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Jim Davies
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Joined: 2009-08-30
Columns on STR: 211
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jimdav@copper.net

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Short bio:

Jim Davies is a retired businessman in New Hampshire who led the development of an on-line school of liberty in 2006, and who wrote A Vision of Liberty" , "Transition to Liberty" and, in 2010, "Denial of Liberty" and "To FREEDOM from Fascism, America!" He started The Zero Government Blog in the same year.
In 2012 Jim launched http://TinyURL.com/QuitGov , to help lead government workers to an honest life.

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RECENT COMMENTS BY Jim Davies

Columns by Jim Davies

Ponzi Reconsidered
0
Jim Davies 2008-11-18 17:00
Exclusive to STR Charles Ponzi achieved in his lifetime something very rare: his surname became part of the English Language. Thomas Crapper did that in the 1860s, when he developed and marketed the modern toilet, and so did Sir Robert Peel when he organized the British police; to this day, agents of that force may be called "bobbies" or sometimes "peelers." But how many other...
A Novel Takes Flight
0
Jim Davies 2008-11-12 17:00
Exclusive to STR George F. Smith, a regular fellow contributor to Strike The Root, has written a crackerjack novel which all here will enjoy, and could acquire to give or lend to friends whose interest in the great money swindle may have been piqued by the recent $750 billion government "failout." With the intriguing title The Flight of the Barbarous Relic, it's a cleverly crafted...
Farewell, Marshall
0
Jim Davies 2008-11-06 17:00
Exclusive to STR Marshall Fritz died November 4th, and the freedom movement is the poorer. While living, Marshall was larger than life. Large physically, this remarkable man had that mysterious quality, a "presence," that would dominate whatever group he entered--in a benevolent way, of course. To the extent that curmudgeonly individualist libertarians have a leader, he was it. And now...
A Dollar in Peril
10
Jim Davies 2008-11-02 17:00
Exclusive to STR One of the nice things about not voting is that one can enjoy a little sport at the expense of those who do. Let me share with you an example or three. A few days before November 4th, I visited a nearby town, and first called at the government postal monopoly for some stamps so that I could write to an innocent friend incarcerated in a government prison. Standing in line, I said...
"Crash Course" Caveats
0
Jim Davies 2008-10-28 17:00
Exclusive to STR Recently an "Editor's Pick" here recommended a no-charge Flash presentation by Chris Martenson about the next 20 years, appropriately called The Crash Course. I endorse that; it's outstanding. I've seen many presentations, but never one more professionally delivered. Further, its 2 ' hour total viewing time is split into 21 short parts, so as to make it easy to absorb...
Fiat Folly
0
Jim Davies 2008-09-23 16:00
Exclusive to STR Everyone seems to agree that the mess in the money trade stems from profligate mortgage lending half a decade ago; banks loaned large sums to people with poor credit rating, then sold the mortgages in bundles with other, better-quality notes, then those were resold throughout the industry, and so when some borrowers failed to repay to the terms agreed, everyone was stuck with bad...
Time for a Trim?
0
Jim Davies 2008-09-09 16:00
Exclusive to STR There's no shortage of complaints about government, nor will there ever be for as long as they may be expressed without penalty; though that may not be too long a period, Amendment #1 notwithstanding. Here's the twist: I'm going to name a few of the more common, current ones, and show simply what might be a possible resolution of each. Then I'm going to ask whether the sum of...
Tail of a Dog
0
Jim Davies 2008-08-28 16:00
Exclusive to STR There are a lot of good folk out there who think civilization is being run--badly--by the Bilderbergers and their friends. They point to such sources as G. Edward Griffin's The Creature From Jekyll Island which documents how the Federal Reserve Bank was set up a century ago, and conclude that since the Fed holds the purse strings, it governs the government; that hence, we are all...
November Games
0
Jim Davies 2008-07-17 16:00
Exclusive to STR Bob Barr was not an ideal choice for libertarians, but he got the nod, so he's the only person likely to be on most ballots in November offering a freedom-ish alternative to the two War Party candidates. His platform is halfway decent, it has a lot of good stuff. Here, however, is one form of words prominently missing, in his segment on "Taxes": "Taxation is theft...
Poised to Implode
0
Jim Davies 2008-07-17 16:00
Exclusive to STR Government is doomed. The whole miserable apparatus of local, State and Federal politicos, liars, thieves, pimps, bullies and bureau-rats will disappear a couple of decades hence and a few years later, the peoples of every other country in the world will follow our example. Those of us who understand why it has to go are now, happily, equipped to make it happen. A few weeks ago...
Gas Puzzler
0
Jim Davies 2008-07-08 16:00
Exclusive to STR Soon after landing on American soil, I found myself lining up for gasoline for 45 minutes, and that told me something was wrong with this land of free enterprise. When all the establishment media I could lay hands on failed to explain the shortage, I knew it was worse. When only a fringe magazine (The Libertarian Review, July/August 1979, with outstanding articles by D.T....
Avalanche
0
Jim Davies 2008-06-09 16:00
Exclusive to STR I've been peering into my crystal ball again, trying to see what government might do to impede a peaceful Anarchist Revolution when it awakens to the fact that one is under way. This is to give you a quick overview, and especially to ask any reader to jump in to the STR Forum, or just email me directly, if he thinks of any kind of hostile action the parasites might take, in the...
E-Day
10
Jim Davies 2008-05-26 16:00
Exclusive to STR I'll not tell you the date, but based upon a very few simple and well-grounded assumptions, it will fall in the year 2027. "E-Day" is the day that all government in America will evaporate because, having gained a proper understanding of its nature, nobody will be willing any longer to work for it on any terms; tens of millions will have done what a certain DMV...
Evil
0
Jim Davies 2008-04-27 16:00
Exclusive to STR Ever since I was nine years old, I've had huge respect for the writer Arthur Ransome. Some here will recognize him as the author of a delightful series of children's books starting with Swallows and Amazons, good for reading at any age and full of wholesome stuff; siblings in each of several families are portrayed, discovering and practising virtues like respect, self-reliance,...
Biggest Bang for the CD Buck
0
Jim Davies 2008-04-14 16:00
Exclusive to STR Civil Disobedience, or CD, is spectacular and scary and costly and courageous and inspiring, all of the above, but as I suggested in the case of Gandhi, not necessarily effective. Still, there are some occasions when it may be useful. CD means the deliberate flouting of a government law, usually in plain view. Some refused to register for the draft, when it was operating; they...
Utopia
0
Jim Davies 2008-03-27 17:00
Exclusive to STR "Utopia" can be defined as "any visionary system of political or social perfection," but we most often hear it in the derogatory sense of "an impractical, idealistic scheme for social and political reform," and it falls thus from the lips of those walnut-brained idiots to whom we've just earnestly explained our vision of how a free-market society...
The Speech That Eliot Never Gave
0
Jim Davies 2008-03-12 17:00
Exclusive to STR "Ladies and gentlemen, this is for me the most difficult press conference I've ever held, though not for the reasons you may be supposing. The fact is that I am--for the first time ever--going to tell you the truth. We shall see tomorrow, from your reports and broadcasts, whether you can handle the truth. "It is, of course, no small thing for the Governor of the Empire...
451 F
0
Jim Davies 2008-03-06 17:00
Exclusive to STR "Why is the number of your squad 451?" asked the girl on the train, of the blond fireman in his smart uniform. His answer: "Because in Fahrenheit, that's the temperature at which the pages of books catch fire." Yes, it's true, I just watched a 42-year-old movie, "Fahrenheit 451" and enjoyed it a lot. It falls short here and there, and isn't up to the...
Why Minarchism Cannot Cut It
0
Jim Davies 2008-02-28 17:00
Exclusive to STR Recently Dr. Gary North, the well-known Libertarian predictor of catastrophes large and small, wrote a thought-provoking article entitled "Non-Negotiable Political Demands" in which he listed seventeen. It's worth reading the original, because it's as vigorous an expression of the Classical Liberal position as I can recall reading, and at first sight we can say "...
Religion
0
Jim Davies 2008-02-17 17:00
Exclusive to STR This is the last in my series of eight reports from the year 2030 about life in our newly-free society. I hope you've enjoyed them so far, and although they are rightly very upbeat, I hope you also agree they included "warts and all"--that they came without unjustified bias. If so, I also hope you'll be hungering and thirsting to help make it happen. Of course, with the...
Travel
0
Jim Davies 2008-02-07 17:00
Exclusive to STR We move around, in this newly-free America, for the usual reasons: to visit family, to find business or employment, and for the delight of seeing all the amazing, spectacular beauties this great land has to show. The big difference is that since E-Day, there has been nobody to stop or hinder us. Forty years ago there was a TV miniseries produced called Amerika, with a K. Its...
Money
0
Jim Davies 2008-01-31 17:00
Exclusive to STR Although two thirds of a century has passed since he wrote it in 1963, Murray Rothbard's classic What Has Government Done to Our Money? still has no equal as an explanation of what money is and how government distorted it. Rothbard called for free-market gold, which was of course impossible while government remained in control--but when it evaporated, three years ago, the market...
Justice
10
Jim Davies 2008-01-23 17:00
Exclusive to STR For the first time ever in recorded human history, in 2027 a major society began righting wrongs and restoring damaged rights. True, I'm being a little unfair to the quite enlightened traditions in Somalia, to settlers of mediaeval Iceland, and to villagers throughout Europe in the same era--who resolved social outrages like theft, homicide and assault by arraigning the perp...
Work
0
Jim Davies 2008-01-16 17:00
Exclusive to STR The great walk-out from government work, culminating in 2027, was the reason it evaporated. Nobody had lifted a hand or a shotgun against it, nobody had voted it out, and few had even withheld tax payments until a year or two prior--it merely disappeared with a whimper when nobody showed up to the office. This was a truly elegant implementation of de la Bo'tie's five-century-old...
Education
0
Jim Davies 2008-01-09 17:00
Exclusive to STR I've now reported for you on the state of Ownership and Health in the newly-free America of 2030, and today I thought you'd like to know how education has fared, in the three years since government imploded on E-Day. I'd say that this is the industry that has improved most radically of all! For about 175 years before then, almost every child in America used to leave home every...
The Suppression of Dissent
10
Jim Davies 2005-10-25 16:00
Exclusive to STR The jury is still out, as I write these words. Its verdict may be in by the time you read them, and there's a blog with the latest news--but that's okay because the point of this article is not to comment on the trial's outcome but to show what government had to do, in order try to silence an influential advocate of freedom. Its conclusion will be that government is wholly unfit...
The Power of One
10
Jim Davies 2005-11-21 17:00
Exclusive to STR Nobody is better qualified than my friend Per Bylund to propose, as he did in a recent STR article, that we who yearn for liberty "save the world through saving [our]selves." Per is not only a brilliant thinker and prolific author (in two languages!) he founded an anarchist website before many of us got our brains in gear and has engaged in debate there all comers from...
The Preamble Reconsidered
10
Jim Davies 2006-05-17 16:00
Exclusive to STR The Preamble to the United States Constitution is surely one of the most sublime paragraphs ever written. Before this dissection begins, let's prop it up and admire it in all its glory: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure...
Twenty Twenty-Two
10
Jim Davies 2007-06-14 16:00
Exclusive to STR June 15, 2007 It's just a year since I wrote to suggest how we can get there from here, so I thought you'd like to know that the project is proceeding nicely. In response to that announcement, about as many as I had hoped joined the Academy it introduced, and that one-time boost will bring forward by several years the day that government evaporates; it's still too early to...
Constitutional Rule
10
Jim Davies 2007-12-04 17:00
Exclusive to STR November 26, 2007 Imagine the Feds were to obey and be limited by the US Constitution. Would that produce a free society? As a stick with which to defend oneself against government people, the Constitution is a lot better than nothing. They invade your privacy without "probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and...
E-Day
10
Jim Davies 2008-05-26 16:00
Exclusive to STR I'll not tell you the date, but based upon a very few simple and well-grounded assumptions, it will fall in the year 2027. "E-Day" is the day that all government in America will evaporate because, having gained a proper understanding of its nature, nobody will be willing any longer to work for it on any terms; tens of millions will have done what a certain DMV...
Justice
10
Jim Davies 2008-01-23 17:00
Exclusive to STR For the first time ever in recorded human history, in 2027 a major society began righting wrongs and restoring damaged rights. True, I'm being a little unfair to the quite enlightened traditions in Somalia, to settlers of mediaeval Iceland, and to villagers throughout Europe in the same era--who resolved social outrages like theft, homicide and assault by arraigning the perp...
A Dollar in Peril
10
Jim Davies 2008-11-02 17:00
Exclusive to STR One of the nice things about not voting is that one can enjoy a little sport at the expense of those who do. Let me share with you an example or three. A few days before November 4th, I visited a nearby town, and first called at the government postal monopoly for some stamps so that I could write to an innocent friend incarcerated in a government prison. Standing in line, I said...
Origins
10
Jim Davies 2009-10-25 17:00
Exclusive to STR  Where and when did government start? It's quite a mystery. Given that human beings are basically harmless creatures, how did it happen that an inherently violent institution arose in human society, whose whole raison d'tre is always to destroy the fundamental human right of self-governance? The question is important not just to satisfy historical understanding, but to...
Vox Dei?
10
Jim Davies 2010-12-26 04:00
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR Michael Kleen's Conversation with Vox Day was an unusual article for Strike The Root, but gave a valuable insight into why theists may become good branch-trimming libertarians, but seldom ax-wielding, anarchist root-strikers. I had noticed Mr. Day at the masthead of that highly Statist, conservative publication World Net Daily, with its 24-point...
To Govern and Enslave
10
Jim Davies 2012-02-07 01:00
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR  Given the axiom of self-ownership, there's very little difference between those two verbs. To govern someone is to override his own wishes; he wants to do X, but government commands him to do Y. Likewise, to enslave someone is to override his own plans; he wants to be an Econ Professor and columnist, but the slave-owner commands him to pick cotton, and...
Help Wanted
10
Jim Davies 2012-03-30 00:00
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR  The power-crazed psychopaths running government need one thing above all: a supply of employees to do their grunt work. With that, they can survive any crisis, any criticism, any revenue shortfall, any desertion by voters; but without it, they are powerless. Therefore, those wishing to enjoy life without government in practice as well as in theory need...
Breivik's Defense
10
Jim Davies 2012-04-23 00:00
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR Is Anders Breivik bad, or mad? If his Norwegian judges find him insane, they will lock him up at the King's pleasure with crazies until he proves he loves Big Brother, and that may be forever; but if they find him criminally liable for murdering 77 people last July, he will spend about 20 years in the company of others, about half of whom are probably quite...
What a Time to Be Alive!
10
Jim Davies 2012-05-08 00:00
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR   For ten thousand years, governments have polluted the human race by stealing and squandering the products of our labor, repeatedly creating war and destruction, and choking off initiative and invention. Yet now, in this present era, there is serious hope that these parasites will cease to leech. The root of the problem is, at long last, being...
So You Work as an Elections Clerk?
10
Jim Davies 2012-05-18 00:00
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR [Author's Note: Readers who know someone who helps operate elections might usefully refer him or her to this article. Should it become widely read before November, it could have an interesting effect. It's adapted from one of a series at the new web site TinyURL.com/QuitGov, which aims to help government employees lead honest lives....
Working Capital
10
Jim Davies 2012-05-29 00:00
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR "Capitalism" is another of those words, like "liberal," whose meanings have been twisted by time, use and particularly by government influence, to mean something quite different from, and sometimes opposite to, their original intent. When we see Occupy Wall Street protesters waving banners calling for its downfall, they are referring to...
Dickens, Reconsidered
10
Jim Davies 2012-06-12 00:00
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR Few novels if any can have so profoundly assisted the spread of socialism in the century following 1850 as those of Charles Dickens, for they portrayed vividly the slums in English cities during the Industrial Revolution which enabled Karl Marx, who lived in London with support from his friend Friedrich Engels, to denounce the capitalist system he said had...
Newt's Letter
10
Jim Davies 2012-06-20 00:00
Column by Jim Davies. Government tries to justify its ubiquitous spying on private correspondence on the back of 9/11. It's just another government lie. The events below took place four years earlier.   Back in 1997, Mr Gingrich was a powerful figure in DC – Speaker of the House. Soon afterwards he swapped wives and was cast into outer darkness for a decade, but recently he ran...
Compassion in a Free Society
10
Jim Davies 2012-08-09 00:00
Column by Jim Davies. One of the ugliest things said about freedom advocates is that in a society without government, large numbers of poor people would be trampled underfoot. Critics say that if all were free selfishly to pursue our own ends, many would be left behind, to suffer and starve. That such a society would be harsh, uncaring, divisive, mean. That it's necessary to have a government, to...
Opinion and Reason
10
Jim Davies 2012-08-20 00:00
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR From time to time a market researcher calls me up and asks for a few minutes of my time to answer his or her survey questions. I always answer “Yes, I'll be happy to; what rate are you offering?”   “What was that, again?”   “What are you offering to pay? My opinions, on a range of topics, are highly valuable. So is my...
A Letter to Young Paulians Recommended
10
Jim Davies 2012-09-10 00:00
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR You've just been kicked in the teeth, and this is to convey sympathy and comfort, as well as sincere congratulations for what you've done – along with suggestions about what you might best do next.   The way you have been treated by your own Party is a scandal that will long reverberate – and was so stupid even from the Party's perspective...
Free Health Care!
10
Jim Davies 2012-10-12 00:00
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR   That was the promise, made by politicos in the England of my youth; health care, they said, is a right, an entitlement. In Churchill's wartime cabinet, William Beveridge, whom I briefly met 15 years later, had designed a scheme by 1945, and it was rushed through and implemented in 1947. The exodus of British doctors to North America began shortly...
'Indians'
10
Jim Davies 2012-10-25 00:00
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR The coming free society will be rational; residents will live on the basis of reality and reason rather than myth. We will recognize government for what it is and therefore reject it on rational grounds; we will think in rational, economic terms predominantly. I can be sure of this, because a free society will not come into being until everyone does think...
Leaving Government Service
10
Jim Davies 2012-11-13 08:03
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR Alex Knight's recent fine column The Post Office that Government Built relates the sad case of one of its 600,000 employees who faces a bleak future as that structure is poised for collapse. It might be useful to compare such cases with the similar ones that will take place when government servants quit voluntarily, having learned what freedom and...
Goodness
10
Jim Davies 2012-11-20 08:42
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR It's fairly clear what “evil” is, we know it when we see it. But what is its opposite, goodness? And are human beings basically good, evil, neutral or something else? It's important to understand that, because if for example mankind is marred with a bias towards evil, the case for a restraining government, as Paine and others have...
The Pugsley Plan Recommended
8.5
Jim Davies 2013-01-14 08:46
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR Prior to Harry Browne's first run for US President in 1996, his friend John Pugsley wrote him a passionate “open letter” urging him not to. As far as I know, Harry didn't reply, but he did continue his campaign – and repeated it four years later. He got few votes more than the LP normally receives, but his platform and campaign were...
464 Lost Years Recommended
8.25
Jim Davies 2012-12-10 08:48
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR Recently I re-read part of that seminal essay, Discourse on Voluntary Servitude by Etienne de la Boëtie, written in 1548, or 464 years ago. He said that if you want to topple a tyrant, all you need to do is to withdraw support. No violence, no sweat, just stop helping him. Yet 24 years later there was a massacre of Huguenot Protestants, indicating that...
The Duty to End the State Recommended
10
Jim Davies 2012-11-30 08:53
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR Many reading this already understand the Self-ownership Axiom; that we each own our own lives by right, and hence that all government is an unnatural and ruinous appendage. Among those who do, though, surprisingly there is disagreement over what to do about it. Some hold that resistance by such voluntaryists in the present government-saturated environment...
St. Abe Recommended
0
Jim Davies 2012-10-23 00:00
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR When the Church of Rome has in mind to elevate one of its heroes or heroines to the status of sainthood, it follows a certain procedure – one element of which is to hear the opinion of an advocatus diaboli – a devil's advocate. His job is to reason against the proposed canonization, so reducing the probability of error. That task fell in...
A Letter to Young Paulians Recommended
10
Jim Davies 2012-09-10 00:00
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR You've just been kicked in the teeth, and this is to convey sympathy and comfort, as well as sincere congratulations for what you've done – along with suggestions about what you might best do next.   The way you have been treated by your own Party is a scandal that will long reverberate – and was so stupid even from the Party's perspective...
Time for Civil Disobedience? Recommended
8.75
Jim Davies 2012-06-05 00:00
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR Underlying approaches to the great problem of how to rid society of government parasites without violence is the insight of Etienne de la Boëtie:   "Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like...
So You Work for a Prosecutor? Recommended
0
Jim Davies 2012-04-30 00:00
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR  [Author's Note: Readers who know someone working in a prosecutor's office might usefully refer him or her to this article. It's adapted from one of a series at the new web site TinyURL.com/QuitGov, which aims to help government employees lead honest lives.] Getting bad guys off the street is surely a good and noble objective, a vital task in a...
Terms of Association Recommended
9
Jim Davies 2010-10-15 03:00
Column by Jim Davies.   Exclusive to STR    An advocate for the US Constitution recently argued on the Peter Mac Show that any group of people in any locality properly has the right to set up an association and to define its terms. He was correct, of course. The terms agreed would relate to who can belong and who, not--and to how decisions of policy and practice shall be made, as...
Great Fictions Recommended
9.33333
Jim Davies 2010-09-10 03:00
By Jim Davies.   Exclusive to STR   Is the state a fiction, a myth? How in either case does it compare to a business company, also sometimes called a fictional entity? Or to a religion?   I'm using "state" not so much to mean a particular political organization like the State of New Hampshire, but more in the sense used by Oppenheimer in The State, or by Bastiat in his...

 

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