> "I have little love for the state, but I do see a need for some actual 'higher power' (religious one's don't cut it) to further society in less harmful directions."

A "lesser evil" is still evil. I find this a contradiction at best. But you don't, so no need to get into it. So far you seem to be saying that such a "higher power" is or has to be the state, even though you say don't love the state.

> "If you feel a discussion is me forcing beliefs on you, that's just sad to me."

A "discussion" does not force beliefs on anyone. I understand that you are just stating/declaring what you believe. And like I said, I don't think your vote counts for much, so I can't even say that you are forcing your political view on me or on anyone else. So no, I don't think you are forcing anything on me, just stating your beliefs that I can chose to ignore.

> "To me, that means you're closed to any discussion that's not preaching to your choir, or to put it another way, you're only interested in mental masturbation, no distractions."

I'm not sure what you are interested in, so I can't really comment on it.

> "we obviously draw it in differing places, I'm OK with that."

Of course, you have to be ok with it because you can't really do anything about it one way or the other.

>"You need enough like minded people to vote thoughtfully and rationally and it will."

Good luck with that. I predict failure in this. But what do I know? And again, I am not stopping you. Go ahead and convince or find as many like-minded people as you need and vote to your heart's content. Obviously, I won't be one of those who agrees with you, as we have different ideas on what "thoughtfully" and "rationally" means. Voting is your strategy to get what you want out of the state. That's ok. That's your choice. Good luck. It obviously holds little to no interest to me. But I don't need to convince any "like-minded" people to do anything. I can just act on my own and take advantage of all the many ways there are to opt out.

> "So, you don't vote? No wonder you have no representation, that's your fault though.""

Wrong. None of the candidates represent me, so this is an idiotic thing to say. Who should I have voted for that would have "represented" me? Last I checked, there were two heinous options available. And unless there's a tie, your vote simply does not count. And then, will they do what I want them to do even when elected? Sorry. Waste of my time. But again, vote to your heart's content. I'm glad for you that you are being so well represented by your politicians of choice.

>"I can't find a group that fits me (or vice versa)."

Even more remarkable then that you have "representatives" that adequately "represent' you.

You are fortunate in so many ways.
Good for you.

@chingalera
to say that every person who joins the military has some form of broken empathy system is just not accurate.
do they exist?
well i would have to concede that they do.what those numbers are is not something that can be quantified.(i looked..came up with nada).

i was in the military.
many people were in the military and they all had different reasons for joining.
for some it was a way out of poverty.
others it was duty.(which was my case)
some even due to a sense of honor and to fight for freedom.(yeah yeah..we both know how that reason turned out for them).

and i am sure sprinkled in that number of recruits were the sociopaths and psychopaths,and the number may have possibly risen due to the abolishment of conscription.

when you understand that boot camp is basically brainwashing 101.the young and fairly innocent are the easiest to break down and build back up in the model that you wish them to be.

killing is NOT a natural human activity.
it needs to be taught.
and who better than an 18 yr old?

for people such as you or i,who have a lifetime of experience,morality and well established egocentric systems in place this brainwashing would almost certainly fail.

who am i kidding....it failed when i was 18.i had a huge problem with authority even then.so i did my tour and opted out.

understand i am not making a moral argument for or against the military,just that these young men all had their reasons for joining and not all of them were to kill other humans.

and yes.
the military aint for everybody.

Actually, 99% of human behavior is entirely anarchic. I make millions of large and small transactions with other humans on a daily basis which have absolutely zero government involvement, whatsoever. Billions of other people on the planet do the exact same thing. Daily. Government is a fiction by which some people live at the expense of everyone else.

Even Somalia, as you may have seen, grew and improved on almost all counts after the government collapsed, built more roads and infrastructure during its 20 years without government than it did with the government.

What we have now, with a centralized government, is (because people, let alone government, is far from omniscient) more of a "planned chaos," by which little to nothing is fully known as to the long term of effects of anything that the government imposes. At least, without government, we work within natural laws and an emergent order. Instead, what we have now is "positive laws" (imposed by governments) which regulate some people at the expense of the many, while benefiting a very few.

And I think you should learn your history before you suggest that "might-makes-right" argument has shaped the arc of civilization. One cannot make the honest case that government is not behind the worst, most egregious crimes against humanity known to man, with its ability to generate unlimited money to spend on mobilizing huge military empires so "the people's" proxy can drone foreigners to death, or lock them up in Guantanamo or anywhere else, or spy on all their communications, or make them all poor though inflation, or regulate their existence to the most minute detail, or provide them with bad healthcare or any number of other things that government can do.

Not me. I'm joining the billions of people throughout history (from the Puritans, to the American Revolutionaries, to the millions of emigrants via Ellis Island, to millions of refugees, to all those air lifted from Saigon, to all those Americans whose relatives fled from China, Korea, Vietnam, Iran, or anyplace where there's war, or famine, or economic devastation) who decided to opt out of government, and to voluntarily exit the charade.


"But, hey, if you like your government, you can keep it."

cookies is how they do this, also google has opt out options for turning off things, and simply turning off data/gps tracking stops alot of the tracking. to be fair, Apple is as bad/worse with iCloud tracking basically everything. and everything saved on their servers is their property just to ad to the paranoia

Here's the long-list from a famous -hacked-to-bits and otherwise forgotten document's grievance rider which seems a poignantly appropriate reason enough to want to shove a vote up someone's ass and rotate it:

Of King George:

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Someone needs perhaps to revise the list and start hoarding ammunition and conscripting, because methinks the "vote" be fast-resembling, fuck-all. I don't vote and I am damn sure not going to be quiet any time soon...Average Joe and Jane voters have already effectively been "opted out."

I have always said to those who say they do not vote because; "my vote doesn't count," or "what difference does it make," that they, like Carlin, should keep quiet. As good, or as bad, as our system is, "opting out" is childish, naive and dangerous.

Awww bully? poor @renatojj Unable to make good arguments so in an act of desperation plays the victimhood card. Boo hoo hoo...the gun lobby has a stranglehold on our gov't but we're being victimized and oppressed!! If only there was some way for you to...opt out which would end all of this. Freedom is a bitch isn't it?

Nothing cryptic about the relationship between freedom and responsibility. I'm the one who introduced the concept in this argument after all. That's not my complaint dummy. Responsibility is not the same as freedom. You're claiming (once again without anything to back it up) that freedom and responsibility are the same and that if you lower one, you lower the other. I'd ask you to back it up again, but you won't.

If you steal a gun, sure not having a permit doesn't stop you from using it, but you're in danger of losing those precious freedoms you seem to hold so dear. Again, you're changing the argument.

You like to use these loaded terms like freedom. How are you measuring freedom? Is it an objective measurement? Are there SI units for freedom? does a upstanding citizen have say..23 KWas (kilo-Washingtons) but maybe a convicted meth dealer only has 420 mWas? (milli-Washingtons) You seem to be the arbiter of what is freedom and what isn't so please, share with us your math!

Coercion??!! Again, you're using this loaded language to emotionally manipulate us. I think George Carlin called it "Spooky Language!" Which laws are coercion and which ones aren't? How can you tell? When I obey traffic laws, am I being coerced? When I decide to not kill someone with a gun because the law says it's bad, is that coercion too??? Your two examples you give are really bad. There is no difference between the two except for loaded language. One example has positive language, the other one negative. If only there was some objective measure other than your truthiness.

To your last point, but I already answered this in my previous post, by that logic, we shouldn't have ANY laws and thus we would become SUPER-Responsible!! It's a nice theory and all, but the reality is that life would degenerate into mob rule. How many other people have to pay for your "mistakes" before you learn your lesson? How much suffering and anguish does it take to "learn your lesson?" Sorry. I think you're not a student of history otherwise you'd know that this has already been tried in the past...the distant past. It doesn't work...that's why we have laws in the first place. The jury is in on this one. People generally like it that we have laws and an enforcement arm that attempts to stop the infringement of peoples' rights *before* it happens so that people don't have to "learn their lesson" at the expense of someone else's suffering.

You're a selfish sociopathic dick if you think otherwise.

It's all fun and games until someone infringes on *your* rights then suddenly, your stance changes. Or are you volunteering yourself to have a criminal come in and kill you and your loved ones. But hey, its ok. Freedom will teach the criminal a lesson...so it's all cool!!

Either you didn't already know this or you're just living up to your avatar pic. I'm starting to think it's the latter.

I think some cities already have that in place, where you can opt-out of receiving a phone book. Although they still have stacks of them at local markets etc.

i like the video and the message, but there is no way i'm going to pet a grizzly/shark/whatever in the wild. I just see this conversation going on:

"What went wrong?!"
'For a moment I thought I could opt out of the food chain, but I was wrong.'

I ALWAYS opt out.

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Unions would not come into existence if it was not for wasting time and resources because that is what companies care about. Clogging up the airport with opt outs is a valid form of protest and could be effective if many people got on board.

I would love to be a optimist like you and believe government follows facts and studies and just calling a congress person would solve the problem but realistically that does not happen. I could give you examples of this if you want but I believe this fact is obvious enough for it to stand on its own.

I am Canadian and I have met many Members of Parliament over an issue I cared about as well as protested over the same issue. A multipronged approach is best and I believe when it comes to the TSA it would help to clog the system with opt-outs till it breaks.