I thought i would share an experience I had yesterday. I live in central New York. Recently we have had quite a bit of snow, schools have closed etc. Yesterday was a rather wintery day and when i left work i quickly cleaned the snow off my car and headed home. Shortly after i started my short commute, I noticed a police car in my rear view mirror. I quickly checked my speed after confirming i was doing at most 3 miles over the posted limit I began to relax. Then the lights came on! Of course i did my part and pulled to the side of the road and when the officer presented himself at my window he asked the standard question “Do you know why I pulled you over?”. Well I tell you In my 15 years of driving I have always known why i was getting pulled over(mostly speeding), but this day I had no idea surely it could not be the 3 miles over. On Christmas eve, I recieved a ticket for an obstructed license plate. I had snow on my license plate and the state could not easily identify me. For that i will miss a day of work and or pay a fine. Just wondering if anyone else has been the victim of such atrocities.
I feel your pain. I got a parking ticket on Christmas Eve (yesterday) in an ice storm while parked in my parents’ driveway because my back bumper was over the sidewalk!
The officer’s actions betrayed his intentions. He could have knocked on the door and asked me to move my car. If he were truly concerned about the public safety this is surely what he would have done. Instead he wrote a ticket and my car remained in this “dangerous” location until I went outside. Why would this particular officer do that? Because his mission has shifted from protection to revenue generation. Sad but true.
What’s really sad about this is that he could have given me a ticket AND asked me to move my car. This would have served to both raise revenue AND protect the public safety. This particular officer was obviously only concerned about one of those two.
Happened to me before. We’re serfs. Just keep your eyes down, and don’t try to be a hero when they kick you.
So you were driving on their roads and when you fail to meet their standards you assume it’s a reason to hate the state. The fact of the matter is this: the state currently owns the roads and as such they have the ability to specify rules required for their use, the question is whether or not they can legitimately claim to own the roads through the homestead principles and compliance with the NAP.
That they have unreasonable standards is a reason to hate the state, not that I broke them.
If I were to ask you to wear a silly hat whenever you went inside my house, I wouldn’t consider that a reason to hate me. Anyway, I fail to see how their regulations in this regard were unreasonable.
If you were employed to protect me I might be in a position to question why the necessity of the silly hat!
The state isn’t employed by anybody. That’s a reason to hate them, not because they enforce various rules on roads that are, for the time being, owned by them.
I was pulled over and harrassed simply because in the middle of winter while it was snowing no less an agent of “my” governemnt could not read my license plate. I find that to be cause for concern. The fact that “my” government seems to have no master or that they actually own the roads is also cause for concern I am not arguing. I fail to see how having my license plate uncovered of snow offfers me additional protection as I am driving
Because you agreed to have your license plate uncovered upon entering the road.
So since the state exists and I live within its realm I should have no qualm with is behavior?
No, however, whilst you are using state provided services you should adhere to their rules. It is entirely plausible to do this, whilst at the same time attacking the very fact that the state has arrogated itself a monopoly in this particular area.
Why?
Because you agree to when you use the service. If I drove on your road, in a free market, meanwhile suspecting you had robbed somebody to pay for it, it doesn’t give me the right to drive on your road ignoring your rules.
If you drove on a road under the conrol of MS-13 and you knew for a fact that they stole it and you also knew that they violated the equal rights of others on a regular basis you would have no MORAL obligation to obey their rules. It might be a smart thing to do unless you are fairly sure you could violate their rules without getting caught - but you would have no MORAL obligation to obey them. They are thugs pure and simple.
I’m not advocating breaking the law. I am upset this one even exists. The people who are suppose to serve and protect are really harrassing and collecting. I am not trying debate the virtues of privatization versus statism. I was simply sharing an experience I had where I broke a law that in no way harmed anyone else or endangered another drive I simply made it too difficult for them to identify me with their new cameras.
I understand. It was not your “intent” to block the view of the tag - it simply was by an act of nature. There should indeed be more leniencies. But, especially near the end of a month officers have an incentive to not be lenient. In many jurisdictions they are given a quota that they must fill every month. If a particular officer has not filled his yet and the end of the month is nearing he may be very strict about every little thing.
Upon entering their road you agree to follow their rules. If you don’t agree with the rules, don’t drive on the road. It’s relatively simple. On the other hand, if you believe that the road has been financed through stolen funds or whatever, that doesn’t automatically prove you to be the owner of it and you cannot therefore treat the road as if it were your own. For the very same reason that if I walked into a hospital and grabbed a handful of morphine I couldn’t begin selling it.
Or, to take another angle. If you really want to follow your own line of reasoning then it is perfectly legitimate for me to smash up a government building. If you take that as correct, then I can disregard the property rights of anybody who has received any benefits from the state. Which is everyone.
The road was at least partially stolen from me. Without driving on roads I would be reduced to the life of a hermit. Why should I deny myself the use of property that was forcibly stolen from me? I have no moral obligation to do so. I also, because it was taken from me by force, have no moral obligation to obey their rules. Let us suppose you owned a pleasure yacht and it was stolen by pirates (in the pre-personal computer sense) would you have a moral obligation to obey the rules of the pirates the moment they raised their Jolly Roger? Again, I am not arguing about the wisdom of this, only the morality of it.
Is this a public or private hospital?
If in this act of “smashing up” you harm no one who is neither a politician nor a tax collector sure, it is moral to do so not necessarily wise but it is moral.
Not everyone has NET benefited which is what is important from a moral standpoint. Receiving a free trip on my highway or using a public library does not mean I have net benefited from the state. To say everyone has net-benefited from the state is absurd. It is ignoring, as Bastiat would say, “That which is not seen”. An individual may receive a bit of his stolen goods back but that does not mean that in a stateless society he would be worse off. Almost everyone (except politicians) in fact would be far better off in a stateless society.
False. Such nonsensical legal positivism has nothing to do with libertarianism and a lot to do with authoritarian conservatism.