A few months back I saw a headline in Jpost about Avigdor Lieberman pushing through a law cutting Knesset Member salaries by 10% in the face of the economic situation (caused by them in the first place). I was pleasantly surprised but of course thought that they should cut buy at least 90%, and preferably 100%. I also doubt they’ll do it because they are, of course, professional thieves who think they are noble. Then I read that they have voted to reverse the cuts down to 1%. I am surprised they didn’t change it to a 10% pay raise.
Moshe Feiglin proposes a law to allow something. I am in favor of any law to allow anything but the initiation of violence against innocent people. Laws to allow are by definition laws to shrink the State. The specific thing Moshe wants to allow is for car insurance companies to sue reckless drivers in the event of an accident. Insurance pays victim, then counter sues offender if applicable. This would be great, of course, because drunk drivers would be responsible for paying the medical fees or God forbid funeral fees and family restitution of the people they murder. Most likely their freedom of movement would be restricted for a long time and forced into slavery as they work to pay off the debt, perhaps even for life as salaries are mortgaged. This would greatly discourage reckless driving of all forms. A better idea would be to get government out of insurance altogether and to simply allow insurance company and client to formulate whatever contract is mutually agreed upon, which would include who is responsible for what in the event of reckless driving. But Moshe’s proposal is a good start. Unfortunately, it is shot down in committee because most Knesset Members are schmucks and schmucks don’t like losing control of industries and not being able to tell them what to do, even at the expense of hundreds of drunk driving murder victims.
Egypt is in a revolution again, after realizing that the new government hasn’t freed anyone from slavery. So now they’re looking for a NEW government again to do the same thing. The answer, nobody realizes, is to replace Morsi with nobody, dissolve the government and not institute a new one.
We see an acquaintance in the park with their kid. We ask where she is going to preschool next year. Acquaintance says she doesn’t know. The system hasn’t told her yet. We ask how the system determines which kids go to what preschool. She says that the kids with government connections get the best ones, the others are randomly assigned. I am filled with disdain.
I get an email today from a faceless bureaucrat named Aviva Something telling me that my daughter will go to preschool at a place I’ve never heard of with children she does not know. Aviva doesn’t know a damn thing about my daughter. Aviva has never met her. My daughter is simply a name on a sheet to her she gets to shuffle around on a whim after all Aviva’s friends get first dibs on whatever they want. She gets to decide where my daughter will go to preschool next year, rather than me, her parent, because Netanyahu passed a law nationalizing preschools all over the country. Now I have to fill in a piece of paper petitioning Aviva to send my kid to a preschool with her friends from this year and rely on Aviva the preschool goddess’s good graces, when all I really want to do is (insert stress relieving word here) for telling me where I can and can’t send my kid to school. If I don’t fill out this paper and instead try to send her where I want without going through the bureaucratic motions, bad things will happen to me in proportion to the amount of non-bureaucratic force I apply. The fact that this random government placement of children does not incur the righteous anger of other parents saddens me to no end.
A cousin in law I have never met looks at my wife and says that the two of them probably have similar political opinions. She says that she doesn’t think so, because she is an anarcho-capitalist. What does that mean, asks the cousin? It means that all of our political opinions are negative, meaning, there should be no politics. For example, the fact that Aviva decides where my daughter goes to school makes my daughter’s education a political issue depending on my personal connections rather than my market talents and what I can or cannot afford. After about 20 minutes of explaining that we do not believe in government and how a free market would solve whatever issue she brings up, she asks, “Well what you are describing is total…anarchy. Do you want your children growing up in such a thing?” Some people just don’t get it.
I paid my yearly car extortion fee of 838 shekels to “license” my car for another year to use road services that are horrible, unsafe, constantly jammed and filled with drunk drivers who are not responsible to pay for the damages they cause.
I paid my national insurance extortion fee even though I do not want their services.
Mandatory child stipends I have no choice but to accept will be cut next year. A ray of hope and freedom shines on my world.
A few months back I ripped up a check the Likud sent me for being a poll monkey at elections. It was quite satisfying. I tore it up in front of the local Likud chapter financial guy and he winced. It was great. He accused me of wasting the money when I could have given it to the shul. So I wrote him an equivalent check for the shul from my own pocket to shut him up. I would love to become a Knesset member if only to be able to rip up State checks on the podium in front of the entire country, or better yet, take my State salary in cash and destroy it live on the Knesset Channel, getting rid of just a bit of inflation and enriching every single shekel holder in the country equally and paradoxically accomplishing every socialist’s dream through returning the money instead of through stealing more of it.
I would also like to add that there is precedent for work as punishment. Historically, people who were caught for various offenses were to do an amount of work for the plaintiff equal to the crime that was committed. However, clearly the drunk drivers are beyond pale and I don’t know how much work could be done in order to avenge for the fact that they killed somebody with reckless intent. So the problem is people who know what they are doing but cannot control themselves.
Hopefully there will be a home schooling revolution in Israel. G-d willing.
I’m not going to pretend that I agree with you on everything, but if I had to choose one thing to debate, it would be your endorsement of slavery for life. I am sorry to say that that concept goes against everything the Torah stands for. It’s a straightforward pasuk: ki tikne eved ivri SHESH SHANIM YA’AVOD! You can argue against the state enforcing this principle, but on the principle of the matter LIFETIME SLAVERY IS NOT AN ACCEPTABLE RESULT OF ANY POLICY. Period.
Everything else you say (in this article) is for the most part hegyoni. The Feiglin plan is better than the status quo (as long as it doesn’t lead to permanent enslavement) and the government is way too involved in the insurance industry (although I don’t like the idea of the barrier insurance places between the drunk driver and his victim. If the only force capable of breaking that down is the state, then I would support it.)
Chaim –
Thanks for the comment. Slavery would only result if someone does not have the money to pay the medical expenses of the person he hit while driving recklessly. I’m not a big fan of these blanket statement like “everything the Torah stands for”. The Torah stands for a lot of contradictory things. I can just as easily quote you Perek HaChovel or Rak Shivto Yeeten Verapo Yerapeh. And if he can’t he has to work for the man for as long as it takes to pay the bill. If that required slavery for life, so be it. If it only takes 5 years, so be it. But pay he must.
I was basing my comment on Rashi on the quoted passuk. Even if he stole millions of dollars, his term of slavery does not exceed six years. If you think you see otherwise from perek hachovel, please go ahead and quote it. Other societies may have believed in enslavement until the debt is paid, however other societies also believed in an eye for an eye – literally! We should not be making policies that contradict overt Torah principles. Knowing that you will be facing six years of serving the guy you hurt, and coming face to face with the results of your recklessness day after day, should be enough of a deterrent and the rehabilitation effects would be far greater than ten life sentences in prison.