[ExI] the law

Wed Aug 26 22:46:20 UTC 2020

From: SR Ballard <sen.otaku at gmail.com> 
Sent: Wednesday, August 26, 2020 3:31 PM
To: spike at rainier66.com
Cc: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: Re: [ExI] the law

>The law doesn’t do that fortunately. 

>…I’m so excited that you realize hypothetical situations are hypothetical. Answer the question. Would you, or would you not, participate in the genocide of the Jewish People?

Of course not.

To answer your question, law doesn’t do that.  

>…Except when law does do that. Like in Germany, where it was the law…

Germany was a dictatorship at the time.  The US is not a dictatorship.  Our system was set up to prevent that.  We saw that danger before Germany did by about a century and a half.

Nothing that I recognize as law does that. 

>…So if a law asks you to so something you abhor, it’s magically not a law anymore?

If it is an illegal law (contrary to the constitution) then it is not only not law, it is our duty as citizens to refuse.

>…Law can’t prevent anything. The law doesn’t prevent murder. It just makes things illegal…

Does it prevent any murder?  What percentage?

>…And yet they still give illegal orders to troops, and still send those same troops to military jail for refusing to follow them. Weird…

Example please?

>…If people didn’t treat it as an insane power-grab, then it wouldn’t have been like this. We never reacted this way to H1N1. …SR Ballard

SR that was perhaps one of the most insightful comments I have seen on the topic.

Notice some things about covid-19, H1N1 and power grabbing: the federal government was criticized for doing this and that, and not doing this and that.  But the federal government has surprisingly little authority on these kinds of things.  

For instance, POTUS does not have the authority to order citizens to wear masks, to shut down businesses, to declare what businesses are essential and which are not.  I see nothing in the constitution that would allow POTUS to do any of that.  There were never any laws passed, congress was busy with other matters in January 2020 if you recall.

Governors have authority to do more, and we saw a variety of approaches.  The California governor mandated masks, but never passed a law.  I didn’t wear one outdoors.  I wore one in businesses, and still do.  Outdoors, I do not.

County health officials gave guidelines, which impacted school closures.  Ours are still closed.

What was different this time is that a tragedy was used as an insane power grab.  Politics got in the way of science.  Things go badly when that happens.

Interesting aside: there is a reason why I am watching the Sturgis rally.  There are no politics involved, no way to leverage a political advantage.  Shutting down Sturgis was not an option, any more than anyone can shut down any city.  The bikers were coming, regardless.  Governors couldn’t stop them.  The tribes couldn’t stop them.  So… no one takes responsibility but the individuals themselves.  No one to blame.

So… now we just watch the numbers and calculate.  So far so good.

spike

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