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
---

## 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.

Unholy shiiyeet

2025-05-08T10:37:07+00:00

your board became a thailand cuisine's chamber of recipes
discovered under an Egypt pyramid
with cones & columns that produce electricity from space rays.

I hope that won't went textboard.net

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.

Zzazz missing since January 2nd

2025-04-04T20:26:25+00:00

It's been 3 months since our hero has last logged on. He was last
witnessed throwing down handfuls of benzodiazepines and chugging vodka
on stream. His current status is unknown, likely among the angels.

I propose we honor our missing hero by making the 2nd of every month
a day we live a little bit more like zzazz, in his honor, whether we
engage in drinking contests, shirtless streams, smoke narcotics on
camera, sing and play music live, netplay old games, or otherwise
attempt to emulate our fallen hero

Goroshek has also deceased. RIP little rat.

New project: WikiWikiWiki

2024-06-08T18:14:26+00:00

Greetings,

https://wiki.gikopoi.com has been launched.

Source code @ https://github.com/153/wikiwikiwiki

Features to add

2024-01-03T01:33:04+00:00

Things I want to add later:
- sage
- message trimming/cleaning
- atom feeds
- better tag engine

What do you want to see added?

Youtube embed? Images?
Are there any tags "missing" (eg: anime, books, conspiracy theories) ?
I'm all ears!

sorry for the recent downtime

2024-09-27T09:19:02+00:00

I was on vacation for 2 weeks and I guess the BBS decided to kill
itself. No problem: I'm back now!

care about pohon bbs moar please ;_;

2024-07-09T23:25:55+00:00

i actually really like the board software and style sheets. it would
be nice if the bbs had more love like jspoi gets. this board is
deserving of some more effort and love infused into it by gikopoi.com
humans. please take time to talk here o _ o`

in unrelated news, i am considering changing pseudonyms. some uneasy
feeling i get whenever i keep a pseudonym for too long and it might
be more than just a symbol.

gikopoipoi.net forthcomingness

2025-03-21T11:17:39+00:00

Doesn't it seem kind of disingenous for gikopoi.com to not have even a little
explanatory sentence or something somewhere explaining it actually is,
in relation to gikopoipoi.net? An alternative instance with some little
preference-based mods? And then going as far as calling it "kidpoi", it's like
you forked off of it against your free will or something. Rubs me the wrong way.

Streams open by default

2024-12-30T04:17:40+00:00

As a limited experiment, all streams are open by default when you
join. How do you feel about this? Is it good or bad? Should there be
a button somewhere to open/close all streams?

I prefer if you share your opinions with your name so I can go with
what the community wants, per this issue. Thank you and happy holidays

Matrix server launched

2024-11-17T15:51:02+00:00

In the past I have hosted matrix-synapse servers on multiple
occasions; resource consumption was always the limiting factor that
led me to pull the plug on them. Maybe someday I'll launch an XMPP
server. Until then, please enjoy using our matrix-conduit server.
Say hi in #lounge:gikopoi.com or swing by the #relay:gikopoi.com room
to chat with our discord and irc friends.

multichan/0chan.vip down

2024-10-24T17:37:44+00:00

0chan.vip (multichan) is down.
unavailable.

the last bastion of truth & freedom. a truly decentralized federated multichan
bbs without js bloat.

bring it back.
pohon is not a replacement because it's not a decentralized multichan.

stylesheet thread

2024-07-12T22:44:05+00:00

talk about pohon stylesheets here
here are various site features to test
>gtxt
%%spoiler%%

Hello world

2024-01-02T15:53:39+00:00

welcome to my web sight

bbs cert expired

2024-07-03T10:34:27+00:00

certificate for pohonbbs is expired 29th of june

Gikopoi Election 2024

2024-05-23T03:24:05+00:00

The year is 2024 and the Gikopoi Election is underway again.

---------------------
Year-Month-Day scheduled events
---------------------
2024-07-06 -- First debate, speeches / presentations
2024-09-08 -- Second debate, speeches / presentations
2024-11-05 -- Final election day
---------------------

If you would like to run as candidate, post a reply to this thread
with your Gikopoi name, and write an essay of at least 100
words on what changes you would bring, values you embrace, etc.

Propaganda can be submitted to our image gallery:
https://booru.gikopoi.com/post/list/election

Gikopoi Booru is open for business

2024-05-23T03:07:23+00:00

https://booru.gikopoi.com

Enjoy

Errrrrrmmmmm

2024-03-18T01:02:11+00:00

ermm... Hello Gikopoi...
Sorry that a group of three dummies attempted to target y'all.
I'll delete anything related to raids off of my site and ban them.
pls don't kill me TT

I wanna stay on good terms with Giko's admin, I promise!
We even crosslinked!
I have no idea why people got so pressed over that post, they were all valid -
criticisms....

BOARDS IS WINNING!

2024-03-17T10:17:18+00:00

BOARDS WON! BOARDS WON! BOARDS WON!
https://boardsarchive.neocities.org/pohon.png

He's too long! He's gone past the Boarder!

2024-03-17T07:40:57+00:00

∧___∧　　/￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣
（ ´∀`） < launching military attack against bbs.gikopoi.com in 3...
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Tripcode Test Thread

2024-01-09T19:30:44+00:00

Test tripcodes itt or whateverl