Whether the charges should have been brought is one question, and to my mind not an interesting question, and certainly an ignorant question. The fact is he was charged - with crimes - tried and convicted.

Charged by a DA who campaigned on prosecuting him, tried by a judge who donates to the opposing campaign in violation of the states ethics rules, and convicted by a jury who were given poor jury instructions. They are willing to sacrifice justice itself on the altar of their mental illness.

I have addressed my claim and put it right in front of you in the form of an argument, and here you are on public record continuing to avoid it. Here you are on public record continuing to use the same reasoning found in the justifications of slavery and tyranny. Others witness you do it, your subsequent bad faith, along with your slavish proclivities, and that’s fine enough for me.

Principled Democrats starting to feel stupid about the political prosecutions of Donald Trump. Too late.

Again, you are laboring for the government’s purposes. When you labor for another’s purposes, involuntarily, that’s forced labor. When they take your property without your permission, that’s theft.

I have addressed what I wrote many times now, and to no avail. I’m happy enough that the public record shows Tim Wood possessing and utilizing the same logic of the anti-abolitionists as he justifies the exploitation, theft, and forced labor of human beings so that he may benefit. Thank you.

Taking the earnings from a certain number of hours of labor is like taking a certain number of hours from the person. If you labor eight hours, and a government agent takes 4 hours worth of the earnings from your labor to do with it whatever he wants, you are laboring for the government’s purposes.

Oh, I’m engaging as much as you are, even more, except without the bad faith and vitriol.

But I’ll repeat what I said earlier. Taking the earnings from a certain number of hours of labor is like taking a certain number of hours from the person. If you labor eight hours, and I take 4 hours worth of the earnings from your labor to do with it whatever I want, you are laboring for my purposes.

You're projecting again, Tim. I answered your questions; no response but vitriol. I made a arguments; no response but vitriol.

Rather, it was you telling me I benefit from government, bringing me to recall the pro-slavery arguments from the past, which were nearly analogous. I responded by reminding you that slaves benefitted from slavery, insofar as their master provided for them. That does not mean slavery is good, that they owed their masters interest, that the relationship was just, and should shut up about their condition. You evaded this line of reasoning entirely, for what I think are obvious reasons.

I think there is nothing to fear.

Supposing that Intelligence is one of the least evolved and less complicated faculties of a human being, it appears relatively easy to program something to accomplish a more recently acquired skill, like doing math. But it is probably impossible to program it to perform skills that seem effortless to us (perceive, pay attention, and understand a social situation) because they have been refined by millions of years of evolution. At any rate, we could always just pull the plug.

Nothing I have or do is independent and free of the government. Its scope and reach is inescapable.

me me me

In some years there won't be any you to benefit anything. Meanwhile, civilized society is fairly beneficial. (I suppose you could cancel your membership, and go live on your own?)

You you you.

It isn’t I who is arguing for benefits, so your straw man is misplaced.

It’s an insult to human beings to say they benefit from their forced labor and exploitation because they eat food and drive on roads.

Slaves benefitted from the scraps of food they were given, the hovels their masters built them, the tattered clothes they were given. I suppose they should have just stopped using them, but since they benefitted they owe master whatever the net amount of their benefit they received.

Serfs benefitted from the protection of their lord's army and by using his roads. I suppose if they found misery in such an unjust relationship they should have just stopped farming on their little plot of land, using their lord's mills, and carrying their freight down his roads.

The Stockholm Syndrome is evident. You seem like the type who is grateful when someone steals from you in the off-chance you might benefit from his plunder.

I'm afraid purple prose doesn't make the inquiry any more clear, Tim.

I don't need Rolling Stone to criticize the actual content of their reporting, as I've done that already, and without any riposte or reference to pro-Trump media. No doubt, the anti-Trump Rolling Stone believes exactly what the anti-Trump MeidasTouch does. My only point was to indicate the wind-sock nature of your standards, which disdains Trump's self-hating projection, but finds it interesting and worthy enough to proliferate in MeidasTouch.

Any bias towards the truth doesn't readily accept appeals to authority while completely ignoring the counter evidence, which you'll never witness on MeidasTouch or in the prosecution's case. This leads me to remain suspicious of any professed claims towards facts or balance, especially when it comes from the open prison of some European nanny-state.

Seems like your comments elsewhere answer my inquiry better.

A comment that has nothing to do with your inquiry? Sure.

What gives?

Unless... A tax-free state (with government), no law (enforcement), ...?

What gives what? What’s with the weird punctuation? Tell me what you want to know. “I want to know…”.

The earlier video they posted was the actual video. They couldn’t tell the difference between the “cheap fake” and the real one. 1984. So funny.

But you’re keenly interested in the material from the guy who can offer no evidence of his claims. There was a great little article in Rolling Stone about the MeidasTouch Network, scolding with as “Trumpian” in their dealings. Maybe the self-hating projection is hitting a little too close to home.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/meidastouch-2020-campaign-finance-trump-1152482/

I am tired of people taking my money. You?

Many people love and depend on the state, and I wouldn't dare take it away from them.

It seems to me more an admission of guilt than a statement of any fact. I say this because the man in your last video tells me the reality of Trump's hateful movement is that they are motivated by racial prejudice and the secularization of the nation. This man says that all logic, reason, and evidence shows that "the average Trump voter" (74,222,958 of them) is not concerned with economics, but with the rising racial underclass and its encroachment on their identity and culture. One piece of evidence he provides is that those who were arrested on Jan. 6th (which I'll pretend is not too small sample) come from areas where racial minorities were making gains on racial majorities, none of which indicates their desires and motivations.

So I find another video and here is one from NBC where Trump voters express why they are voting for Trump.

So who is lying?

For instance the MeidasTouch videos you keep sharing. The “network” originally formed as a political action committee to stop Donald Trump. The sole purpose of a Political Action Committee is to influence an election. Personally I much rather hear your own original opinions than theirs and the Biden campaigns, but I fear there aren’t any.

Are you asking if I’d like to see government disappear?

No, I don’t envision.

You’ll just say whatever they tell you to.

I’ll just say it’s his arthritic spine and neuropathy in his feet.

“Cheap fakes”, the new phrase, straight from the Whitehouse press secretary to be repeated by the complicit media. Don’t believe your lying eyes and ears.

Someone who's already convinced Biden is a doddering old fool, will see that in the clip - that's what we call confirmation bias.

Biden suffers from spondylosis, which is age-related spinal arthritis, and neuropathy in his feet. These have affected his walking.

I wasn’t aware neuropathy and spinal arthritis made you space out and wander off.

The literal Streisand Effect. I checked out the story Babs was referring to and it appears a bunch of Biden influencers, like Streisand, are going full 1984 pretending it didn’t happen.

https://nypost.com/2024/06/16/us-news/biden-appears-to-freeze-up-has-to-be-led-off-stage-by-obama-at-mega-bucks-la-fundraiser/

Why does Biden have to be led around like a child?

I support cutting taxes, yes. Taxes are not only theft, but forced labor. Taking the earnings from a certain number of hours of labor is like taking a certain number of hours from the person.

The forecast of Biden’s tax policies as indicated by The Tax Foundation is pretty bad. The whole article is worth a read but I’ll quote the summary:

The president’s tax policy proposals as outlined in the State of the Union address would make the tax code more complicated, unstable, and anti-growth, while also expanding the amount of spending in the tax code for a variety of policy goals not related to revenue collection.

…

In sum, President Biden is proposing extraordinarily large tax hikes on businesses and the top 1 percent of earners that would put the U.S. in a distinctly uncompetitive international position and threaten the health of the U.S. economy. The budget ignores or makes unrealistic assumptions about the fiscal cost of major proposals as well as economic growth under higher marginal tax rates on work and investment, concealing what is likely to be a substantial cost borne by American workers and taxpayers.

https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/biden-budget-2025-tax-proposals/

For some reason raising taxes on corporations and top earners sound good to pro-government functionaries, probably because they enjoy the benefits of other people’s money and efforts too much to pass it up, but it just means they raise their prices, stop hiring, and refuse to increase wages. The rest of us bear the cost. So once you get past the pomp and fluff, Biden’s insanity reveals itself on a simple analysis.

Reducing tax revenue does not result in decreased government spending- it actually increases it, by increasing national debt and the interest paid to service that debt.

My question is: why focus specifically on tips? Why not simply lower taxes (or increase the earned income tax credit) for low incomes? This seems fairer.

It reduces the incidence of government theft. It’s not their money in the first place.

Food and hospitality businesses are struggling to retain workers. This is an added incentive. He’s already lowed income taxes, and The Tax Cuts and Jobs act hasn’t expired yet. Biden is trying to eliminate it.

The bloated government and its base is scared of Trump’s idea of ending taxes on tips, likely because it will affect their own meal ticket. We can’t have service workers keeping their own money.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated Sunday that exempting tip income from federal income and payroll taxes could lead to a decrease of $150 billion to $250 billion in federal revenues over a decade.

https://thehill.com/business/budget/4725520-trump-plan-to-nix-taxes-on-tips-could-cost-250-billion-analysis/

What sort of matter is the money in your bank account made out of? Wealth is not a fixed pie, I’m afraid. Zero sum bias, especially when it comes to wealth, is a fallacy. This is elementary and should not require explanation, but of course it does.

Wealth is accumulated through effort and ingenuity. The only wealth exploited from you or me has been taken in the form of taxes.

Sorry, I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t want people to be wealthy. Do you prefer people to be poor? Do you prefer they should have just as much as Vera Mont allows?

Why should it? People have very few and simple needs and motivations. The circumstances could be made a whole less variable by an AI making sure every human has the necessities of life and no one human hogs 10,000 people's allotment of necessisties. Equity ain't that complicated!

Life isn’t a zero-sum game, thank god, though the fallacy has led us to such injustice in the past.

J.J. Ward would agree

So would history!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornucopia

Regardless of any should's or oughts, AI is being utilized and (in the future) continue to be exploited to do so. Any should's or ought's, never stopped the rich and wealthy from becoming richer and more wealthy.

Good. After all, there is nothing wrong with becoming richer and more wealthy.

Thanks for the education. But the market is based on the relation between flesh-and-blood human beings as they exchange goods and services. Though AI might be able to reiterate economic concepts such as supply and demand, and do all the economic math better than an economist, it could never grasp the activity of the market.

Do you think AI could and should plan your life?

I beg to differ. AI as a central manager will be able to do this with greater ease than any human manager. Everything in the marketplace is heading towards computerization. With greater complexity in the marketplace, then only AI can do it.

If not AI, then who?

No one. As intimated, the feat is impossible. I’m not even sure why anyone would want a planned economy in the first place.

AI would not be able to grasp the thoughts, motivations, and circumstances of 10 people, let alone millions.

The knowledge problem is from Hayek, yes, but is by now routine economics.

No matter the skill and sagacity of the central planner, whether human or AI, he is beset by the knowledge problem. It is the problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose importance only these individuals know.

People are capricious, unpredictable, and subject to whim. Their circumstances, needs, and appetites change. Assuming that a central planner could gather all the relevant data required to plan an economy, by the time he had possessed it, it would have changed and become obsolete. As we’ve seen with these regimes, any attempt to plan an economy invariably leads to tyranny, misery, and death.

Marx was always a republican, and therein lies the framework in which communism sees a way through its failure, that is, in the republic.

But it turns out to be less a way through than it is a dead end. The Soviet Republic, the People’s Republic of China, The Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the Republic of Cuba, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela—the framework is by now the coffin of the communist dream, and perhaps its final resting place. The result is the same as all republics: oligarchy and state capitalism. In that sense the socialist state is little different than the Roman one, with its bureaucrats no more than a praetorian guard. The state never withered away like Marx and Engels foretold, but it got larger, centralized, and more totalitarian in its reach. So much for historical materialism.

If you can put someone in bondage with discourse you can liberate him with discourse. But that’s action at a distance. It’s just not true that people can be pushed to this or that action according to the combination of letters and words they read or hear, slavery or otherwise. The impetus for action invariably begins in the actor, and on the simple grounds that no one else has access to his motor cortex. At every moment he is under his own control.

Ironically, it is the belief that symbols can manipulate human beings that fosters the tendency to act according to what symbols one reads and hears, and not according to one’s own understanding, will, and conscience. Until he understands that it is he who manipulates symbols, and not the other way about, he comes to believe he is weaker than symbols, and so submits himself to them.

Observing any reader will show that there is no force or agent limiting his freedom. So this brand of freedom is metaphorical. I would worry that in seeking it out one would limit his own and another’s true freedom in order to attain it.