I was listening to a Paul Wheaton Podcast recently about Sepp Holzer and how pissed he (Sepp) was about how other countries have much less litigation. In this podcast I found out that making ponds, and lakes, on your own land requires tons of permits from several departments. If you make one anyway they might see it on Google Earth and come make you sad. This blew me away, I could not believe there are laws about putting in a freaking pond. This got me doing a little researching on what freedoms other countries have that we do not. Mostly I came across a lot of idiots on forums that believe that “Free” Healthcare and Education is freedom. Not when you are being taxed to death to pay for those things. More laws never equal more freedom. I dismissed those morons but did manage to find some freedoms that we do not have. Let me share with you a few things that our neighbors can do that we can’t
Food
I watched a documentary on Raw Milk recently on Netflix and was appalled by it. I saw people arrested and their business destroyed for selling the best quality milk on earth. One man in California spent four months in jail, got two felony charges and heavy fines for running a CSA. This man only wanted to provide a great service and healthy food and now his life is completely destroyed. From searching online Raw milk is legal in most countries throughout the world with a few exception. Raw milk is not the only food governed so strictly in the U.S. Michigan is going in a killing heritage breeds of boars because they might go feral. The Federal government makes it extremely costly and time consuming to be labeled organic but subsidies gmo crops that are killing US. On top of that people have been finned and arrested for front yard gardens. Do the police and law makers have nothing better to do than throw people in jail for growing food.
Business
I was reading that in Australia you can file for a business and be up and running in three days, compared to America where it can a month. How sad is it that it’s easier to run a business in Singapore, China or Rwanda than the US. These countries and many others have realized that they need to encourage the entrepreneurship attitude in it’s people and make it easy for them to start businesses. The more business employing people the more wealthy you can become. In America with companies in bed with the government the small business get screwed over. If it wasn’t so unprofitable to run a company here we wouldn’t be moving everything overseas.
When I think about all the laws that are completely unnecessary in this country. Laws that have no victims and that in no way interfere with anyone else’s way of life. I get infuriated when I think, and I often try not to, about all the laws to nanny us. I am a free man and have no desire to be told what to do, eat or If I can put in a lake. If you traveled back in time and asked Thomas Jefferson if you could put a pond on your land he would replay with something along the lines of “Well can you?” and be puzzled as to why you are even asking. To answer the question is America really free, I would say maybe in some ways that are being eroded constantly. Even the rights we have are being taken. In short America becomes less free everyday.
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You forgot about how freedom of speech has been eroded by political correctness, chilling effects, and corporate fascism, how freedom OF religion is now defined as freedom FROM religion, second amendment is on the chopping block, 3rd amendment is ignored by LEO’s, fourth amendment gone (NSA and Drones), 5th amendment stripped, 6th amendment gone long ago (speedy trial? please), 8th amendment gone- (fines and excessive bail is the rule rather than the exception), 9th amendment ignored, 10th amendment ignored, 11th amendment gone (what state sovereignty?)14th amendment gone (immigration?).
Doesn’t leave much does it?
Exactly ScaryDad those are all erroded
Some of the rules do have a sound basis in “common good”. Take ponds for instance. Let’s say you have a stream running through your property. You build a pond without any engineering, because “you know better”.
Several years down the road, your 200,000 gallon pond washes downstream due to inadequate structural integrity (you cheaped out when you built it and it washed away).
Consequently, two houses downstream from you were severely damaged by your unintentional flash flood.
Had an engineer been called in to verify that the dam wall was built up sufficiently to prevent this, much pain, suffering, and loss could have been prevented. Permitting dams requires that engineer in most places.
Now, many local governments simply look on the permits as income, and therein lies the problem. Permits should be a system of checks and balances, not as an income stream. When governments start operating like a business and less like a leech, we will start to have fewer problems, I say…
Or simply less government overall…thats would be even better…
But what do I know, I’m just a hillbilly with a West Virginia high school education…I’m not smart like those politicians…
🙂
db
You hit the nil on the head, DB……. Common sense goes a long way….. too bad there’s so little of it around anymore.
Tin
DB that makes sense but I prefer to punish crimes and not possible ones. So if someone does make a bad pond and it floods then they are responsible for the damage. If not then no harm no foul.
SO you won’t mind if a guy with a 6th grade education builds a dam upstream from your house, holding back 500,000 gallons of water? The only engineering he knows is what he learned from playing with his Tonka truck…You are OK with that? Tell that to the three trailers wiped out and 5 people that died from it….
There are lines drawn about civic and moral responsibility that get called into play in this one….the potential for damage is too great for there not to be rules…as long as they are in place for the right reasons.
I’d say that about 90% of all rules in place these days are NOT in place for the right reasons…And in the case of building a dam, its not about possible crimes, its about sound and safe building techniques…
I don’t agree with him often, but when Spirko says, “You right to swing your fist extends all the way up until it reaches my nose” is pretty sound in my book. Do what you want, as long as it doesn’t force your beliefs on others. Living downstream from a poorly built dam is forcing your will upon me, in my book.
And I think we are getting off the main topic, we are NOT a free country anymore. The progression of civilization demands that the individual liberties are sacrificed for the greater good…Again, a great concept, but the execution of it is rarely done well, resulting in lost liberties that shouldn’t have been touched.
As always….
Peace,
db