Fun fact: it takes 1337 signatures to get an iniative on the bannock county ballot

@whlive is anything being done to strengthen/resurrect the old SBA/VA loan program?

I’ve been thinking of rights lately, and realizing that many people are trying to miscategorize rights, mostly because nobody’s really categorized them. For example, the right to healthcare is seen as equivalent to the right of free speech, even though the mechanism for aquisition and expression of said rights is vastly different. So I propose a classification system of rights via acquisition and expression mechanisms. The beauty of this system is that it becomes easier to determine how to protect rights and determine infringements.

The first classification of rights are the Natural or Animistic rights: food, water, elimination of bodily waste, and continued existence. You can’t take away these rights without actual termination of the life processes of the individual, and exercise of these rights is non-optional: if you’re hungry enough, you WILL eat what’s in front of you, regardless of consequence. The next category of rights is Human Rights, the rights you get by being a sentient being: freedom of speech, action, and belief. You can infringe these rights without actually terminating the individual, but the likelyhood is slim that you’ll succeed without greviously harming the individual. Please note that until this point, the individual is key in these rights, the individual can accomplish them by itself with no assent by other individuals. In fact, the only thing another individual can do about them is restrain the one attempting to exercise them. Now we get to Social Rights, those that require at least the implicit assent of others to exercise, such as property, self-determination, learning, first aid, and reproduction. To infringe these rights, all you have to do is refuse to assent. This refusal to assent probably will involve the individual taking the refusal of assent badly, and may result in bodily injury on the part of the individual or the infringer. Our next category of rights is societal rights, those that require the assent of many people, ie a society. These would be the right of marriage (permanent pair-bonding for reproduction), possession of named items, like arms, land, clothing, etc., self-actualization, education, care for the diseased, and equal treatment. Since a society grants these rights, only an entire society can infringe these rights: individual infringement is handled within the society, with individual recourse being defined as withdrawal from the society. Next we get into Civil rights, those that are dependent on being a member of a Nation-State. This is where we get the right to a trial by a jury of your peers, the right to vote on representation, prevention of disease, and equal protection of the laws. The Nation-State is responsible for determination of infringements and punishments, and individuals’ recourse is withdrawal of consent of the governed. Finally, we get to the last categorization of right: meta-civil rights, for want of a better term. Those rights that are not only dependent on membership in a Nation-State, but actually dependent on the Nation-State’s continued existence, such as retirement, societal safety nets such as medicare or welfare, K-12 education, and cradle-to-grave healthcare. This is by no means intended to be an ehaustive list, nor a fully fleshed-out classification system. This is hopefully a starting point for many further discussions on rights, privileges, and infringements.

Why do all the people in _causes celebre_ have to be attention whores? #festivus

You know, this whole “days getting shorter” thing is getting OLD. If ONE MORE sunset is earlier than yesterday’s, I SWEAR I’ll scream!

@AdrianneCurry flat tax is the definition of regressive tax. 10% of $25K is a lot more burdensome than 10% of $1M

In life, there’s those that lead, those that follow, and those that say “what took you so long, the coffee’s almost cold”

Here’s an example of how arbitrary the nutrition information on food is: they hardly ever include a whole number of servings in a package

QOTD: “if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything”, Malcom X

@buckminst you think I actually paid attention to what you youtubed?