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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

Health
0
Jim Davies 2008-01-02 17:00
Exclusive to STR January 3, 2008 I turned 90 in the year that government finally collapsed, so if anyone had cause for concern about that decapitation of the health care system, I was the one. At this age, one's good health assumes an importance never considered in the carefree days of youth and prime. However, I need not have worried; as always, the market works.
Ownership
0
Jim Davies 2007-12-19 17:00
Exclusive to STR December 20, 2007
Rainbow Five
0
Jim Davies 2007-12-04 17:00
Exclusive to STR December 5, 2007 Have you heard of Rainbow Five? Most have not; I had not, until I read Thomas Fleming's masterpiece, The New Dealers' War. I'd say it is one of the most important documents of the 20th Century, and yet to this day it is little known. Such is history; forget its lessons, as Santayana so famously said, and you're condemned to repeat them. The story of Rainbow Five...
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...
Constitutional Rule
0
Jim Davies 2007-11-25 17:00
Exclusive to STR December 5, 2007 Have you heard of Rainbow Five? Most have not; I had not, until I read Thomas Fleming's masterpiece, The New Dealers' War. I'd say it is one of the most important documents of the 20th Century, and yet to this day it is little known. Such is history; forget its lessons, as Santayana so famously said, and you're condemned to repeat them. The story of Rainbow Five...
One End in Sight
0
Jim Davies 2007-11-06 17:00
Exclusive to STR November 7, 2007
A Flame of Success
0
Jim Davies 2007-10-14 16:00
Exclusive to STR October 15, 2007 The 19th Century Industrial Revolution was one of the most glorious periods in human history, for the societies that took part--notably in America and Europe . Thanks to the intellectual groundwork laid a century earlier in both philosophy and science, the influence of governments was reduced at the very time when enterprise could develop key discoveries in...
Are States Irrational?
0
Jim Davies 2007-10-10 16:00
Exclusive to STR October 11, 2007 In a recent essay here I suggested that the state (government, nation) is "an entity utterly irrational at its very root," and that raised a few eyebrows--so I thought to explain. The concerns were of this kind:
The Greenspan Enigma
0
Jim Davies 2007-09-26 16:00
Exclusive to STR September 27, 2007 Alan Greenspan was economic advisor to governments and presidents from Gerald Ford onwards, and Fed Chairman for 19 years. He has had enormous influence for a third of a century, so it's worth trying to understand him.
Suppose Paul Wins
0
Jim Davies 2007-09-16 16:00
Exclusive to STR September 17, 2007 The reputable London gambling firm Ladbrokes is offering odds of 40/1 against Ron Paul winning the White House (click on Specials > US Presidential Election), so true believers in the Paul campaign might do well to pony up a grand then pocket a handy $40,000 in November next year. That could be one benefit of a Paul victory. But what else?
Sicko, Wacko
0
Jim Davies 2007-07-01 16:00
Exclusive to STR July 2, 2007 It must have been Be Kind to Michael Moore Week.
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...
The Futility of Protests
0
Jim Davies 2007-06-03 16:00
Exclusive to STR June 4, 2007 It's all very exciting and good for morale. You get up early, ride to the bus station, sing along with two dozen others of like mind on the journey to the big city, then march along the streets yelling slogans, waving banners and getting photographed for the evening news as part of the latest phenom. With any luck, purveyors of the opposite view will show up across...
Shock and Au
0
Jim Davies 2007-05-08 16:00
Exclusive to STR May 9, 2007 Governments wage war on anything and anyone that interferes with their insane wish to dominate everything in sight; they are only about power, for its own sake. Any regular reader of Strike The Root will know this. Still, it's amazing to watch it happen.
Article Three
0
Jim Davies 2007-04-17 16:00
Exclusive to STR April 18, 2007 There is a rich variety of reasons why a "minimal government" cannot work, starting with the entirely sufficient one that since every human owns his own life, any interference with his exercise of that fundamental right imposes a negative effect upon his wellbeing.
Recollections of a Visit to a Bank
0
Jim Davies 2007-04-11 16:00
Exclusive to STR April 12, 2007 Some years ago, I paid a visit to a strange bank. It wasn't "strange" in the sense of being weird or sinister, just in the sense that I'd not been there before; it was not my regular bank, and so it was strange to me. The reason I went was that I'd come across an old piece of plastic in my drawer, and wanted to try it out. It bears a symbol not displayed by any...
An Offer to Be Refused?
0
Jim Davies 2007-04-08 16:00
Exclusive to STR April 9, 2007
Anyone for Sacrifice?
0
Jim Davies 2007-03-25 16:00
Exclusive to STR March 26, 2007 A number of extraordinarily brave libertarians have recently shown themselves willing to suffer physically at the hands of government rather than submit to its authority. Is this a good idea? Let's probe that question in three ways: ' - Does self-sacrifice strengthen one's own resolve and self-respect? ' - Does it inspire the hesitant to take...
The Pretense of Justice
0
Jim Davies 2007-03-15 17:00
Exclusive to STR March 16, 2007 Imagine: you stand in a government court, accused of wearing an orange jacket in public on St Patrick's Day. You're disconcerted to find that the judge, the court staff and even your own defense attorney are, in addition to the prosecutor, all Irish-American; and as everybody knows, Irishmen think very poorly of the color orange. You have certainly been guilty of...
But What About the Poor?
0
Jim Davies 2007-03-08 17:00
Exclusive to STR March 9, 2007 Eighty percent of humanity is living in squalor. Why? The Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto asked and answered that in his 2000 book, The Mystery of Capital"--well worth reading, and the subject of a 2004 STR article here. His analysis of the cause of these anomalies is stimulating; in my view his prescription for a fix, less so.
Brown v. US
0
Jim Davies 2007-03-04 17:00
Exclusive to STR The case of US v Brown is over; on January 18th, 2007 , Ed and Elaine Brown of Plainfield , NH , were convicted of tax evasion in a Federal Court. What I'll call the case of Brown v US then began, and seems set to continue through the Spring. The Feds are very clever at gaining such convictions, even though nobody has yet found any law compelling anyone to pay their "income...
What the War Was For
0
Jim Davies 2007-02-25 17:00
Exclusive to STR February 26, 2007 Back in 2002 before the invasion, I chanced upon what I thought then--and now--was an unusually intelligent article about what the NeoCons planned to do in the Middle East . It was by Gary D. Halbert and derived from the Stratfor think tank, and while analysis of government policy is not normally anything of interest to anarchists, this did fascinate me because...
Tribes
0
Jim Davies 2007-02-18 17:00
Exclusive to STR February 19, 2007 To which tribe do you belong, I wonder? How do you describe yourself?
Meet Your 1040 Form
0
Jim Davies 2007-01-29 17:00
Exclusive to STR January 30, 2007 This is the time of year when 150 million working Americans 'fess up to owing the FedGov several thousand dollars each, and many of us pick up a free copy of the 1040 Instruction Book at the government's nearest Post Office and try to minimize the total. This offers a short guide to two pages of that 100-page book which most people never read.
In Praise of Andy Mel
0
Jim Davies 2007-01-14 17:00
Exclusive to STR January 15, 2007 We know, now, that government can never be constrained in either theory or practice but must be eliminated altogether from civilized society; but I can confirm the "in practice" bit of that due in part to the dogged determination, and ultimate failure, to prove the opposite by one of the most remarkable men I've been privileged to know: Andrew...
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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