Reader Mail #6 - Fooling Search Engines

I continue to be surprised by which posts are popular. According to Google Analytics, my post on Did the USA Declare Bankruptcy? was very popular.

Some of these blog aggregator sites are pretty funny. Some of them are entirely script-generated, based on keywords in your post. All I have to do is mention "Ron Paul" somewhere in my post and it triggers inclusion in their aggregation statistics. I'm conducting an experiment. The list of candidates so far is: Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Christopher Dodd, John Edwards, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, Sam Brownback, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, Alan Keyes, John McCain, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Tom Tancredo, and Fred Thompson. Boo! Let's see how those blog aggregator sites handle this post.

On the Ron Paul Forum, someone asked:

What rights have we lost?

My answer is "All of them".

1. You have lost your right to trial by jury. The Supreme Court has ruled that attorneys may not remind juries of their jury nullification privilege. This was not done by passing a law; it was merely a court ruling. Further, biased jury selection methods repeal trial by jury. Knowledgeable and smart jurors are frequently excluded in favor of jurors who will blindly follow the judge's orders.
2. The right to a free press was lost with concentration of newspaper ownership. Fortunately, the Internet is correcting this problem.
3. The right to bear arms has been lost. With taxation, regulation, and registration requirements, your right to own a gun has been pretty severely restricted.
4. The right to work and keep the fruits of your labor has been lost, via the income tax. In other words, everyone is a slave.
   
5. The right to fair money has been lost by the Federal Reserve, fiat money, and The Compound Interest Paradox.
6. The right of free speech has been mostly repealed, with restrictions on peaceful protesters.
7. The right to a speedy trial has been repealed, with long drawn-out trials.
8. The right to own property has been repealed. You must pay property taxes (rent) or you lose your property. Further, zoning and environmental restrictions limit what you can do with your property.
9. Common law has been repealed. You can only argue contract law or criminal/military law.
10. When corporations were given the right of property ownership and contract enforcement, that eliminated the ability to hold people accountable for their actions. Further, tort reform has limited the liability of corporate management when they do bad things.
11. The right to purchase health care was repealed, with AMA and government licensing requirements for doctors. The supply of doctors is limited. The number of slots in certified medical schools is intentionally kept low. That's the reason healthcare is expensive. Mainstream media sources never make that argument: artificially restricting the supply of doctors increases prices.
    
12. The right to representation by an attorney has been repealed. The American Bar Association and the government restrict the supply of attorneys. This guarantees that lawyers are expensive and only available to the wealthy. Whenever a non-attorney tries to give cheap/free legal advice, they are prosecuted for "practicing law without a license".
13. The protection against unreasonable search and seizure has been repealed.
14. The right of habeas corpus has been repealed.
15. The ban on cruel and unusual punishment has been repealed.
16. Licensing requirements for many professions restrict the supply, driving up prices. I already mentioned doctors and lawyers, but it also applies to plumbers, electricians, accountants, and many others.

On the Ron Paul Forum, someone asked:

What would be an acceptable military budget?

I answered "zero". In fact, I think that the entire government's budget should be zero.

The response was, of course, an ad hominem attack.

Does anyone have the right to threaten me with violence to confiscate my wealth? Do they then have the right to use that wealth to murder other people?

If you argue "the government's military budget should be nonzero", you are also arguing "someone has the right to use force to steal from me, and use the proceeds to kill other people".

Later in that same thread, someone says

Are you suggesting anarchy? I'm still on the fence.

The mainstream media intentionally creates a bias that all anarchists are fruitcakes. There are many different flavors of anarchism.

The model I like is called "agorism". Basically, agorism says that people should get together and trade, without reporting their transactions to the government for taxation, regulation, and confiscation. By avoiding taxes and regulations, you would see productivity gains of 50%-95% or more. An agorist revolution would have self-sustaining exponential growth, once it gets started. All services currently provided by the government could be more efficiently provided by multiple competing vendors in a free market.

In a truly free market, anything people demand gets done. People directly pay for the things they want. If a lot of people are concerned about invasions, they will buy guns or pay for policemen.

In the present, suppose an invasion force of 10,000 or even 100,000 landed in a major city. Would they have any chance of success? The local police alone probably could handle it. There probably would be reinforcements sent from neighboring cities. The invading army would have supply issues, whereas the local police could just buy supplies from stores.

I don't think an invasion force is a realistic possibility.

Without a centralized government to replace, conquering and enslaving people won't be profitable.

Terrorists should be treated like every other criminal. Further, without a centralized government, terrorist attacks are less "profitable".

If you believe "using violence to steal is wrong", then anarchy/agorism is your only conclusion.

Remember that in a truly free market, any problem that a lot of people want solved gets solved. Instead of being forced to pay via taxation, people will voluntarily pay for things that concern them. Privately purchased services have a lot more accountability than government-provided services. If a government funded school is of poor quality, people are still forced to pay for it via taxation. Paying for services via forced taxation stifles free-market alternatives. In a free market, if a school provides lousy service, it will lose its customers.

On the Ron Paul Discussion Forum, someone asked:

If FSK is an anarchist/agorist, then why does FSK support Ron Paul?

I hang out on the Ron Paul discussion forums, because that's where the most intelligent discussion seems to be.

I haven't voted, donated money, or even changed my registration to Republican. Quite frankly, I don't think it's worth the 1-2 hours it would take to change my registration and go vote in the primary.

I don't think Ron Paul has a chance of being elected. I suspect the real purpose of his campaign is to highlight the unfairness of the mainstream media and the current economic and political system.

I can hedge by both supporting Ron Paul and advocating for a new economic and political system.