http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=157055
It will be interesting to see what comes of this.
Like the Paulies or not, they definitely know how to organize and they don’t lack for passion.
Okay, first the League of Non-Voters, & now this? I’m intrigued but not convinced…
Libertarians/Anarchists/Objectivists seem to think the Paul movement(s) are waiting for their blessing or approval.
I don’t think the Ron Paulies care.
They don’t wait. They just try to do stuff. Certainly a bold and courageous idea if they can pull it off.
Those damn vulgar libertarians. Leading the way again!
I don’t think much will come of this. It’d be way more effective if this didn’t originate from Ron Paul supporters but instead from a general non-partisan group, and if it were the main cause. RP supporters have been all over the place in terms of activities, but I doubt they have achieved much.
I think its great.
Brave, but stupid. What makes income taxation illegal? And do not get me started on natural law.
I don’t see what good will come of it. They’ll just be thrown in jail.
Or, like Karl Hess, disallowed to make monetary transactions.
Libertarianism is not about dodging taxes but opposing the violence of the state. Any time someone says that people are “cheating on taxes” someone makes a new bill that “closes the loopholes” to steal more.
Think of the cost-benefit. I don’t think it works out to a win. For that matter, neither did the “demonstrations” of anarcho-collectivists at the RNC. As ballsy as it was. Fear is something the government doesn’t live with – and never will. It’s a disproportion of power that defines it. Fear, though, is demonstrated by those who beg the government for liberty.
Well, I am one person, among what I believe is a great number, who was only really introduced to libertarianism through Ron Paul. We libertarians may still be a minority, but we are a much larger minority than we were before Ron Paul and his campaign. I differ with him and them at this point as well, but the impact has been huge.
I don’t remember generalizing all RP’ers as all vulgar libertarians (I might generalized them as political reformists, however).
I also do not remember seeing any prominent LewRockwell posters at said RP forum proposing such ideas. It can easily be said that the RP’ers have been trumping them, by large in part, by showing the ability to self-organize beyond cheerleading by the LRC blog. It’s much more important that they were busy badmouthing the “vandarchists”, instead.
The “not convinced part” had nothing to do with an approved viewpoint or approved philosophy on their part, but everything to do with “will their following translate into tangible results”.
I wish them the best of luck, as this is a very risky (but, most likely necessary) undertaking.
Hopefully their League of Non-Voters gets off the ground, as I wouldn’t mind registering if it exists beyond a good community forum (& pre-registered domain name, afaik) idea.
A further ballsier move on the RP’ers that follow this tax resistience would be to disable the government’s advantages of disabling their ability to make monetary transactions (via alternative currencies such as self-made labor notes & bartering). However, that would assume a good concentration of RP’ers are either organized enough online to create some sort of online version of labor notes & bartering (which would be quite an abstraction to tackle), or they are concentrated in a local community to the point of bursting, where such bartering & labor notes would be viable (i.e. The Free State Project, but they are well beneath their quota of amount of people).
FYI, it wasn’t all anarcho-collectivists at the RNC. Market Anarchists also made their (offline) debut there (w/ a flag as well), and despite some uneasiness with other anarcho flavors, were obviously welcomed to the protest. I forget the source for this (it was a blog), but I will post it here when I find it amid the swamp that is my bookmarks…
I think the protests at the RNC was a good first step if there will be more; I will be fairly disappointed if none follow it, however.
Not directed specifically at you. Sorry.
Vandarchists suck, the RNC was an embarassment. As FSK said on his blog, if you’re apolitical, why would you protest a political gathering? What next, anarchists gunna start voting?
Not that I want to get into that discussion now, but the tactics of the Vandarchists suck, they had no right to damage private property.
Perhaps they reasoned they were protesting politics & that they felt that the corporations right to property wasn’t legitimate?
As I said in a two-stage strategy for freedom, there are much safer forms of resistance than tax resistance that we can start with. I wish them good luck.
And not just them, indeed.
Embarassing and shameful.
Why?
Start a new thread please.
And
Start a new thread please.
And it’s sad that you have to ask why
Are you assuming I’m defending them? I’m simply asking for a more in-depth answer other than “Embrassing & shameful”, I don’t see what’s so sad about that.
All modern corporations are quasi-governmental agencies, legally-established entities with ablities and natures unattainable in a true free market. The periodic bailouts of automobile and aviation industries should be proof enough of that. That, and, particularly in the case of shipping, the fact the centralized and remote production from which a corp like Macy’s gets its inventory is only possible because the bulk of its transportation costs are carried in socialized roads. The idea that they are free market institutions is a lie perpetuated for its usefulness. Firstly, it deflects the natural resentment that people have towards the unnatural concentration of capital away from the government that is truly behind it. Secondly, for that reason and especially when things go wrong, it allows government to set itself up as an alternative that will fix things, justifying Leviathan’s growth.
Truly private enterprise and the conduct of business between individuals is the free market, not huge quasi-governmental corporate Leviathan-spawn. Burn the f-ers down.