Saturday, May 16, 2015

What the heck, I'm in for $25.

One of these archaic pre-Enlightenment concepts is not like the others:
  • Trial by Ordeal
  • Bleeding
  • Ptolemaic system
  • Witch burnings
  • Asset forfeiture
If you guessed "Asset forfeiture", you're absolutely right! While you'll only read about the others in history books, you can still see ridiculous case names like The United States of America, Plaintiff, v. $107,702.66 in United States Currency, Defendant right here in 21st Century America.

"Siri," you might ask your smartphone, "how in the name of Isaac Newton does the government get away with using this obviously ridiculous medieval dodge to take people's money?"

"Let me check on that," Siri will respond, as baffled as anybody else by how this is still allowed to go on, despite legal underpinnings as wobbly and archaic and full of hocus pocus as the Divine Right of Kings and the transmutation of base metals to gold.

A guy I know made a wisecrack about riding around with $30k in his pocket, just waiting for the inevitable seizure. I said if he was gonna do that, I'd be in for twenty bucks just to watch the show. So now there's a Kickstarter. It probably won't happen, but it'd be funny if it did...
.