Jim Davies's blog

Today there's a new article out on the Zero Government Blog, and it's good news. A 2013 report shows how membership in, and the influence of trade unions has steeply declined during the last half century. Unions, like government (and with its vital assistance) operate by force; so this means force in society has fallen.
 
TinyURL.com/ZGBlog celebrates the fact. Enjoy!
 
By the way, if you're a Root Striking author in sync with the aims and outook of ZGB (see here) do take the chance to submit an article. There's no payment offered :-( so the only rewards are fame, the satisfaction of helping beat back the borders of ignorance and prejudice, and the knowledge that the time remaining to the Government Era will be marginally shortened.

At TinyURL.com/ZGBlog today, my latest Zero Government Blog shows that war is the normal and primary business of government, and so that if we fail to eliminate government, it will surely eliminate us, and/or our progeny. Merely to hide from it is only to kick the can down the road.

After five weeks, resources of several of the world's governments have failed to locate Flight 370. Does this result from malevolence, or stupidity? My answer, in today's new Zero Government Blog, is "yes."  Enjoy.

last week in effect I told STR "Please accept my resignation. I don’t care to belong to any club that will have Paul Bonneau as a member."

Nonetheless, several Root Strikers kindly commented to say they wished I wouldn't go. So I've figured out how those good folk can have their cakes and eat them too.

I've reactivated the Zero Government Blog. I plan to post articles there more than once a week, so anyone who'd like to read them can bookmark http://www.theanarchistalternative.info/zgb/ and get the RSS feed provided. Then RSS will send a reminder when anything new appears.

Today the Zero Government Blog shows a welcome-back message, and tomorrow, all being well, will appear the first of the new articles - this one, about the MH 370 mystery.

There's a link easy to memorize which also takes one there: TinyURL.com/ZGBlog

On the site is an archive of previous pieces from a couple of years ago, and authors eager to end the government era, as well as argue about how bad it is, are invited to submit new articles.

Gary North sometimes gets it wrong IMHO, but today he's posed a great question: how would you give away a billion dollars? Well worth reading, and he promised to answer his own question tomorrow.
 
He shows some of the hazards of giving such a huge amount to organizations that are doing good work now; how does one make sure they continue doing so? A tough one.
 
I think my own answer would be either to set up a venture capitalist firm and pick some crackerjack managers, or else fund SAVOG: the so-far unfunded Society to Assist Victims of Government. There would be no danger of money remaining unspent in that one. The venture-cap idea would cause all manner of benefits to reach a vast number of people over many, future years. Possibly half to one, half to the other.
 
There's an obvious option: to give it to organizations best poised to bring about a free society; but that's not even on my short list. A free society will come about as a result of this process, and in no other way - and it doesn't need any money at all.

"Oxygen is a prescription drug." So I learned this morning from Teresa, who is in the oxygen business.
 
This page confirms it; "oxygen is a drug and therefore requires prescribing in all but emergency situations." Prescriptions can issue only from the pens of physicians. Physicians can only practice after licensure by the government. Therefore, the government licenses the use of oxygen.
 
Oxygen comprises 21% of the Earth's atmosphere, and so is so abundant as not generally to command a market price. It is essential to life; we die within minutes if deprived of it.
 
And yet, in the insanity of the modern state, in any greater concentration it is a "drug" and can be obtained only by government permission. Accordingly, we already need government permission in order to live. That is my... breathless conclusion.
 
We anarcho-libertarians have a lot of work to do, and not much time in which to do it.

Russia Today has a transcript (in English) out today of a Turkish government conversation about provoking a war with Syria. They must have learned something from Hitler's 1939 false-flag job on Poland. I don't for a moment suggest that only Turkey does this kind of thing.
 
It seems that Kerry is really, really eager to have his war on Syria, now that the Kiev gambit was countered with the Crimea annexation. Such are the games that governments play.

Right on cue, CNBC appears to have picked up on my remark that small governments are easier to walk away from than big ones; "Hate paying taxes? Then consider a home on the range, and keep as far away from New York as possible" they say in The Best and Worst States for Taxpayers.
 
New York Governor Cuomo has been spending a lot of taxpayer money recently on TV ads. A key theme has been that businesses are being offered a ten year tax holiday for relocating to Cuomo's domain. Odd; if tax freedom is that good, why limit it to ten years?
 
Just recently, though, the ads have struck a new note. Now, he's campaigning to "lower" property taxes by forcing an unusually large number of local governments to "work together."  If you can swallow that, make me an offer for my bridge in Brooklyn.
 
This is a blatant grab for more central power.
 
 

89% of Venetians want to secede from Italy. This report says the vote is "unofficial", presumably meaning that the clear will of the residents will be ignored in that democracy, but there it is: a modern case of secession, to set alongside that of Crimea.
 
While agreeing that small governments are preferable to big ones (because it's easier to walk away from them) I'm not a fan of secession as a "solution." Seems to me little more than a deck chair rearrangement. What's needed is outright abolition, a total dissolution of government as an utterly false and lethal idea.

I enjoy commenting on the very lively on-line forum run by The Guardian, and encourage Root Strikers to join me. Large numbers of left-of-center readers see what is posted. That is the newspaper that broke the Snowden story.

There is a system of "recommendations." You like a post, you give it thumbs-up. If one of mine receives a few, I know my day was not wasted. If one gets double digits, I'm very gratified. If my score hits 25 or 30, I'd go dancing in the street; if, that is, the lane outside could be called a "street" and if I could dance. Neither applies.

This week, one of mine attracted over three hundred. Seems I hit the jackpot, by scorning Obama's current hissy-fit against Putin. It included a link to a good LRC article on the subject.