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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 27, 2025

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One can be below the law with not too much effort, on the anarcho- side of anarcho-tyranny. It's a mean, impoverished, but quite possibly freer existence, at least if you have no internal moral constraints on theft and violence. If you do have such constraints you're stuck following the rules but not benefiting from them, which just leads to an unlamented death in short order.

To be above the law requires considerably more. Great work if you can get it, though.

In between, you're on the tyranny side of anarcho-tyranny. Step out of line even once on one of the things those with power care about, and you're headed for the unlamented death. This is enforced in all sorts of ways -- New Jersey's draconian penalties for a law-abiding citizen carrying a gun is only one of them. Drunk driving law is another -- doing that gets a lot of people into a cycle where they drive illegally (because they live and work somewhere you have to drive), get busted, go to jail, lose their job, have their license revocation extended, get out, get another job, repeat, for a very long time.

Others are less obvious; over on another board someone said they once managed to find an employee by sifting through the recruiter's discards, and found one where the employee had been rejected because he'd been previously fired. That employee didn't realize what everyone knows but most will deny: in most of the white collar world, below executive level, to be fired is to be unhireable, so you'd better learn to conceal it.

As it has always been. Choose.

Also, the level of anarcho-tyranny does vary by state. One of the things you could hypothetically choose is to live in a less tyrannical and less anarchic area.