Monthly Archives: June 2018

Domestic Enemies

It is with not without an enormous amount of irony that mere days after this country celebrated Memorial Day – the day upon which we honor the fallen soldiers who selflessly gave their lives to protect our freedom – that we learn of yet another way their sacrifice was for nothing. The enemies of freedom are no longer foreign – they are domestic. To wit, a Georgia couple recently lost custody of their son after it was discovered they had been giving him marijuana to treat his seizures. Stated differently: armed men forced their way into someone’s home and kidnapped a child because a roomful of (mostly) men hundreds of miles away think it is bad to inhale smoke from a burning plant. The marijuana had kept him seizure free for 71 days, but since having been “saved” by the state his daily seizures (up to 10 a day) have returned. But hey, what’s the suffering of a child when compared to the public good of knowing someone somewhere is not inhaling microscopic particulate matter. But it gets even better. Not only was their son kidnapped by the state, but they are also now facing criminal charges (reckless conduct), for you guessed it, a victimless crime. Indeed the state action has created victims where there were none previously. The arresting officer in Twiggs County defended his actions, saying, “It is my duty to enforce state law.” Yes – “I was just following orders” – music to the ears of every totalitarian regime that craves an army of mindless automatons that can’t figure out right and wrong for themselves.

 

The arresting officer in Twiggs County defended his actions, saying, “It is my duty to enforce state law.” Yes – “I was just following orders” – music to the ears of every totalitarian regime that craves an army of mindless automatons that can’t figure out right and wrong for themselves.

 

The sad reality here is that the parents would not have had to obtain “illegal” marijuana if the state of Georgia allowed them access to the legal THC oil they needed. It is actually legal in Georgia to possess and use low THC oil – but only if you have a state-issued medical card…which has a six-year waiting list (naturally). But even if you somehow manage to get one of these Willy Wonka golden ticket of a medical card, there is nowhere to obtain said oil in the state of Georgia. Its sale is illegal. Its importation is illegal. But if the stork magically drops it from the sky onto your front porch then you’re golden.This is what snarky good ol’boy lawmakers do when they think they’re being oh so clever – they can satisfy two sets of constituents simultaneously. They can claim to be looking out for those in pain who need help while simultaneously claiming to be “tough on drugs”. As the parent of a child who suffered through a period of epileptic seizures when young all I can say is these folks did what any decent parent would do – whatever it takes to alleviate the suffering of their child. They should be commended, not vilified. To the lawmakers in this state who continue to obstruct access to ANY substance that will alleviate suffering, all I can say is that you are vile and despicable monsters. Anyone who would consign their fellow man to unyielding pain in order that their own peculiar notion of propriety is satiated is a callous barbarian unworthy of being permitted any engagement in civil society let alone the respect they so openly crave.

Anyone who would consign their fellow man to unyielding pain in order that their own peculiar notion of propriety is satiated is a callous barbarian unworthy of being permitted any engagement in civil society let alone the respect they so openly crave.

In a country that purports to be the shining city of freedom on a hill there sure is a colossal lack of freedom here. How does the state despoil freedom? Let me count the ways: civil asset forfeiture, criminalization of all manner of victimless “crimes”, conversion of liberties into licenses necessitating bureaucratic permission to regain what was stolen, formerly forced disassociations, now forced associations, forced labor (jury duty), theft of income and assets (taxation) at levels vastly above that which would be paid to fund basic services in a voluntary model, a quagmire of rules that citizens must follow to simply reenter their own country, the 100 mile “liberty free zone” around the US border where not even citizens are immune to the potential 4thamendment abusing CPB agents.Events like this should open all of our eyes to the reality that we are not free. Constraining your actions to fall within the scope of rules established by those with no authority to establish them does not make you free. Even slaves are “free” by that standard. Rules are only legitimate when there is consent. Voting is not consent. Just because the mafia lets me vote for the new mob boss doesn’t mean I consent to their purported authority over me. If slaves got to vote for the nice slave master or the mean slave master it does not somehow legitimize their condition of servitude. If the exercise of a freedom impacts another then as long as there is consent there can be no legitimate boundaries.

GDPR: End of the World

“It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.”

This sentiment from the well known R.E.M song encapsulates most succinctly the state of affairs with the E.U.’s “General Data Protection Regulation” (or GDPR). Like you, I too received an onslaught of (promptly deleted) “updated privacy policy notice” emails last week. We all scratched our heads at the oddly timed confluence of these emails but soon went back about the business of life. In short, we felt fine, nothing to see here, move right along. In reality these email notices were the harbinger of the end of human civilization as we have enjoyed it (that is, relatively free liberal western democracies with some semblance of local autonomous governance). GDPR is the first step on the road back to serfdom, albeit a rather different path then the one foreseen by F.A. Hayek. This path follows the same instinct toward fascism (fascism=state control of otherwise putatively private interests, in short a fascism is the façade of socialism dressed up in a cloak of capitalism).

“Oh, c’mon now, I think you’re overstating things here just a bit!” you’re probably thinking by now. Sadly, I’m not. This is the first time that any law or regulation has had GLOBAL reach.

“There is nowhere to run to, no where to hide.”

It does not merely pertain to companies operating in Europe, no, it governs any company anywhere in the world that may at any time count an EU citizen as a customer or even merely a website visitor. That might be all well and good if it were merely a recitation of privacy best practices. But no, this regulation has teeth – velociraptor sharp and deep. The fines for violation of this regulation are specifically designed to put all small to midsize businesses into bankruptcy overnight. The fines range from 10 – 20 million Euro (12 – 24 million dollars) at a minimum! And that is for a single offence! To put that into perspective, according to IRS figures (2013 latest year available) 99.685% of all US business make less than 12 million a year in profit. Or stated differently only about 18,000 US businesses out of approximately 6 million could conceivably withstand such a fine. That is the recipe for serfdom. That is the recipe for what all regulations do to some extent (favor large businesses at the expense of the small) but at a scale that would all but ensure no one could ever again rise above the station they were born into by starting their own business. The least little misstep in following every little dot and tittle of this (and most assuredly future) regulation would leave the nascent entrepreneur crushed like a bug under the heel of Paul Bunyan. “But I’m in the US, they can’t touch us!” you say. Unfortunately our government will be all too willing to help out their EU cronies just in the same way that the EU has been complicit in enforcing the absurd US tax law known as FACTA (which basically treats any US citizen with an overseas bank account like a criminal). GDPR fines are the equivalent of the death penalty for jay walking.

The premise behind this regulation is itself flawed as well. When even someone’s name is considered “private” information I think we can say that privacy regulations have “jumped the shark” and entered full on SJW territory of head spinning absurdity. In short, there is no right to privacy. You do not have the right to walk through the public park and then insist that everyone who saw you must be beat over the head until they have no memory of you walking through the park. That is what this regulation does. It substitutes state violence for personal responsibility. If you don’t want some website to have your information, then don’t use the website, it’s that simple. If you don’t want some company to know where you live because they had to ship product to your house, then don’t buy from them. Don’t ruin society and the internet for the other 99% of us who don’t give a crap if some website stored a cookie in the web cache about the last visit there.

Privacy is a negative right  – it is up to you protect it. Using the state to point guns at people to make them do what you want doesn’t count as you doing something – unless you think violence is the best way to solve problems.