This story serves as an example of how the state has a monopoly on coercion. The state can force you to do its will. This is why you must trust the state while you can choose to trust a corporation.

A tactical law enforcement team broke into Tom Shiflett’s home and took his 11-year-old son to hospital for court-ordered medical treatment for a minor head injury.

Garfield County’s All Hazards Response Team raided the home Friday night, a day after Jon Shiflett fell after grabbing the handle of a moving car. The child was returned to the family at about 2:30 a.m. Saturday, hours after the raid.

“Inappropriate is not nearly strong enough a word. It was gross irresponsibility and stupidity,” said Ross Talbott, owner of the Apple Tree Mobile Home Park south of New Castle who rents to the Shifletts and who witnessed the raid. “Is this Russia? I don’t know what we’re coming to when they think your kid needs medical help and they send a SWAT team.”

In the end, the injury wasn’t as severe as caseworkers from the Garfield County Department of Social Services thought when they went before a judge seeking a search warrant and order for medical treatment.

The doctor recommended fluids, Tylenol and ice to treat the bruises, according to a copy of Jon’s patient aftercare instructions.

When was the last time you heard about a corporation busting down someone’s door and taking their child?

Via Instapundit.

Instapundit updated this article with a readers comments which I think make an extremly excellent point.

Consider the irony. The Marines and Army have now progressed in their counterinsurgency campaign and the understanding of the population to the point that they can cordon and knock. They are respectful, cautious, and unwilling to impose anything foreign or hostile to the culture or the honor of the head of household. Yet in America we have men donning tactical gear to forcibly enter the homes of people and remove them for … forced medical service for non-life threatening injuries. It is a sad picture.

Sony has recently announced that there will be making available music that is not DRM protected.

In a move that would mark the end of a digital music era, Sony BMG Music Entertainment is finalizing plans to sell songs without the copyright protection software that has long restricted the use of music downloaded from the Internet, BusinessWeek.com has learned. Sony BMG, a joint venture of Sony (SNE) and Bertelsmann, will make at least part of its collection available without so-called digital rights management, or DRM, software some time in the first quarter, according to people familiar with the matter.

Sony BMG would become the last of the top four music labels to drop DRM, following Warner Music Group (WMG), which in late December said it would sell DRM-free songs through Amazon.com’s (AMZN) digital music store. EMI and Vivendi’s Universal Music Group announced their plans for DRM-free downloads earlier in 2007.

The legislation that gave these corporations Digital Rights was very poorly written. As a consequence consumer largely ignored the legislation and found ways to get around the protection measures. This is notable for several reasons.

A common complaint from Darwin has been that lobbyists corrupt our legislative branch leading to the passage of laws that the majority the citizenry would disagree with. I have argued that when legislation does not enjoy the support of a large block of voters that legislation will die. Either the laws will be repealed and or the citizenry will largely ignore the laws. In both instances, the ‘corruptive’ effect of lobbyists is diminished by the fact that the bad law fails to have the desired effect. It’s not hard to see the fact that the four major music distribution companies have realized that the laws they were able to get passed have been ignored and therefore are willing to abandon the legal rights DRM grants them.

It’s also noteworthy because the failure of the recording companies to make consumers respect their rights underscores just how helpless corporations are at forcing their will on the consumer. All four recording companies at the start of this digital era attempted to force consumers to respect the digital rights given to them by law. Millions of consumers simply ignored these companies’ attempts at coercion. Consumers could easily ignore the company’s coercive attempts because not a single one of these corporations could directly force a consumer to respect digital rights. In cases where they did force someone to obey the company’s digital rights it’s was always mediated through the state via the courts.

One final thing to note. The recording companies turn around on this position started when one of the recording companies began using a non DRM rights model to sell songs through Apple. Once it was noted that success could be attained through that matter competitive force caused the other recording to begin flipping their models. Thus, we see its free market competition that brought about the change. A change that is more in line with what the citizenry wants, but also does not require any of the onerous regulatory laws someone like Darwin would demand. Regulatory law is simply unnecessary because the markets responded to the citizen before enough political will was marshaled for the passage of regulations.

Lobbyists are helpless to force citizen to do the will of their corporation. Securing the passage of laws that most citizen disagree with will not protect the company or industry’s interest since the citizenry will simply ignore those laws. I should like to point out that the Digital Rights Media Act of 1998 was no doubt passed because the vast majority of citizen did not understand what the law meant. It seems to me that lobbyists are most effective at influencing law when the majority of the citizenry is ignorant of the significance of the law. If true, it’s difficult for me to get to upset at the ‘corrupting’ influence of lobbyists. If anyone is to blame it’s the ignorant citizenry. Seems to me the lobbyists are clever by taking advantage of relatively neutral political climate to get their legislation passed.

And as this story shows, no matter how clever the corporations lobbyist are, companies are helpless to force the citizenry to do their bidding. As I have said before, and I’m sure I will say again, I can choose to trust a corporation. I have no choice but to trust the government.

How bad is it for mom and pop store when a large massive corporation sets up shop next to there store?

Soon after declining Starbucks’s buyout offer, Hyman received the expected news that the company was opening up next to one of his stores. But instead of panicking, he decided to call his friend Jim Stewart, founder of the Seattle’s Best Coffee chain, to find out what really happens when a Starbucks opens nearby. “You’re going to love it,” Stewart reported. “They’ll do all of your marketing for you, and your sales will soar.” The prediction came true: Each new Starbucks store created a local buzz, drawing new converts to the latte-drinking fold. When the lines at Starbucks grew beyond the point of reason, these converts started venturing out—and, Look! There was another coffeehouse right next-door! Hyman’s new neighbor boosted his sales so much that he decided to turn the tactic around and start targeting Starbucks. “We bought a Chinese restaurant right next to one of their stores and converted it, and by God, it was doing $1 million a year right away,” he said.

So let me get this straight. When you offer a higher quality product at equivalent price you don’t lose your consumer base? Odd and here I thought capitalism failed when massive corporations got involved. Huh. I guess corporations don’t have coercive force like some of me reader’s best friend: the state. I trust corporations because I don’t I have to. Same can’t be said about the state.

Darwin Writes:

I’m not sure your argument is factually true. Roe V. Wade doesn’t actually specifically allow a woman to determine whether something is alive, right? Doesn’t it just make abortions legal?

The de facto end result of Row versus Wade is that women were given the extra constitutional right to determine when human life begins. This is perfectly captured by the fact an assailant that harms a pregnant woman that wants her child will be charged with homicide if the fetus dies as a result of the attack. However, the same woman that decides to have the fetus aborted will not be charged with homicide. The result here is that a woman is given the extra constitutional right to determine when life begins.

Take for example the highly publicized Scott Peterson case several years back. At the end of the trial, Peterson was convicted of homicide of his wife and unborn eight month child (They are called children when the mother wants the fetus). Had the mother not been murder but elected to undergo a late term abortion she would not have been charged with homicide.

In this context, the application of murder is contingent on how the mother regards the fetus. A mother that regards the fetus as living can declare homicide while that same mother that regards the fetus as non-living can declare it not a homicide. Hence, the right to chose is a de fact right to determine what constitutes a living human in a certain context.

Allowing the government to define when life begins is like allowing the government to define what constitutes a family, or allowing the government to what IQ score you need in order to be considered ‘gifted’

How about letting the government determine how much wealth one can acquire before some of it should be reallocated or letting the government determine what kind of curriculum children should be taught at school. I must say its odd seeing you appeal to a libertarian argument in defense of abortion. I’m also surprised to see you express distrust of government when you blithely accept its role in redistributing wealth.

In any event, as I had already stated with Jamie’s comment, my idea is to ratify a constitutional amendment. As I’m sure most are aware, constitutional amendments require the most stringent criteria before they are passed into law. This rigorous criterion insures that the largest majority of people agree to this definition before it is passed. In no sense is this allowing the government the power to determine what life is. If anything, this is an attempt to restore the definition of life into the hands of the people away from the government.

I really don’t like the term ‘government’. It’s much too broad and is often used in poorly articulated arguments like your current one. However, if I’m to indulge, arguably the most important role government has is determining what can and can’t be killed. With this most basic determination government is able to establish the safety and security necessary for civilization. As I have stated on countless times, government is by definition the entity that has monopolistic power over coercion. It has this power for the explicit purpose of protecting its civilians. This odd extra-constitutional right for a subgroup of citizens, in addition of smacking of discrimination, strikes against the fundamental principle from which government is built. That is the right to determine who lives and who dies.

To blend the last two paragraphs into a more coherent whole I would say that the people, measured by the ratification of a constitutional amendment, should define what life is to allow the state to go back to providing its most important role. Protecting it’s citizens from murder. This clearly would include fetuses that have developed past the point the people have decided constitutes life.

As I have said before, the defining feature of government is coercion. Thats reflect in the fact that Canada plans to build military bases in the Arctic to control the resources up there. That is to say they want to force other countries from not extract resources in the arctic.

Traffic violations as a revenue stream is dumb and serves as yet another reminder of how the state has coercive power.