“They say if you give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day. But if you teach a man to fish…then he has to get a fishing license. But he doesn’t have any money, so he has to get a job and enter the social security system. And he has to file taxes, and you’re gonna audit the poor son of a bitch because he’s not really good at math. You pull the IRS van up to his house and take everything. You take his velvet Elvis and his toothbrush and his penis pump and that all goes up for auction with the burden of proof on you because you forgot to carry the 1. All because you wanted to eat a fish, and you couldn’t even cook the fish because you need a permit for an open flame. And then the health department is gonna wanna ask you a bunch of questions about where you’re going to dispose of the scales and the guts. This is not a sanitary environment. And ladies and gentleman, if you get sick and tired of it at the end of the day, it’s not even legal to kill yourself in this country. You were born free and you got fucked out of half of it, and you wave a flag celebrating that fact…If you wanna fix the pledge of allegiance, put a disclaimer at the end: With liberty and justice for all…must be 18, void where prohibited, some restrictions may apply, not available in all states. You’re born absolutely free except laws of nature. If you drink too much you’ll get drunk, that’s a law. If you get old you die, that’s a law…these are the only laws you’re born with and any government just fucks you out of that type of freedom…You’re not free. You need a diploma in this country to cut hair.” -Doug Stanhope
A favorite philosopher of mine. Fairly new guy. I wonder if anyone has heard of him. If not, I suggest you youtube this guy.
See this is why people poach, throw things in their neighbors yards, buy moonshine, drugs and hair remedies. I blaim the IRS (I Really Steal) you wonder who runs this country? Look at the directors of the IRS. They have more power than the president, Congress and the Senate combined. They can bring down anyone they choose.
I have heard Stanhope, he is good. Truth couched in humor goes down better than truth being beaten over your head.
I.) I love Doug Stanhope; he’s got the libertarianism of Penn Jilette and the pessimism of George Carlin.
II.) Is not the ‘state’ the manifestation of the will to power of the upper echelon of so-called ‘leaders’? Systematized theft. Steal everybody’s shit with a gun in one hand, a warrant in the other, and polite smile to boot. Theft seems completely acceptable by the herd as so long as it is ‘justified’. That is, a starving orphan stealing a fish is no different than a power-hungry politician ‘acquiring’ my car and foreclosing my house, since–as they see it–the politician represents not just one, but all starving orphans. These acts are justified by a ‘greater good’; the orphan quells his hunger, the politician quells his fan base. But in truth, the politician is just as hungry, if not hungrier than the orphan.
Yes, one is allowed to steal as long as it is done the way it is allowed to be done in society. This goes against morality though, and there is a conflict between the evils that are allowed, and the evils that should not occur no matter if it is allowed or not. Greed often gets the best of us, but some of us are very moral, or at least have a conchense that forbids wrong-doing.
It’s really just the permeation of mythologies, memes, and morals within a nonlinear system, i.e. society. Ethics are indeterminable and are nothing more than an over-abused means to an even greedier end. The will to power isn’t ‘bad’ nor ‘good’; sometimes though, it is sublimated in rather ineffective, disadvantageous, or even inevitably vain fields of dominance.
