Yes, yes. Rather than acknowledging how USG is so legally contradictory and financially oppressive that it drives people to madness, let's just gawk at the spectacle of their demise. Nytimes at its finest.
> Sovereigns, who sometimes call themselves “freemen” or “state citizens,” have no foundational document, but broadly they subscribe to an alternate version of American history. The tale can vary from sovereign to sovereign, but it goes roughly like this: At some point, a corporation secretly usurped the United States government, then went bankrupt and sought aid from international bankers. As collateral, the corporation offered the financiers … us. As sovereigns tell it, your birth certificate and Social Security card are not benign documents, but contracts that enslave you.
The summary is slightly inadequate. There wasn't a corporation that usurped the government - the government made corporations of everyone
Basically it goes like this -
* SSN Act (created after the market crash) was created not only to provide faux "retirement" accounts but also "incorporate" every citizen of the country as a company upon birth.
* New baby John Smith instantiates company JOHN SMITH with account 123-45-6789
* ALL banking and financials go through your company account JOHN SMITH (check your checks, statements, loans). This included Liens, child support, taxes, alimony, etc.
* The line you sign your name on your check is not actually a line but very tiny "Authorized Representative" IE: John Smith is acting on behalf of JOHN SMITH
Why?
Because Feds didn't have the power to enact laws on individual citizens at the time. So they created companies out of every citizen which they can then force to pay into Social Security (among other things). This has evolved over time granting the government the power much more power over individuals through their "shell companies"
Some sovereign citizens claim to be able to gain sole control over their shell corporation JOHN SMITH and with that all government encroachments on their rights via liens and taxes are invalid.
Disclaimer: I have no position on this conspiracy theory just providing a better summary
Citizens apply to SSN and a corporation is created for them - they are not forced to apply for one. Even to this day you can have a baby and not apply to SSN (increasing a good idea given the state of the program)
yeah actually, it isn't a conspiracy theory but more like cultural critical theory, the book Seeing Like a State, is a great read about how the state works to transform the natural world into a world that can be quantified and managed by bureaucracy.
One of it's most interesting examples is how early modern governments reformed agricultural practices, not to raise productivity levels but to make them more easily measured and therefore taxed.
In the UK we sometimes get this stuff leaking in, which is really interesting to me as obviously it fits far more poorly (ie doesn't) with the legal-historical position here.
It happens with "wage gap" stuff too; people assume the USA wage gap stats apply to them here.
>as obviously it fits far more poorly (ie doesn't) with the legal-historical position here
A country with a thousand years of accumulated legal rulings seems like fertile soil for conspiracy theories. Superseded common law is the framework for many sovereign citizen's arguments in the US.
I've always been impressed by an odd contrast within theories of this sort. The theories posit that the government acted illegally in various ways. But at the same time, the theories posit that despite this, there is some deeper framework of law that the government still has to obey. Yet what force would cause this deeper law to prevail if the state was committed to its conspiracy?
Of course, this sort of thing could only appeal in the US, where a lot of the laws aren't product of a giant conspiracy but rather a complex patchwork of local, state and federal strictures, so a spew of incoherent legal nonsense takes a given court office a while to deal with.
> the theories posit that despite this, there is some deeper framework of law that the government still has to obey
Isn't this the spirit of hacking in general?
Of course, they're trying to hack a system rooted in fundamentals that undermine hacking. So rather than a vulnerability leading to a "full compromise", the best that can be obtained is a minor advantage.
I dunno. Germany has the same kind of thing. Search for "Reichsbürger". Essentially these people reject the modern German nation, and say they belong to one reich or another - either the Kaiserreich or the Nazi one.
What these conspiracy people don't get is that a nation exists as a consequence of its subjects and warriors loyalty to it and obedience of it. It's just a power structure. All the legalities and voting and bureaucracy around it are just there because it's much easier for everyone to live with a power structure that behaves predictably, justly and generally nicely. But the legalities are not actually necessary. At the core the answer to "Why?" is "Because we can".
Note that I'm generally pro-government. I'd rather have one nice power structure to deal with than a world operating after the rules of school, where I have to protect my lunch money myself. This is just reality.
Or as attorney Leonard French said regarding one Sovereign Citizen case on his Lawful Masses podcast[0]:
"We live in reality, where the four laws are not common law, statutory, code and... whatever. The real laws are the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, the electromagnetic force, and gravity. Everything else is fair game."
Really? You have "no position" on this conspiracy theory? You think it's possible that it might actually be true that everyone has been "incorporated" via the Social Security Act?
Sovereigns start out by taking the classroom taught non-controversial idea of self determination to its logical extreme (every individual a country unto themselves). They don't need a foundational document because they believe that not answering to anyone is the natural state and therefore needs no deceleration. They further conclude that unnatural states (re: being born into someone else's rule) must be the result of some form of scam or trick. It has appeal because on the surface it is logical and congruent with things you learn in school.
Sovereign's go from extreme libertarian to crackpot in their explanation of why the world doesn't match their description of the natural free state. They invent an elaborate story of paper people and corporations and conspiracies to act as a sort of dark matter that makes their theory match reality. Soverign's can have wildly different takes on the dark matter while still agreeing on the core ideology.
Soverign's are basically just magical thinkers who happen to be libertarian.
Ultimately, the limit of someone's freedom is violence or contract (including concord).
It is silly to assume you can evade any given state forever unless you actually want to live like a hermit. Or start from scratch, like Americans of old, and even they had to fight and lose wars.
The difference is that the loopholes rich people use generally actually exist, while the "loopholes" advertised by sovereign citizens are obvious nonsense like "by filing the right paperwork I can make the government give me a million dollars they're keeping in a secret bank account for a government-created corporation that's named after me except with all caps".
They do this under the rubric of “bleeding the beast” as they put it. The FLDS did this too, and it’s a pretty common, and massively self-serving tactic of many fringe groups. Personally I like it, because it opens a path for legal sanctions irrespective of the groups ideology or religion. They can believe whatever crazy shit they want, but fraud and tax evasion are still crimes.
While I think the “sovereign movement” is pretty laughable in both theory and action - I think this article smacks of a total lack of even attempting to understand where these people are coming from. It’s the same people that write these articles that are surprised by the vitriol directed at the press or “how trump won”
The real question is what is driving these people to behave in such an irrational way? Might it be the ever increasing reach of government into people’s lives or the fact that many in positions of power in the US seem to think of that the people should serve the government rather than the government serving the people...
One of the bases is that the government's charter (founding documents) is full of lofty ideals. But when you look at modern society in practice, most of them have been effectively nullified. And following the contour of the law, you continually see the little hacks whereby the government routed around the spirit of the higher constitutional/common law by using a procedural exception of allowing people a narrow loophole.
If you start with an assertion that the founding laws must still be in full effect (the fundamentalist mindset, effectively), then it stands to reason that if you can just find the correct loopholes you can cut through all the totalitarian cruft that was plastered on top. There's a lot of runway before individuals actually run aground from these theories (and social pressure to not admit when they've failed in a minor way), so you end up with the sovereign citizen social club.
(AFAIK what actually happened is that those loopholes were de facto closed via societal consensus. And to the degree that some of them are still effective, you're fighting an uphill social/economic battle to choose them)
The federal government was created to ensure the People's rights and was only given jurisdiction in a limited number of areas (See Article 1, Section 8).
It has seen fit to insert itself into innumerable areas, against which We the People have not protested vigorously enough. And this is despite court rulings, which state the People's sovereignty:
When we consider the nature and the theory of our institutions of government, the principles upon which they are supposed to rest, and review the history of their development, we are constrained to conclude that they do not mean to leave room for the play and action of purely personal and arbitrary power. <B>Sovereignty itself is, of course, not subject to law, for it is the author and source of law; but, in our system, while sovereign powers are delegated to the agencies of government, sovereignty itself remains with the people, by whom and for whom all government exists and acts.</B> And the law is the definition and limitation of power. It is, indeed, quite true that there must always be lodged somewhere, and in some person or body, the authority of final decision, and in many cases of mere administration, the responsibility is purely political, no appeal lying except to the ultimate tribunal of the public judgment, exercised either in the pressure of opinion or by means of the suffrage. But the fundamental rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, considered as individual possessions, are secured by those maxims of constitutional law which are the monuments showing the victorious progress of the race in securing to men the blessings of civilization under the reign of just and equal laws, so that, in the famous language of the Massachusetts Bill of Rights, the government of the commonwealth "may be a government of laws, and not of men." For the very idea that one man may be compelled to hold his life, or the means of living, or any material right essential to the enjoyment of life at the mere will of another seems to be intolerable in any country where freedom prevails, as being the essence of slavery itself. [118 U.S. 356
Sovereign citizen arguments generally reach well past any actual constitutional or legal principles and end up with stuff and nonsense like "that fringe on the flag means this is an admiralty court, so this ruling doesn't apply to me" or "by writing my name in all caps on the court document, you're actually talking about the legal corporation the government created in my name at birth".
> The real question is what is driving these people to behave in such an irrational way?
From what I understand, a substantial part of it is scam artists taking advantage of people who fundamentally lack understanding about the legal system. See this judge's ruling that contains a substantial guide on the subject, and look at the section "The OPCA Guru": https://www.canlii.org/en/ab/abqb/doc/2012/2012abqb571/2012a...
This is kind of related, but someone told me yesterday that if you move to Puerto Rico you pay 0 federal personal income tax (note: if you live anywhere else in the world as a US citizen you still pay taxes on your income), and although they have their own taxation system it's basically 0 for newcomers because they want to attract investment.
If I want to sell a large chunk of capital gains in a single year, is there anything stopping me from moving to PR for 6months+1 day to a year and paying nothing on it?
It's not 0, it's 4% and you need to jump through some hoops to do it, but basically yes. You need to get it reclassified from capital gains to consulting/contractor income.
I know multiple people who've moved to PR for tax purposes.
Even with a few hoops that I assume are manageable if others are doing it, it seems way too good to be true. I would seriously consider moving if I lined up a bunch of capital gains to liquidate in a single year.
You pay 0 federal income tax on income in Puerto Rico. That is, when the income is in Puerto Rico, not when you are in Puerto Rico. Capitol gains income happens where the capitol gains happen, not where you live. Even though you moved to Puerto Rico you would still have to pay capital gains tax on your capital gains in the non-territorial US. But if you had capital gains on Puerto Rican assets like Puerto Rico government bonds or you sold a stake in a Puerto Rican company in a transaction that took place in Puerto Rico, then you wouldn't have to pay tax on those gains.
If you can arrange for your capital gains elsewhere to look like income in Puerto Rico though, then you're all set.
What do you mean "when the capital gains" happens? Say I was an early employee of a company and received stock options. I exercised my options while living within the US and have private stock. The company IPOs, I move to Puerto Rico, and sell my shares while a resident there.
The "tax event" happens when I sell my shares, no?
It’s not just “take a vacation in PR for 183 days”. You have hoops to jump through and need to actually move there. I think cap gains rate becomes 4% on the PR part, with some amount of apportioning between PR and prior gains.
Seriously, read up on Act 20 and 22 (whichever applies). Don’t take random 2-minute internet blurbs on it. You enter into a contract with Puerto Rico, you move there, you make required donations, comply with the other rules as required.
Set aside several evenings to do the basic reading, then if still interested, engage in a PR-based expert counsel to ensure you both understand and that you do everything correctly.
For me, it would only make sense if the amount in question was mid 7 figures if you’re just doing it for taxes and didn’t otherwise want to live in PR.
I love the Australian one, the guys think that having a rental car means they can break any laws, and then when they're stopped they say "Am I under arrest?" as if it's the magic words that make the cops go away.
This insanity is HUGE in American prisons. There was a book called (I think) "One Man Out" where the author describes a case where someon used Sovereign Citizen declarations to get themselves released from incarceration supposedly. This somehow spread to nearly every correctional facility in the country and because many inmates are mentally ill in some fashion they eat this up (and it's a possible Get Out of Jail Free card, and when you're serving 60+ years I'm sure you'd try damn near anything to be released). Usually this results in just a lot of talk about becoming sovereign citizens and getting, and getting the millions of dollars held in some secret bank account attached to your social security number... and ends with some idiot filing liens against the warden of the prison (not making this shit up) and then the prisons banning all Uniform Commercial Code reference books from the institutions. I don't remember why but something to do with the whole name in all caps means you're actually a corp of some flavor - social security card is a bank account - there's millions of dollars backing that SS number - you can file liens as a corp against the warden for restricting your corp's free trade or traveling rights or some such fuckery -- then the lien will force the warden by the laws of the UCC to let you out..... It's insane, even for prison.
edit -- found an example of the lien's real effects: https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-xpm-2001-04-08-0...
This Canadian judge's ruling includes pretty much a full reference book on this kind of weird stuff and its attempted application to court systems (Canadian and U.S.), which he calls "Organized Pseudolegal Commercial Argument": https://www.canlii.org/en/ab/abqb/doc/2012/2012abqb571/2012a...
oh man, labeling the preachers of this as "gurus" is perfect -- it's always one pseudo-intellectual convincing a group of followers lol. This really is the most organized and comprehensive summary for rebutting this nonsense in court that I've ever seen. I thought it was only an American issue... huh. It has to be exhausting dealing w/delusional people.
55 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 113 ms ] threadIt covers a lot of ground -- lots of contextual information -- and is quite long, but readable (and entertaining).
Basically it goes like this -
* SSN Act (created after the market crash) was created not only to provide faux "retirement" accounts but also "incorporate" every citizen of the country as a company upon birth.
* New baby John Smith instantiates company JOHN SMITH with account 123-45-6789
* ALL banking and financials go through your company account JOHN SMITH (check your checks, statements, loans). This included Liens, child support, taxes, alimony, etc.
* The line you sign your name on your check is not actually a line but very tiny "Authorized Representative" IE: John Smith is acting on behalf of JOHN SMITH
Why?
Because Feds didn't have the power to enact laws on individual citizens at the time. So they created companies out of every citizen which they can then force to pay into Social Security (among other things). This has evolved over time granting the government the power much more power over individuals through their "shell companies"
Some sovereign citizens claim to be able to gain sole control over their shell corporation JOHN SMITH and with that all government encroachments on their rights via liens and taxes are invalid.
Disclaimer: I have no position on this conspiracy theory just providing a better summary
One of it's most interesting examples is how early modern governments reformed agricultural practices, not to raise productivity levels but to make them more easily measured and therefore taxed.
It happens with "wage gap" stuff too; people assume the USA wage gap stats apply to them here.
Oh yeah, and we get Trump supporters.
I think copyright is the only other area I can recall where people assume USA legislation applies (that's a pre-internet example), some think you have to add © to get copyright protection.
A country with a thousand years of accumulated legal rulings seems like fertile soil for conspiracy theories. Superseded common law is the framework for many sovereign citizen's arguments in the US.
>Oh yeah, and we get Trump supporters.
We also weirdly get Brexit supporters.
Of course, this sort of thing could only appeal in the US, where a lot of the laws aren't product of a giant conspiracy but rather a complex patchwork of local, state and federal strictures, so a spew of incoherent legal nonsense takes a given court office a while to deal with.
Isn't this the spirit of hacking in general?
Of course, they're trying to hack a system rooted in fundamentals that undermine hacking. So rather than a vulnerability leading to a "full compromise", the best that can be obtained is a minor advantage.
https://xkcd.com/1494/
Similarly, relying on technicalities you will still get tripped up by mens rea.
But other model-playing optimizations like tax avoidance are perfectly acceptable. As I said, "minor advantage" rather than "full compromise".
What these conspiracy people don't get is that a nation exists as a consequence of its subjects and warriors loyalty to it and obedience of it. It's just a power structure. All the legalities and voting and bureaucracy around it are just there because it's much easier for everyone to live with a power structure that behaves predictably, justly and generally nicely. But the legalities are not actually necessary. At the core the answer to "Why?" is "Because we can".
Note that I'm generally pro-government. I'd rather have one nice power structure to deal with than a world operating after the rules of school, where I have to protect my lunch money myself. This is just reality.
"We live in reality, where the four laws are not common law, statutory, code and... whatever. The real laws are the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, the electromagnetic force, and gravity. Everything else is fair game."
[0]https://youtu.be/nqPiQiinDTs?t=3143
Sovereign's go from extreme libertarian to crackpot in their explanation of why the world doesn't match their description of the natural free state. They invent an elaborate story of paper people and corporations and conspiracies to act as a sort of dark matter that makes their theory match reality. Soverign's can have wildly different takes on the dark matter while still agreeing on the core ideology.
Soverign's are basically just magical thinkers who happen to be libertarian.
It is silly to assume you can evade any given state forever unless you actually want to live like a hermit. Or start from scratch, like Americans of old, and even they had to fight and lose wars.
and rich corporations, too. indeed, why not us?
The real question is what is driving these people to behave in such an irrational way? Might it be the ever increasing reach of government into people’s lives or the fact that many in positions of power in the US seem to think of that the people should serve the government rather than the government serving the people...
If you start with an assertion that the founding laws must still be in full effect (the fundamentalist mindset, effectively), then it stands to reason that if you can just find the correct loopholes you can cut through all the totalitarian cruft that was plastered on top. There's a lot of runway before individuals actually run aground from these theories (and social pressure to not admit when they've failed in a minor way), so you end up with the sovereign citizen social club.
(AFAIK what actually happened is that those loopholes were de facto closed via societal consensus. And to the degree that some of them are still effective, you're fighting an uphill social/economic battle to choose them)
It has seen fit to insert itself into innumerable areas, against which We the People have not protested vigorously enough. And this is despite court rulings, which state the People's sovereignty:
When we consider the nature and the theory of our institutions of government, the principles upon which they are supposed to rest, and review the history of their development, we are constrained to conclude that they do not mean to leave room for the play and action of purely personal and arbitrary power. <B>Sovereignty itself is, of course, not subject to law, for it is the author and source of law; but, in our system, while sovereign powers are delegated to the agencies of government, sovereignty itself remains with the people, by whom and for whom all government exists and acts.</B> And the law is the definition and limitation of power. It is, indeed, quite true that there must always be lodged somewhere, and in some person or body, the authority of final decision, and in many cases of mere administration, the responsibility is purely political, no appeal lying except to the ultimate tribunal of the public judgment, exercised either in the pressure of opinion or by means of the suffrage. But the fundamental rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, considered as individual possessions, are secured by those maxims of constitutional law which are the monuments showing the victorious progress of the race in securing to men the blessings of civilization under the reign of just and equal laws, so that, in the famous language of the Massachusetts Bill of Rights, the government of the commonwealth "may be a government of laws, and not of men." For the very idea that one man may be compelled to hold his life, or the means of living, or any material right essential to the enjoyment of life at the mere will of another seems to be intolerable in any country where freedom prevails, as being the essence of slavery itself. [118 U.S. 356
Yick Wo v. Hopkins - https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/118/356]
From what I understand, a substantial part of it is scam artists taking advantage of people who fundamentally lack understanding about the legal system. See this judge's ruling that contains a substantial guide on the subject, and look at the section "The OPCA Guru": https://www.canlii.org/en/ab/abqb/doc/2012/2012abqb571/2012a...
If I want to sell a large chunk of capital gains in a single year, is there anything stopping me from moving to PR for 6months+1 day to a year and paying nothing on it?
I know multiple people who've moved to PR for tax purposes.
Even with a few hoops that I assume are manageable if others are doing it, it seems way too good to be true. I would seriously consider moving if I lined up a bunch of capital gains to liquidate in a single year.
If you can arrange for your capital gains elsewhere to look like income in Puerto Rico though, then you're all set.
The "tax event" happens when I sell my shares, no?
It’s not just “take a vacation in PR for 183 days”. You have hoops to jump through and need to actually move there. I think cap gains rate becomes 4% on the PR part, with some amount of apportioning between PR and prior gains.
Set aside several evenings to do the basic reading, then if still interested, engage in a PR-based expert counsel to ensure you both understand and that you do everything correctly.
For me, it would only make sense if the amount in question was mid 7 figures if you’re just doing it for taxes and didn’t otherwise want to live in PR.