There Are Plenty of Good Reasons You Might Want to ID Yourself: Why Should The State Have a Monopoly?

Today my very creative libertarian Muslim friend, Davi Barker, wrote on his Facebook:

"Anyone feel like spotting me $900 bucks so I can start issuing custom full color plastic agorist identification cards?

A commenter responded:

"that's very statist of you"

Davi's answer:

"How do you figure? There are plenty of legitimate reasons to verify your identity. I don't see why the State should have a monopoly."

Commenter's response:

"touche.."

Davi's followup:

I'm not sure if you've noticed, but the whole point of Shiny Badges is to provide market alternatives of Statist insignia. Lapel pins. Badges. Declarations. Soon flags, maybe ID cards. That's the joke... or is it the strategy. Maybe it's a strategy disguised as a joke.

Another commenter wrote:

I'm saddened that you didn't check https://www.bitcoinstore.com/badgy-bdg101fru-card-printer.html first! You can save over $165 and pay with Bitcoin!

Davi answered:

That's awesome! Thanks. That'll be how I do it when I do it! I gotta crunch some numbers.

And another commenter had a great suggestion:

What about starting a kick starter. I'm sure many if us would like to help out but few us van actually do 900

I wrote:

"If you started a Kickstarter and at a reasonable enough contribution level people could get their own ID card, and if you thought some more about it and came up with a truly functional private ID card with some real potential uses; an excellent, useful, and remarkable look and layout; and and a plan for your brand to build a trusted reputation with cards that are easily identifiable as your issue, somehow difficult to fake (I think there are all kinds of awesome solutions to this), and a trusted verification process for someone to get a card-- you might have a very cool business idea on your hands that a lot of people would support. I'd be interested in getting one of these and I know a few people I think would be too."

A very, very cool idea.

Tax Bill Is Beginning of Formal Debt Criminalization

The noose is tightening on liberty. The United States Congress is steadily headed to a place where those who owe money to the US government shall be treated criminally. This phenomenon is advancing domestically and now, increasingly, internationally. The first shot in this latest campaign took place in 2010 when US President Barack Obama signed into law The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. It demanded, basically, that foreign banks withhold up to 30 percent of the income that an American abroad might earn. This bill isn't working so well because overseas banks are not cooperating (a state of affairs that was certainly expected). Thus, there is a need for something else: Senate Bill 1813, recently introduced by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA). This bill, in part, states that taxpayers with unpaid taxes over US$50,000 may find their passports confiscated. This isn't criminal per se, but the IRS has recently made noises about "sharing" information with police a...

Thomas Sowell Returns

By: Thomas Winslow Hazlett Reason

How To Cripple The Real Estate Market In Five Easy Steps

If the government and the banks had just allowed real estate prices drop to market equilibrium, we'd be out of this mess and housing would truly be affordable. But the government is determined to artificially prop up housing prices, whatever the cost to the economy. If you were head of Central Planning (howdy, Ben!) and were tasked with crippling the real estate market, here's what you would recommend. Choke the market and banking sector with zombie banks... Have the central bank (the Federal Reserve) buy up $1 trillion in toxic, impaired mortgages... Lower the rate that banks can borrow from the Fed to zero, and then pay the banks interest on all funds deposited at the Fed... Try to prop up the housing market by giving poor credit risk buyers loans with only 3% down... Load young people up with the equivalent of a mortgage in student loans... OK,let's see how our Organs of Central Planning are doing: check, check, check, check, check: a perfect score! they're...

The Humble Libertarian original

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