Civil Disobediance.
POSTED BY: Fremdfirma
UPDATED: Friday, October 24, 2025 19:32
VIEWED: 5372
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What I fail to see is how dismantling useless and counterproductive Govt agencies that suck up money and resources like there's no end, limit our rights and freedoms, and can't seem to manage at any time to actually do the intended job - would kill our tech base ?
WTF does the one have to do with the other ?
I mean, are you SO sure we can't get along without the Office of mattress tag enforcement backup redundancy division ?
Or is it just that your "religion" gets in the way of critical thinking here ?
We CAN do without a lot of the useless and counterproductive structures of Govt - hell, you could go through the list of porkbarrel agencies with a chainsaw and make NO essential difference but to increase our freedoms, resources and prosperity just by cutting loose the deadweight.
But of course you have to strawman it, because without the State to nitpick every single aspect of our lives, we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves, right ?
-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it
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Frem: I'm waiting to be told how to respond to that... ;)
Mike
"I supported Bush in 2000 and 2004 and intellegence[sic] had very little to do with that decision." - Hero, Real World Event Discussions
I can't help the sinking feeling that my country is now being run by people who read "1984" not as a cautionary tale, but rather as an instruction manual. - Michael Mock
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Quote:It seemed earlier you suggested that whole reams of society, including technological base, could be removed if we didn't want them, without causing 'unintended' consequences, which simply isn't true.
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
What I fail to see is how dismantling useless and counterproductive Govt agencies that suck up money and resources like there's no end, limit our rights and freedoms, and can't seem to manage at any time to actually do the intended job - would kill our tech base ?
In fact:
Quote:I think you're pretty clear here about technology being on the potential chopping block, so I really don't think you can accuse people of strawmanning your argument in that regard.
Example: If we choose to dismantle structure A, then we will lose Technology B and the ability to produce product C.
Do we have perhaps an alternate tech or product we can live with ?
If not, are we all ok with losing B & C ?
If-Yes-Next Structure...
In any event I think the major problem of the Federal US Government isn't that it's too big, per se, but that it's size isn't derived through public concern. I believe the public employment of the Federal Government is about 1-3 million people, but that if you take into account private companies doing government work, it rises to 10-13 million. You've got more for profit private concerns, free of the sort of public government oversight afforded government agencies, doing government work by several orders of magnitude.
Blackwater is Alric the Visigoth to your Imperial Rome, and we should all know how that worked out.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.
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I think the idea is you can't get very far without a common currency. And investment, can't forget that either. 
And what Citizen said.
But seriously Frem, you have already posited a local, barter, isolated economy with only backyard technology. I'm just saying the technology cut goes further than you envision.
Let's go back to your original post from a long time ago. While you may know how to forge iron in your backyard - can you do everything with just the stuff in a 10 mile radius - indefinitely ? Or will it take distant resources and compounded resources ? And if so, HOW do you expect those things will be there ?
You've figured out how to forge iron in your own backyard - now figure out how you can personally build a small engine at your forge, with just resources located within 10 miles. And before you cry strawman remember this local, isolated, barter society is one YOU posited.
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Ya' can't have an iron age technology in a neolithic society.
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Like Cit, Mike and Rue said. Only they said it better than me.
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Let's party like it's 1929.
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Quote:
It seemed earlier you suggested that whole reams of society, including technological base, could be removed if we didn't want them, without causing 'unintended' consequences, which simply isn't true.
If someone said that, it sure hell wasn't me, as usual - what's it gonna take for y'all to not throw other peoples arguments at me as if I made them ?
My primary beef for structure removal is stuff that's deadweight, sucks up resources and doesn't benefit us, which is why Gov goes on the chopping block first, obviously - and I happen to be the quickest to point out that if you remove the support infrastructure for certain things, you lose the ability to produce them, with potentially other consequences of the cascade failure variety.
That's the primary reason for incremental scaling down, because of the chance of something biting you on the ass that you did not consider, it improves your chances of coming up with an alternate or replacing the bit you just scaled down without so much hassle, yes ?
Quote:
I think you're pretty clear here about technology being on the potential chopping block
Well I don't see how it's NOT bloody obvious that should you scale down the industrial base REQUIRED to produce something, that you won't be able to produce it - time and time again I have said this, pointed it out over and over again, that in a reduced industrial base you WILL take a technological hit, and time and time again have been told I either didn't say it, or said something else.
Do you have any IDEA how annoying this cycle is getting ?
I don't think we need to scale down the industrial base THAT much, but I used simple low tech examples to prevent the argument from getting deliberately sidetracked by folk who wanted to fight instead of discuss - which it was anyway and continues to be by folk who think shitcanning redundant Government offices will instantly reduce us to barbarism once the gates of change are pried open.
As far as common currency goes, even our founding fathers made that one a no-brainer, the whole damn world uses rounds of precious metal even now and they make as fine a currency as any, since they cannot be debased or devalued without detection, nor are they subject to the ills that paper fiat money is.
Quote:
And before you cry strawman remember this local, isolated, barter society is one YOU posited.
In direct response to Geezers theoretical about dropping a bunch of Anarchists onto unclaimed, undeveloped land with NOTHING.
In fact, in that post I pointed out just what a fekkin disaster that would come to, only you seem to have quite deliberately not stated THAT part.
In fact, to be EXACT, I pointed out that most folk do not even know what a swage or a hardy is, much less what they are used for, suggesting that starting from such a primitive tech base without the proper skills, you'd play merry hell even making nails, for crying out loud.
But as usual you've chosen to distort, decieve and sidetrack instead of addressing the topic at hand - you know, the one your ideological fanaticism and blindness led to you miss ?
We were discussing flaws in our educational system, something that was actually being discussed usefully by at least Siggy and Myself before your ire at having your sacred cow of all knowing, all beneficial, omniscenent and all present Goverment got a little flogged and religious zealotry intervened.
If you wanna go beat the dead horse of arguments I didn't even make, go do it somewhere else, instead of wrecking useful discussions about another topic entire.
If you wanna discuss flaws in our educational system and thoughts on how best to correct them, then by all means do so.
Sig - your input on the idea of standard testing in a finals form as a requirement for grade advancement ?
I thought that was a pretty effective concept for resolving much of the issues with such things, myself.
-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it
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Quote:Frem, I quoted you.
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
If someone said that, it sure hell wasn't me, as usual - what's it gonna take for y'all to not throw other peoples arguments at me as if I made them
Quote:Considering this is what you're actually doing to me, rather than vice verse, yeah I've got some idea. You were saying you hadn't brought technology into it, that you were talking about government, I quoted you and said that's why people are talking about technology. You then come back and tell me I'm throwing other peoples arguments at you, when I directly quoted you, with your words from your post. It's like talking to Finn.
Do you have any IDEA how annoying this cycle is getting ?
Quote:
Well I don't see how it's NOT bloody obvious that should you scale down the industrial base REQUIRED to produce something, that you won't be able to produce it - time and time again I have said this, pointed it out over and over again, that in a reduced industrial base you WILL take a technological hit, and time and time again have been told I either didn't say it, or said something else.
You're premise maybe that you remove structure A and you lose technology B and thus product C, you don't need to argue that's what you're saying, we know that's what you're saying. Perhaps before getting on your high horse and martyring yourself you should find out what other people are saying yes? Because what I'm saying is that it's not as simple as 'remove structure x, lose small defined subset of technology y'.
Modern technology is not a group of unrelated strands, you can't take one strand away and expect it all the other strands to remain unaffected. All those strands are interconnected, take one away and it'll pull the rest with it.
What that has specifically to do with government I don't know, but it seems to me you brought it up.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.
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S'wenyways - Frem, let's just take one example.
You've been very clear all along you want to get rid of money. Money isn't a 'technology' like fire or the bowl, but it is a way people organize and cooperate over long distances and over time, and accumulate resources in a (fairly) non-volatile way. (ie It doesn't spoil, evaporate or get consumed like food, water or fire.)
What I was doing was pointing out that even something as simple as a small engine requires sustained long-distance inputs - accumulated resources from different areas like iron, coal and other metals; and accumulated resources over time like machine tools and knowledge.
This is something I've been puzzling over for a while.
I really, really like Le Guin's version of society, but even when I first read it decades ago it I wondered - how do they keep the train running ? And how do they fix it when a part breaks ? Without the ores, without the foundry, without the machine tools, without the metallurgy, without the experience and knowledge, without the ability to bring it all together in a coordinated way, I've recently come to the conclusion the answer is - they don't.
If you are looking for a society without currency or larger organization you will get a small, isolated and impoverished group completely limited to local resources - like stone, leather or wood. Not the utopia you think you'll get.
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"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."
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Frem's examples include money, they have commodity based currency (gold standard in fact) to allow for abstracted trading. So in theory community A can sell their production for hard currency that can be sent to community B to buy B's materials. Because there is currency the system doesnt really entirely on A having some product that B is willing to barter for.
The bigger problem is going to be investment. Let's imagine for a moment that community A finds exploitable resources they could mine but they need a pump to reach it. If the pump costs more than they have unless they can find someone outside the community willing to invest they won't be able to afford to get the pump. Capitalism started in part because the agricultural revolution produced a class of people with excess capital, it was those people that ultimately financed the industrial revolution. If nobody has excess capital to invest it would be hard to see where the money would come from to allow extraction of resources where the setup costs exceed the communities own capital resources.
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Frem:
I think I feel SOME of what you're talking about. Doing away with useless government agencies without doing away with the actual WORK that gets done - simply getting the work done through OTHER government agencies that are more appropriate or more geared toward that work in the first place.
I'm dealing with a bit of an example of a useless government agency right now, and wouldn't you just know it, it involves guns. This is long, even by my standards, so those who aren't interested might want to go get coffee about now...
Some years ago, I was given a Russian Saiga 7.62x39mm rifle. It's a rifle that was based on the venerable AK-47 design, but modified with a "Monte Carlo" stock so that it looks like your standard hunting rifle. It came with a 10-round magazine, which was the maximum allowed under the Assault Weapons Ban of '94. It was manufactured by one of the AK makers, Izhmash Automat of Russia, who also produced the Dragunov sniper rifle for the Russian military.
Now, of course, the AWB has expired, so I can now legally buy and use the high-capacity 30-round magazines for the gun. And I want to. Don't get me wrong; I don't have any real NEED for a high-cap mag - I just like the idea of being able to buy and use them without hassle. And they're American-made, which should help our local businesses, right? Plus, when some other form of ban comes around, high-cap mags are nearly worth their weight in gold.
Here's where it gets fun. Because of Section 922r, I can't legally put that mag in my rifle, because then it would no longer be a "sporting" rifle, and would have too many foreign-made parts to be considered an "American-made" rifle. I can OWN the magazine, but if I put it into the rifle it's made for, it becomes an "assembly", and as such an illegal one. So the government doesn't have a problem with me owning an "assault weapon", per se, they just want to make sure that my assault weapon of choice is made right here in the good old US-of-fuckin'-A.
How ridiculous does all this stuff get? Well, I just want the 30-round mag. I like going to the gun range and running lots of ammo through the thing, tearing up paper targets, blowing off steam, having fun with friends, appreciating well-made machinery (I'm lousy about cars that way, too). Having 30-round mags would mean I would spend less time at the range reloading mags (at $15 an hour for range time), and more time at the range actually shooting. I could do all my loading at home, where I'm not paying $15 an hour for the privilege.
So, with the 30-round mag, my rifle would look like merely a rifle with a longer magazine. But the government says that would be a federal firearms violation. It would be legal to do, IF I were to replace a certain number of OTHER parts with US-made replacements. As it stands, the gun has 14 "foreign" parts, which is acceptable if it is a "sporting" rifle. However, if you put a higher-capacity magazine in it, it is now NOT a "sporting" rifle, but an assault rifle, and as such must have no more than TEN foreign parts. The hi-cap mag is American-made, so that puts me at 13 foreign parts - three too many. So I'm left either not going with the hi-cap mags, OR I'm forced to replace or modify and add things like stocks, handguards, muzzle brakes, flash suppressors, gas tubes, gas pistons, fire-control groups, and the like with American-made parts, so that I can get the total down to 10 or fewer foreign parts. Nine or less is recommended, just in case the ATF or a local prosecutor wants to try to make a test case out of you.
The result? If you want a higher-capacity magazine, you're forced to build something that looks and acts like a full-on assault weapon, complete with skeleton stocks, pistol grips, multi-rail tactical guards with points for mounting lasers, flashlights, night-vision scopes, and tactical red-dot scopes and the like, and big, beefy muzzle brakes and all sorts of other mean, nasty-looking stuff. All so that I can make sure to have no "sporting" intentions whatsoever, and to make it even more lik
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