I think this is a really great essay. I love the hook how I first thought he was going to be talking about the nature of businesses and why real estate is a good investment and probably give us some startup advice derived from looking at real estate.

I am an old fart so it is sometimes difficult for me to judge how much young whippersnappers know about the history of these things. But in my lifetime (I'm sure an even older fart can point to even earlier history) this kind of government seizure of property started in the 1980s when Ronald Reagan signed into a law the concept of "Civil Asset Forfeiture". At the time there were lots of stories in the news media about drug lords and how big their mansions were etc. The MegaUpload stories about all the cars, etc are in the same vein. This law was pitched as "denying drug dealers the profits from their criminal activity". (Nevermind that drug dealing is not criminal activity in the US at the federal level- the constitution doesn't authorize regulation of substances, which is why for prohibition they needed a constitutional amendment....but also due to prohibition they learned that making things legal under the constitution was a huge pain in the butt and why not simply ignore it? What's the odds that a supreme court filled completely with appointees from the two parties will overturn unconstitutional laws passed by those same two political parties?) In the same way, seizing domain names is not authorized by the constitution either. It doesn't even make logical sense (e.g.: someone selling counterfeit jerseys- ok, raid the warehouse and seize the counterfeit products, you can make an argument for that, but a domain name is not physical property, and it could be used for any number of things.) Many of the domains that have been stolen were engaging in literal free speech-- like the hip hop blog that was talking about hip hop music[1]. That's unquestionably speech. Worse, the music they were sharing was given to them by record labels as part of their promotional efforts, so it wasn't even engaged in copyright infringement!

Anyway, of course in the early years you heard about drug dealers getting busted and all their money taken. Then it started being biker dudes at airports flying across state lines to go buy (and drive back) the harley davidson they've always wanted (saw that on 20/20 in the 1990s) then it started being the guy who sells silver coins with Ron Paul's face on them, having $6M in Gold, Platinum and Silver stolen by the FBI, as punishment for suing the government to get a ruling that his business was legal after a government employee (of the US mint, which was in competition with him via their production of Silver Eagles) said it wasn't.

Then it was the guy you went to high school with, who is now a doctor and who has this wacky notion that chronically ill people should not live out their last years in massive pain and so he prescribes sufficient pain medications to relieve their suffering, only to be raided by the DEA, have all of his assets, his house, car, his wires car, all of his money, his savings, all of his stocks, seized as part of the raid. Forced to sign a confession, and go to prison, as part of a deal where they don't also prosecute all of his employees and his wife, leaving his children as "wards of the state". Of course part of the reason he had to sign the confession is, with all of his assets seized, he was unable to pay for a lawyer. Don't I remember something about legal representation being a right? All because some non-doctor decided he was giving patients-- who literally were dying, these weren't junkies-- too many drugs for their pain.

Imagine how many people with serious pain in the USA suffer because their doctors are afraid to give them the correct dosage lest they too have their lives destroyed by the DEA? And of course, since the DEA is conducting surveillance, they know the average prescription for given conditions, which, reduced by fear, means that it must continually ratchet lower and lower. This is barbaric.

Naturally, since police agencies get to keep the money they steal, this has resulted in more than one county sheriff operating literal highway robbery schemes whereby they pull over people with out of state plates-- tourists-- and seize anything of significant value they find on them. I don't know if they bother planting a tiny amount of drugs n the car anymore or not...

And of course, this has been going on, in increasingly worse degrees since the 1980s. But the news report always points out that the "accused" who had his money stolen was "charged with possession" or some other crime. Nowadays its the even more vague accusation of planning terrorism.

The thing is this-- this is not accidental. This is not just a weakness in the system. This is the design of the system. This is completely deliberate. This is a situation created with malice and forethought.

"Do you think that we want those laws to be observed? We want them broken.
There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power the government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them.
One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws." -- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

[1] Alas I don't remember the name, but I read about it on torrent freak.com back when the first round of domains were stolen.