the right to a holster on his hip, also containing a loaded sidearm.

If the State outlaws our weapons completely, we hide them from searches and seizures. We maintain black markets among free individuals to keep weapons available to those who wish to protect themselves.

This is clearly not the moment to think of measures that are other than peaceful. Nevertheless, the State has made it clear that it may ultimately require us to spill the blood of Statists if we are to retain our liberty. We therefore must not give up our weapons. Not even the tiniest .22-caliber pistol.
We refuse to participate in fingerprinting, photographing, and any other State-mandated record-keeping of free individuals. If the State makes it impossible to travel without such records, then do not travel. Is there anywhere you need to be so badly that it is worth your freedom? We maintain "underground railroads" among free individuals so that if travel is necessary, free individuals may do so without State-mandated electronic "travel papers."
We use the highest level of encryption we like for whatever purpose we see fit. If the State outlaws encryption, we ignore these laws. We maintain black markets and "black networks" of free individuals so that we may communicate freely, without the interference of the State in our affairs.
We refuse to obey any laws that infringe on our freedom. We maintain "underground railroads" among free individuals so that those who violate unjust, immoral law may escape persecution by the State.
We go about our business – whatever it may be – guided by only one principle:

That we do not have the right – under any circumstances – to initiate force against another human being, nor to advocate or delegate its initiation.

If we initiate force against an individual – intentionally or accidentally – we must provide restitution to that individual.

If an individual initiates force against us, we may take whatever action is necessary to counter it. If a force initiator is a Statist or one of the State's sycophants, we are still ethically justified in taking action. The power of the State must always be kept in mind when contemplating action, however.
We go about our business openly whenever possible, showing our unfree friends and neighbors how free individuals conduct themselves – and thus inspiring new free individuals through our example.

The State seems intent on following a course that leads inexorably to tyranny. I am utterly confident that there is only one way to reverse this course:

A sudden proliferation of free individuals – starting when you wake up tomorrow morning and decide to be free.

Imagine that even a third of the adults (and responsible children) of the United States woke up tomorrow and decided to be free. The State – on all levels – does not employ enough police to enforce its will on so many individuals.

Remember this truth when you wake up at night, terrified by what the State may do next:

The State cannot control you if you do not wish to be controlled.

Of Course You Realize This Means War?

2009-07-30T23:06:00.003-05:00

"Aha! That's it, hold it right there: pronoun trouble. It's not 'He doesn't have to shoot you now,' it's 'He doesn't have to shoot me now.' Well, I say, he does have to shoot me now. So shoot me now!!" – Daffy Duck, "Rabbit Seasoning," 1952

"Director? Why does a cartoon need a director?"

So went the baffled questioning of a coworker when I explained why I came into work depressed on Monday.

Chuck Jones – director of an some of the most hysterical Warner Brothers Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons – died February 23, 2002 of congestive heart failure. Jones was 89.

I don't think I've been quite so depressed since the 1989 death of Mel Blanc, the remarkably talented individual who gave voice to virtually all of the male Warner Brothers cartoon characters (and a lot of the female ones).

I've always been a gigantic fan of the classic Warner's cartoons – and I don't use the word "gigantic" lightly.

I can identify any Warner's cartoon starting from the very first 1930 Bosko and Honey short "Sinkin' In the Bathtub," through 1988's "Night of the Living Duck." I've seen literally every single Warner Brothers cartoon produced during the 58-year span, including "Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarfs" – a cartoon considered so racist that it's never been released to syndication.

I've seen the animators' gag reel, which include such moments as Porky Pig hitting his thumb with a hammer and stuttering, "Son of a b-b-b-, son of a b-b-b-, son of a biscuit!" Then, after an embarrassed pause, Porky says, "I bet you thought I was going to say 'Son of a bitch.'"

I can trace the lineage of Bugs Bunny from his embryonic form in 1938's "Porky's Hare Hunt" to his first recognizable characterization in 1940's "A Wild Hare."

I can identify the director of the cartoon with a glance.

Why does a cartoon need a director? The same reason a book needs an author. Without a director, you don't have a cartoon.

Chuck Jones was absolutely my favorite director of the classic cartoon era. From 1938 through 1963, he worked in a broken-down shack its residents called "Termite Terrace," alongside such greats as Friz Freleng, Bob Clampett, and Bob McKimson. Jones produced an extraordinary body of work to meet the demands of Hollywood's golden age.

I've never laughed harder at anything than I have at Chuck Jones' work. Like all brilliant comics, his sense of timing and characterization defies repetition. You can't explain Chuck's work: if you don't see it with your own eyes, it isn't funny.

All I can tell you is that Jones was the genius behind the "duck season, rabbit season" cartoons (there were three of that motif: "Rabbit Fire," "Duck! Rabbit! Duck!" and "Rabbit Seasoning") and that he created and directed all but a small handful of the Roadrunner/Coyote cartoons (the remaining being directed by Jones' Termite Terrace cohort, Friz Freleng).

Chuck Jones was a genius who made me laugh until I cried. But that wasn't all he did. He created true American icons.

Precisely who "created" Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck is an issue of some debate. Having screened every single one of their cartoons repeatedly, my own opinion is that everyone at Termite Terrace had a hand in their evolution. I think that Chuck Jones was the individual who got their characterization specific, hilarious, and uniquely American. To quote film critic Richard Thompson, the duck season/rabbit season shorts have, "... the clearest definition of general roles: Elmer never knows what's going on; Bugs always knows what's going on and is in control of events; Daffy is bright enough to understand how to be in control, but he never quite makes it."

But beyond this, the character of Bugs Bunny under Chuck Jones assumed a uniquely American flavor. By "American," I don't mean some form of nationalist or socialist drivel. I mean that he was an adult individual, aware of his own self-ownership, and took took care of his affairs without asking for help.

Yes, Bugs Bunny under Chuck Jones was a libertarian.

Jones voiced as much in his autobiography, Chuck Amuck:

"Golden Rule. Bugs must always be provoked. In every film, someone must have designs on his person: gastronomic, as a trophy, as a good-luck piece (rabbit's foot, which makes as much sense as a rabbit carrying a human foot on a key chain), as an unwilling participant in a scientific experiment (laboratory rabbit or outer space creature). Without such threats, bugs is far too capable a rabbit to evoke the necessary sympathy."

Sound familiar to the libertarian "golden rule" of the Zero Aggression Principle?

Indeed, in the best Bugs Bunny cartoons – usually directed by Jones – Bugs is typically going along, minding his own business, when someone drops out of the blue to interrupt his existence.

Bugs is usually forgiving for the first couple of infractions, such as 1949's "A Long-Haired Hare." In that particular cartoon, Bugs endures being smashed over the head with a banjo (observing, "Hm – music-hater,"), squashed into a harp like an accordion ("Also a rabbit-hater! Oh, well ...") before finally being tied to a tree branch by the ears and pummeled.

At which point Bugs intones solemnly, "Of course your realize this means war."

Uniquely American – and uniquely libertarian.

It's easy to realize that the Bugs Bunny cartoons could never be made today. A huge number involved guns and – gasp! – hunting! The office busy-bodies, victim disarmers, and feminized, cowardly men in this country would never let such a thing happen again. I don't suppose anyone could miss the almost semi-annual argument that the Road Runner/Coyote cartoons are in some way responsible for schoolyard violence.

As though watching the Coyote being crushed by a giant boulder that he himself pushed off a cliff could inspire the Columbine Massacre.

Beyond that, however, there is the uniquely American character of Bugs Bunny that would never be allowed today. Bugs never resorted to government intervention to stop Elmer Fudd from hunting him down – except, or course, to twist the government's hunting laws into a parody of themselves.

In one instance, Bugs admonishes Elmer that he can't shoot Bugs since Bugs is a fricasseeing rabbit – and Elmer's license is for a stewing rabbit. In another, a confused Elmer asks the game warden (Bugs in a cheesy disguise) which season it is – only to have Bugs inform him that it's baseball season.

And in my favorite version, Bugs and Daffy tear down hunting sign after sign, loudly arguing which hunting season it is – and then finally reach a sign proclaiming that it's Elmer Season.

Rarely, too, does Bugs resort to physical violence to thwart his antagonist. Oh, there's plenty of cartoon violence, but it's almost always a result of something the antagonist has initiated. Bugs relies on his wits to outsmart the bad guy.

Again, a uniquely American – and libertarian – notion.

I've learned a lot from Bugs, Daffy, and Chuck Jones. I mean that quite literally. Not only have I laughed myself silly, I've learned a lot about dealing with the real-life hunters in this world, the aforementioned office busy-bodies, victim disarmers, and feminized, cowardly men.

In fact, just this morning I got the opportunity to put the teachings of these great Americans into practice.

As I've written elsewhere, I have a concealed carry permit that allows me to legally carry a sidearm on my person in the state of South Dakota. Further, my present employer does not have a policy requiring disarmament of his employees. Nevertheless, there are a few office busy-bodies, even in South Dakota. One of them recently complained to my boss that I was carrying a gun – a gun! – and was probably a dangerous psychopath.

This represented a tricky situation for my boss, and he carried it off with much dignity. I'll not recount the details, but suffice to say that I agreed to leave my carry gun outside the office so as not to cause this busy-body to complain to the HR department. This would almost certainly have resulted in a new disarmament policy, thus making my office a much more dangerous place by the creation of ready victims.

And just in case my little office busy-body happens to be reading, you heard me right: I'm by no means the only one packing. This is South Dakota, after all. People like you are in the minority around here.

And guess what? You're safer with us around. Not that I'd expect you to understand why this is so.

However, disarming me wasn't enough for this particular office busy-body. On Monday, he complained to my boss about my copy of Scott Bieser's extraordinary cartoon">.

I've had the cartoon pinned in my cubicle since Scott created it. I'm frankly amazed that anyone would admit to objecting to the idea of filling terrorists with lead before they have a chance to murder three thousand individuals. Indeed, the normal reaction to the cartoon is that of a night janitor I bumped into while doing some after-hours maintenance:

"Hey ... uh ... about this cartoon?"

"Yes?"

"Can I get a copy of that? I've seen it in here, but we're not allowed to take stuff down from the cubicles."

I naturally ran him ten copies, proudly identified myself as a friend of the artist, and let him know that he could get it on t-shirts and coffee mugs at the artist's Web site.

Despite the obvious insanity, the office busy-body objected to the cartoon being in my cubicle, on the grounds that it wasn't "professional." Apparently it's escaped his notice that I'm a Certified Information Systems Security Professional.

In any case, I was asked to take down the cartoon. Since my company has the right to make any policy it likes, I complied.

Then I sat back and said to myself, "Of course you realize this means war."

My daughters are presently aged six and eight. I've had their art literally plastering my workspace since I was hired. Sometimes if I have to do after-hours work and the kids are with me, I'll toss them a ream of paper and highlighters, and let them busy themselves. This evening, my little libertarian girls presented me with a whole series of new artwork with which to adorn my cubicle.

Let the office busy-body try and object to the Gadsden flag that my daughter drew. Or the picture of a man playing the banjo over which the words, "Tom Daschle For Dog Catcher" have been imprinted.

Let the office busy-body object to my new September 11 coffee mug that I'm suddenly carrying into every meeting.

Let him object to the new pro-gun cap I'll be hanging on my cube (hopefully a version of Scott Bieser's beautiful poster "Piece").

In this cartoon, I'm Bugs Bunny, and the office busy-body is Elmer Fudd.

I happen to know that it's really Elmer Season.

With respect and admiration to Chuck Jones, 1912 - 2002.

Gun Control Kills

2009-07-30T23:04:00.001-05:00

Gun control kills. See New York City, September 11, 2001.

No libertarian doubts this for a moment, particularly in light of the Columbine Massacre. After the events of September 11, 2001 no one who is not stupid, insane, or just plain evil can creditably argue that there is anything positive about gun control.

Or – as it is more correctly termed – victim disarmament.

On September 11, 2001, victim disarmament killed almost four thousand individuals.

My then-employer had an office in One World Trade Center. As part of my job, I spent the day on the Web, listening on Internet Relay Chat channels (IRC) and watching the few news agencies that weren't so flooded with traffic that they couldn't respond. Anything for news of our people.

I chatted with one man on IRC whose sister and 14-year-old daughter had been sightseeing in New York. Fortunately, they were both ultimately accounted for among the living – as were our New York employees.

I spent some time worrying about one of our people who generally flies out of Newark to San Francisco on United flight 97. Fortunately, she was discovered stranded at JFK airport.

Only slightly more horrifying than the events of the day themselves was the fact that no one I talked to seemed to understand that they were easily avoidable. It's important that we understand the truth of this: a few guns – that's all – would have prevented everything that occurred.

Just a few guns. That's all.

The fault for the events of September 11 (hereafter referred to by the name given to it by seminal libertarian author L. Neil Smith: "9/11") can be laid squarely at the feet of the 20,000-plus Unconstitutional and immoral victim disarmament laws in this country.

By extension, the fault of 9/11 can be laid at the feet of every power-mad, autocratic, would-be dictator who ever wrote or voted for a victim disarmament law.

Think of it: if only a tiny handful of people on each of the four aircraft that were hijacked had been armed, there would only be a dozen terrorists lying dead in pools of their own blood.

Instead, there are thousands of innocents dead under the rubble of the World Trade Center Towers.

Never forget this:

9/11 was avoidable.

It occurred because the Federal, State, and Local Governments all over the United States colluded to deprive individuals everywhere of their natural right to self-protection.

And we let them.

Now they're going to use 9/11 as an excuse to destroy whatever may be left of the Bill of Rights in the United States. Before the day ended, Federal officials were moving their lips, telling Americans that we were going to have to "pull together" and "make sacrifices" to eradicate terrorism.

That's all just government-speak for "give up our rights."

The time is past for talking to government about giving back our freedoms. The time is past for trying to vote our liberty back.

The time is past for waiting for the government to be nice to us for a change.

They're not going to give anything back to us. At best, they're going to collapse due to the basic financial instability of Statism. At worst, we're going to have another revolution to take back our rights.

Remember this, and remember it well: our governments would rather see four thousand people dead in the rubble than allow us the means to defend ourselves from terrorists.

The time is past to wait for the government to allow us to be free individuals. It's simply not going to happen.

It's time to ignore the gun laws. It's time to intentionally violate the gun laws. It's time to say to yourself, “Starting today, I am a free individual, and that's how I'm going to live.”

It's time to stop traveling by air. If the FedGov won't let you take a gun on a plane, take a train, a bus, or drive.

Or – if you've got the gumption (and I'll readily admit that I don't) – just let them drag you away in chains from the airport for refusing to become a victim.

Understand: we don't do this because we have a choice. Things are bad, and they're going to keep getting worse until government collapses internally or we have a civil war – whichever comes first. While we wait for the outcome, governments aren't going to make things better. They're going to make things much, much worse.

It's time to start ignoring government and their laws.

There's some strength in numbers. If even those individuals reading this decided to ignore the laws, it would be more people than can be policed – or coerced.

The choice is simple, and 9/11 proves it beyond even a shadow of a doubt:

Obey government laws and die.
Become a free individual and live.

How To Avoid Getting Your Ass Kicked In South Dakota

2009-07-30T22:58:00.002-05:00

The following was seen tacked to the wall at Al's Oasis.

Don't order filet mignon or pasta primavera at Al's Oasis. It's a diner. They serve breakfast 24 hours a day. Let them cook something they know. If you upset the ladies in the kitchen they'll kick your ass.
Don't laugh at the names of our little towns ( Wall, Murdo, etcetera) or we will just have to kick your ass.
Don't order a bottle or a can of soda here. Here it's called "pop." Accept it. Doing otherwise can lead to an ass kicking.
We know our heritage heritage. Most of us are more literate than you. We are also better educated and generally a lot nicer. Don't refer to us as a bunch of hicks or we'll kick your ass.
We have plenty of business sense. You have to, in order to make a living here. Naturally, we do sometimes have small lapses in judgment from time to time, but we are not dumb enough to let someone move to our state in order to run for the US Senate. If someone tried to do that, we would kick her ass.
Don't laugh at our giant fiberglass cows and our turtles made out of car parts. Anything that inspires tourists to buy 50,000 postcards can't be bad. In Rapid City, don't point at the genitalia on the giant plastic dinosaur or we'll kick your ass.
We are fully aware of how cold it gets here in the winter, so shut the hell up. Just spend your money and get the hell out of here or we'll kick your ass.
Don't order the vegetarian special at the local diner. Everyone will instantly know that you're a tourist. Eat your steak well-done like God intended and have some potatoes with that, for heaven's sake! Also, don't ask what a hot dish is or we'll kick your ass.
Don't try to fake a Dakota accent. We don't have an accent. Do not mention the movie Fargo because that wasn't us. That will incite a riot and you will get your ass kicked.
Don't talk about how much better things are at home because we know better. Many of us have visited big-city hell-holes like Detroit, New York, and Minneapolis, and we have the scars to prove it. If you don't like it here, Interstate 90 is ready when you are. Move your ass on home before it gets kicked.
Don't complain that South Dakota is flat and that there aren't enough trees. If you whine about our scenic beauty we'll kick your ass all the way back to Milwaukee.
Don't ridicule our mannerisms. We only speak when spoken to. We hold doors open for others. We offer our seats to old folks because such things are expected of civilized people. Behave yourselves around our sweet, little gray-haired grandmothers or they will kick some manners into your ass just like they did ours.
So you think we're quaint or losers because most of us live on the prairie? That's because we have enough sense to not live in filthy, smelly, crime-infested cesspools like New York or LA. Make fun of our fresh air and we'll kick your ass.
Writing it " Sue Falls" is not a joke. Your ass will be kicked.
Last, but not least, do not dare to come out here and tell us how the prairie should "go back to the buffalo." This will get your ass shot (right after it is kicked). Just mention this once and you will go home in a pine box. Minus your ass.

Now enjoy your visit and then go home.

Medical Care For Free Individuals

2009-07-30T22:48:00.004-05:00

Much to my surprise, I discovered that America actually has a health care problem.

I've known for years that health care was much too expensive, for reasons that are obvious to any non-Statist. What really surprised me is exactly how bad the health care problem is.

Its solution, of course, has nothing to do what the Statists in Washington and their sycophants the "free" press would have you believe.

As a teenager, I noticed that the left side of my nose stuck out a little farther than my right. I bemoaned this fact in terms of it being a deficit to attracting girls, but gave it no more thought.

In the ensuing twenty years, I experienced persistent sinus problems. In 1997, I spent eight months with sinus infections. Last year, it was close to six months.

However, in 2000 – by virtue of living in a small town in South Dakota as opposed to Chicago – I saw the same general practitioner at each doctor's visit. In short order, she discovered that her usual course of treatment wasn't working and sent me to the hospital for a CT scan. At this point the details of my unusual sinus physiology – and their impact on my health – became obvious, and corrective surgery was scheduled.

I'd never had surgery previously. With the exception of my daughters' births, I've never been in a hospital except as a visitor. The experience was such that I'm inclined to take really good care of myself so that I need never see the inside of a hospital again. The experience was appalling, from beginning to end.

First came the predictable delays. My surgery was scheduled for 9:15am, and I was asked to arrive at 7:45am. I wasn't called to have my intravenous drip inserted until 9:00am – meaning there was no chance of making the 9:15 surgery.

Those in the medical profession don't really seem to understand the effect that delays have on a patient. Let me put this as succinctly and clearly as possible:

Surgery scares us. Even relatively simply outpatient sinusoidal surgery is frightening. If you're a normal human being, the notion of being unconscious while someone sticks a tube down your throat so you can breathe, breaks your nose, and threads mechanical devices into your head should scare you.

Sitting in a waiting room watching weekday morning TV while wondering what's taking so long does not make you feel better. All it does is give your imagination time to run wild.

When I was taken to have my IV drip inserted, I was led to what amounts to a large room with beds, separated by thin curtains. I was then invited to strip off my clothes and put on the dreaded "hospital gown."

I'll grant the medical profession this: since my last daughter's birth, patient care has advanced to the point where if you know how to tie the gown correctly, it will cover your behind.

I don't know who thinks that these conditions represent anything like privacy. Certainly no one outside the medical profession.

At this point, I experienced another delay of approximately an hour and a half. This time, my imagination was fueled by an elderly man ten feet away from me who was awaiting a triple bypass operation. I know all the details of his case: he received teary-eyed visits from all his relatives. A couple of cotton curtains do not qualify as soundproofing.

While I was intellectually capable of saying to myself, "Well, at least I'm not having heart surgery," listening to the personal lives of an old man and his grandchildren does not have a positive impact on your mood.

By the time I was finally transferred to a wheelchair and taken to pre-op, I had experienced not only the old man and his family, but the victims of an automobile accident who were wheeled past. Again, this is not conducive to a positive mental attitude.

Then things really got awful. I suffered yet another two-hour delay, during which time I was treated to the most appalling examples of bedside manner that it's ever been my misfortune to witness. Indeed, it reminded me of a triage scene from M*A*S*H.

At one point, an elderly lady was brought in complaining of chest pains and difficulty breathing. When the surgeon on duty examined her, there was a pause and then he asked if she'd ever been told she had heart problems. She replied that in 1991, she'd been told about a heart murmur. In a tone of voice more appropriate to discussing the autopsy of the one of the accident victims I'd seen previously, he said:

"Well, ma'am, from listening to your heart, it sounds like one of your ventricles isn't functioning at all. You've got a very serious problem. We'll give it a shot, but it's really bad."

I couldn't believe my ears. The doctor was essentially telling the woman her days were numbered, but his choice of words and tone of voice were likely to frighten his patient into shock.

I wish I could say that was the worst of what I witnessed. Appallingly, it was not.

Shortly afterward, a nurse brought in a 35-year-old woman who was morbidly obese (she gave her weight as 350 pounds) and suffering from lung and heart problems.

The first thing that happened was that the nurse who delivered the patient was thoroughly chewed-out by the pre-op nurse. It seems that the pre-op nurse didn't feel the job of transferring the patient to a bed should lie with her. Three strapping orderlies were located. In a manner more consistent with moving a piano than a pathetically infirmed human being, the orderlies transferred the patient to a bed.

It didn't stop there, either. This poor woman's horror story was only just beginning.

The doctor arrived, examined her, and suggested that they would need to insert something into an artery in her neck. The doctor said to the patient (again, in that callous tone of voice):

"Ma'am, we've got to get this thing inserted, but you're really heavy and have a lot of fat in your neck. I don't know if I'll be able to find an artery. I'll give it a shot, but I can't promise anything."

He then proceeded to spend a lot of time poking, prodding, and pushing. He ultimately had to call an orderly to roll the patient over a couple of times, all the while complaining about the difficulty finding the artery.

When he finally did locate it, he let out a surprised gasp and said, "Dammit – that's a lot of blood – can we get somebody here to clean this mess up?"

Finally, just to add insult to insult (as they had already added insult to injury), as the surgeon put away his instruments, the nurse said to him:

"That took quite some skill, Doctor, to even find the artery."

"Skill? No – that was just dumb luck. I had no idea I was going to find anything. I think I probably went completely through the artery a couple of times and didn't know it because of all the fat."

Keep in mind that while I never saw the patient in question, the only thing separating us was a thin cotton curtain. And in any event, they made these comments in front of the patient.

While this was absolutely the worst example of a doctor's behavior during my surgical experience, there were a number of examples of extraordinarily bad design and planning that resulted in what can only be termed callous treatment – if not outright mis-treatment.

For example, as I was trying to recover from the shock of overhearing the trials of the poor woman next to me, I heard the unmistakable sound of a defibrillator charging and then being discharged.

Now, it may be that they were only testing the equipment – or it may be that some poor soul within my hearing experienced a coronary arrest. Perhaps it was the elderly gentleman from the IV insertion area. I don't really know, but by that time, my mind was working overtime imagining the worst possible things that could happen to me.

Then they wheeled in an accident victim with a broken arm. Again, the doctors treated her utterly callously, and again I heard the phrase, "I'll give it a shot."

Let me give the doctors among my readership a tip: "I'll give it a shot," is not something a patient should ever hear out of your mouth. It doesn't matter if you think that what you're doing has no chance of working, you should never say it.

A patient does not want to hear that their condition is permanent – or worse, terminal. They're probably afraid for their lives already. What a patient needs to hear is the gentle, firm conviction that the treatment you're about to give is correct and will at least alleviate – if not eliminate – the problem.

In a classic example of extraordinarily poor architectural design, the surgery pre-op area adjoined the recovery area. It was literally on the other side of a couple of inches of drywall behind me. There were no doors separating the area, just a fifteen foot wall/partition.

Unfortunately, some poor infant was in the recovery area.

I can't speak for other parents, but since the birth of my daughters, I can't stand to listen to a child in any kind of pain. I can't watch movies where awful things happen to children. I can't bear to watch coverage of the Andrea Yates trial – and she's really lucky I wasn't on her jury. Before I had children, I used to like dead baby jokes; now I can't stand them. Anything that involves pain or cruelty to a child simultaneously sickens and enrages me.

The poor infant on the other side of the partition wailing its lungs out very nearly sent me over the edge.

After what seemed like an interminable delay, the anesthesiologist from my surgery stopped by to explain his role. When he was done, he asked, "Do you have any questions?"

While I was by no means eager to get into surgery at this point, I was nevertheless desperate to get out of pre-op. I told the doctor:

"Well, you know, Doctor, sitting here the last hour or so, I've come to the conclusion that I made the right career choice when I went into computers. So can you tell me when they'll be ready to take me into the operating room?"

I got a quizzical look. "I don't understand."

"Well ... I'm saying that sitting here, listening to everything, I've discovered that I just don't have the ... constitution ... to deal with the sorts of things you guys deal with all the time. So I'm kind of interested in getting into the O.R."

He stared at me like I'd suddenly sprouted two heads. "I'm sorry, what ... ?"

I began gesturing at the partitions around me, then pointed to my ear and mouthed the phrase, "I really don't like hearing all this." What was he going to do, make me come right out and say that these pathetic cases were driving me nuts and I'd rather be under the knife than listen to them?

Again, he gave me a deer-in-the-headlights look. I realized that he was so appallingly inured to the callous treatment of patients that he really had no conception of its effect on both the patients and the witnesses to it.

"Forget it, doc – I'm just curious when I'm going in, is all."

So he helpfully went to ask, returned, and told me it would be about half an hour. It was, naturally, double that.

When they finally came for me, I was a nervous wreck, due entirely to the surroundings into which I'd been thrust. In reality, my surgery was fairly minor – noninvasive even, since they do all the work through the nose without incisions. But after a morning spent in the horrors of pre-op one would need a stronger constitution than I to not be scared out of their mind.

From the moment I entered the O.R., I decided that I'd do my level best to not be a part of the problem. I recounted the incident with the obese woman next to me to my surgeon, who was – again – so inured to callous patient treatment that he didn't understand my objections.

In an effort to be upbeat, I said, "Well, at least I don't have to worry. I mean, it's not like you've ever lost someone to sinus surgery, right?"

There was a long, silent pause. Had I not been fasting and recently visited the restroom, I would have soiled my hospital gown. Finally, the anesthesiologist said, "Well, we try."

Another tip for the doctors in my readership: if a patient asks such a question, the correct answer is, "No, sir, we're never lost anyone to sinus surgery."

They administered my general anesthetic, and as I was starting to get woozy, I could hear the anesthesiologist asking me questions about how I felt. I murmured something non-committal, and then, as loud as I could say through the haze descending on my mind, I called out:

"I see dead people!"

There was general laughter, and I lost consciousness. Always leave 'em laughing!

When I came around in the recovery room, I made a distinct effort to sound upbeat, happy, and positive. I made jokes, repeated the "I see dead people," line when asked by a nurse how I felt, and generally tried to put on a good show for the benefit of anyone listening in pre-op.

I wish that I could say this experience took place in some inner-city hell-hole. I wish I could write it off as an unusual aberration. I wish I could, but I can't. It occurred in a hospital with an excellent reputation in Sioux City, Iowa. If it's that bad in Sioux City, it's probably that bad everywhere. Or worse.

So far, the surgery's been a resounding success, correcting everything it was intended to. During the resultant week off for recovery, I had a lot of time to ponder why the experience – indeed, the system itself – is so horribly flawed.

I couldn't help but contrast current patient care with that common in my grandmother's day. My grandmother – an elderly pioneer of the American West – occasionally tells of her hospital experiences delivering her five children (well, almost five hospital deliveries – my uncle John didn't wait until she got to town).

In my grandmother's day, it was commonplace for a mother and newborn to be in the hospital for a month after delivery.

You read that right: a month.

Today, unless you have extenuating circumstances such as a Cesarean section, you'll be out in two days. I'm certain the lack of professional care following delivery accounts for many complications in both mother and child. Indeed, my sister and her first son were ejected from the hospital in 24 hours, resulting in my nephew contracting pneumonia a day later.

In my grandmother's day, house calls were commonplace – even though the nearest town to her ranch was more than an hour's drive under the best of circumstances. Today, the house call is considered a quaint hallmark of the past – something to be derided and laughed at when you watch "The Brady Bunch."

However, no one can argue that receiving professional attention for a month after delivery would be beneficial. Nor can one argue that getting out of bed to go sit in a doctor's waiting room when you're sick is anything other than awful.

Leaving aside for a moment the element of care, there is the issue of cost to consider:

Prior to WWII, costs were so low that my grandparents – whose lifetime income is less than many individuals' annual earnings – could easily afford to pay for hospital care for a month.

That's hospital care for a month for five children.

Think of it. In the early part of the 20th century, dirt-poor cattle ranchers in extremely rural South Dakota – an area that's still unbelievably remote, undeveloped, and poverty-stricken by modern standards – could afford to pay for hospital care for a month for five children and their mother. Neither did they have medical insurance to draw from: they paid out of their own pocket.

Today, anyone paying out of their pocket for a month of hospital care is either independently wealthy or about to file for bankruptcy.

What happened to this kind of care and affordability?

The answer is simple: government.

Prior to WWII, there was almost no Federal intervention in the health care industry. As such, health care was subject to the same market forces as any other product, and with the same result: lower costs for higher levels of service.

Then the FedGov got into the picture. It put Unconstitutional price controls on medical care. It invented Unconstitutional programs designed not to help the needy but to create whole classes of people who depend on the FedGov for medical care. Insurance companies took advantage of the business opportunity, inserting themselves as a middle-man between the patient and the doctor. Ultimately, insurance companies bribed FedGov officials – sorry, made "campaign contributions" – and got their position solidified by Unconstitutional law.

It's been downhill ever since.

Partly, too, the problem is due to the doctors' union – sorry, the American Medical Association.

Prior to the 20th century, there were essentially two classes of medical doctor: the physician and the surgeon.

A physician was an individual who made the rounds of his patients every day, treating common illnesses. A surgeon was an individual at the hospital who actually performed operations. The two classes of doctor didn't have the same training, because it's obviously not necessary. A General Practitioner (in today's parlance) rarely performs surgery. A Specialist is a surgeon in a particular field and never performs GP work.

Via Unconstitutional FedGov intervention, the AMA eliminated the physician. Today, all medical doctors are – needlessly – surgeons.

These factors – driven entirely by Unconstitutional FedGov intervention – act to completely divorce health care from market forces. Further, the primary customer of a medical doctor is not an individual patient, but rather that patient's insurance company.

Small wonder that patients are treated so callously.

In a free society in which individuals self-govern guided by the Zero Aggression Principle, things will be radically different.

In the first place, the cost of health care will be radically lower because there will be no AMA-induced physician shortages.

Freed from requiring the intestinal fortitude to perform surgery, the job of physician will attract intelligent individuals who presently go into fields like engineering and computer science.

Indeed, were it not for surgery, I might have been inclined to have become a physician. In my college days, I spoke with a number of engineering students who'd have preferred to be doctors but didn't want to perform surgery.

Contrary to what many of today's surgeons might claim, there's really no need for anyone who treats the flu on a daily basis to be a surgeon. Indeed, eight years experience as a father has taught me that a gallon of Amoxycillin syrup in the house would be enough to keep my kids out of the doctor's office almost entirely.

Imagine it: a free society in which medicine (indeed, all chemicals) are unrestricted consumer goods, the same as TVs, VCRs, and computers.

In a free society, when one of my daughters complains of an earache, I'll exercise some judgment and in all probability make a quick run to the drugstore. I'll plunk down a couple of fractional copper ounces and purchase a bottle of Amoxycillin. There'll be competing brands, as well – the same as there are fifty different kinds of cough syrups today. I'll choose the least expensive one I want for the quality I want, take it home, and my daughter won't see the physician at all.

If I decide that my daughter's condition warrants a physician's visit, I'll call one. The physician will appear on the door, examine my daughter in her bed, and advise me as to what to buy for her condition – and indeed, probably offer me some from the physician's van or SUV.

Physicians, you see, will compete for my business the same as a plumber or other skilled technician. Under such circumstances, it will be in the physician's best business interest to come to my house, to treat my family and I with respect and compassion, and to have a supply of common drugs on hand. There probably won't be much profit in selling the drugs, but as it's inconvenient to run to the drugstore when one has a sick child, the physician may be able to get away with charging more than a drugstore.

A physician in a free society might will even offer to sell other drugs – probably as a side business. "Anything else I can get you as long as I'm here, Mr. Stone? I just got a new shipment of that West River Gold you like. You need any today?"

In fact, in a free society, it won't just be the physicians who make house calls. So will the surgeons. Like other technicians, surgeons will compete for my business. In short order, they'll discover the competitive advantage of offering surgery and recovery services out of patients' bedrooms.

In an anarcho-capitalist society in which individuals self-govern guided by the Zero Aggression Principle, contrast my sinus problem with that of of my (hypothetical) grandson:

Firstly, my 17-year-old grandson will probably have the same family physician for most of his life. After all, as long as the care is good and the price is right, having the same individual constantly looking after your body makes at least as much sense as having the same individual looking after, say, your computer network at your business.

Further, my grandson's physician has a good chance of being female. I have a strong preference for female doctors – females have a natural business advantage in terms of bedside manner. Most men have to learn how to appear nurturing.

At the age of 17, during a house call for a persistent cold, my grandson's physician will notice his deviated septum. She'll make a quick trip out to her van, SUV, or service truck and drag out the CT scanner.

In a free society, medical technology – unhampered by government restrictions – will advance with at least the speed of the personal computer. It will probably advance faster, since people tend to view prolonging their lives as a higher priority than obtaining a competitive business advantage (though in a free society, there will be individuals that attempt to gain competitive advantage in the business of extending human life). Under such conditions, there will be small, handheld or portable CT scanners that would allow a patient to simply lay on their bed for the procedure.

They'll run my grandson through the CT scanner and realize that his physiology – left uncorrected – will result in blocked sinuses, persistent infections, and other nasty problems.

Once the CT scanner confirmed that corrective sinus surgery was the only option, the physician will put in a call to a sinusoidal surgeon – a business associate to whom she'll refer in such cases.

The sinusoidal surgeon will schedule a surgery visit at my daughter and grandson's convenience – and if their convenience didn't match the surgeon's schedule, the physician will call one of the other surgeons competing for my daughter and grandson's business.

On the day of surgery (in all likelihood the next day), my grandson's physician will be present. It's only good business, after all, to assure that your patient feels comfortable with the stranger about to operate on their body. The surgeon will set up a portable surgical environment in my grandson's bedroom, politely asking my daughter to move certain unsterilizable items out of the room for the duration of surgery.

The room and bed themselves will receive the cleaning of their lives, and a portable, sterile flooring placed over the carpet not covered by the bed and furniture.

The surgeon will ask if my grandson wants music, an Internet multicast, or other diversion. When the environment is comfortable for my grandson, he'll climb into bed and the surgeon will administer the necessary anesthesia.

When my grandson wakes up, his room will be exactly as it had been before the surgeon started rearranging things for the procedure – albeit immaculately clean for the first and only time in my daughter's memory. My grandson's physician will remain unobtrusively present for several hours, to monitor his recovery in case of unforeseen complications.

Total cost to my daughter: a few ounces of gold. A little steep, perhaps, but more than worth it in the long term.

By the time my grandson is old enough to worry about his nose sticking out on one side being a problem with girls, the entire concept of hospitals will have been relegated to historical dramas. People will watch movies about hospital stays in the late 20th and early 21st century with the same kind of natural revulsion we experience when we watch the surgery scenes in the movie Glory.

However, we won't get there until we stop believing that government can solve the problem. Government is the source of the problem.

Today, we allowing our Federal office-holders and their cronies to violate their oaths of office by passing blatantly Unconstitutional laws. In this case, intervention in the health care industry violates at least the Tenth Amendment – though most of the rest of the Bill of Rights is also impacted.

As long as we allow our elected officials to go unpunished for violating their oath of office, they'll continue to do so. As long as they continue to do so, patients will continue to be treated like cattle.

The Free Mind

2009-07-21T02:32:00.004-05:00

"How do we become free?"

This is a question that gnaws at the minds of libertarians everywhere. It has consumed much of my political thinking since I first agreed that no human being has the right — under any circumstances — to initiate force against another human being, nor to advocate or delegate its initiation.

I've finally come to the conclusion that free individuals don't try to be free. They simply do it.

Fifteen years ago when I was a communist actor (as if there were any other kind), stage movement classes were part of my training. One of the main focus of these classes was physical relaxation. The theory is that if an actor holds physical tension, it interferes with the ability to effectively communicate a role. My classes, therefore, taught breathing exercises and progressive relaxation.

One of the things you discover after breathing and progressively relaxing is that you can't "try" to relax. If you sit there, trying mightily, all that happens is that you get more tense.

However, if you don't "try" to relax, kinesthetic memory eventually kicks in. It informs your conscious mind that, "Hey, you're holding your shoulder blades together!" You can then use your conscious mind to let go of that muscle group.

I've never successfully explained how to just "let go" of a muscle group. Kinesthetic memory is like that — just ask anyone who's spent time lining up a front and rear sight. It's experiential rather than intellectual.

One can't "try" to relax. You just do it.

Freedom is exactly the same.

Freedom is, first and foremost, in your mind. It's a way of thinking and approaching life at all times. It's any individual waking up one morning and saying, "Starting today, I'm free. I'm going to do what I want to do, short of initiating force against another human being."

The problem is that life constantly throws up barriers. Usually it's in the form of some autocratic toady saying things like, "No you don't, either! You're driving faster than I like, so give me some of your money!"

In a world where everyone woke up and said, "Today, I'm free," the toady would hear a guffaw of laughter as the free individual left him in a cloud of dust.

Unfortunately, the majority of people wake up with the slave mindset. They say to themselves, "Today, I'm going to do what I like — as long as some autocratic toady approves."

This puts free individual in a difficult position. Make no mistake, we absolutely have the option to drive off — or (considering the reaction that driving off is likely to engender in the toady) drawing our sidearm and shooting him between the eyes. Unfortunately, if we do this, the slaves won't lift a finger to stop other toadies from putting us in prison — or the morgue.

However, unlike slaves, free individuals have the choice. Slaves have no choice other than to do what they're told.

Some day, a critical mass will be reached. Enough people will wake up and decide to be free that we can just laugh at the toady. That day isn't today. Therefore, if you're a smart free individual, you take out your cash, pay up, drive on, and speed up as soon as the toady is out of sight. You don't have to like it, but being short of cash is better than being short of your life.

The question, then, is not "How do we become free?" We're already free. We just want to be able to laugh and drive on. How do we get to that point?

Some people think the way you do it is to form political parties dedicated to things like the Constitution. While well-intentioned, these people have a basic misunderstanding about the nature of power. They don't realize is that even if they successfully got into power, they would find the temptation to use that power coercively is too great to resist.

I consider myself something of a Zero Aggression Principle philosopher. I'm probably as ethical an individual as you'll find. Nevertheless, I'm under no illusions about my ability to resist the temptation of power. It's vulgar, but I'll tell you what would happen were I suddenly made President:

For the first six weeks — if I was really lucky — I'd resist the temptation of the yes-men, toadies, bureaucrats, and hangers-on. However, after enough money, gifts, and women were thrown at my feet, I'd take the money and gifts and let the women blow me.

Once I discovered I could get rich and satisfied with impunity, it would be downhill from there. In short order, my enemies would start disappearing with a few words to the right people. As Lord Acton noted, "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

I'm probably giving myself too much credit. It might not take two weeks for me to become corrupt.

Anyone who thinks they're free from power's corrupting influence is simply unaware of what power is. For those who've thankfully never witnessed power firsthand, let me provide a real-world example from my own experience:

Power is attractive teenage girls standing around a stage door in miniskirts and tube-tops in a frigid Nebraska winter, breathlessly hoping for an opportunity to blow anyone connected with the rock concert they've just attended.

I've seen the teenage girls, by virtue of working backstage for touring rock bands — and no, I never gave in to temptation. On one occasion, however, as I was loading a semi trailer after a concert, I watched my crew chief take one of the girls back to the crew bus, ostensibly to "meet the band."

Unfortunately for her, the band had literally left the building before the house lights came up. I know, because at the end of the concert, I was standing in the wings waiting to start breaking things down. From my vantage point, I saw the stage lights go down. The band quickly left the stage, walked past me, and out the stage door. Through the closing door, I watched them get into their limo. I turned back to the stage and watched the house lights came up.

Fifteen minutes after she went into the crew bus, the girl came stomping out, disheveled, swearing and screaming at my crew chief that, "I can't believe I gave you a blow job and the band isn't even here!"

This is what power does to crew chiefs for rock bands. If I'd wanted any of the teen-aged girls, I could have easily had them myself. The only reason I didn't is because I can successfully resist abuse of power on that level.

The temptations of power are multiplied by a thousand (and then squared and cubed) for individuals in politics. It's no surprise that the halls of American government are filled to overflowing with individuals with whom free individuals would be disgusted to share a drink.

I tell the rock concert story often. It's more fun in person, because I add a lot of details: the crew chief's Liverpool accent, his "day calendar" with explicit photos of his girlfriend glued to each page, and so forth. I also mention the name of the band — and yes, you'd know them if you watched MTV in the 1980s.

When told in person, someone will usually suggest that an ethical free individual wouldn't succumb to such temptation. This betrays a lack of understanding about both power and human nature.

Imagine that you could have the thing you want most in life — whatever that thing may be. It could be literally anything. Imagine that not only could you have it, people were constantly begging you to take it from them, any time you liked. All that's required to get it is that you use the limitless power that everyone around you is begging you to use.

Ultimately, no matter how moral or ethical you think you are, you will succumb to temptation. Everyone does. It's folly to believe you're different, simply because your ethics are superior. I'm sure many of the freshman Republicans elected to Congress in 1994 felt they had superior ethics, and look how fast they became corrupt.

Ethics in absence of power is not a true test of ethics.

This is why political parties cannot make you free. Successful political parties ultimately become nothing more than havens for individuals who want power. Nothing demonstrates this better than the Democratic and Republican Parties — though you can be sure the same thing would happen to the Libertarian Party if it ever succeeded in coming to power.

Freedom does not lie with political parties. It lies with you.

Being a free individual is something you simply decide for yourself that you are — in spite of the toadies, slaves, and corrupt men of power.

There are, of course, toadies who think differently. They think that if they take your money, beat you, imprison you, or murder you that they own you.

They're wrong. All they have is your penniless, beaten, imprisoned, dead body — not your freedom.

No free individual want to be stolen from, beaten, imprisoned, or murdered. Unlike slaves, free individuals have options. A free individual can, if he chooses, shoot the toady dead on the roadside. He can fight back when the toady tries to beat him, take him to prison, or kill him.

Some day, when enough people decide to be free, that's exactly what free individuals will do.

Freedom is individual. The only thing that free individuals can do as a group is gang up on a toady with a bigger gun.

Anything else that a group does in the name of freedom is just socialism in disguise.

Free individuals shouldn't be concerned with the "rules" of freedom, or "working toward" freedom. The "rules" of a free society are unpredictable. Having never seen one, I personally can't imagine what a free society would even look like. I have ideas as to how one would look (L. Neil Smith's books comes to mind), but these are just guesses. All I know for sure is that a free society would certainly be a surprising, exciting place in which to live.

A "free society" is simply defined as millions of individuals thinking and acting as free individuals rather than slaves.

No political party or individual leader can suddenly and decisively bring about the change in mindset from slave to free individual. It is a personal decision on the part of the individual.

If free individuals wish to "work toward a free society," we must abandon political parties, causes, governments, bureaucracies, and collective action. Free individuals simply wake up, decide to be free, and show our neighbors what a free individual is through our actions and attitudes.

If free individuals do that, some of our neighbors will decide to wake up and be free one morning. Through their example, some of their neighbors will wake up and be free one morning. Eventually, there will be enough free individuals that we can laugh at the toadies — or kill them, if need be.

Though I suspect that some of the toadies will decide to be free individuals, too.

If you want to work for freedom by example, I advocate following my example: live the Zero Aggression Principle. Teach it by example, through your words, attitudes, and actions.

If it's feasible, I heartily recommend moving to a place where more people wake up free in the morning. Such places exist: in 1999, my family moved from Chicago to South Dakota. We are now surrounded by gun-toting individualist free individuals as far as they eye can see.

Urbanites may think I exaggerate. I don't. The contrast between America's socialist megalopoli and "small town America" is that stark.

I'm a South Dakotan by birth. I grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska (with summers between ages five and fifteen on my grandparents' South Dakota cattle ranch). I spent the decade of the 1990s in Chicago, with occasional business trips to most of the large cities in the U.S. and Canada. I ultimately got sick of the socialist megalopoli and moved to McCook Lake, in the extreme southeastern corner of South Dakota, at the northwestern edge of the Sioux City metropolitan area.

For the information of those in the megalopoli, I did not take a cut in my standard of living in order to do this. In fact, it was completely the reverse. While the Siouxland area doesn't have all the "cultural opportunities" of a major metropolitan area, Omaha, Nebraska is about 90 minutes' drive. Kansas City is another two hours. Minneapolis is four hours. The Chicago Art Institute is a two — hour flight (ten hours' drive) — or an hour, if you fly out of Omaha.

Indeed, while growing up in Lincoln, Nebraska, I dated a girl whose mother was a flight attendant based out of Chicago. She simply tacked on an extra hour to her "commute" to fly to Chicago O'Hare at the beginning and end of her shift.

As to enhancing my options as a free individual, moving to South Dakota was the best decision I could have made. My family now ignores virtually all of the toadies' rules and regulations with impunity.

That is, what little regulation South Dakota toadies wish us to endure, in a state with no income tax, legal casino gambling, and legal concealed carry for anyone who asks. Not that we should have to ask, mind you. And by all rights, our farmers should be able to cultivate the hemp and marijuana that grows wild on the prairie rather than destroy it as the toadies demand.

But it's better than all of America's megalopoli.

You can't try and be free. You just do it.

I have very few dreams that don't involve simple things. At present, my greatest dream is to see my daughters move out of my house gun-toting, individualistic free individuals.

I do have one other dream, inspired by (and with apologies to) L. Neil Smith:

In my 60s or 70s (maybe older — I plan to chase medical science for the rest of my life, so I could end up being around a long time), I'll sell my suburban Sioux City acreage. I'll buy a travel trailer, hitch it to the pickup, and drive to Alaska. I'll then spend several years crisscrossing North America with my wife.

The difference is that I'll be doing it while carrying my Kimber Custom Classic pistol. I'll have it holstered in a custom-made leather gunbelt much like the ones seen in 1950s westerns (altered to fit a M1911 semi-auto pistol). I'll grab my gunbelt and strap it on every time I leave my trailer — even in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York.

I'll know then that I've left my daughters a free society.

I won't get there relying on a political party or a collective. I'll get there by living the rest of my life as a free individual and showing my neighbors how a free individual lives.

Pirates And Emperors

2009-07-21T02:26:00.000-05:00

Yes, Virginia, There Is Individual Liberty

2009-07-21T02:00:00.002-05:00

In 1897, eight-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon wrote to the New York Sun:

"Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, 'If you see it in The Sun, it's so.' Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?"

From time to time, I'm presented with the "college PoliSci student questionnaire" regarding how libertarians think. These questionnaires seem to me to be a desperate plea for an alternative to the predominant socialism and fascism of the college campus.

Or put another way, our college-aged friends are asking, "Please tell me the truth, is there individual liberty?"

My answer (with apologies to Francis P. Church, author of the famous editorial reply to Miss O'Hanlon's letter):

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the socialism of a socialist age. They do not believe except what they have been told to believe by socialists and fascists who wish to control them.

Yes, Virginia, there is individual liberty.

Recently, one of the frequent posters to the discussion list for the Ad Hoc Conspiracy to Draft L. Neil Smith For President passed on such a questionnaire. As I thought it was sufficiently unbiased and well-written to bother reading, I took a few moments to write an "anarcho-capitalist primer" as a response.

In your ideal society, what do you feel is the province of government?

First, let's define an "ideal society."

The ideal is a free society in which its members exercise self-government guided by the Zero Aggression Principle:

"No human being has the right — under any circumstances — to initiate force against another human being, nor to advocate or delegate its initiation."

Since its very existence is predicated on the initiation of force, government — as a concept — is inherently immoral and therefore has no province whatsoever.

What do you want government to do for you?

Nothing.

Is it the role of government to keep law and order?

"Law and order" is irrelevant. The appropriate replacement concept is "peaceful interaction between individuals."

Attempts by government to enforce peaceful interaction between individuals are disastrous. Worse, such attempts uniformly lead to tyranny.

The free market ensures peaceful interaction by its very nature. Further, it does so far less expensively than government and without the hideous side-effect of encouraging tyrants.

Does government have any kind of a positive role — that is, is it the place of government to put any sort of program in place?

This question makes a basic mis-assumption. Government programs are easily demonstrable as not positive.

Further, since government programs must initiate force against the governed in order to be implemented, they are not only negative, they are immoral. Specifically:

In order for government to spend a penny, it must initiate force. It must force the governed — at the point of a gun, if necessary — to pay for any and all spending. This is in direct violation of the Zero Aggression Principle and is therefore unethical.

Are there areas of the lives of citizens which government should absolutely not be involved in?

Yes: every area.

There is no reason for government to become involved in any aspect of your life.

What rights do you feel that you have under this society?

Believe it or not, I have no real conception of "rights." I have a substitute that works better.

What most people think of as "rights" is any activity in which I might choose to engage that does not violate the Zero Aggression Principle.

These are same rights I have under any society.

Are these rights given to you, or are they innate?

This borders on a religious question.

The Zero Aggression Principle is derived from a number of traits of the human species. Specifically, the major traits are sapience, territoriality, and a desire for self-determination.

Just as hamsters are rodents and fish use gills to obtain oxygen so as to breathe underwater, sapience, territoriality, and desire for self-determination are innate to homo sapiens.

What you might call my "rights" are simply the actions of homo sapiens acting in accordance with their nature — but as self-governed by the Zero Aggression Principle.

Religious individuals might choose to interpret the human species' possession of these traits as indicative that they are bestowed by a supreme being.

What role does the government play in your possession of these rights?

None. In most instances, in fact, government actively seeks to deprive all individuals of their liberty.

These characteristics which drive individual liberty are innate to the species. They exist regardless and in spite of government edict.

Fish have gills and hamsters are rodents. Any government edict to hold your hamster underwater until he sprouts gills will result in a dead hamster. Any government edict that requires humans to behave in a manner inconsistent with their characteristics as a species will result in ... well, exactly what we have now.

Are there other organizations that play a role in your possession of these rights?

No. Though I can and do occasionally hire other individuals to assist me in protecting myself from those who do not govern themselves in accordance with the Zero Aggression Principle.

Typically, the individuals from whom I am protecting myself are government functionaries or their sycophants.

Are all people born equal?

Of course not. There is tremendous individual variation of characteristics within a species.

This is as true of fish and hamsters as human beings.

How do we account for different characteristics (cf. Some people are great piano players, and I can't carry a tune in a bucket. Is this equality?)

Such equality is irrelevant.

It's unnecessary to account for variations such as these. They simply exist. Attempting to achieve equality of individual characteristics is an exercise in futility.

Should all people be treated equally? How do we measure this equality?

Individuals should be treated however you like to treat them within the bounds of the Zero Aggression Principle.

To what extent should the market control the economy?

Completely.

Social services?

Completely.

What role does the government have in this regulation?

None.

For instance, is deficit spending to repair the economic damage done by the current recession warranted?

This question erroneously presumes that the economic damage and current recession are caused by something other than government meddling in the free market.

Were government to immediately cease meddling in the free market, the resultant sudden economic prosperity would make the boom of the last decade look like Mount Everest beside a small hill in the South Dakota prairie.

Is deficit spending to repair the economic damage done by the current recession within the purvey of government?

No. Initiation of force is always immoral, even when done by government functionaries for some presumed collective benefit.

To what extent do you support or challenge the notion of income tax?

"Tax" is simply another word for "theft."

The activities are identical. In both instances, individuals are forced to forfeit money or other valuable property. The only nominal difference between "taxation" and "theft" is that "taxation" is government-sanctioned.

Theft is no more moral when sanctioned by government than it is when sanctioned by the Mafia.

Should such tax be proportional, or do you advocate a flat tax, or no tax at all?

All taxation is immoral because it violates the Non-Aggression Principle.

How do you feel that this would better a society?

A free society is easily demonstrable as being far more successful for its members than some form of tyranny.

Purely on a financial level, taxation by government at all levels currently confiscates something in excess of 50% of every individual's gross income — regardless of income or marginal tax rate. Even individuals whose income is not directly confiscated are still required to pay sales taxes, property taxes, etc.

Further, because government taxes goods and services at every possible point of production, the consumer cost of every item you may ever purchase is increased by something in excess of 800%.

In a society self-governed by the Zero Aggression Principle, individuals would effectively have double their current income with only one-eighth their current expenses.

Clearly, this would be far more beneficial for any individuals in such a society as compared to the present time.

On another level, support of taxation has the side-effect of lending credence to government authority in virtually any area of life. Lack of taxation would not only be economically in our best in interests, it would also be in our philosophical best interest. Once government had no way to fund itself, it would become crystal clear in extremely short order that it was only causing harm.

How far do you feel that the right to privacy extends?

Privacy is not a right per se. It is simply an application of the Zero Aggression Principle.

I may morally observe anything about an individual that does not require the initiation of force to do so.

Observing my neighbors having a heated argument on their front porch does not violate the Zero Aggression Principle. Installing surveillance devices in their homes without their authorization does.

Does the right to privacy supersede a government's interest?

Government has no moral need to be aware of any individual's activities.

Does the right to privacy supersede a moral interest of government or other citizens?

Government has no moral need to be aware of any individual's activities.

Individuals have no moral need to be aware of other individuals' activities as long as those activities do not initiate force.

Does the right to privacy supersede a market interest?

Since "the market" is made up of individuals, and as no individual has a moral reason to be aware of other individuals' activities provided that they do not initiate force, then "the market" has no moral need to be aware of other individuals' activities.

To what extent do you see a libertarian philosophy being compatible with a democratic government?

It is incompatible.

"Democracy" is simply "mob rule." The tyranny of 50%+1 of a voting populace is no more moral than the tyranny of an autocrat.

A socialist government? Fascism?

The same as above. The tyranny of one is no more moral than the tyranny of a bureaucracy.

Do you think that Libertarianism needs to be it's own form of rule?

The beauty of self-government guided by the Zero Aggression Principle is that it is independent of government.

Regardless of what type of tyranny happens to be in dominance, any individual can practice self-government.

For example, I ignore government edict approximately 95% of the time. Government laws are uniformly irrelevant to my daily existence. I pay attention only when failure to do so will cost me my life.

However, there will come a day when enough individuals are self-governing guided by the Zero Aggression Principle that my life will no longer be in peril. At that point, I will entirely cease to kowtow to government edict.

I am firmly convinced that the American Federal government will ultimately meet its doom in one of two ways:

Either it will collapse due to its own inherent instability or it will simply cease to be relevant.

The latter notion seems to be most likely at this time, considering the size and scope of the black and gray markets in the United States.

How do we distinguish between the rights of citizens and the rights of non-citizens in a libertarian society?

It is immoral to make such a distinction.

As it is based on the inherent characteristics of the human species, self-government guided by the Zero Aggression Principle makes no distinction between humans who are members of one group or another.

An individual human being — regardless of group affiliation — simply has no right to initiate force against another human being.

Is a conception of justice important to your libertarian philosophy?

"Justice" is irrelevant. The appropriate substitute concept is restitution.

In a free society self-governed by the Zero Aggression Principle, there will be transgressions. There will be individuals who — by accident or design — initiate force against other human beings.

Such individuals are morally bound to make restitution to the victim.

How do we insure justice in a market economy?

By not interfering with how the free market handles restitution.

Can the market be trusted to give both social and criminal justice to everyone, even those who don't contribute to it?

The free market is the only entity that can be trusted to ensure restitution by force initiators.

Think of it this way:

In a free society in which individuals self-govern guided by the Zero Aggression Principle, there would be no laws, courts, legal precedent, or other associated government baggage.

There would simply be individuals who had initiated force and their victims.

Freed of such "crimes" that do not initiate force (such as the sale or use of guns and drugs, prostitution, failure to pay taxes), the number of instances in which force is initiated becomes very, very small.

A huge percentage of force initiations would no doubt be accidental. For example, an individual might accidentally initiate force by losing control of their car and colliding with another individual's car. In such circumstances, the force initiator is morally bound to provide restitution for damages — and would do so peacefully, either directly or via insurance.

However, there might be a small number of individuals who initiate force by design, so let's examine your garden-variety mugger, rapist, or murderer.

In a free society, individuals are not limited by the type of weapon that they may choose for personal defense. Therefore, there is a high statistical likelihood that any given individual will be armed with deadly weapons, either worn openly or concealed.

(As a side note, I imagine that openly-worn weapons would be an extremely effective deterrent against the initiation of force. Why attack an individual you know is armed?)

Since the Zero Aggression Principle only requires that an individual not initiate force, a victim is within their moral right to respond to such an initiation in any way they see fit.

In a free society, the majority of would-be muggers, rapists, and murderers will not survive their first attempt. They will be injured or killed at the hands of their would-be victim.

Also, as Dr. John Lott noted in his seminal work on the subject, More Guns, Less Crime, there is a significant decrease in the level of violent crime when individuals are not disallowed the use of weapons for personal protection. The reason for this is simple:

The average mugger, rapist, and murderer depends on a population without the ability to defend itself. Where there becomes a high statistical likelihood of death or injury, the mugger, rapist, or murderer chooses not to even attempt their crime.

(It is, as a side-issue, the same reason the Federal Government is partly accountable for the events of 9/11. Had it not created airplanes filled with disarmed potential victims, would-be terrorists probably wouldn't have tried to take those aircraft. Or if they had, they would not have been successful due to all the armed passengers.)

So, in a free society, very few muggers, rapists, and murderers will even exist because the potential cost is too high. Of that small percentage that does try, most will not survive to try again.

Of the tiny number that successfully initiates force, what will be required of them is restitution for damage. Even murderers will be morally bound to pay restitution rather than incarceration.

Since there would be no government courts or police, the onus falls to the individual to handle their own affairs. This being the case, an individual might contract with a private security firm to locate and detain a force initiator.

Such action would be taken with the knowledge that any individual detained who was not the force initiator would have force initiated against them — and so would therefore be due restitution from the firm that detained him. This applies equally to any individual a security firm might question in the course of locating a force initiator.

For example, suppose such a firm questioned the force initiator's best friend as to his whereabouts. Any questioning that initiates force — such as strong-arm tactics, beatings, or detaining the individual until he "talks" — would require significant restitution from the security firm.

Once located and detained, the force initiator and victim would contract with a private judge or adjudicator. This individual would be contractually responsible for determining if a force initiation had, in fact, taken place; whether the detention of the force initiator was necessary and appropriate given circumstances; and what restitution was necessary by the force initiator.

The restitution phase would likely entail some kind of negotiation, for which both the victim and initiator would probably retain representatives.

Failure by the initiator to either contract with a judge or provide the negotiated restitution would carry its own punishment.

Consider: in a free society, no individual is required to do business with any other — and this includes individuals who sell the basic necessities of life (food, clothing, and shelter). Also consider that in a free society, there is no crime — only force initiation. Without government-established crimes that do not involve initiation of force, the number of individuals we might think of as "criminals" is very small.

And remember, we know from current statistics that an armed populace is a deterrent against such individuals.

Therefore, in a free society, unrepentant force initiators will be an extreme minority.

Since they are such a minority, it is possible to practice the free market version of "excommunication."

Back to our example, imagine that a force initiator fails to provide the negotiated restitution. The victim is free to take pictures of such an individual and release them to news media, the Internet, or anywhere else they may see fit.

In a society with such low instances of force initiation, even a check-bouncer will receive an enormous amount of publicity.

Once this individual's identity has achieved the notoriety of, say, Jean-Benet Ramsey, he will shortly find that most individuals will refuse to do business with him. It is, after all, clearly not in my interest to support an individual who would initiate force against you. Who knows if he might not initiate force against me, some day?

An unrepentant force initiator will shortly find himself unable to trade for basic necessities such as food, clothing, and shelter.

He will, in short order, begin to provide restitution. If he does not, he will either die or lead a miserable existence — thus providing further incentive to would-be force initiators to restrain their impulses.

There will also be instances in a free society when an individual cannot make appropriate restitution (such as a murderer), and the victim is unwilling to allow the force initiator to be left to the market. In such circumstances — bereft of government regulation to interfere with the natural process — the victim might choose to call the force initiator to a duel.

What is your gender?

Male.

What do you feel was the economic class you were born into?

This question erroneously assumes that there are more than two economic classes in the United States.

In fact, these "classes" are the Productive Class and the Unproductive Class. The Unproductive Class includes government, its functionaries and sycophants. The Productive Class is virtually everyone else.

In this context, I was born into — and have always been a member of — the Productive Class.

What do you feel is your economic class now?

I am in the Productive Class.

What is your ethnic affiliation (where did your ancestors come from?)

For the last two-and-a-half centuries, my ancestors have been native to the United States.

One — Thomas Stone — was a signator to the Declaration of Independence. Another — Edwin McMasters Stanton — served as President Lincoln's Secretary of War.

How old are you?

37, as of this writing.

How typical do you feel your ideas of libertarianism are?

Typical in the company I keep. Probably atypical in terms of the Libertarian Party. Most LP members are Constitutionalists, and I am a strict Zero Aggression Principle philosopher.

How Do I Get To SYL Ranch?

2009-07-21T01:53:00.003-05:00

Paradoxically, SYL Ranch doesn't really exist

However, since the 1930s, the SYL livestock brand has been in use in South Dakota. Owned by Sylvia Davis Stone, the stylized SYL has appeared on cattle raised on the banks of the Cheyenne River, some fifty miles north of Wall, South Dakota for nearly three quarters of a century.

Sylvia Davis Stone was born and raised on a small homestead on the Cheyenne River in South Dakota. Originally registered when she was a girl, the brand appeared on her cattle in this area. She married my grandfather, William Stone, Sr. The couple ultimately moved to Pedro, South Dakota, some seven miles from where Sylvia grew up. Together, they ran a cow-calf ranching operation from the 1940s until their retirement in the early 1990s. These cattle all bore the brand SYL.

Technically speaking, Pedro, South Dakota isn't a town. Rather, it is the remains of a town. The majority of Pedro burned in a fire in the latter part of the 1800s. There are, however, a number of historical buildings, including a fairly well-maintained log cabin still standing on the property.

William and Sylvia had four sons and a daughter, as well as numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren. These include myself (William Stone III) and my daughters, Katherine Sylvia Stone and Lisa Eileen Stone.

From age five to fifteen, I spent two weeks to a month nearly every summer on my grandparents ranch. I would help Granddad with things like running and repairing fences, checking and herding cattle, and the various chores involved with running a cattle ranch. This typically left plenty of time for yard work with "Nanny" (my family's nickname for Sylvia), walking along the banks of the Cheyenne River, and horseback riding.

Understand that at no time was my grandparents ranch ever referred to as "SYL Ranch." It was generally called "Pedro." When her father died, Sylvia Stone and her siblings each received a portion of their father's land. Sylvia, in turn, deeded her portion to each of her five children. This land, which holds a small cabin among other things, has come to be referred to as "Pedro" by those of us who care to visit it.

The Pedro property is extraordinarily remote given the degree of development in America's megalopoli. When I attempt to explain it to urbanites, I often get a blank stare accompanied by outright disbelief that such a place could exist in the 21st century. I have occasionally given thought to the viability of photo-safaris or an authentic "dude ranch" for the children of wealthy urban dwellers.

The nearest road is a pair of ruts through the property. The nearest gravel road is several miles away; the nearest paved more than thirty. In periods of inclement weather involving any sort of precipitation, the grade of the breaks into the river valley makes the property utterly inaccessible. If you have the misfortune to be present when a blizzard hits, you may well be there until the spring thaw. One of the major jobs in the near future is to convince a neighbor to allow us to construct a bridge on his property that would allow access virtually year-round.

The property hosts a small, nominally two-room cabin. There are no modern amenities: if you want to bathe, you do it in the Cheyenne River. If you want drinking water, you bring it in with you (the Cheyenne River being generally too muddy and the well water too high in iron to drink). There is no indoor plumbing, the bathroom consisting of an outhouse. Heat is provided by a wood burning stove and air conditioning consists of opening the windows.
In short, it is one of the most peaceful places on planet Earth. I treasure my brief, infrequent visits to the property, the one place in the world where the stress of 21st century life simply does not exist.