Not everyone abstains from voting, but those who do...

The white part of this image came from a tweet someone posted after the presidential election, most likely a Hillary supporter.  The black part was added as a response to the tweet(maybe a Trump supporter).  Here is my response:

Not all of us abstained from voting. But those of us who did refused to participate in an immoral system of aggression against our neighbors designed to create the illusion of legitimacy for a government that uses force, coercion, and violence to steal the wealth and freedoms of our friends, family, and neighbors.

Government is a weapon

Hillary Clinton supporters react to Hillary's loss to Donald Trump on election night.

The Hillary supporters in this photo are likely not really thinking about how government is going to be used against them. They are probably just upset because their "team" lost. But one of the reasons they are upset is because of how Donald Trump being president is going to negatively affect them. I think it's a shame that the office of the president is so powerful that people have to be fearful of who has that office. The founding fathers created a presidency that was so weak that it shouldn't matter who it is to regular Americans.

But every president pushes a little further outside of the boundaries that the Constitution sets for him. This has happened with every president, but really took of with Abraham Lincoln, and hasn't slowed down since then. There is now a cycle that repeats every time a new president is elected.

The cycle goes like this: People spend 4 or 8 years supporting the president with the R or D behind his name (just because it’s the same letter they carry behind their name) as he grabs more power for the office of president than his predecessor did, cheering him on as he further erodes liberties, enslaves the residents of the nation through taxation and inflation, and makes government more authoritarian. Then they spend the next 4 or 8 years in a panic as they fear how all these powers will be used against them as they prepare and plan to win next time so that they can start the cycle again.

A better system would be one where people respected the non-aggression principle, which says that you don't use force against anyone unless you are defending yourself, you family, your property, or your rights. It says that you can use force, just not to be the aggressor, only to be the defender. Libertarians believe that this principle applies to all areas of our live, including government. It's wrong for a person to use force to take their neighbor's property, and it doesn't become okay when it is the government taking your neighbor's property. If we vote for a politician, we are choosing someone who will use government to take our neighbors wealth or freedoms, and this violates the non-aggression property.

The democrats in this picture likely cheered on President Obama as he used government to spy on Americans, to punish their enemies, to steal wealth from Americans to fund programs they wanted, and to murder innocent people, and now they are afraid that President Trump is going to do the same, but he is going to use government against democrats.

Of course, now republicans will spend the next 4-8 years cheering on Trump as he grabs even more power for the office of the president and uses the power against their enemies, only to be weeping and gnashing their teeth when the next democrat is elected as president as they fear how government will then be used against them.

The Driver's License Nightmare

Getting a driver's license is a great moment in the life of a teen. It's a sign of maturity and of nearing adulthood, and it's a license for freedom.

While a system of insuring that drivers know the rules of the road and have competent driving skills is important to the safety of all drivers and the efficient flow of traffic, having a State-run monopoly issuing driver's licenses is a horrible way to manage this system. Driver's licenses offices have a well deserved reputation for being inefficient, having rude employees, and being difficult to work with. In the Houston area where we are,it takes a minimum of a month to get an appointment, and you can only get one that quickly if you are willing to drive 60 miles from home. The closest office to us required a 2 month wait. 

3 of the 6 kiosks used for check in are out of service.

After waiting that month, if you are missing one of the 10 forms they require you to have, you are sent away and required to go to the back of the line, meaning you have another month wait and another 60 mile drive. 

Once in the office it is likely that you will experience at least one employee who will be short with you when answering questions, or downright rude. 

This is all happens because the government has a monopoly on licensing drivers. Monopolies have no incentive to offer good service or a good product. If you don't like the service the State provides, you can't go anywhere else to obtain a license. This doesn't happen in the free market. In the marketplace, if you don't enjoy the service or product a company provides, you go to a different company. If enough people do this, the company has a financial incentive to improve its service/product, or they risk going out of business. 

So I was thinking about how drivers could be licensed without a government monopoly. I'm not claiming to have come up with a perfect solution, but the system we have now is horrible and people just live with it, so why not consider something different. 

Maybe we could have auto insurance companies issue licenses. Insurers have a financial reason to verify that their customers know he rules of the road and are skilled and able to drive safely. The safer their drivers are, the more profitable they can be. They might offer different grades of licenses. Go through the bare minimum of training, maybe 100 hours of classroom and behind the wheel instruction and you could get a rate, say $100 a month, for your insurance. Go to more advanced training like defensive driving or accident avoidance and they might give you a rate of $75/month. This system would encourage drivers to complete more training to get more advance licenses for cheaper rates. 

The abundance of poor service offered at State-run licensing offices would become a thing of the past. If we didn't like the service we received at the Farmer's Insurance licensing office, we could swap to Geiko, Allstate, or many other insurers. This is not to say we could find someone who who license you if you were not qualified to drive, because these insurers would still want to be sure you were a safe and qualified driver before making themselves financially responsible for you. 

I don't know if this is the system that would be best to replace the state run system we have now, but I know that the state run monopoly that now exists is terrible and should be replaced.