Businessmen aren't serfs. They do business where they choose to; even the communist Chinese can't stop that.
Serfs were farmers who were so subjugated by tyrants that they became virtual slaves on their own property. The more right someone else has to order you what to do, the more you become a serf. A businessman who is not free to manufacture the products he wants, the way he and his customers want it, the more he is restricted in who he can hire and fire and the more he is restrained from using his land the way he wants, the more that businessman is a serf.
Repealing alcohol Prohibition is leading to serfdom?!
You can tell a lot about a person by what the freedoms he values. I would trade my right to a beer for the right to manufacture vaccines. That right vanished with the federal vaccine act in 1994. Today doctors and drug manufacturers have become subservient to politicians, lawyers and courts who wield life and death authority over their trade.
Legalizing gold ownership in the 1970's is leading us back to serfdom?
More important is the right to develop mineral resources. That right has been slowly strangled over the years by extreme environmentalists in the EPA to the point where most new US resources come from other countries.
Abolishing sugar and gasoline rationing is leading us back to serfdom?
Rationing was a temporary measure during WWII. Today US taxpayers are forced to support sugar prices. Gasoline prices are high and sometimes shortages occur because of the myriad environmental regulations of gasoline that forces the serf-producers to formulate different varieties of gasoline.
Banishing Jim Crow laws is leading back to serfdom?
What good did it do them? Blacks are taken for granted by democrats who have used welfare to purchase their very right to get married and have a stable family. Today about 40% of young black men are under control of the criminal justice system. Inner cities are ruled by crooked politicians who have driven good people to the suburbs leaving the neighborhoods ridden with crime and poverty.
Repealing wage and price controls is leading us back to serfdom?
Wage controls are coming through a different door. Lawsuits are forcing employers to hire and promote unqualified people because of their race, sex or sexual preference.
Eliminating the 55 mile per hour national speed limit is leading us back to serfdom?
I would gladly trade the freedom to drive fast for the freedom to kill the cougar who menaces my children, or to shoot the bear that broke into my house, or drain the swamp on my land that breeds mosquitoes Today, you can pay a heavy fine for that privilege.
Sunsetting the Assault Weapons Ban is leading us back to serfdom?!
Not much good to have an assault weapon if you can't carry it. We used to be able to own fully automatic machine guns. We used to be able to carry weapons on commercial aircraft.
Killing the federal ban against commercial airline pilots packing heat is leading us back to serfdom?!
Read the fine print and you will realize that few pilots are going to jump through the all the hoops to take advantage of this. They have to travel to a remote area in the Southwest to take a rigorous training course. It used to be passengers could have guns in carry-on bags.
Legalizing the ability of citizens to use the Internet for profit is leading us back to serfdom?!
Didn't make much difference. It was never illegal for private computer networks to use internet protocol for their own networks. They would have just bypassed government networks.
Giving women the right to vote is leading us back to serfdom?!
But today politicians want to make it easy for illegal aliens and phantom voters to steal our elections. After they do that we will become serfs. The doctors at hospitals and clinics that were forced out of business along the Mexican border became serfs of politicians subservient to illegals. American serf-taxpayers are paying dearly for this new suffrage of illegals not just in dollars but also in crime.
It's no wonder that you 3rd Party types have no national popularity...you have no comprehension of reality.
The reality is that for every step that government takes back, it advances three steps forward. They give more freedom to homosexuals and prevent the rest of us from shunning them. They give rights to workers and take away the right of business to hire qualified people.
They tax everyone and give the money back to us provided we give up our rights -- purchasing our freedom.
They give tax dollars to politicians running for office but restrict out right to speak against them.
http://resourcescommittee.house.gov/archives/108/testimony/anncarpenter.htm
http://www.greenscissors.org/agriculture/sugar.htm
Businessmen aren't serfs. They do business where they choose to; even the communist Chinese can't stop that.
... And yet, vaccines are still being made. Go figure (perhaps hyperbole is not your friend, after all).
That said, anyone who thinks that I am not more free now at the age of 33 than my grandparents were at the same age is beyond delusional.
Real men don't whine.
Nonsense. On my land alone we mine the rock for your roads, sell water to local businesses, harvest timber for your homes, as well as have ample coal and iron for our industries. We've just drilled our latest oil well, too.
More broadly, the Bush Administration has just opened up vast new stretches of Alaskan property for mining and drilling...and existing federal law already permits you to force the government to sell federal land to you for less than $100 per acre where-ever you can establish profitable mining operations.
The EPA (and lawsuits) and such are problems, no doubt, but hardly on the scope that you claim.
"What good did it do them?"
Freedom for anyone helps free all of us in some little way, just as surely as slavery for anyone enslaves all of us at some level.
That you criticize such freedom belies your real motivation for threads such as this one, too...
Yes, rationing is now gone...and we are MORE free today because of that fact.
Lawsuit (tort) reform is being handled this very year by Republicans in Congress. Medical liability is first up on that list.
We can freely carry assault rifles. I do. We can still own machine guns. I do. We can still carry weapons on our own aircraft. I do. And commercial pilots can once again pack heat, too (yet another baby step in the right direction).
"Didn't make much difference."
Yeah, that whole "Internet Revolution" thing will never catch on... < /sarcasm >
Trading stocks on-line, selling books on-line, international auctions on-line, gambling on-line, porn on-line, doing your taxes on-line, news on-line, message forums on-line, corporate catalogs on-line, selling programming services on-line, on-line ads, email, et al...
Didn't do us much good?! Oh brother... What, like you've never even performed your own Google search??
Illegal aliens haven't stolen many elections recently; overall voter fraud is down substantially (yet more steps in the right direction). The Daley Machine may still influence Chicago, but it isn't swaying national elections any longer.
No, the real problem here is that *your* mind is enslaved. You see only serfdom in a a land of extraordinary freedom.
Until you free your mind from such artificial negativism, you'll remain self-enslaved no matter what progress we make in further expanding our freedoms.