Jackie,

I enjoyed the podcast you did with Gard.  It's nice to get the perspective of a new libertarian.  I'm sorry to hear about your current situation.  It sounds like you should be getting out of El Paso as soon as you can.  Certain parts of this country are unsalvageable.  Keep reading and keep posting. 

Thank you. :) I'm glad you liked it! I was really nervous. I would have loved to have recieved a brain transplant from someone like Bastiat before talking to Gard. lol

I swing through El Paso frequently.  Sorry you are stuck in that hole.  As far as jobs, you need to move.  One of the best places for jobs and low standard of living are Dallas/Ft. Worth, Austin, Houston, and San Antonio.  In our fascist, oligarchial run economy you have to move to the jobs.  Those four cities are doing well on the jobs front and they are not too far from where you are now.  Good luck, it is tough out there.

I started a small business doing lake management 15 years ago.  I do treatments to control aquatic plants in lakes.  It's a regulatory nightmare.  Licensing and permitting in three different states through six different agencies.  Now the EPA is moving to heap on even more requirements for permits starting this spring.  None of that stuff used to bother me.  I was always pretty good at navigating it all. 

As my client list grew it began to include government involvement more and more.  The state started a lake management grant program that tacks on a grant fee to each boat registered for use in state waters.  The premise was that boaters and fisherman that enjoy the lakes and potentially impact these "common use" resources should pay back toward their preservation and management.  The whole industry was in favor of it at the time including myself.  The principle seemed sound enough.  Then of course as a player in the industry to be competitive you had to get good at scoring those grants for your clients, and I was.  The problem is the managers of the program at the state didn't know much about the activities they were funding so they went to one of the industry chemical manufacturers for advice.  They agreed to supply that advice (how nice of them).  Within a couple years invitations to bid on certain grant jobs were being issued with instructions that only lake managers on that chemical company's "preferred" list (that purchased enough of their products) would be eligible to bid for the grant work.  

Meanwhile our governor is creating himself an image for a presidential run in 2012.  Since the United States Government is broke, and people are getting concerned,  that image requires having governed a state that is well in the black financially and sporting a triple A credit rating.  So to protect this image he steals the lake management fund and dumps it into the general fund leaving the industry and my clients high and dry, yet still responsible for paying the fees that constititute the fund.  I tried to find the statutory authority for doing this as the fund is statutorily bound to be used for the lakes.  The way I read them the words on paper they cite at the state house DO NOT provide the authority to do what they did.  Of course it's irrelevant as I'm sure the attorney general has acertained that any potential court challenge could be stretched to last beyond the governor's term.  Everything is a calculation.   They also pilfered many other "dedicated" funds created with promises that they would always be off limits for other uses.  Over 120 million worth.  He even sacked the fund created by a little check off box on the bottom of your tax form that let's you voluntarily contribute five bucks to help non-game wildlife.

I look back now at my own embrace of government in the past.  I remember trying to talk clients into starting legal taxing districts so they wouldn't have trouble raising funds to management lake every year.  I knew it would make their life "easier" and my business arrangements with them much more stable.  I started signing contracts with townships and taxing conservancy districts.   The biggest and best jobs always seemed to be the ones payed for through taxes.  There was never any question about how much they would be able to spend in a given year.  It was pretty much guaranteed.  Now I've even got non-governmental clients going out getting grants on their own through partnerships with government agencies and informing me that part of the yearly services I perform for them are now government funded.  

In the last year as I've learned by listening to people like Gard and I've begun to understand the nature of these relationships that begin with force and begun to see the oft unseen consequences.  I've watched in cases where the free market began to solve manageable biological problems in lakes, just to have the state step in and begin spending money there.  I'm watching as fertilizer companies are agreeing to voluntarily take pollutants out of their products that can harm the lakes, but well meaning legislators run out ahead of that parade and push for a law just to make sure.  God forbid we allow a voluntary apparatus develop for solving the challenges of environmental preservation when we can have an opportunity for credit to go to bureacrats.

As I've been able to tear this fluffy covering off the skeleton face of government for myself I find so much infection with this cancer in my own small business that don't think I could make a living currently if I cut out all the government involvement.

In my situation I think the best thing for me to do is begin the weaning process and begin shifting to all voluntarily funded business transactions at a pace I can sustain without losing my ability to earn a living.  We live in a system by, of, and for statists and I think as long as you continue to move in the right direction and try to reach out and wake up others you can't go wrong.

If enough free staters move maybe someday I can go to NH and become the first agorist pond treater.

Thanks Gard and keep up the good work.  S-510 is a scary step isn't it.  When they put the hands of the state on the means of food production what have you got left????

Jackie and Weedwacker,

Thank you both for sharing your stories, I really enjoyed reading them. Jackie, I concur with the advice already stated here, get the hell out of El Paso. You gave the place a fair chance and clearly it’s holding you back. Get out just as much for your own sanity as for greener pastures. New opportunities are sure to present themselves as you make your way north and east. Job hunting is a brutal process these days, even for those with desirable skills and experience. New surroundings might help get your mind re-focused on carving out your nitch in life.

As long as were doing a group therapy on this thread, indulge me for a few paragraphs. I got out of engineering school at exactly the right time. The hardest thing I had to do before leaving school is choose what offer I wanted to accept. I followed the money and landed in the automotive industry. Had a decent amount in student loan debt, but otherwise didn’t owe anybody anything. Even though I had nearly zero cash to work with, I had my entire life to start building that nest egg. So off I went to the overbuilt burbs of South East Michigan.

Needed a car, so for the first time in my life got something that was both cool and sort of practical. Now suddenly I make monthly payments to 2 banks on debt. A year into my post college life I convinced myself that buying a house would be a good investment and that I really needed one. This was 2001. I paid way too much for what I got, but fortunately I only bought what I knew I could comfortably afford. Now I was making payments to 3 banks. And on it went on from there. Eventually I sold that first house and lost big money on the deal.

11 years of NEVER being unemployed and I have found myself in a similar position as you. After losing a butt-load of cash on what was supposed to be a safe investment, I now owe more to banks than I ever did before. Did I make those choices on my own, yes I did, and I will pay off every dime of it on my own eventually.

In the meantime, for the sake of my family I have had to become an absolute slave to the corporate world just to keep it all under control. Perhaps if I had been listening to Peter Schiff and Gard’s wisdom on how a free economy is supposed to work, and how THIS economy actually works 12 years ago, my wife and daughter and I might be in NH carving out a more independent life.

I guess there is always retirement.