Welcome to the first edition of The Sunday Parting Shot. Each Sunday, before Redmond Weissenberger takes you through the Week In Review I'll give you one last parting shot likely from a bar on the beach in Acapulco.
I'm so happy to be here… but, in fact, I also came here a year ago and turned down this same opportunity and decided to give the USSA one last chance. Even though I was a full blown anarcho-capitalist…despite the obvious slide into an all encompassing police and surveillance state with a shattered economy…even though I was sick to death of being surrounded by fascists Republicans and communist Democrats… I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.
Then 2012 came along. The insults from the state kept coming. The Orwellian nightmare was coalescing from literary warning parable into reality. In parts of the country internal checkpoints were being set up. There is open talk of filling the skies with armed spy robots from the government.
The government is seeking more and more control of the already fascist economy while the idiot population thinks the “free market” is responsible for them getting poorer.
I was already groaning under the weight of taxation. I became an independent contractor over a year ago. You tend to look at the world differently when you have to write a check to the government regularly. It’s different than just having the taxes withheld. You get to see the funds in your account for a while. Then you get to watch them disappear.
“Why not just leave?” Jeff would ask me. “Hand in your slave card. Stop letting them steal from you.”
The nature of my job was such that I could leave. Easily. I can work from anywhere in the world. So why did I insist on doing it in one of the most dangerous places on the face of the Earth? Why do it from the US where police are getting more militarized and aggressive…where they take almost half your wealth off the top?
Of course it was fear and inertia. Most of us want to stick around in the environment we’re used to. But sometimes the environments we’re used to suck. I honestly believe that liberty-minded people may eventually find themselves in physical danger from the state. But even if that never happens – and I really hope it doesn’t – they ought to consider trying out other places in the world.
Even without rounding people up into FEMA camps, the US sucks in many ways. The shopping sure is easy and convenient. But as mentioned before, the taxation is a huge burden. What’s even worse, however, is that pretty much everyone in the US loves paying their taxes. They think people who complain about paying taxes are insane or immoral. The psychological toll of being trapped with these people is tremendous.
Not that the masses in other countries are necessarily any better. But at least you generally can’t understand what they’re saying because you don’t speak the language. That can be a great comfort when you are a peace-loving market anarchist in a world filled to the brim with statists.
I'll tell you what though. There are places in the world where people are pretty damned anarchistic in most of their habits…where they know better than to waste their time counting on politicians and their “solutions”. Mexicans, for example, don’t need a libertarian party. They ignore the authorities plenty already, rarely pay taxes whenever possible and live happy lives. Only places like the US – with its collectivist population drowning in taxes, regulations and an ever-growing police state – needs a liberty movement.
I flirted with the idea of moving to New Hampshire briefly as part of the Free State Project. Then I actually went to New Hampshire for PorcFest this year and realized that it just wasn't for me. I’d been on the quest for a place to call home for awhile at the point, but I’d restricted my search to the continental United States. Even when I found a city I liked (Minneapolis), I’d have to contend with the frustration of being surrounded by various flavors of commies and fascists. As if the weight of the state – with its taxes, cops and war machine – weren’t enough.
It just gets to be too much living in the States… the worry of how much worse it will get economically and in terms of the police state. But there’s no need to fret or whine. There really is an entire world out there. And it has a place for you. Maybe several places! Even if you don’t have much besides debt, you can start taking the steps to find the place for you. Or, if you want to stay we'll soon have a new product just to help those want to stay inside whether you stay to fight or just to live around the fringes of the system like an agorist.
Stay tuned to The Dollar Vigilante. We are committed to finding the solutions that work for you. That’s why it’s my great pleasure finally to be on board down here! I get devote all my time to working on the New Underground Railroad.
Talk to you again soon.
Regards,
Editor, The Dollar Vigilante
TDV Week in Review
MONDAY, AUGUST 6
So Long and Thanks For All The Taxes n’ Regulations: More Renounce US Citizenships
The Wall Street Journal calls them “renouncers”, as if from the mind of Ridley Scott. We call them expats who love freedom, and no where not to find it—in their once home and land of the “free”. Regular TDV contributor Justin O’Connell has details on the latest in an every-growing list of Americans leaving their citizenship behind for something better.
“One of the more bitterly contested aspects of US law in terms of the expatriate is that US citizens and residents abroad are subjected to US taxes on “worldwide” income. The “renouncers” (as the Wall Street Journal calls expatriates as if they were some form of “other”) must not cite US taxes as a cause of their departure, for in so doing they could be jeopardizing their freedom to reenter the country.”
TUESDAY, AUGUST 7
Dear Slavey — August 7th Edition
Z in Maryland asks about the power of the state, so Slavey gets into 9/11. Hold on.
“The 9/11 attacks were an event staged by the US Government to scare people into compliance. And boy did it work… they came up with that ridiculous threat level color chart… sent anthrax to a few key people to scare the public even more… then they quickly wrote and signed The Patriot Act and created the Department of Homeland Security. Very Germany 1934-esque, wasn’t it? “
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 8
Lies, Damned Lies and Government Statistics
Sheeple, sheeple, sheeple. Listen up! Jim Karger, fresh from a week of disrupting the status quo by daring to suggest your guns may be literally pried from your cold dead hand, discusses he lies you’re told and the lies you believe.
“And, while it appears government is lying to its advantage, in fact it is lying when the truth would work better. Why? The lies upon lies will soon become incredible. The Sheeple will look around and see that more, not less, of the people they know — their neighbors and their friends — are unemployed, and one day the published numbers will mean nothing anymore and the civil disobedience will begin. No doubt the truth would be taken hard today, but the truth would provide a foundation for solutions that make sense. Relentless denial is rarely, if ever, the answer to any problem.”
THURSDAY, AUGUST 9
Lamenting the passing of Olympics of yesteryear, when communists would defect and the West would be celebrated as the land of freedom, Jeff Berwick considers the London Games. Held in one of the most oppressive surveillance states in the world, the games saw just a handful of defections: seven members of the Cameroon delegation, three from Sudan and one from Ethiopia. Jeff wonders of they were heading the right direction.
“But, we caution these athletes from Cameroon, Sudan, and Ethiopia that they may, in fact, be headed in the wrong direction. It may not seem like it today to the untrained eye, but things are and will be changing drastically in the coming years as the UK, US and European governments collapse under the weight of massive debts and continue to inflate their currencies into worthlessness in an attempt to stave off the collapse just a while longer.”
FRIDAY, AUGUST 10
Feedback Friday – August 10th, 2012
It’s Friday again, and again your feedback takes us off in wonderfully diverse directions! This week, Jeff throws some knowledge back to his former homeland and fills in a Canuck on how to escape the clutches of the Canadian government. And what else? Well naturally, the defense of the drunken Acapulco scooterist, why Jeff doesn’t hate the Olympics, he just abhors them, and finally a bit on Global Escape Hatch conference in Panama and how to secure the last of four slots available!
SATURDAY, AUGUST 1
The Weekend Vigilante August 11th, 2012
More on the Olympics, which thankfully are almost over, the coming rise of kidnapping in the US, a flickering light of hope in the distance, and remember New Yorkers, your Mayor says “Don’t smile”, for your own safety.
As for me, Redmond, I’m back from vacation, excited that Gary has joined us, and like you, can’t wait to read his daily dose of Parting Shots. Hold on TDV, because we’re rested, and we’re ready to fight with you daily for freedom, liberty, and removing the shackles of the state.
Thanks as always for reading or subscribing!
Managing Editor
