End the War on Freedom

"Half of being smart is knowing what you are dumb at."

Guy Rundle at The Age via Liberty Forum - The real deal on drugs - why prohibition should be replaced by truth-based education. [libertyforum]

But they were mere way-stations on the road to the abyss, the absolute zero, addiction to heroin. The message that one might fall into junkiedom like the ground opening up beneath you was a potent one - in retrospect it seems to have held sway over our pre-adolescent imagination.

I still remember one booklet printed on underground newspaper style soft paper with the wavy, curvy typography of the period. The centrepiece was a carefully posed picture of a long-haired hippie chick junkie, fit in hand, lying face-first over an open toilet, a sort of porcelain Pieta. It was pretty compelling stuff - for most of us, sufficiently gruesome to scare into straightness - until you actually took some and found they didn't kill you, and thereafter disbelieved everything you'd ever heard.

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There is obviously a need for public education to make people aware of the extremely dangerous nature of heroin and other opiates, given that they have a capacity in many - but by no means all - people to become physically addicted quite rapidly. But the best way to make that clear, especially to the young, would be to acknowledge that other drugs are more manageable.

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As Reefer Madness author Eric Schlosser notes, there are currently 18,000 people in US federal prisons - and many more in state prisons - for marijuana-related offences, often serving sentences longer than those for rape and murder. And in Victoria, the entire drug squad has been abolished, with confessions of officers now revealing how inextricably intertwined drug production and drug enforcement has been in this state. In the sort of world we live in, having a "war on drugs" is about as sensible as having a war on air.

Loompanics - An Interview With Mike Hoy, Founder and President of Loompanics Unlimited Regarding What It's All About - good look inside the mind of the guy crazy enough to run the Loompanics book store.

Q: You have a number of anarchist books in your Catalog. Are you an anarchist?

Pretty much so, although I am too much of an anarchist to be an anarchist -- I have found that the organized anarchists have too many rules and too many leaders for me. I am so much of an anarchist that I have gone beyond anarchy -- I am agnostic about anarchism. I guess I would call myself a political solipsist. I don't much know how "society should be organized," but I want everybody to be able to live the way they want. I would like to see everyone create his own reality. I think that any large institution, not just government, is likely to be dangerous to individuals. That is where I part company with the "Libertarians" -- they actually seem to think that large corporations are rivals of the government. My view is that they have become interchangeable with the government. In fact, corporations now wield even more power than governments -- look at what is going on in Afghanistan and Iraq, for Chrissakes. The U.S. Government is serving the "oil" and "defense" industries.

John Q. Newman at Loompanics - How To Escape the Tyranny of the Social Security Number - history of the SSN, and some ideas for reducing its use to what was originally (supposedly) intended.

By following theses steps, you will reduce the circulation of your SS number dramatically. You can even file tax returns under the ITIN. Eventually you will have the satisfaction of knowing that your Social Security number is used for what it was intended -- to identify your Social Security retirement account and very little else.

Michael Chesbro at Loompanics - A Plague Upon The Land - good rant against the beast number and Big Brother's other encroachments on our privacy.

As oppressive and intolerable as this national ID system was becoming, worse was yet to come. The federal government still could not track everyone. People with a desire for some degree of personal freedom and anonymity from Big Brother were still able to slip through the cracks. So, over the objection of the states and over the objections of We the People, the federal government passed federal law 42 USC 666(a)(13) which requires states to collect a SSN as a condition of issuing any type of license. Some states attempted to protest this trampling of our freedoms, declaring the federal legislation "inappropriate, intrusive, and offensive." In response to this the federal government simply refused to provide these states with federal funding for assistance to the poor (funds which the federal government derived from the states in the first place) unless the states complied with this mandatory numbering system. As of October 1, 2000, you must provide your SSN in order to be issued a driver's license, a fishing license, or even a marriage license!

William L. Anderson at the Ludwig von Mises Institute - Smoking and Property Rights - good rendition of the fact that it doesn't matter how harmful second-hand smoke is, it's a property rights issue.

Advocates for "smoke-free workplaces" contend that since nonsmokers work in bars and restaurants, and that since even second-hand smoke contains so-called Class A carcinogens that in large doses can cause cancer, people should be entitled to "safe" places wherein to work. In other words, by banning smoking in these places, government simply is protecting the "rights" of workers.

On the surface, such arguments may sound good, but when one barely scratches the surface, they not only are specious, but downright dangerous. Such laws amount to a confiscation of property. Whatever governing body makes the ruling is using force to limit behavior that can occur on private property, yet it is the owner who is liable for enforcing the rule--on pain of losing the property and perhaps even his or her freedom. Property owners, who in a free market would be able to decide on their own whether or not they want to permit smoking, have that right taken away from them by the state.

One forgets that people who either are employees or patrons of a bar or restaurant are there by choice. To put it another way, those individuals who decide either to work at such an establishment or to eat and drink there freely have made the decision to spend time at that place. No restaurant or bar owner can force anyone to work or eat at his or her establishment, so at best, the state is "rescuing" people from their own free choices, which means that the political authorities--and the activists cheering them on--are in effect also coercing those workers and patrons into making choices that meet state approval.

Dan Weiner at The Libertarian Enterprise - So, What's Wrong With Dan? - Ken Holder has edited the past few issues of TLE, because Mr. Ed has been sick. He may have cancer. He's thinking of using Essiac therapy. [tle]

William Stone, III at The Libertarian Enterprise - The Economics of Pokemon - Mr. Stone uses an example from his daughters knowledge of Pokemon to illustrate supply and demand and goes on to explain to her the evil of fiat currency. [tle]

"Right! Now, as long as the government's paper money was actually a certificate, they couldn't print any more of it than there was gold. Because people in America might start asking for the gold, the government might run out if there were too many certificates, and people would get angry. Does that make sense? So when paper money is a certificate for gold, it's stable. It will be exactly as valuable as the gold it can be redeemed for."

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"See, as soon as it didn't matter any more how much paper the government printed, they started printing tons of it. When the paper was a certificate for gold, they had to worry that people who show up and want their gold. When the paper was just paper, they didn't have any reason not to print money.

"What they basically did was take a Zapdos Holographic card and turn it into a Staryu by printing up lots and lots of them."

Francis A. Ney, Jr. at The Libertarian Enterprise - How Bad Government Gets Worse: A review of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - pointing out the parallels between Harry Potter book five and modern events. [tle]

Philip Johnston at The Telegraph - 'Magic eye' ID cards clear Cabinet hurdle - Big Brother takes another big step in jolly old England. [kimdutoit]

David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, is to press ahead next week with plans to introduce a compulsory identity card backed by a national citizens' database.

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The ID card will be required by everyone over 16 - more than 40 million people - and cost around &lb;40, though with concessions for the elderly and the poor.

Each card will contain biometric data, such as an image of a person's iris or fingerprint, so police and other authorities can confirm the holder's identity.

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