Gen. Romulus T. Eggweight

*refuses to pay tax dollars into system that allows for upward mobility*

*is shocked when economy collapses*

*is a republican*

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i-love-dinos.livejournal.com

i don't hear those words, i just hear "blah blah marry me traci..."

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I'm still gonna say I find that kinda creepy though.

Bear in mind I've been hit with the "You are obligated to serve other people who will be ungrateful swine in return for ill-defined reasons" bludgeon since I was a kid, though.

So I'm kinda sensitive when people tell me I'm responsible for people I don't see as having anything to do with me and who certainly wouldn't life a finger to help me if I were in trouble.

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A lot of it depends on how I'm perceived, I think.

I've known people to be very kind and generous when they see me as an individual.

On the other hand, I've known people to act like a frightened lynch mob when they look at me and see a guy who belongs to a whole bunch of groups they don't like.

It should go without saying that I've far more experience with the latter than the former.

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OK I'm going to try this again because the first time sucked.

Basically, I'm a white, male, straight, Christian with somewhat conservative political leanings...who cannot freaking STAND the company of pretty much everyone else who is white, male, straight, Christian and conservative.

As a result I'm more likely to be comfortable in the company of gay pagan athiest liberals. This is probably because I was raised liberal as fuck. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing, but it brings its own problems.

For instance, I'll be around Normal Whitebread People. I will, upon first appearance seem sufficiently WASPish for their tastes. Then I open my mouth and provoke a HOLY FUCK IS THAT THE SOUND OF BROKEN TABOOS! ACTIVATE THE WASP HIVE MIND! SHUN! SHUUUUUUUN! reaction.

Then I'll hang around my normal depraved athiest liberal company. This will go nicely until they say something I find kinda creepy and collectivist. Then they're all "Oh wait, I forgot, this guy's meant to belong to all the demographic groups we blame shit on. SHUN! SHUUUUN!"

So basically I'm a freak amongst freaks. Appeals to belonging to something tend to rub me the wrong way because last time I checked I didn't really belong to anything unless membership was mandatory.

This, amongst other things makes me astoundingly cynical. To be honest that's pretty much the basis of my own politics - the steadfast belief that my neighbours would break into my house, rip the flesh from my bones and sell my organs on the black market if they thought for a moment they could get away with it.

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"You are obligated to serve other people who will be ungrateful swine in return for ill-defined reasons"

Do you think that the other people who pay taxes that go towards providing:
- the roads you drive (or are transported) on
- the police and fire protection that you would rely on if you needed it
- the scientific research that funded the creation of the computer network you are now using to complain about the system that created it

also feel this way? If not, should they feel this way? What would happen if they all felt this way?

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To be honest that's pretty much the basis of my own politics - the steadfast belief that my neighbours would break into my house, rip the flesh from my bones and sell my organs on the black market if they thought for a moment they could get away with it

Would you break into your neighbors' house and do the same thing if you thought you could get away with it?

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What he said. Even if you look at it from a strictly self-interested point of view, putting money towards the public good benefits you as well! Even something like plain old give-poor-people-a-check welfare benefits everyone in a capitalist society by injecting upward mobility into the economy and boosting aggregate demand. Check out John Maynard Keynes' writings on economics for a more rigorous look into this sort of thing.

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Is that the same guy as the guy who thought MI5 had a secret listening post in his sinuses or no?

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"I've known people to act like a frightened lynch mob when they look at me and see a guy who belongs to a whole bunch of groups they don't like"

Well, be glad the groups you're a member of are the ones which pretty much dominate the entire world, at least.

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It's all about picking yourself up by your bootstraps, knuckling down, gritting your teeth, taking the initiative, and putting in the effort to be born a white male middle- or upper-class American.

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I wouldn't say I'm a libertarian, those guys go too far. I'm just skeptical about the notion that there's any inherent goodness to the government.

Also, if socialists tried to pinch my stuff they'd be dissappointed. I'm certainly not wealthy by any means. It's not so much the "OMG THEY'LL TAKE MY STUFF" I'm worried about, but that economic stagnation from too much taxes and regulation will forever keep me on the "working poor" treadmill where I never get ahead.

My family's lived from paycheck to paycheck all the time, government assistance is either never enough for anything other than a band-aid measure or they find some bullshit loophole reason why we don't qualify. I just want a strong economy so I can make enough to have money saved up and not worry so much about money anymore. I don't even care about shit like new cars or big screen plasma TVs. I just want a nestegg.

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No. I should note that I was sort of intending comic hyperbole there. I forget these kind of things fall flat in text where I can't do the whole "eyebrow raising to indicate I'm being deadpan" thing.

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OK, I should note that I'm not some sort "ALL TAXES ARE EVUL" Ron Paul junkie. I'm cool with taxes to pay for infrastructue and essential services.

In fact a lot of my problem is that these days governments tend to neglect infrastructure and essential services in order to redirect budgetary resources to stuff that I consider frivilous bullshit intended to either give government contracts to buddies or cater to the political fads of the day.

Roads are a great example. In Australia, where I live, the government raises about 10 times more from taxing petrol than is spent on road infrastructure. The supposed reason for taxing petrol is to make sure roads are well maintained and safe. So 90% of it goes fuck knows where while the roads are made out of nasty tire-destroying coarse chip bitumen and several major highways are notorious death traps.

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Tony, I'm quite familiar with Keynes (who is regarded as a God in my country) and I think Keynesian economics is a total load of bollocks.

I ought to know. I live with it all the time.

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You know Tony, this seems to come to a surprise to an awful lot of people but sharing some superficial characteristics with the dominant ruling class isn't anywhere near as awesome as quite a lot of people seem to think.

If there's an Old Boy Network out there, it does a great job of hiding from me.

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I think the thing that people perhaps do forget is that people do help out each other a great deal. It's just that most of the time they do so through trading with each other and that tends to be the most effective way to do it. I'd rather the opportunity to co-operate with other people based on having something worthwhile to offer them than because I've suddenly become everyone's burden.

I like responsibility plenty, indeed I think there isn't enough of it. But I think people mostly still don't take anywhere near good enough responsibility for themselves. And it's not possible to take responsibility for others effectively until you take responsibility for yourself first.

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stuff that I consider frivilous bullshit intended to either give government contracts to buddies or cater to the political fads of the day.

I think you need a bit more complexity in your analysis.

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*facepalm*

And this, ladies and gentlemen is why talking about politics on the internet is a bad idea. You give the abridged version of your beliefs and people go "Oh, how simplistic and unsophisticated!". You bother to take the time to explain it and people either go "TL;DR" or just entirely misunderstand it.

Nuts to this, I'm just going back to my usual policy of not commenting on politically oriented entries in my friends LJs.

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Well, you can take in the data point that people on the Internet think your arguments are simplistic and use that to improve yourself (since pretty much everybody can always stand to learn more), or conclude that the Internet is stupid. That's pretty much up to you.

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