#1 I clicked "ignore" after responding to his post. That is what I have no problem with doing.

#2 Bullshit. (sorry but it is) Hundreds if not thousands of people get arrested and prosecuted regularly for drug possession, drug selling, and even drug use. Tell me what's been decriminalized!

#3 The state is doing quite a bit in Oakland, actually, like preventing the private institutions that would solve these problems from arising in the fist place from setting up there (but instead hold failed monopolies over those industries). For example, there are no legalized drug dealers (See bullshit #2). Again, that kind of gang activity happens on a "public" street. It does not happen on private property. And even if it did, it'd be no one's business but the owners'.

#4 If this was even close to true, then it's even more proof of the superiority of private police over "public" law enforcement. Because, like I said, you don't see this kind of thing happening on private property, do you?

#5. Wrong. Businesses will take care of that if given an incentive to move there. Have you not heard of people complaining about (so-called) "gentrification?"

#6. Huh? Really? So, are there no business permits needed to set up a business in Oakland? Do the business owners and residents of Oakland not have to pay taxes? Is there no open carry for law-abiding citizens? (now there will be it seems). Is there no enforced rent control in Oakland? If you don't see any regulations being enforced, then you are willfully ignorant.

#7. There are no gangs at Disney because it is private property and its owners will not put up with something so bad for business as gangs. Disneyland and Google have gentrified the neighborhoods they are in -- they were not always low crime areas as they were before they moved in.

"Oakland is a high crime area with little money for security."

Yeah, those usually go together. The ultimate results of statist interventions are always poverty and crime.

#8 Much of the violent crime happens in the "public" spaces, like the streets. Sure, there are break-ins to private homes, etc. but as you say, the poverty does not let people hire private security, and the "public" police (that have monopolized that industry) are, like you point out, completely useless to the tax-paying residents who live there.


#9 I'd rather I wouldn't have to pay for taxes and pay for my own security than having to give the money to the state in exchange for getting nothing in return. In fact, I'm aware of several security services that are available to people living in the ghetto for as little as $35/month.


#10 So, only gangsters can afford guns now? Maybe it will be cheaper without the gun "permit" costs. Or the restrictions about buying them more cheaply online.

And I highly doubt the peoople in Oakland can't afford guns, given how many guns there are in Oakland. But, for the sake of argument, lets say it's true. If not for the illegality of the drug trade, then gangsters would also not be able to afford guns (the illegality of the drugs is what's driving up the price and, as a result, the profitability of gangsterism). And if it wasn't for the regulations, Walmart would make sure to provide more affordable armaments, just like they do in other states.

I recommend spending just a few minutes inside the Oakland traffic court and you'll see how many "hardworking upstanding people" there are who somehow manage to pay for hundreds of dollars in fines and/or do community service for an equivalent minimum wage to pay for these. You could easily get a gun at Walmart for much less.


"Before someone claims I have no idea of what I speak, my brother lived in East Oakland..."

Well, if you think Oakland is a libertarian "dream," then you clearly have no idea what you are talking about. Having a brother who lived in Oakland for a year does not make you an expert on (or even vaguely familiar with) what a libertarian "dream" place looks like (or even -- as you apparently reveal -- what actually goes on in Oakland).


Just the fact that, as you say, Oakland is rather poor makes it a non-libertarian city at all. A free market society/economy (cronyism is not a free market, so don't even go there) has much less poverty than a 'regulated' one.

Sure, if you go from a state-dependent "economy" to a free market overnight, without having had time to rebuild the private institutions that the state demolished and/or took over and/or monopolized, then, sure you may have a chaotic transition period. That's why a controlled dismantlement is far more preferable to an anarchy that comes about by sudden collapse. But, you have to take what you can get.

(As we may find out first hand) the problem with a government going bankrupt is that, at first, it may seem like a good thing, but it can also bring about a worse repression from the state. Praxeology cannot answer the unknown. It falls more within the realm of thymological prediction/analysis.

Cross-hybridization is one thing. Patenting a cow you found in Africa and then suing the life out of the original tribe is the Monsanto way. Or, changing one gene and then claiming ownership of all corn in the US and then suing small farmers when their crops get contaminated (and of course, denying it) is GMO. The fight against GMO isn't always a "health" concern about wanting to stay truer to our millions of years of evolution and cohabitation with certain foods. It's also about fighting against mega-corperations that unfairly target small farmers with regulations such as requiring white painted walls . . . yearly, or requiring an office and bathroom for a health inspector to use once a year that no one else can use ever, or so many laws and regulations that a small farmer can inadvertently break the law, steal someone's intellectual property and be sued out of existence all while doing the same thing their family has been doing for over 100 years.

When we plant crops of only one variety over large swathes of land we invite disaster. It's already happen numerous times. Hell, no one remember deadly spinach killing around 50 people with no way to trace the origin? Mad Cow? Or the destruction of economies in their world countries because Monsanto requires only their crop to be grown and subsistence farmers into the ghetto's of India so that more High Fructose Corn Syrup can be made.

Or worse . . . the US Farm Bill . . . *shivers*

So no, it's not always about health. It's about staying true to the roots of a society that worships our farmers as life-givers, essential to our health and economy and free of unknown risk that could catastrophically damage the world as we know it all while ending a giant untouchable monopoly that refuses to let even the tiniest bit of oversight oversee it's operations so it can continue to "own life."

Kick the cat not the snow... Ghetto cat was like snow... That all you got!

@ messenger-The solution lies in a combination of radical reform of policy, and that can only happen if people stop following the programming of the people who pay for elections firstly. Then, you educate the hell out of people at a grass-roots level of just how deep the rabbit hole goes i.e., the insidious cabal of those who would profit from incarcerating more and more people to prop-up their money-making scam of larger and stronger law enforcement infrastructure, the inhumane prison industry which is billions of dollars annually. Profiteers who breed future criminals in prisons, and ghettos. It takes people actually giving a fuck about their society instead of thinking that they are safe ans secure with more police.

YOU ARE NOT

Police are made-up of dangerous, self-loathing and damaged individuals who are recruited for the sole purpose of building the infrastructure I described with protecting and serving very, very low on their not-so-hidden agenda.

The power-keepers and their fanatical putsch should be glaringly obvious to anyone with a TV, the internet, and an I.Q. above 100.

"They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."-Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac.

Heed the words of a brilliant statesman and thinker, and of similar, modern contemporaries.

I don't have much hope for it, I have expatriation written all over my forehead in big red letters. Hardly a place to go anymore, the entire world is jumping on board to the 'occupy everything with police and military' route.

Cops are criminals, plain and simple. Continue to believe to the contrary and watch how fast the shit gets non-linear.

Pronouncing the word 'cotton' without enunciating even ONE of the T's, is a learned and practiced, ghetto-ass speech impediment.

2 more comments have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.

Yeah he shot him, good call. Great survival instinct. Smarter hu-man than tase-boy. Tase-boy survives, does some time, maybe he'll become someone who learned a valuable lesson. You don't fuck with some folks and expect not to get fucked back.

Yeah man, I was seeing Clockwork Orange scenarios for this place as soon as I was old enough to decipher the dissemination of misinformation. It's been here in ghettos and suburbs for quite some time prior to Burgess' 62 novel and has manifest throughout history as simply variations of a running theme...

Isn't it one of those ghetto- air-fresheners? Looks like all those, 'top user' crowns

talkin' bout ghetto life

This is their escape-from-the-ghetto anthem man, no worries. What would really scare you is the neighborhood they grew up in and their colorful friends in Cape Town...Come fame, and the kids are legit and 'child-approved!'

@enoch

There is little doubt that Child Labor, Labor Explotation, and Forced Labor continue to be of a major concern with Africa and Asia/India being particularly problematic. That said, concerted efforts are being made to reduce these numbers and they are improving, but slower than anyone would like. Unfortunately the problem is largely cyclical - even educated youth have trouble finding productive work, so they are forced into unskilled labor, and there is little economic growth.

Again, there is no magic wand that any one organization or person can waive to resolve these issues. The ILO has been trying for almost 100 years...

I would not characterize every person who is lucky or privileged enough that they do not live in those conditions to be terrible people.

Consumerism?
Nor would I characterize people's value as simply being good consumers. The people I know in my life all make contributions to the welfare of those around them and are rewarded for those contributions.

e.g. My best friend, a p.h.d. doing research regarding immunology I can't begin to understand. My fiance, finishing her ER residency at the county hospital. My brother, working as a kayaking guide.

Circling the Drain
Is America really circling the drain? I doubt it. Has it done terrible things? We all know it has.

When I look around I see a lot of problems here. We do have a huge wealth gap. We do have ghettos and crime. We have all sorts of selfcentered ego driven loons.

Yet we also have an enormous pool of talented and intelligent people working on all kinds of things. Some of which are mundane and some of which are really amazing - and many of which are sifted about on this website all the time.

Carlin
I saw Carlin live twice before he died. I own several of his books. I think he is a brilliant comedian and insightful thinker. My point is and was - he saw it as his job to remind us "HEY - look over here. See this shit? This is FUCKED." And he was right.

Rationalist African-Americans tend to dress so people will know from looking at them that they reject ghetto culture.

Aren't we talking about culture, but pretending we're talking about race?

For example, conservatives dislike ghetto crime, but they've wanted Herman Cain and Allen West to be their presidential candidates.

The controlling group of men who made the decisions on Vietnam thru to Iraq, with all the bombing, drug running, kidnapping, sponsoring of death squads, torture and mass slaughter of civilians (not to mention spraying toxins on poor ghettos at home, shooting student protestors etc etc.) are in the same league. Start with the 'terror bombing' of Hiroshima and Nagasaki if you like (Curtis LeMay's words not mine). The Bush family were in from the start.

If you take this as a 'Regime', then the numbers are right up there and, as stated, operating from a dramatically more comfortable position. The historical villains mentioned all had backgrounds that any psychiatrist would ring alarm bells about and their societies were in tatters when they came to power.
But Dubya for example? Privileged draft dodging frat boy living in the most comfortable place and time in all of human history.. how many did he kill in a deceptive money grab? Oh yeah, they 'don't count dead babies'. Even the hawks are conceding its in the millions now, and that's just the last 10 years of near 70..

@sanderbos, yer joking, right? Last time I checked a table fulla candles were flammable enough to ignite grain alcohol at 2600 °F (candle, burning match) and stunt-doubles were still cost-prohibitive for school chums or wage-slaves to afford.
That was a glass coffee table and that inordinately large ass may have had some cuts after that and those not from any editing suite.

Haven't you ever been in a stripper's apartment? They look just like this....cheap furniture, ghetto apartment, candles and bourbon on the table in the afternoon while practicing douchebag mating-rituals, etc.
Judging this fail ISU.....up-card, 9.6

@MilkmanDan-Pretty sure the most effective squelching of the rise of the Nation of Islam and the push for conversion from the slave-master's religion was achieved by the CIA, (insert covertly shadowed organizations within the labyrinth here) pumping high-grade opiates into the ghettos of all major United States cities-Fast-forward to 1980, and crack cocaine takes what's left of a effectual black population on a path to self-actualization down the road leading right back to the master's plantation.

That the black activism of the 60's scared the holy shit outta the control apparatus is best evidenced in the assassination of MLK, Malcolm X, (many, many others) and the string of cocksuckers disguised as presidents to follow Eisenhower, a legacy which continues to become more farcical with each movement of the second-hand on yer grandpa's pocket-watch.