Oh yeah man. Well think about it. What REALLY happened here? Why didn’t the police officer tell who ever told him to arrest her to get fucked? Why did he obey? Just another “following orders” man.
The whole country is like this now. All these old people take over these positions are just sheep followers. “Doing my job”. “Following the law”. It’s everywhere.
This is something I remember my father telling me he disliked about the States several decades ago: “Americans are becoming a nation of informants and informers.” Drawing analogies and comparisons to East Berlin and their predecessors if you get my drift without being too hyperbolic. This was pre-plandemic, mind you. Because you’re exactly right - if anything, shouldn’t the police officer have made a citizen’s arrest of his superior for an unlawful attempted arrest, detention or kidnapping - whichever term is most accurate? I’m not being hyperbolic about this.
I’m still waking up, so my mind is a little fuzzy as to the precise terms. But good grief, this is no good at all. What has changed? Americans weren’t always like this, I don’t think, or were they?
Nope. Haven’t met a single one. Not one I admired.
You might meet someone who SEEMS on the outside to be the Clint Eastwood character but once you actually meet them and talk to them you know they aren’t.
My grandfather used to be a person who I thought was growing up. But now that I’m older and actually met him as an equal and have talked to him and see what he really thinks. Or rather doesn’t think. It’s just a show.
Americas IDEA will always be cool. But it’s just that nobody wants to actually live by that idea. And say “I” want to be that way. “I” want to be Clint Eastwood.
I bet these Asian fucks from Japan and shit come over here like it’s a fucking petting zoo hoping to see “somebody else” embodying the ideal which they thought was cool. Without ever doing it themselves.
Without putting anyone else down, I do not think young people worldwide are crying out at night wishing and hoping they could become Chinese or Indian or Russian or even French or Italian, if you get my point.
Italian, who knows, it could be possible. The French, a long time ago, I suppose; why not? Someday in the future, Brazilian or Mexican, I guess. But America has that cool factor and cultural edge. It’s almost as important and strategic as its ICBMs. Ozzy Osbourne, I know, was British, but the likes of him and Metallica did a lot to tear down the wall.
America lives by inertia. Those people of the past who actually did it versus the people today who only hold it as an idea that they never act on. And then walk around flailing the American flag as if it means the same thing it does when it was created.
Soon this conflict is going to catch up with us and it’s going to be a mainstream comment where people are saying “that’s not even who you are anymore” and the new (current) image of American dogshit will replace it. And nobody wants to be what America CURRENTLY is.
Is the house really that important? Especially when you’re punished for having nice things? Or the person inside of it?
Voluntarily improving your stuff just to be taxed more for it is a self sacrificial slavery. NOTHING is worth doing more to be stolen from more and putting myself in that position to let them do it.
Well you have to work. To get things you need to keep existing. But why do more than the bare minimum? If working more means you’re just going to be stolen from more?
Wasn’t that the whole point of Atlas shrugged? With John galt the genius basically becoming a janitor.
They say perfect is the enemy of good, my friend, and so it’s not about finding that perfect place, but a better place.
There are many parts of the world that are, for example, a lot more tax-neutral. The trouble is that there are few places where you have both economic and social freedoms, not that I like to disaggregate the two.
You’re making me think, as you almost always do. I’m thinking, in recorded history, what are some examples of countries that have come back? Israel is an obvious example. Poland has resurfaced periodically, as has Armenia, but as far as empires are concerned, I mean, what do we have?
I suppose there were several different British Empires, French Empires. Rome went through a few different incarnations, so I guess it can happen, and it does happen, but it doesn’t always look or feel the same. But, yeah, it does seem to me that, for the most part, empires don’t come back, at least not in the same form.
No, not at all, and not in the least. It’s the exact opposite. It’s saying, “Sure, I’ll take 99% of what I’m asking for to at least get that 99% instead of being a big fat loser at 0%, waiting for the 100% to come in one swoop because I’m an uncompromising person, I mean principled because, yeah, that’s just so principled.”
There’s nothing wrong with going from a bad restaurant to a better restaurant because the best restaurant in town isn’t yet open. Nothing wrong with that at all.
Not to mention, perfection just simply doesn’t exist, at least not on this planet. Not that we shouldn’t strive for it, and not that we should ever be satisfied with what we have, and I’m using the term “we” very loosely.
I think there probably is no turning back. 40 trillion debt is too high and it’s pretty much at the point of no return. But I do think you can give it the best possible chance of bouncing back AFTER collapse. A renaissance. And I think Texas is the best possible chance of that not only for its character but simply for the fact it owns all the oil in the country and you can’t fight a civil war without oil.
Say you give up. Go to Puerto Rico or something. Which is the very best next alternative. You’re giving up the US mainland continent with no fighting chance of freedom. Besides the fact Puerto Rico being an island is the easiest thing to counter by just sinking every ship that leaves with resources even if it did say back Florida or Texas in a fight.
I understand property taxes aren’t a big deal. But it is the easiest to attack and takes the least amount of people. And has a CASCADING effect. Cause if you can show one place to do it then all the other places have to say “this is possible”. All across the country.
And on a personal level don’t you want to be able to build the best house you can ever imagine and not ever have to think “am I going to get a higher bill for this?” Simply because you want to live better? I know I do and I purposely sold my house just to avoid it because it’s disgustingly immoral that I pay more because i have a better house.
Probably because the INDIVIDUALS who started them were the lynch pin making them great. they were the ones holding the Howard Roark fire and once they died the drive died with them.
Like it’s pretty clear the ambitious one for Rome was Julius Caesar. After he died it seems to have fizzled out. France had napoleon. British king Henry. But I think if you have MANY people holding their ideas then it is entirely possible. Not just a single man making it all work.
Never said he was. But he was the one who made the whole thing into the empire it was. HE. Had the EGO. And the ideas to make it happen.
He was the one coming up with ideas like rewarding soldiers with statues for taking extraordinary risk. Which is a basically meaningless thing to do. But yet he knew that’s how you get people to do what he wanted.
Napoleon said the same thing. He said “it’s amazing what a person will do to get a tiny little ribbon reward”.
All these things were tied up in one man. Never before has it been multiple people or a whole society to make it happen. I think America is really the first for that. Multiple founding fathers. And the spirit of individual people after them to keep it going
You’re making an interesting point. When one conjures up images of Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, it’s difficult to separate those men from ego, ambition, desire, never being satiated, and, most of all, being incredibly driven. These were high-agency, high-performance individuals. Perhaps their imprint, or footprint, or shadow, has only grown as the centuries have rolled by, and we tend to lionise, idealise, or romanticise such figures.
I wonder if they were also as gargantuan as we make them out to be back in their day. I think, to a large extent, yes. It’s just that it seems history has a way of embellishing the exploits of such alphas.
But a separate question is, are such figures role models? Is it all about conquest and Empire at the end of the day?
@participant-3927 another thing about the property tax. Local governments are basically the exact same thing as the whole country just a smaller little snapshot. And if you get rid of all sources of forced funding and make the donation based system happen one has to ask. “Why can’t this happen at the bigger level for the same thing”? Just change property tax for income tax and it’s the same. If they can make this small little town work without coercion. Which then it hopefully builds into a city. Why can’t it work for just the next step of being multiple cities put together to make a country?.
Got to get the ball rolling somewhere and that’s the place to do it. And the easiest.
But who made it that way? Who was the starting head that made that the path? Julius did. He set the standard. He made the reward system to make that the behavior.
It’s like any company. The whole influence starts at the top. The ceo hire the manager below him. Which that manager hires a person below him. And then he hires a worker. All based on the starting ideal of the ceo who should have had his intentions flowed down through that first manager he hired.
Which is why HR is the most dangerous part of a company. Because it’s no longer the ceo deciding who gets into the company effecting its culture. But Karen who is deciding who is let in. Influencing the culture from the bottom up
That does sound like a man of ego. Not a moral one. But it does seem like he had the drive to go after what he wanted.
Going after married women was no small thing in those days. I’m sure you were killed. So to have the courage to do that in spite does say something.
Not saying it was right but clearly it does say something about an individual who does chooses to break that.
No doubt. Cause it doesn’t seem like anyone is doing much to end the cycle.
Even ARI with its 32 million dollar budget is basically a massive failure and achieved nothing.
And this reason given. Of being “educational” and not “political”. Gives me the idea they want to sit around and do nothing and wait for “somebody else” to materialize out of thin air and make things happen for them.
I mean really. How do you have a philosophy which a major factor of it is about policy and not want to be political. It’s impossible. Which amounts to running around saying a bunch of words. Being the guy saying “this is such a great idea but I’m not going to do it myself. You guys should do it!”.
Ocon is the biggest waste of fucking money and serves nothing more than to ego stroke those intellectuals by sitting on stage and seeing people listen to them. There’s literally no reason for this as anything they say can be said online. And doesn’t justify the cost at all especially for what I guess is MEAGER if any gains. The only people going there aren’t new people it’s people who are already in the pool
The only thing ARI does I agree with is the essay contest which pays college people 50k or something for disputing rands books. This is literally the only stroke of genius and worth the money cause you get a ton of people who have to engage with the material and you only have to pay one of those people. That’s value. That’s effective money use
Thank you. It’s more than that, though; it’s very much using the ethos, the mentality. You’re totally right: the excitement of startups to use capitalism to help create more capitalism. That’s something that I’ve always found so completely, utterly lacking in this ecosystem, space, movement, industry, whatever you want to call it.
I mean, what good is it to quote great philosophers and economists and thinkers but not try and put some of those ideas into practice? And a lot of it also was, in part, thinking back to how Israel is referred to as the Startup Nation; that’s really what I was thinking at the time, plus I like alliterative names.
Oh for sure no doubt and the high concentration of startups that come from Israel particularly in the tech sector and then make their way on to the likes of NASDAQ.
I’m well aware of the story. It’s also a bit of a double entendre because of Israel coming back to life in 48, very much in part through scrappy bootstrapping similar to that process many startups go through, minus the bullets flying, but I do think it’s that kind of ambition and drive as well as motivation that can propel founders and builders to the deploy to launch new countries.