[ExI] texas county judge demands residents wear bananas

[spike at rainier66.com]

> On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat



 

 

 

On Fri, 24 Apr 2020 at 10:07, spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> > wrote:

 

 

>…Suppose a new virus emerges which will infect anyone that comes within 10 metres of an asymptomatic carrier, unless the carrier is wearing a mask, and this virus will kill half of the people who are infected. If everyone wears a mask, then in a few weeks the virus will disappear. Given this information, most people will probably voluntarily wear a mask, but not all. Are you saying there is no legal mechanism to enforce mask wearing, with the result that either half the population will die or the economy will permanently shut down because everyone is too afraid to go outside?

-- 

>…Stathis Papaioannou

 

 

Legal mechanism in that case, not that I know of.  A president has the power to declare martial law, which would give him extraordinary legal powers, but there are some really really good reasons to not do that.  The possibility that a president could declare martial law is a good reason why Americans are heavily armed: under those conditions there aren’t enough military, so the militia is in charge of keeping order in their absence or scarcity.

 

As far as I know, there is nothing analogous to declaring extraordinary war powers that apply at the state level to governors.  I have never heard of such a thing.

 

Your scenario brings fresh meaning into the comment “…A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state…”  The threat of the Federal government attempting to seize extra-constitutional powers and take over the country is always one that must be taken very seriously.

 

spike

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20200423/cbb51b42/attachment.htm>