Pohon BBS

What is law? The secular functional tests.

2026-01-10T12:37:24+00:00

Below is a practical checklist of Bastiat-style tests you can apply to any policy to decide whether, by his criteria, it is **law‑ful** or **un‑law‑ful**, expressed in secular and functional terms.

YES LL BECAUSE I LITERATE, LOSERS
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## 1. Rights-Protection Test

**Question:**
Does this policy exist primarily to protect individuals against violations of their basic rights—**life, liberty, and property**—or is it trying to do something else?

- **Law-ful if:**
- It prevents or punishes physical aggression, theft, fraud, or coercion.
- It organizes common defense (police, courts, basic security) so that individuals don’t have to carry out private retaliation.
- **Un-law-ful if:**
- Its main purpose is to manage outcomes (e.g., set prices, guarantee jobs, provide benefits) rather than stop rights violations.
- It uses the state’s force to promote particular lifestyles, moral codes, or economic patterns.

**Functional idea:**
Law is a **defensive mechanism**, not a tool for shaping society’s positive goals.

---

## 2. Non-Aggression / Negative-Law Test

**Question:**
Does the policy only **forbid aggression and protect against harm**, or does it **compel** people to do things they have not chosen?

- **Law-ful if:**
- It is “negative” in nature: it says, “You may not assault, steal from, defraud, or otherwise violate others’ rights.”
- It uses force only in response to prior or imminent rights violations.
- **Un-law-ful if:**
- It is “positive” in nature: it says, “You must participate, fund, or behave in certain ways, even if you are not harming anyone.”
- It compels actions like mandatory charity, compulsory membership in state schemes, or forced participation in “public” projects that go beyond self-defense.

**Functional idea:**
Legitimate law **stops** injustice; it does not **command** virtue, generosity, or social cooperation by force.

---

## 3. Legal Plunder Test

**Core principle:**
Bastiat’s key criterion for un-law-fulness is **legal plunder**: when the law is used to take from some to give to others.

**Question:**
Does the policy **take wealth or advantage from one group and transfer it to another** by force, under the color of law?

- **Law-ful if:**
- Any taking (e.g., taxation) is strictly confined to funding the protection of everyone’s life, liberty, and property.
- It does not favor specific industries, classes, regions, or interest groups.
- **Un-law-ful if:**
- It grants subsidies, special protections, or benefits to some at others’ expense.
- It uses instruments such as targeted tariffs, industry-specific protections, forced welfare transfers, “guaranteed” income/jobs, or other schemes that forcibly redistribute resources.

**Functional idea:**
If a private individual doing the same thing would be called **theft or extortion**, then the state doing it via policy is **legal plunder** and un‑law‑ful in Bastiat’s sense.

---

## 4. Universality and Impartiality Test

**Question:**
Is the policy **truly general**—the same rules, applied to everyone equally—or does it **privilege or burden** particular groups?

- **Law-ful if:**
- It is **universal in scope** and **non-discriminatory**: the same protections and the same restrictions apply to all individuals.
- It does not create legal categories with special rights or exemptions.
- **Un-law-ful if:**
- It treats groups differently, giving some legal privilege (e.g., monopolies, protections, exemptions) or placing special burdens on disfavored groups.
- It is effectively written “for” or “against” specific classes, professions, or interests.

**Functional idea:**
Legitimate law is a neutral set of **general rules**; once it becomes a tool for “our group vs. their group,” it is perverted.

---

## 5. Scope and Social-Engineering Test

**Question:**
Does the policy **confine itself** to preventing and punishing rights violations, or does it **organize** and **direct** areas like education, religion, charity, or economic life?

- **Law-ful if:**
- It leaves decisions about education, charity, religion, work, and lifestyle to individuals and voluntary associations.
- It only intervenes when there is actual or imminent rights-violation (e.g., abuse, fraud, coercion).
- **Un-law-ful if:**
- It sets up compulsory schooling systems, official moral or religious codes, mandatory welfare schemes, or economic plans that people must support or obey regardless of consent.
- It tries to “engineer” social outcomes (e.g., equality of material conditions, uniformity of beliefs) by force.

**Functional idea:**
Law should **protect free choices**, not replace them with a legislator’s blueprint for how people should live.

---

## 6. Consent and Self-Ownership Test

**Question:**
Does the policy **respect each person’s self-ownership** and the fruits of their labor, or does it treat individuals as resources to be directed?

- **Law-ful if:**
- It assumes individuals own their bodies, time, and legitimately acquired property.
- It does not commandeer their labor or resources for purposes other than common defense and justice.
- **Un-law-ful if:**
- It obliges people to fund or participate in endeavors they would not voluntarily support, when those endeavors go beyond protecting rights.
- It presumes that a portion of everyone’s labor and property is available to be allocated according to some social plan.

**Functional idea:**
Individuals are not means to collective ends; policies that treat them as such are un‑law‑ful in Bastiat’s framework.

---

## 7. Systemic Consequences Test

**Question:**
If generalized, does this policy tend toward a system of **universal legal plunder** and conflict, or toward **stable justice** and peaceful cooperation?

- **Law-ful if:**
- Its generalization leads to a society where people mostly interact by voluntary exchange, under equal protection of rights.
- It tends to reduce conflict by giving everyone a clear, limited framework of protection.
- **Un-law-ful if:**
- Its pattern—“use law to get benefits for my group”—would push every group to fight for control of the state, leading to permanent conflict and widespread plunder.
- It blurs the line between justice and injustice, encouraging people to see whatever is legal as automatically right.

**Functional idea:**
A law‑ful framework **stabilizes** expectations and cooperation; systemic legal plunder makes politics a war of all against all.

---

## How to Use These Tests in Practice

When evaluating a specific policy (tax, subsidy, regulation, welfare program, education law, etc.), walk through these questions:

1. **Rights-Protection:**
- What concrete rights-violations does this policy prevent or punish?
- If none, why is force being used?

2. **Non-Aggression / Negative-Law:**
- Is the policy only stopping harm, or is it commanding positive behaviors?

3. **Legal Plunder:**
- Who pays, who gains?
- Would the same transfer be wrongful if done by a private person?

4. **Universality:**
- Does the rule apply identically to everyone, regardless of class or category?

5. **Scope / Social Engineering:**
- Is this about defense of rights, or about shaping how people live, believe, work, or trade?

6. **Consent / Self-Ownership:**
- Could individuals reasonably opt out if they disagree, or is participation coerced?
- Does it override individuals’ control of their own labor and property for non-defensive ends?

7. **Systemic Effects:**
- If all groups used law this way, would we get general justice or general plunder?

- If a policy **passes all or almost all** of these tests, Bastiat would likely consider it **law‑ful** (legitimate law).
- If it **fails one or more key tests**—especially the **legal plunder** and **scope** tests—he would classify it as a **perversion of law**, i.e., **un‑law‑ful**, even if it is formally enacted and widely approved.

Giko weight loss club

2025-07-13T15:50:21+00:00

Starting weight: 88kg
Target weight : 82kg
Calories per day: 1850 ( lose 1kg per week)

I'm using this site as a reference:
https://www.calculator.net/calorie-calculator.html

Nearly to 1600 calories at the end of day with 200 left as overhead.
This is for weight loss.
You don't need any kind of special app to track calories. Just use a
combination of google and spreadsheets. The easiest way to maintain
caloric deficits is to eat low-calorie meals and snacks -- keep the
belly full without growing it larger.

i'm that nigga

2025-07-06T18:26:33+00:00

Every one is THAT nigga once and awhile.

For example, I'm that nigga on Pohon using LL (that's right I don't manually edit and keep track of my columns here: this ain't emacs!!!)

Getting organized with tech

2025-03-01T17:37:22+00:00

3 interesting ideas I've stumbled across lately --

- https://terokarvinen.com/2021/calendar-txt/
- https://github.com/todotxt/todo.txt
- https://johnnydecimal.com/

How do you stay organized?

Proprosal: EUR currency of gikopoi

2025-04-07T21:00:00+00:00

There are so many currencies we could call baseline, most notably:
- yen -- but only appeals to Japanese
- usd -- but Trump is crazy and Americans are minority
- eur -- basically a dollar*

I think "EUR" should be our baseline on Gikopoi because people with
odd currencies can understand EUR pretty well, and it also sends a
message to Americans that they are not the boss. Actually I would
rather use EUR than USD even if I lost money.

post various neat things you did

2024-07-13T17:38:56+00:00

house doesn't have a sauna so i put the shower at maximum and covered
the vent. it steam's up a little and you can pretend you are in suomi.

Melancholy Paradox

2024-05-13T11:15:30+00:00

Recently I have been craving solitude.
It's strange since so much of my life has been driven by
companionship and socialisation.
I sort of have everything I've ever wanted, a dream job,
a life long companion, financial security
and future growth prospects.
Yet.
I feel the intrusive urge to throw it away.
It's as if I WANT to become a hikki.
Im well aware how privilidged I am to contemplate this, it disgusts me in a way.
So is this just a manifestation of selfdestructive tendencies?
Or am i trying to fly to close to the NEET sun?
Was Diogenes wise to become a hobo-maxing NEETma grindset enthusiast?
Niavely romanticising a dilapidated empty flat with nothing
but the echoing keys of a dumpster laptop and stolen WIFI.
In more important and relevant matters:
How often do you wash your sheets?
I want to wash them weekly, but have failed this routinne so far.
Till we meet again - blogfagchan

The Giko Gathering 2025

2024-09-02T17:50:38+00:00

hotaru has proposed a Giko Gathering 2025 in Turkey.

Pros:
- Turkey is pretty cheap
- Accessible to most Euro bros
- Accessible to Indonesians
- Hotaru can probably score us weed

It's good to send emails to friends.

2024-01-12T19:32:44+00:00

As life goes on, and we separate from people we cared about before,
it remains a great practice to send emails to old friends every now
and then.

It's not essential AT ALL to make a Facebook / Instagram / Tiktok
/ LinkedIn / whatever to stay in touch with old friends. If anything,
people are more likely to keep their old mail address as trendy
spyware apps come and go.

Equally, it's easier to keep a friend's mail address for long spans
of time than phone numbers -- and the kinds of communications we make
over email tend to be more meaningful than the kinds we may make on
text-adjacent platforms like Whatsapp or Signal, Telegram, etc.

Do you ever send mails to your old pals?
When was the last time you sent a personal email?

If you know any old friends' emails, maybe this thread can serve as
a timely reminder to fire them off a message. Or, maybe it can serve
as inspiration to exchange email addresses with your friends today.

I hope this thread can encourage you to write someone an email,
or save someone's email address if you don't have many. Email is a
great way to maintain friendships over time and distance -- even if
it's "not trendy" it's also not bad! You would be surprised about
how many people would be pleased to get an email that's not spam
from GoogBookBankShopApp and take the time to write a caring,
thoughtful response back to you.

pohon poetics (gikoetry)

2024-04-07T08:51:25+00:00

sharing feeling and perspective morphs into an insult
I foolishly spilt what I wanted private, how stupid of me.
now it's sighing, begging for a pity party
murky thinking., my paper isn't safe either,
they hope to glean what? wants?
once I showed them a possibility of positivity or justice
they feared my hubris and punishment and told them
and they presumed to know me, my beliefs, my logic
and pretended like it was for my
protest our suffering with outlook. own good not to
## and "care" never passed career.
I can't be private, can't be public, what good is it to be a person?
and just when I nearly came off as frustrated & angered, then I
lamented & secluded []