Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

Provocative title—let's start with what we can agree on: theft and aggression are immoral.

Tom Jefferson 1816: “It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million people, collected together, are not under the same moral laws that bind them separately.”

Voting supports people who will use coercion and theft (taxes) against us “for the public good”—for activities, wasteful and often corrupt, you may not use, or agree with. Why do we do it? Because it was taught in school, WHICH IS THE PURPOSE OF COMPULSORY GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS. Voluntary alternatives (especially education) are suppressed. A “free” education that enslaves the mind, is a very high price to pay.

EVERY overpriced, monopolistic government “service” can be competitively privatized. Education, social services, arbitration and space travel, for example. BLM grazing lands should be sold to pay government debt. We've had free market health care for hundreds of years… for livestock and pets. Video streaming and Kindle are private libraries. Railroads are private roads, cars electronically billed.

Governments don't collect taxes to provide services, they attempt “services” to gouge taxes: a protection racket. Instead, YOU can decide how to allocate your resources = consumer financial voting. In a democracy, if 51% want vanilla, all get vanilla. With freedom, you can have chocolate, strawberry or dozens of choices.

CRIME   Greatly reducing government theft and assault is a good start. Abolishing the failed Drug War would help empty prisons. Then we can go from there with private security and insurance—think Pinkertons in 1880.

WAR   Tom Paine nailed it in 1792 “What inducement has the worker to lay aside his peaceful pursuit and go to war with the laborer of another country? War is the gambling table of governments, and citizens the dupes of the game.” What if they gave a war, and nobody came?

And of course government has no credibility interfering in social activities or what we ingest.

July 4, 1776: “Whenever any government becomes destructive, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it…”

Here's the fatal flaw: government is aggression— theft and coercion—it can NEVER work. How do we get from tyranny to freedom… again? La Boetie explained… in 1577:

“Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once free. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces.”

Kahlil Gibran The Prophet, Freedom 1923: “If it is a despot you would dethrone, see first his throne erected within you is destroyed.”

It won't be easy, and as always, some parts will not be pretty. The U.S. Government is morally and financially bankrupt. It will be ugly when the Ponzi pyramid scheme finally collapses; Individual Freedom is THE alternative, just like 1776. Next, the last step in our long journey that started with The Magna Carta (1215), is NO GOVERNMENT = no coercion, as Thoreau imagined in 1846: “That government is best which governs least… or not at all.”

By voting, you are an accomplice, an enabler—advocating theft and coercion are good for your community. Do you really believe that? NOT voting eliminates “the consent of the governed”.

 

Further info: www.stormy.org/public.htm A non-voter since 1996, stormy is a goat farmer in SW Oregon. [ NONE of stormy's writing is copyrighted ] comments appreciated: [email protected]