09 Dec 2013

Josie the Outlaw’s Message to Police

Big Brother, Libertarianism 21 Comments

By the way, one of the up and coming liberty heroines I featured in my hippy video is “Josie the Outlaw.” I linked to her new site when she launched it last week, but I want to draw your attention to one of her powerful videos. This thing already has 109,000+ views.

I totally understand why people who agree with her perspective think this is amazing, but I’m curious to hear the reaction from naysayers as well. Is there anyone who thinks this is wrong / silly for her to post? If so, why?

21 Responses to “Josie the Outlaw’s Message to Police”

  1. Major_Freedom says:

    Looks like about 60 Nazis disliked the video as of this writing (Dec 10, 2013)

  2. Scott says:

    While I mostly agree, the naysayer in me asks where does this end? If enforcement of the law becomes subject to the individual enforcer’s private preferences, is that really more just? She calls on police to decide where they’ll draw the line, which sounds good when we think the line will be somewhere reasonable. But what if they draw the line at investigating crimes against black people? Or maybe they draw the line at letting conservative groups file for tax exempt status. Once we subject enforcement of the law to the enforcer’s individual preferences, we’re not really living under the law anymore.

    This would be less important if she had spent most of the video saying, “Here is the line that you should draw.” But instead she spent most of the video asking police to draw their own line. Maybe that’s just rhetoric, but it’s a potentially dangerous rhetoric.

    • Cosmo Kramer says:

      The constitution

      • BZ says:

        She answered that question in the video, explicitly. And she explicitly said the answer applied to everyone, not just police. What did you think of her answer?

        • Ken B says:

          Her answer implies that a man manufacturing sarin in his basement should not be arrested until he actually releases it. so it leaves a bit to be desired.

    • Ken B says:

      There’s also a great gaping contradiction here I think. She complains, rightly, about warrantless searches. But should anybody be able to get a search warrant? Don’t we want warrants to be served only by the police and not by others? If the service ends upon entering someone’s home don’t want restrictions on who can do that and under what circumstances aside from the warrant itself? So the claim that if you’re not entitled to do it without a badge and not entitled to do it with the badge is simply wrong.

  3. James says:

    I don’t think cops generally believe that they get to draw any line about what they won’t do on the job. Maybe she can have another video asking police supervisors if they will allow their subordinates to start deciding what laws they are willing to enforce.

  4. skylien says:

    I guess that you won’t get many answers on this one…

    • skylien says:

      And no, 300 comments about administered prices don’t count!

      • Major_Freedom says:

        I recently “administered” an asking price of $100 billion for my house.

        Clearly the reason I am not selling the house, is because the tight, stingy, non-totalitarian interventionist weak and pathetic and tea party corrupted government hasn’t increased nominal spending by enough to enable the market for housing to clear.

        Bwahahaha

        • skylien says:

          Yes it seems that (stupid) producers just randomly produce stuff in arbitrary quantities and set prices on completely arbitrary cost + markup patterns. Therefore we need (wise) people with the capabilities of LK who are able to adjust the money supply/aggregate demand in such a way that the actual market demand (subjective valuations expressed in money prices) of every good coincide with the arbitrary prices set by producers, so that supply meets demand.

          The law of supply and demand should rather be called: The law of supply and by LK adjusted demand.

  5. Cosmo Kramer says:

    She figuratively kicks ass.

  6. Innocent says:

    Here is the issue I have. When should you enforce something and when should you not? If I have become a police officer I am there in order to create order. Police ARE there as a group of force that has authority granted it by the state to be the muscle.

    It is then the oppressed who have to decide what level of resistance they are willing to fight back.

  7. David R. Henderson says:

    I think it’s good that she posted it. It takes some courage because it’s conceivable that some cops could target her.

    • skylien says:

      “Democracy means that if the doorbell rings in the early hours, it is likely to be the milkman.” Churchill

      Wow, comments like yours make me doubt if this is still true for the US…

  8. Ken B says:

    Not wrong or silly certainly. These are legitimate questions. But it does feel like she’s playing to the gallery. It feels in other words the target audience is people like Bob Murphy or major freedom and not actual cops.
    Sadly I agree with David R. Henderson that she has exposed herself to reprisals. I was once threatened with arrest when I made a complaint about an officer, and his commander only backed down when I escalated to his boss.

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