Freedomain Radio

first off I totally agree with everything that stef said in his video regarding ron paul
he is not going to end the government in school/roads/social security etc. etc.
it could be much like a reagon presidency where he says a lot but does almost nothing at home.
But as president he can bring all the troops home and can pardon all non violent prisoners. Not saying he will do both of those but but I would see minimal resistance to both.

But my 'plan'
ok so when I started writing this I was going to say that he could veto everything and even if some agency's started to strike etc. then he could fold, and it would show that you cant shrink the gov so more people would push away from gov as a whole. And that since he was elected it means that a lot of people believe in a smaller gov then we have so it would make headway. And that he would be able to at least be able to win the fight against our 'libertys' that are being taken away. And since the american gov is going to bankrupt in the next 10 years anyway, paul will not be able to kill social security and medicare he wont be able to stop the collapse. So at least in the last days I will not be 'butt searched'

-But stef is right, even if he is elected it will be with a minority and nearly everyone will see failures and not understand why and blame the libertarians which is a fear I had from the start but was pushing aside for hope. Your right stef it is the hope of having normalcy in our lifetimes  that will destroy us.

But here is my new plan.
paul makes a good showing in the primarys but ends up loosing and then the libertarian party actually gets 10%+ of the vote and the establishment freaks out and backs off while the gov goes bankrupt

one of my arguments was lysander spooners voting as self defense, which I would actually still subscribe to(please comment on this) but really ron paul is leading a frontal assault on a full regiment of tanks with nothing but a few farmers for back up and then the the tanks call in there air support (this made me think of the movie V for vendetta, spoiler,  and i thought everyone was just going to get mowed down at the end to show the evil of gov)
 

so really everyone knows your arguments are right stef its just the hope that they can fix their families is pushing them to hope that they can fix the system without it falling apart first?

...one of my arguments was lysander spooners voting as self defense....

If I can be said to have any "heroes," Lysander Spooner is among them, but "voting in self-defense" is nonsensical.  If you have the numbers to effectively resist government via its own game, why are you enabling the government by even participating in it?  If you don't have the numbers to effectively resist, yet you vote anyway, it's pointless symbolism that legitimizes the system to itself (even if not to you).

how much time is left?

I think its hard to say but if you look at current liabilitys of the US gov it is over 50 trillion.  and teh first baby boomer retired about a month ago or so.  even paul is saying that he does not want to remove SS or medicare, maybe when Harry Browne was running their was still enough time to fix it by selling everything off but i think we passed the point of no return, and real estate is falling in price now so that would make selling off gov property near impossible anyway.    i guess the big question is when more baby boomers start go on medicare how sick are they and how much will medical care cost.  and the majorter of boomers are on the front end of the generation

so maybe 10 years? at least it would not surprise me, but then like you said it falls apart faster and faster as those in power realize whats happening.

 i think we are seeing the start of it now with the dollar falling  and the forever wars.  so who knows maybe even less then that

I think thats part of the point, no one can stop it at this point so dosent it make sense to make it as painless as possible.

meaning not starting any new wars and not continuing to loose freedoms.  trying to ween people off of the government even just a little could make a big difference when if finally falls apart since the more people reliant and the bigger the crash the more people will be looking for a scape goat or just take out their pain on others.

but I think the part i was missing was that so few people understand that paul would actually lessening the pain and would see him as causing it that it would hurt the cause for going ahead after the collapse.  and their is also the possobility that people will look for the strong leader afterwards as well.

but part of me says we need to do something to lessen the pain of what is coming, i keep jumping back and forth 

What are people's predictions of when the collapse will be?

Stef, do you have any opinions?

I can plausibly see it happening and I know that, roughly paraphrasing Stef, "such massive deficits end in tyranny or bankruptcy or both."

At the same time it just seems so unlikely.  After all, America's been through the civil war, both World Wars, and the Great Society (sorta).

On the other hand, the numbers x trillion dollars debt, y trillion dollars taxes, and zed war add up to unsustanability.

Dammit I just want to be an electrical engineer.

I guess my thinking with voting as self defense is that the number for resisting gov via its own game do not exist.  but enough people do not want gov to control everything that you can vote people in who will limit gov but very few want to or even believe that it might be possible to not have one.

 my understanding of the ending of slavery(please someone correct me if im wrong here this is off of memory) is that it slowly gained acceptance.  jeffreson wanted to eliminate it in the deceleration  of independence (and tried before wiht virginia const) but felt it was better to declare independince as a full coalition then without many of the states(do not want to argue if this was good or not).  and slowly since them more and more people started to have fewer slaves and public opinion started to believe that slavery was immoral, but also that it was possible to live without slaves.  

so wouldnt the removal of the state be more likely to come about after a length of time where states are small and not really doing much so people can see that life is possible without them.  I think the proving the state is immoral is also important but look at minarchists, they are very like minded but believe even if  the state is  immoral the state is necessary  .  I have heard paul say that the reason he is not a anarchist is because he would fear the power vacuum and that someone like the UN would come in and claim power over america.