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Robert Heinlein, et al.

Posted by $ MikeMarotta 9 years, 2 months ago to Books
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We can and will add others whom we acknowledge or even admire, but I am willing to bet that of all the science fiction writers, Heinlein is held in the highest regard here.

"I would say that my position is not too far from that of Ayn Rand's; that I would like to see government reduced to no more than internal police and courts, external armed forces — with the other matters handled otherwise. I'm sick of the way the government sticks its nose into everything, now.
The Robert Heinlein Interview (1973)"
-- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_...
(But even this one resource provides a rich array to choose from.)

Every law that was ever written opened up a new way to graft. -- Red Planet (1949)


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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 9 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    "No matter how it shakes out the owner is ultimately responsible for the taxes."
    Maybe this isn't important, but I do not believe the owner is personally liable for property taxes. The gov't cannot sue him and take his assets. The gov't will pay the taxes by writing a bond secured by the property. If it land owner fails to pay on the bond, the bondholder can foreclose the right of redemption, and take the property. In this case I think the bondholder pays the other leins to get clean title. But the landowner's assets, apart from the property itself, are not at risk. Maybe someone more knowledgeable about RE can confirm this.
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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Right. I agree with you 100%. But you and I do not agree with Asimov. He disliked Solaria and the other Spacer worlds. In his universe, they failed. (Did you know that? Read here: "Asimov's novels chronicle the gradual deterioration of the Spacer worlds, and the disappearance of robots from human society."-- Wikipedia, Spacer (Asimov). ) I agree that Solaria, Aurora, and the other Spacer worlds meet my expectations. However, Asimov was, as far as I understand from reading and listening to him once, a New Deal liberal.
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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I agree that making something mandatory is an admission that the system is broken and biased to the extreme against liberty and free markets.
    FREEDOM FOR ALL is communism in disguise. You are a crypto-fascist.

    You and I might agree on specifics, but philosophically, you are just another controller.
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 9 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    It has now and did we get Arthur C. Clarke? But a died too young author also found artistic achievement in poetry C. M. Kornbluth shoudl get at least a mention. Never fear we seldom when it's done and archived find we have failed to to list....well that's your post..
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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    See below for a real word example
    https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...

    When I enlisted, I said, "I have had heart surgery." The Colonel replied,"We're all on meds here." As it was, I passed the physical with metrics for one-half to one-third my age... after three months of my own running and doing push-ups and sit-ups... Just to say, service is based on willingness to serve.
    Ideally, if you are ready and willing then you must be able (by definition).
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  • Posted by jsw225 9 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    One source, Pennsylvania Laws: http://www.palrb.us/statutesatlarge/1... Pages ~35-45 or so. It's tough to track down because a lot of states had established who was allowed to vote before the ratification of the Constitution, and since the Constitution left it to the states to determine who could vote, they didn't really change it.

    But that law there pretty much says (assuming I'm reading it right) that all tax payers (including "freed-men") were allowed to vote.
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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    So, government employees could vote, but not people who are retired and living on investment income?

    Come on, Jan, you can think deeper than that.
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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    It is not the IRS, it is the state (Michigan), but your point is taken. So, therefore, in your capitalist utopia, banks would have thousands of votes for the mortgages they hold, and the home owner (ahem "owner") would have no vote until the mortgage was paid off.

    OK. Just so we are clear.
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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Cannot be done. Ontologically impossible. I wonder what is in your head. Whatever it may be - and, granted, easily, your being here speaks well for you - myself, I am different inside.

    I read Anthem and all the rest because they were outside of the school norm, even though, in particular, Anthem was handed to me by a buddy of mine as we passed between algebra classes. Call it an underground classic.
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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Interesting, thanks! Here in Austin, the Church of Scientology is one of several churches that are vetted for Community Emergency Response. (Just sayin'... not endorsing... and whatever happened with ERH and RAH was over 50 years ago.) But thanks for the link. It was interesting.
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  • Posted by Technocracy 9 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Whether the taxes are rolled into the mortgage or not the individual owner is the one ultimately on the hook for those taxes. You can structure it so you have an agent acting in your behalf to facilitate the payment. That does not exempt you from the responsibility for the taxes being paid. The IRS will come for you, not your agent.

    Tha landlord of a rental property is either an agent for the owner or himself the owner. No matter how it shakes out the owner is ultimately responsible for the taxes.
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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Dunno... but of all of the options, which is best for you?

    Military academy? (Four years of bootcamp.)
    ROTC (see above plus more like lots of gym class interrupting your studies)
    OCS (finish college. goto boot camp. goto OCS. you experience both sides. You are given responsibilty for conceptual breadth of command. People are variables. A good commissioned officer knows to trust his Senior Enlisted Advisor.

    I take your point. I just note that it is complicated. As for what Heinlein actually saw, his service was brief: 18 months. He got tuberculosis and was discharged. So, no telling what he saw, but 90-day Wonders were probably not tossed in until World War 2.
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  • Posted by Technocracy 9 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    In some ways he modelled that character after himself. Asimov refused to fly, an unexpected phobia for a writer of both hard science and sci-fi
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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    No. Consider a mortgage. In the here-and-now, the bank lends you the money, and, indeed, the taxes can come from your mortgage payment. Ours could have been set up that way, but I insisted on paying the taxes myself. (Heinlein surely, Ayn Rand, perhaps.) But if your taxes are rolled into to your mortgage, does the bank get to vote them?

    Maybe so.

    Maybe in some capitalist utopia, the lender would indeed have hundreds of votes for all the mortgages it holds.

    But if so, I suggest that you need to think it through...
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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I MIchael E. Marotta, being of legal age, of my own free will, without coercion, promise, or inducement of any sort, after having been duly advised and warned of the meaning and consequnces of this oath, do now enroll in the Federal Service of the Terran Federation for a term of not less than two years and as much longer as may be required by the needs of the service. I swear to uphold and defend the Constituition of the Federation against all its enemies on or off Terra, to protect and defend the Constitutional liberties and priviledges of all its citizens and lawful residents of the Federation, its associated states and territories, to perform, on or off Terra, such duties of any lawful nature as may be assigned to me by lawful direct or delegated authority, and to obey all lawful orders of the Commander-In-Chief of the Terran Service and of all officers or delegated persons placed over me, and to require such obedience from all members of the Service or other persons or non-human beings lawfully placed under my orders - and, on being honorably discharged at the completion of my full term of active service or upon being on inactive retired status after having completed such full term, to carry out all duties and obligations and to enjoy the privileges of Federation citizenship including but not limited to the duty, obligation and privilege of exercising sovereign franchise for the rest of my natural life unless stripped of honor by verdict, finally sustained, of court of my sovereign peers...
    So help me God.

    ["... the rest of my natural life ..."]
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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Yes, right. Interesting that Wendell Urth never left Earth, the pun being there for us. However, let me point out, if I may, that Sherlock Holmes was not a rationalist - which Wendell Urth (and Isaac Asimov) was. Holmes was an empiricist. He is mis-represented as a rationalist. In fact, myself, just personally, I would call him an objectivist unifying theory and fact.
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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I agree 100% that objective knowledge requires teachers who know objective reality. I also agree that today the stultifying mass of teachers are just so much dead weight in the educational system. I must submit, however, that the facts of reality speak against your utopian dreams. My daughter attended a Montessori school run by Christians. I should have seen it coming... After a hard day at school, she said that she wanted to be dead so that she could be in heaven with Jesus. Well, yes, we pulled her from the school... but did not Ayn Rand endorse Montesssori??

    You cannot program freedom. It must be discovered... by individuals.
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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Yes. It was a lesson my mother demonstrated with two sides of a baseball card. Objective reality is absolute. Yet, we perceive it differently. Therein lies the rub.
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  • Posted by jsw225 9 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Not incomplete at all. I was talking about the right to vote at the founding of the republic. It's only since then that things have become perverted. I have often repeated that any republic can't be expected to survive unless the voters have to have some skin in the game in order to get the vote. Federal Service, Land Owners, (Net) Tax Payers... Any of the above.
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  • Posted by jsw225 9 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    It's tough to find sources on it, because like most of what is taught in schools, it's just accepted to be a fact that no one questions, so it becomes repeated ad nauseum.

    For example this source: http://www.ushistory.org/us/23b.asp Discusses that Women and Blacks could get the right to vote (but it was rare due to standard practices in society, not legal standards), up until the point of the concept of "Universal Suffrage" where everyone is granted the right, and they started to specifically exclude groups of people.
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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    The deeper it is hidden, the smarter will be the people who find it.
    I know you jlc from a couple of years here, so I do not mean you when I point out that too many so-called "advocates of freedom" are just totalitarians of a different stripe. They do not want to let other people believe the "wrong" things. Why not?

    I have met several self-identified progressives and communists who have individualist personalities. On the other hand, many of my Republican comrades are conformists. Are you surprised?
    Some of my best friends are communists here
    https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...
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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Stranger was my least favorite, rivalled by Friday. But I agree that the strength of all of Heinlein's works was his choice to unify plot and theme by showing how a premise develops into a philosophy. He was a deep thinker.
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