I just got a link from Dr. Yahoo titled Texas arresting people in bars for being drunk.

Looks like Texas is trying to protect innocent citizens from the non-violent drunks who haven’t committed any crimes yet. Sounds good to most people, I’m sure, until you realize the attrocities being committed here in the name of safety.

Drunk driving is a terrible thing to do, but one that continues to happen as the courts don’t penalize repeat offenders and rarely penalize even those who hurt or kill someone recklessly while drunk. The reality of any crime is that the punishment for a real violent crime should be severe — VERY severe — if they want people to not commit the crime. In my opinion drinking and driving is stupid, but it isn’t criminal. When you run someone over with your car, drunk or sober, you’ve trampled on their personal property (their bodies) and I can understand going after property infractions.

Yet when you’re driving your car and you don’t hurt or kill anyone, has a crime against property been committed? I don’t see one, yet a criminal is still being created here (according to the law). In the end, the “criminal” pays a large fine, attends some classes with hardcore alcoholics, and then goes back to driving — usually in 3 months. A second drunk driving arrest brings maybe a 6 month to 12 month penalty and a larger fine and more classes.

What is common in these cases? The fines. The court doesn’t care about the non-existance victims, they care about the collection of the bucks. Now that they’re arresting people on private property for public drunkeness, they have a new weapon to collect those bucks: more tyrannical laws. Why don’t they arrest people for being naked in public when they’re changing in the Target changing rooms? How about arresting people for disorderly conduct and noise pollution when they’re “singing” karaoke?

A bar is a private piece of property — people should be allowed to do whatever it is they do as long as everyone is consenting. I won’t even say they have to be adult since I don’t see any reason why a family can’t go out and get hammered with their kids — if they’re regular alcohol abusers their kids will likely follow the same route anyway. In the long run, the economy will do better by leaving those people to spend their money as they please, with whom they please, in the way they please.

To say that arresting non-crime committers for victimless crimes is acceptable sounds to me like a political slogan against a problem that doesn’t really exist. If the courts want to protect people on the roadway, they can make penalties for harming another individual much harsher and toss out the penalties for not hurting anyone. I prefer financial renumeration for any crime committed rather than jail time, but that’s my market anarchism talking.

And as for the guy who stumbles out of a bar into the road and gets hit? That’s his choice. And the guy who jumped from a balcony and misses the pool? Again, that’s his choice. Leave them to do whatever it is they want to do; be there when they actually harm someone.

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Bill Bonner today made an interesting comment: The War Against Nobody, alone, will cost the typical American family about $10,000 – or about a sixth of its entire net worth. Bonner means the War on Terror when he says the War Against Nobody, which is very appropriate as the War on Terror is no different than the War on Drugs or the War on Welfare or whatever various “wars” have popped up over my generation that have led to more money being spent because more people are now criminals.

Bonner makes a good point, but the war won’t cost the typical American family anything because they’re not paying for it directly. Instead, the War Against Nobody will cost everyone something today, and it will cost everyone something tomorrow. When I’ve done tax audits for friends and family (adding up all their income and adding up all the various taxes they pay), most households end up paying almost 50% of their gross income in taxes of some sort. The average worker has to work half the year to pay for government, and only then can they pay their mortgage, utilities and living costs. A large chunk of government spending goes to pay interest in debt — this occurs at every level: local, state and national. This debt was created by the previous generation; we have our parents to “thank” for it.

The current generation has less savings and less equity (versus the median income) than the previous generation — we’ll need more public money in order to retire. We’ve placed our country, our states and our communities in more debt than in all of our history (when do you think all those bond issues get paid?). This means the next generation will have even more debt than we do today. Yet government doesn’t like to increase overall taxes beyond that 50% figure, so they find another sneaky way to pay for yesterday’s expenses today: currency inflation.

Currency inflation means the Federal Reserve prints new money that didn’t previously exist. Instead of creating more debt, they devalue everyone’s current money holdings — all the dollars we all have in our pockets, our wallets, our purses and our bank account goes down in value just a little bit. We don’t notice it and it creeps up on us over time so it is less painful when we realize that cars cost us more out of our salary than our parents’ cars did; houses cost more as a percent of our salary than our parents’ cars did, too. Your house price may have boomed, and the interest rates might have been low, but it doesn’t matter — you’ll pay more of your income for your home than your parents had.

Blame your parents, today, for the mess they left you. Then pass the token to your children, they’ll be blaming you in 40 years.

Thanks folks.

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