Monday, November 20, 2006

Theft by Taking

So here's how it works: a government agent cruises around the city to identify all the parked cars that appear inoperable. If one of these cars just happens to be yours, they send you a notice telling you to remove it from your property within 30 days. If you don't remove it within 30 days, the city will authorize a towing company to come onto your property and take this piece of property from you and hold it for ransom for 30 days. If you don't pay the ransom in 30 days, they'll sell it to someone else. The new owner will then receive a notice from the city ordering them to remove it from his property within 30 days, else a towing company will come onto the private property and take this piece of property, and hold it for ransom for 30 days. If the new owner doesn't pay up, then the city will sell it to another unsuspecting soul who will be next in the cycle for the government's theft and ransoming of your own private property.

Reference:

FORSYTH - The Forsyth City Council has adopted a new derelict motor vehicle ordinance that gives the city more power to have nonworking vehicles removed from public and private property.

The new ordinance says that any vehicle that cannot operate under its own power that is left unattended for 10 days or more on public property and 30 days or more on private property can be cited with a notice requiring the owner to remove it within another 10 to 30 days.

If it is not removed by the deadline, the city can tow the automobile away and impound it for 30 days. Owners may pay towing and storage fees to retrieve impounded vehicles, but if they have not been claimed by the end of the holding period, the city may sell or dispose of them.

Anarchy in the streets

Several cities in Europe have decided to give people more control over their own driving skills by eliminating the multitude of nanny directives carving a path through the crowd for them. This can only be a good thing, to force drivers to pay attention to what they're doing and deliberately navigate and negotiate their own way to their destinations.

Read the article Controlled Chaos: European Cities Do Away With Traffic Signs

Monday, October 16, 2006

The libertarian in me

Ok, I've decided to post today's more salient thoughts to sprout amid the unusually dense clutter of thundering boom cars cruising the neighborhood this afternoon.

You'll come to learn my biggest pet peeve in life is uninvited noise. Depending on its range, duration and ultrasonic frequency, it manages to hit my various rage spots with uncanny precision. Today's obnoxious intrusions triggered that old reflexive why there oughta be a law! sentiment, but as the thought materialized, the realization that there IS a law already dragged the next reflexive action into contemplation: I'd call the police if I thought they'd actually enforce the g-ddamn law. They don't and they won't. We've been through this a hundred times before.

As I waded through the jagged stream of successive thoughts about how to deal with this noisy situation, I again for the thousandth time realized that the police really aren't interested in busting up the people's good times, and I wouldn't want mine prematurely snuffed out by the law either. But I stopped mightily short of sharing a kindred moment with the offending neighbors, the tension was too great and constant, what with the noise still rattling my floors and booming loud over the neighborhood.

And while taking a few breaths to try to relax and let it go for my own health and safety, I again came to realize that as much as I absolutely loathe those thunderous bassy sensations agitating my spine with increasing regularity, we don't need more laws, and we don't need neighbors calling the cops everytime something offends us. So just let it go, again.

We have enough laws already, and too many cops who use them selectively to reaffirm their positions of authority over the little people, lest they dare forget for a day and enjoy themselves.

What's all this leading up to? Well, I'm a liberal, or used to be when I thought I understood what the word liberal meant. But now I embrace the libertarian philosophy more and more as the liberals and conservatives flail away at each other fighting over the joystick with the grossest immaturity ever displayed by adults.

Now the word liberal in politics means to aspire to positions of authority so they can use the full brute force of the government to "help" everybody, like we're all a bunch of idiots who can't tie our own shoelaces without a government-sanctioned manual distributed through a network of government-employed social workers. Thanks for the offer but we don't NEED any more government so back off already.

And conservative means to aspire to positions of authority so they can use legislative powers to protect monopolies and raid the government's bank accounts to enrich themselves and their friends. As if this needs further condemnation.

The liberals and conservatives currently holding public office have taught me through their actions that these are the new definitions of the words I grew up thinking were just little idiosynchracies of all people everywhere.

It's become so ridiculous, and scary, that it's time to put principled libertarians in office to at least temporarily interrupt the flow of arrogance and corruption spewing out of government offices everywhere.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

I hereby welcome me

Yet another blog, created spontaneously only for the purpose of acquiring posting privileges to William Grigg's "Pro Libertate" blog.

I may write stuff here occassionally, and I may not.

Does it matter?