Articles of Confederation


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It would be interesting in how dead it would be if people were allowed to move back in and live there. What I'm saying is all we know is it's dead for political reasons, yes, scientific ones, maybe.

--Brant

Here is an article that will help to answer that question:

http://chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/radiation-levels/

Right now the current safe stay is three weeks in Pripyat and three weeks in a low radiation area. Certain areas of the city are "hotter" than others, and the very dangerous places are clearly marked with signs. It is hard to reckon when Pripyat can be returned to a "normal" place where the radiation hazards are known and the "hot" areas avoided.

In any case, the city would have to be rebuilt from the ground up. Most of the buildings are in an irreversible state of disrepair and would have to be razed to the ground.

Pripyat was 26 km from the Chernobyl plant and the wind blew the radioactive stuff right into town. The population had to be evacuated asap. I read somewhere that it took two days to get everyone out (about 40,000 people). The people who were children 29 years ago are closely monitored. Little kids absorb things very rapidly into their thyroid and the expectation is there would be a higher rate of cancer than statistically normal for the kids.

By the way, the Chernobyl accident put out more radioactive material than the A-bomb at Hiroshima and the Plutonium bomb at Nagasaki.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Regarding the alleged necessity of taxation: even Objectivists, a group no one would accuse of being weak on national defense, admit that once welfare state functions are eliminated, a government limited to police, armed forces, and law courts would require expenditures totaling only a fraction of the current federal budget. Yaron Brook: "In a laissez-faire society, government would be a lot smaller."

More importantly, in order to be convinced of the idea of taxation, I would have to be shown how a politician on the basis of winning a state or national popularity contest becomes automatically better qualified than I to know how to spend the money I earned. That's the hurdle no pro-taxer has been able to overleap.

Tell us a good way to eliminate the danger of armed attack on our nation. Once we do that, we can crank back and let the sheriff of Mayberry keep the domestic peace.

One way is to focus on the nation's defense rather than empire, which is what U.S. foreign policy consists of today. As Rand wrote in her essay "Government Financing in a Free Society," people will voluntarily pay for defense but not "against the danger of aggression by Cambodia."

Furthermore, since Rand specifically mentioned "the police, the armed forces, the law courts" as necessary functions, it is unlikely that that she had sheriffs in mind to repel an armed attack on our nation.

It may be feasible to withdraw from NATO, but we would still need forward bases. If we withdrew to our continental boundaries we could not successfully prevent air and missile attacks. And we would still need as fleet of aircraft carriers and submarines (perhaps reduced somewhat). Even this reduced defense would be beyond the means of a non-centralized and non-taxing government and certainly be beyond the means of a quasi-private defense force.

It is very important to keep nuclear weapons from being exploded in the continental U.S. If that were to happen large parts of our continental territory would become unlivable because of residual radioactivity. In Ayn Rands day a war could happen then end. Post nuclear and war could happen and the radioactivity would be a long, long time ending. In fact it would never end completely in terms of the survival time of our species. Bottom line, we need forward defense and we would have to fight in a proactive manner, that is detect danger and strike first. Like Israel.

This is your argument:

Without taxation people will not spend enough money on their defense to keep them free. Therefore, we need to force them to be free.

Among the problems with this:

1. Once the government has the power to steal from us (which makes it a criminal gang), why must we assume that this form of aggression is necessarily less than what we would face from other gangs?

2. If government has the power to take funds from producers without the consent of those producers, then government has no incentive to conduct itself in a way that would reduce risks or costs. It can act in the most irresponsible manner and simply pass on the costs of irresponsibility to the tax slaves. Proof of this can be found in the growth of statism over the 227-year history of the U.S.

3. In any society under rule of a taxation authority, there will inevitably be net tax consumers and net tax producers. The winners, of course, will be the tax-paid officials controlling the reins of power. Why should we assume that their insight into national security is greater than that of the producers? They are simply better at winning elections.

4. If in the name of "the national good" people may be forced to pay for defense services, why would that principle not also apply to education, or transportation or the production of energy? Given that the government has already set the precedent of forcing people to take care of their defense, at that point there can be no consistent objection to extending that policy to every other sphere of human life.

It says in the Talmud, If he is coming to kill you, rise up early and slay him first. That is very good advice from The Survivors Manual, the Talmud.

Ba'al Chatzaf

In other words if a man is coming to kill you, you will know it ahead of time by consulting a clairvoyant. That way you can kill him the night before in his sleep.

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In other words if a man is coming to kill you, you will know it ahead of time by consulting a clairvoyant. That way you can kill him the night before in his sleep.

If one has sufficient evidence that an attack is coming, then once can preempt it. That is why the 1967 war between Israel and her attackers only lasted six days. By day two the enemy air force was wrecked and the tanks did the rest.

It is absurd to let the foe have the first blow if one can stop it.

When is it easiest to kill the enemy? When he is not expecting it. Preferably when he is asleep.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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In other words if a man is coming to kill you, you will know it ahead of time by consulting a clairvoyant. That way you can kill him the night before in his sleep.

If one has sufficient evidence that an attack is coming, then once can preempt it. That is why the 1967 war between Israel and her attackers only lasted six days. By day two the enemy air force was wrecked and the tanks did the rest.

It is absurd to let the foe have the first blow if one can stop it.

When is it easiest to kill the enemy? When he is not expecting it. Preferably when he is asleep.

Ba'al Chatzaf

This might work as a metaphor, but not in ground combat. "Easiest" isn't a choice. There isn't any such thing when you're trying to kill someone.

--Brant

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This might work as a metaphor, but not in ground combat. "Easiest" isn't a choice. There isn't any such thing when you're trying to kill someone.

--Brant

It worked in the six day war.... Which is why there still is a State of Israel.

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This might work as a metaphor, but not in ground combat. "Easiest" isn't a choice. There isn't any such thing when you're trying to kill someone.

--Brant

It worked in the six day war.... Which is why there still is a State of Israel.

Okay: easiest and hardest: why didn't they choose the "hardest"? Because there was no hardest. The Israelis knew there was the smart way and for some reason didn't choose the hard way. Way? They weren't stupid. In the context of one's knowledge one chooses the best way, not the easiest. The easiest is easily a trap, for the danger is the enemy already knows that. Take the attack on Pearl Harbor. It really wasn't even much of a tactical success and an absolute strategic disaster. You can say the Japanese took the easy way, but it was ignorant, stupid, ineffective, disastrous.

--Brant

think, think, think!--that's why they won in 1967--in the following Yom Kippur War the Israelis had gotten stupid in the same way the French did in 1940 and the Iraqis did in 1990: you have a fixed line of defense that can be penetrated or bypassed by armor and you lose

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This might work as a metaphor, but not in ground combat. "Easiest" isn't a choice. There isn't any such thing when you're trying to kill someone.

--Brant

It worked in the six day war.... Which is why there still is a State of Israel.

Okay: easiest and hardest: why didn't they choose the "hardest"? Because there was no hardest. The Israelis knew there was the smart way and for some reason didn't choose the hard way. Way? They weren't stupid. In the context of one's knowledge one chooses the best way, not the easiest. The easiest is easily a trap, for the danger is the enemy already knows that. Take the attack on Pearl Harbor. It really wasn't even much of a tactical success and an absolute strategic disaster. You can say the Japanese took the easy way, but it was ignorant, stupid, ineffective, disastrous.

--Brant

think, think, think!

That attack on Pearl Harbor was strategically and tactically brilliant. Its main defect was the third strike on the fuel storage facilities on Ford Island If the Japanese commander had the courage of Yamamoto's convictions the U.S. would have been stymied for perhaps two years. Thus no turn around battle at Midway only six months after the Pearl Harbor attack.

Japan's attack on P.H. was conceptually sound but not executed in completion which is why Japan lost the Pacific War. The U.S. on the other hand was caught flatfooted and asleep. It was only brilliant code work by Rouchefort that broke JN-25-b and saved our asses at Midway.

Without our island hopping campaign we never would have gotten our B-29s close enough to Japan to drop a nuke, when we finally had a nuke. So the war in the Pacific would have gone on at least two years longer, or the U.S. would have made some settlement with Japan to confine them to the Western Pacific. If Midway had been taken by Japan, the U.S. could not have won the Pacific War in a political feasible time frame.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Well you got it half right, especially with the common knowledge padding. Strategically you know zip about the price of attacking Pearl Harbor: you lose the war. Why you don't know something so blatantly obvious only means you are qualified to have been on the Japanese general staff--or whatever it was called back then.

--Brant

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Well you got it half right, especially with the common knowledge padding. Strategically you know zip about the price of attacking Pearl Harbor: you lose the war. Why you don't know something so blatantly obvious only means you are qualified to have been on the Japanese general staff--or whatever it was called back then.

--Brant

Price, nearly 3000 dead, most of our planes on the Island shot up and seven battleships and some other ships sunk or damaged (Arizona is the famous BB sunk completely). We kept our carriers which was good news at Midway What price are you referring to?

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Well you got it half right, especially with the common knowledge padding. Strategically you know zip about the price of attacking Pearl Harbor: you lose the war. Why you don't know something so blatantly obvious only means you are qualified to have been on the Japanese general staff--or whatever it was called back then.

--Brant

Price, nearly 3000 dead, most of our planes on the Island shot up and seven battleships and some other ships sunk or damaged (Arizona is the famous BB sunk completely). We kept our carriers which was good news at Midway What price are you referring to?

y o u l o s e t h e w a r

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Well you got it half right, especially with the common knowledge padding. Strategically you know zip about the price of attacking Pearl Harbor: you lose the war. Why you don't know something so blatantly obvious only means you are qualified to have been on the Japanese general staff--or whatever it was called back then.

--Brant

Price, nearly 3000 dead, most of our planes on the Island shot up and seven battleships and some other ships sunk or damaged (Arizona is the famous BB sunk completely). We kept our carriers which was good news at Midway What price are you referring to?

y o u l o s e t h e w a r

Without the quick turnaround at Midway, it is not clear that Japan would loose the war.

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Well you got it half right, especially with the common knowledge padding. Strategically you know zip about the price of attacking Pearl Harbor: you lose the war. Why you don't know something so blatantly obvious only means you are qualified to have been on the Japanese general staff--or whatever it was called back then.

--Brant

Price, nearly 3000 dead, most of our planes on the Island shot up and seven battleships and some other ships sunk or damaged (Arizona is the famous BB sunk completely). We kept our carriers which was good news at Midway What price are you referring to?

y o u l o s e t h e w a r

Without the quick turnaround at Midway, it is not clear that Japan would loose the war.

Not clear to you. Not clear to Japan in 1941. Japan got educated.

The Pacific War was primarily naval. If it had taken 100 fleet aircraft carriers the US would have built and manned them plus all the auxiliary ships. They could have occupied Hawaii and it would have only slowed down the inevitable. Any serious student of the Civil War could have seen that coming. Relentless, industrialized warfare beats Bushido. Sherman even knew that before "The War of Southern Succession."

--Brant

Japan's best bet was to bypass the US and attack the Dutch East Indies--instead they went and bet on the black while the wheel was nothing but reds only winning "Remember Pearl Harbor"!

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