Patriotism is racism. People’s failure to point out this fact is truly amazing. Most wars are partly racism fueled. Patriotism is like dangerous sports; it shows the level of antagonism.

People think of the US as the embodiment of freedom. Reading the declaration of independence and the bill of rights promises freedom. However, many rights have been trampled. Democracy is merely an orderly form of mob rules and does not protect those who are not in the majority. Only a wide spread belief that individuals have inherent rights can protect minorities and minority beliefs. Victimless "crimes" are the result of the failure to separate church and state, and show that the US is not free.

Just as people’s desire for freedom helped to found the US, sub-societies form which insulate people from aspects of society which impose on them. The next step would be to found a utopian nation. Tax havens are utopian nations for the rich, Vegas is a utopia for gamblers, the Netherlands draws people from around the world with legal prostitution and its liberal environment. Salt Lake City is a successful sub-society founded for the freedom (of overly macho men). Groove people in the 60s started their own schools, co-ops, communes, communities etc.

I have written a constitution for a micro-nation that is iron clad and specific in its description of freedoms and its system of operation. The ultimate goal is to buy sovereign land from an existing nation or create a floating barge off San Diego or somewhere. When founded, each contributor would get a section of land proportionate to their contribution. If on the sea, people could dock up. I would restrict membership to liberal cool non-evil people who have skills our society would need, or money. Another restriction would be on the various types of pollution. This most important function is often neglected by our otherwise busybody government, and is the fairest thing to tax. Taxing things other than pollution would not be necessary in a streamlined system. Land would be cut into lots with shapes which would allow multiple and overlapping systems of transportation, so that even roads and utilities would not have to be socialized.

A condo is like a non-profit, jointly held community once the developer has sold all the units. All they lack is a requirement for coolness. I could imagine a time share system that cool people with money or property could join which would allow you to stay at any of the places where the community had a location. It would be like everyone having 52 one-week timeshares that can be traded with the other members.

Government and socialism are the same: enforced co-operation for, in theory, the common good. If the amount is relatively great it is called socialism; if small we say capitalism. If each person has an equal share of the political power it is called democracy; the more unequal, the more totalitarian. Representative government is far from democracy. If each person could vote to increase or decrease the amount spent on each budget item and each law, things would be very different. Media would have a much greater effect. Education spending and environmental protection would increase. It would be a great system because all the actions of the government require money. However, creating an effective way to defend our constitutional rights would still be important. Not everyone would try to be fair, or know what fair is.

I would vote for a person who said: "my qualifications and abilities are not an issue." "I will put to vote any issue I have control in and follow the public consensus".

People would do well to move to the county or state that suites them best. Voluntary segregation of people by belief would solve huge problems by getting us out of each other’s hair.

Companies are usually libertarian and non-raciest. They just want to buy labor and resources and sell their product without hassle. Hassles arise partly because companies often pollute and appear to pay labor less then is fair. Another major source of problems is that politicians, being crupt, tax companies as much as they can, and regulates them when it serves their interests (such as impressing clueless voters or causing companies to do even more lobbing). Most dollars spend their lives ping-ponging between people and companies, and taxing either one has the same effect on everyone in the long run. Because companies can’t vote and don’t receive the sympathy people do, they are the easier victims.

The US is the biggest arms exporter.

Without safeguards, evil can rise to the top. Right now we are committing the same types of crimes that caused WW2. Our only excuse is that as a group we are too primitive to understand how to control our government.

The military industrial complex is the major cause of war. Military companies were big backers of Hitler because they knew he would start a war. Much of the space program’s budget goes to defense firms and improves missile technology. There has been a drive to justify putting missiles into space by saying they could protect us from meteors. This shows how easily deceived the public can be. Major meteor destruction occurs about every 70 million years.

I could imagine oil and military companies having paid the leaders of Iraq to start the gulf war even though everyone could predict the outcome and new it would be bad for the common people of Iraq. You must admit the war was very good for US oil and defense companies in that it increased defense spending and the drive for more energy independence. They pay money to lobby the US government to make things good for them (drilling subsidies to keep us energy independent, tariffs etc.). Why would they not "lobby" Iraqi officials to start such a valuable war, sense they had already "lobbied" them anyway when seeking exploration and drilling rights. I doubt the officials would have qualms beyond "would it work".

The Spanish civil war was joined by many countries, as was Korea etc. Some say countries like to get practice fighting to stay up with the times. I am even more cynical. Politicians and lobbies can not afford to spend their efforts pursuing such ideological goals as helping the country. Increased weapons sales were the true motive. Global "defense" spending is $2 billion per day.

The Holocaust is thought of as a hate crime, but it was more like a robbery. It was a partial economic revolution, not unlike the French revolution, which hit royalty but not bisseness. If a person or a group is seen to have more money than protection, they become a victim. "Hate" and "improving the strain" were mostly lies that people told themselves and others to hide the motive of greed.

Non-military multi-national companies can help to prevent destructive war. They will use their economic muscle to avoid war between nations with which they are economically involved.

Jail does not rehabilitate most criminals and is not a great deterrent. It’s like a school for criminals. Keeping violent people off the streets is the only good it does. If you don’t accept free will, you see it is cruel. I believe non-violent crimes can be kept to an acceptable level with money penalties. People who can not control their violence should be segregated. After a certain age and after warnings they should be brought to a place where they can live a more natural, primitive life. A beautiful island in the Caribbean could be used. I would be in favor of providing them with medicine and other things but to let them handle their own governing.

A good approach to gun control would be to tax them greatly, maybe tell they cost $1000 minimum. The rich commit few crimes which require guns. In the hands of violent people guns are a form of pollution, which makes them fair to tax. However, we don’t want to keep guns from being used for protection by those who need it most, the normal poor person.

People pay about 33% tax on income over $6000/year. That turns a dollar into 66 cents, less 7% sales tax =59 cents. The places you spend the money are also taxed. That cost is pasted to you. 59 cents less 33%=40 cents. Their material providers and/or labor are also taxed. The cost is passed to them and to you. ---40 cents less33%=27 cents. Add to this inflation (a form of tax), estate tax, ss tax, property tax, extra high sin and luxury taxes, liceiencing fees, the sale of federal land (as if its theirs) etc. to see the true size of the government. If it were well spent it might be OK but much is stolen or wasted through un-necessary jobs, pork barreling, bale outs, mis-alocations, subsidies etc.

Taxation without representation is rampant in the US. Paying for roads with a gas tax is the right idea but they fall short. There are so many subsidies that everyone is helped by many and hurt by many. Subsidies disguise the true cost of the things they affect. Logically, less money would be spent on all things subsides affect: US products, healthcare, food, education, research, transportation etc. Subsidized education is a boon for those who consume educated labor and valuable to those who succeed with it, but it misappropriates our resources and steals from those who don’t benefit from it (the poor).

Many government functions are "sandboxes for the rich". It is deplorable to use tax money to support the arts, city beautification projects in nice areas, scientific curiosity such as astronomy or anthropology. This is robbing from the poor to give to the rich. It is justified in that the rich pay more tax. The system balances one wrong with another. Like evolution, the social mind does not have perspective to redesign, only to patch.

Unfair tax is like theft at gunpoint in that you must work and live somewhere but if you do not pay tax they will take you to jail and if you resist they will drag you and if you resist enough they will shoot you.

Enforced socialism, which is technically theft from the richer half of the people, occurs in the US in many ways and for many purposes---education, heath care, social security, subsides, disaster relief, laws which empower unions etc.

The pollution, colonial mischief, weapons making etc. that your taxes support makes doing taxable work much less of a moral accomplishment than it would be. The Mennonites feel it is a sin.

Income tax harms people based on how much they work –a bad idea (on the surface at least). Sales tax harms people for spending – sensible in that spending takes product and labor out of the supply, driving up prices and therefor harming others.

When you spend your money you trade your work for the work of others. If you burned it you would help others by not driving up the price of product (not demanding work in exchange for your work). Work and product balance each other. If people liked products more than they disliked creating them, then they could work more.

Creating jobs is considered good even though work is bad because the product produced by the new jobs will compensate. More than compensate according to the pump priming theory. The economy can be caused to run faster by controlling interest rates, heavy taxing to support government projects, encouraging work etc. but all it means is people work harder and have more. Like subsidies, pump priming strives for more good without realizing the good was in equilibrium with the bad to start with.

The $500 billion S and L failure was a system of theft where banks loan money to their friends for kickbacks, knowing they will default. Also, to really make it big when they do default, they sell properties to each other at overly high prices. This gives them a lot of money on paper that is in fact unbacked. These assets are sold back and forth along with real assets but inevitably end up being held by the bank or development company which is allowed to fail, hopefully with as much of the bad assets as possible.

A captain of industry might consume as much as 30 people but produce like 10,000. Our tax structure makes them pay huge amounts, which is unfair. Unfair is not the worst possible thing and in this case seems somewhat justified but it serves us right when they take their business to the Cayman Islands. Brain drain due to taxes has been suggested as the cause of the economic demise of England.

Money is a tool, a catalyst, and can not by itself change the productivity of the nation or the desires of its citizen. However, printing unbacked money is theft and changing peoples buying power relative to each other in the worst possible way.

The depression was the falling of a house of cards in that during the 20’s the economy was over-accelerated and things were built that should not have been. In the 30’s the error was seen and building stopped for a wile.

Banks and stocks concentrate money where it is most needed (valuable). This accelerates change and compounds risk.

I am not afraid to state ideas regarding the econominey, though people scoff, because I see that many things are not figured out as well or as soon as you might think. Car theft was a problem for 60 years before someone thought of the "club". And, everyone was working on it in the sense that everyone would have liked to have made an easy buck and the idea was simple enough for anyone to have thought of. Also, the way roads and traffic are organized is idiotic. Other things slow to occur: 3 point seatbelts, in-line skates, snowboards, 3 fin surfboards, catamarans, the bottle cap etc. Also, things are often discovered by "amateurs" or the self-taught.

Big complex systems work in companies, but I am not satisfied with the level of corruption and beurocracy in government. I am also not satisfied with their ability to prevent wars: they should go sit in the corner for a hundred years as punishment. We must force government reduction. Left to their own devices, agencies beget more agencies but never shut themselves down.

Minimum building requirements and minimum wage are suppose to ensure a minimum standard of living but are unrealistically optimistic about peoples potential. Their result is to increase unemployment and rent. All that many people want is just a simple place to live, not double thick walls and a cement foundation etc. There are way fewer homeless in Tijuana than in San Diego. The real propose of such laws are to keep the poor out of nice areas.

Federal Express shows that the government is so bungled it can not compete with private business even if highly subsidized. Private schools also thrive against tax funded competition. Even private schools have very off base curriculum, however. Formal education will receive a blow when hi-tech companies realize only science classes help to make a scientist, and that they could do the teaching themselves efficiently despite the subsidized alternative. They will recruit out of high school.