Bag Tax Dilemma

Fred - I'm not arguing for more or fewer support forces, or anything having to do with micromanaging the day to day operations and makeup of the military. I'm not interested in it, and there are far more qualified persons than I to make those decisions. The only reason I broached that topic was your "bleeding for our freedoms" trope, which has no place in this discussion as far as I'm concerned

Your post 6 was in response to my post 7 ??????   Not only a remarkable fealty to the written transcript, but clairvoyantly and presciently so!  

We spend enough money for the feds to have a fucking time machine, but I don't actually believe you have access to one, sport..

What else are you wrong about, counselor?  What version of reality is convenient in the next 15 seconds?

. I'm similarly tired of the wailing and gnashing of teeth on behalf of "the heroes" whenever an eyebrow is raised over police officers hauling down $100k in roadside-detail overtime. I'm interested in facts and sober analysis, not politicized hyperbole of that nature. Roofers and powerline workers have two of the highest fatality rates in the U.S. You couldn't pay me enough to do either of those dangerous jobs. Nobody but the families cry over their sacrifices because they lack the sexy uniforms and firearms of the romanticized armed services.

Sure.  But apparently someone coould pay you enough to oversee taxing them to death to support the CronyFest on the Potomac.    When the E1s stop the bleeding, its not them who come back to the soft landing assembly line in DC.   No, in fact, they end up roofers and powerline workers and even longline fishermen(another high mortality profession overseen by soft-landing central in our own version of The Hunger Games.

Jules argues that libertarians should out of principle entirely abandon certain sectors of government to their progressive counterparts.

I did not say abandon them to their progressive counterparts.

I said destroyed.

Abandoned  means the structure would still be there even if it was not manned.

No that is nothing more than pragmatic sellout mentality.

Here is an analogy even you might grasp.  It applies especially to you.

Lets go back to WWII.  A libertarian SS officer is trying to justify his position as an "insider" in a Nazi concentration camp.  He posits the rationalization for his position by declaring " It is a good thing that I am here because if a progressive was in my position he would kill 5000 jews/day whereas I attempt to minimize this and only select the bare minimum.  I only kill 750 jews per day.  Just accept that this is only politics and I am only doing what my superiors tell me to do.  You cannot stop the concentration camps.  Are you now on board with my way of thinking?

" Since "destroying" these departments you don't like isn't an option, are you now saying it might be acceptable - in the here and now - for libertarians to work within these organizations to scale them back? If so, welcome aboard."

You are a sell out Robert. There is no difference between what you are doing.  Only in degree.  You are part of the problem, not the solution.  You are worse than a 5th columnist.  Sleep soundly working in that immoral branch of government?  You obviously are not a District attorney, those are the good guys.  So what is your function, how is it that you are destroying the lives and dreams of businessmen and the American dream albeit at a lesser slower rate than a non libertarian...  A piece of paper comes down the chute with a presidential order?  This is what we want to do to this industry.  Robert makes it air tight so the poor bastards have no wriggle room?  

Jules:

50 years of curbing the bloat from within has done nothing.  Who grew the bloat more than Nixon, Reagan and Bush?

JFK and $100B of overhead from a nation of 180 million;  inflation and population  barely adjusting that to $1500B/yr.   And unlike those roofers and so on in the private sector who realized actual increases in productivity over these 50 years, the bloated overhead by our deadwood keeps skimming an every year higher cost per capita of self government.  It would be excessive to account for productivity increases over 50 years when comparing JFKs adjusted 1.5T to today's nearly 4T.  How much lower should that 1.5T be?  Moot.

Nobody fixing anything, the bloated pig is just going to break, as it is in front of our eyes.   We'll know the nation is on the way to recovery when the moving vans are streaming out on I95.  

Yes you are right about that Fred.  It is going to pop.  After it all settles what will be left?  A free country or a complete dictatorship?

Jules - You're reminding me of MSK now with your holier-than-thou psychologizing - too much time in bad company on OL maybe. MSK spent hours psychologizing Eva across multiple threads - why "she" acts and thinks the way she does, what her future may hold, what lessons she should learn from him, etc. Turns out it was all bullshit and she's just a run-of-the-mill troll who fabricated a persona for laughs. So all that psychologizing was built on a foundation of sand. There's a lesson in humility in that, if you're willing to learn it.

Mike - Thank you for your words. I'm a realist, not an idealist,and that is the source of conflict between  myself and those on this board, in my opinion. It's important to have ideals, but you also have to square them with the reality that progressives run DC and government is only getting bigger. Some find it easier to bury their heads in the sand. I say grab a pickaxe and start picking. Let them hate - whatever they think they're doing in Rand's name isn't working, that much is abundantly clear. I'm just going to keep on doing. I've saved U.S. businesses millions of dollars in compliance costs by keeping overly burdensome requirements out of the regulations I've worked on. But Jules knows my work better than I do, so he should really be the one to explain it.

Socialists/Keynesians have good sounding false promises (prosperity without production). We only offer that one must think and work hard to succeed. The recognition of the invalidity of socialism increasing prosperity doesn't seem so complicated to me that the former could win the masses over... but it does. The effort to win them over seems hopeless to me. I think they will only learn the hard way: death.  Or never learn, but be allowed to live and work as slaves. Not that I would prefer it that way... but due to the existence of elite manipulators it seems to me that this is the only way it can be.

Prior history had enslavement by pure military might.  Today the military might is still present, but the strings are pulled by elite manipulators 1984 double think style.

But if you refuse the premise that intelligence is a normally or even skewed distribution these conclusions would not be QED. (as discovered with previous debate with Steve)

Furthermore, might I add that this seems like the natural way for things to be. Variation in intelligence results in domination/enslavement. Variation will always exist and is even desirable a la natural selection. Prosperity of the dominant species results in flourishing of the subservient underdog. Underdogs grow in population due to the unresistable nature of the prosperous to "feed the bears"... which is hard on the middle class, but not the elite.

Given that within the lesser intelligent population, those who choose to live off government redistribution during highly prosperous times reproduce at a greater rate than those who have similarly lower intelligence yet chose to live by the products of their own labor... the later kind of person reproduces less frequently, hence there being a natural selection force for an emotional reaction for the lesser intelligent to desire and take wealth redistribution. But then when famine/hard times/war/mass extinction events occur, the vast majority of these lessers die, but those who practiced living self sufficiently most definitely have greater chances to survive.

Hence it could be argued that working toward bringing about such an event would have benefits, although I must assert that I am not thinking that intentionally causing such an event to happen would be overall beneficial. Hence maybe we should be thanking rather than damning those who take advantage of the system? Didn't LP once suggest to vote for Obama on this line of thought?

Due to elite manipulators managing the level of taxation, potentially an Atlas Shrugged event could not happen only due to Galts and Wyatts (strikers) (managing to keep Galts incentivized just enough to not all strike) but another special ingredient: unexpected geological natural disaster. Or I guess if peak oil is a real problem then that would cause a similar effect.

Since "destroying" these departments you don't like isn't an option,...

What cabinet level position, established at the whim of some past POTUS, is not voidable at the whim of some future POTUS?   And along with that position, the entire department underneath that position?

Fred - Departments cannot be established (or removed) at the "whim" of a president. Do you happen to have a copy of the Constitution nearby? It's not a simple matter of getting the votes either. There are hundreds of labor laws, contracts, property rights, and procedural matters that would have to also be resolved. It's essentially impossible to fire a federal employee, nevermind shutter a department with thousands of them. This is why scaling them back incrementally is the most we can realistically hope for (although truth be told, I often wonder if even that is realistic).

Jules - That's not even close to the same situation. In that hypothetical, there is a whole range of options within the person's control, including doing no harm. What I'm telling you is that I'm doing the least harm possible within my power, and any other course of action - including resigning - would lead to more harm. You've called DA's, policemen, etc. heroes (I used to be a prosecutor BTW). Do you understand that they are legally required to enforce victimless crime laws all the time?

Is it essentially impossible to fire a federal employee? It seems it depends (link).