Hi, everyone. I've been on this sub for a while and would greatly appreciate some advice from the community on whether I should apply this cycle and on a good school list for my stats. I am dead set on becoming a physician-scientist. Open to MD-PhD programs in addition to MSTP's
Bio Data: URM Not low-ses CA CC T20 (non-trad) Junior Undergraduate Physical Science Major & Minor
MCAT: 505
GPA: 3.2 Cumulative (post-bac not needed transfer institution GPA is 4.0) 3.7 sGPA
Research Stats: 5,000 Hours (Across four laboratories) Field - Organic Chemistry & Biological Chemistry I'm at the level of a second or third-year chemistry graduate student; my letters reflect that. My bio work is 500 hours of that total and reflects that difference in ability.
Publications: 2 in review at Nature/Tetrahedron for roughly 4 and 2 months respectively.
Presentations Oral/Poster: 12 in a mix of school and national conferences. Always the only presenter.
Volunteering/Community Service: 1,000 hours in one org I plan to stay in for the foreseeable future
Leadership: 300 Hours—I am President of my school's chapter of a national URM STEM organization. This organization is active and community service-oriented.
Work Experience: Medical Clinic Receptionist 4 Years Tutor 600 hours (all the math through differential equations/Linear and all the chemistry/physics)
Clinical Experience: 500 hours in a program for premed students meant to give undergrads clinical experience. It's hands-on, lots of vitals, abulating, feeding, bathing, bonding with patients. Note: This was during the pandemic and shortly after. For the past year, I have not participated.
Shadowing: 40 hours across 4 Specialties Note: This is all within the past four months
Honors/Awards: Transfer College awards for Outreach and Research/Academic Excellence Presenter awards for posters from transfer college and national conferences NIH Maximizing Access to Research Careers (MARC) recipient 3 REUs (2 are MSTP specific, if that matters)
Letters: STEM/Non-STEM professors who I know very well (strong letters) I was thinking of 2 STEM 2 Non-STEM, but would that be too many? Should this just be 1:1?
1 letter from the Coordinator of org I volunteer with (strong letter) 3 letters from PI's (strong letters) 1 letter from a Physician (Only known me for a month) 2 letters from formecurrent MSTP directors who know me well (strong letters, but not sure how much weight these have)
Other stuff: Academic probation due to low GPA from years ago at community college for several semesters.

https://mises.org/mises-daily/society-without-state
In attempting to outline how a “society without a state” — that is, an anarchist society — might function successfully, I would first like to defuse two common but mistaken criticisms of this approach. First, is the argument that in providing for such defense or protection services as courts, police, or even law itself, I am simply smuggling the state back into society in another form, and that therefore the system I am both analyzing and advocating is not “really” anarchism. This sort of criticism can only involve us in an endless and arid dispute over semantics. Let me say from the beginning that I define the state as that institution which possesses one or both (almost always both) of the following properties: (1) it acquires its income by the physical coercion known as “taxation”; and (2) it asserts and usually obtains a coerced monopoly of the provision of defense service (police and courts) over a given territorial area. An institution not possessing either of these properties is not and cannot be, in accordance with my definition, a state. On the other hand, I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of an individual. Anarchists oppose the state because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of individual rights.
Nor is our definition of the state arbitrary, for these two characteristics have been possessed by what is generally acknowledged to be states throughout recorded history. The state, by its use of physical coercion, has arrogated to itself a compulsory monopoly of defense services over its territorial jurisdiction. But it is certainly conceptually possible for such services to be supplied by private, non-state institutions, and indeed such services have historically been supplied by other organizations than the state. To be opposed to the state is then not necessarily to be opposed to services that have often been linked with it; to be opposed to the state does not necessarily imply that we must be opposed to police protection, courts, arbitration, the minting of money, postal service, or roads and highways. Some anarchists have indeed been opposed to police and to all physical coercion in defense of person and property, but this is not inherent in and is fundamentally irrelevant to the anarchist position, which is precisely marked by opposition to all physical coercion invasive of, or aggressing against, person and property.
The crucial role of taxation may be seen in the fact that the state is the only institution or organization in society which regularly and systematically acquires its income through the use of physical coercion. All other individuals or organizations acquire their income voluntarily, either (1) through the voluntary sale of goods and services to consumers on the market, or (2) through voluntary gifts or donations by members or other donors. If I cease or refrain from purchasing Wheaties on the market, the Wheaties producers do not come after me with a gun or the threat of imprisonment to force me to purchase; if I fail to join the American Philosophical Association, the association may not force me to join or prevent me from giving up my membership. Only the state can do so; only the state can confiscate my property or put me in jail if I do not pay its tax tribute. Therefore, only the state regularly exists and has its very being by means of coercive depredations on private property.
Neither is it legitimate to challenge this sort of analysis by claiming that in some other sense, the purchase of Wheaties or membership in the APA is in some way “coercive.” Anyone who is still unhappy with this use of the term “coercion” can simply eliminate the word from this discussion and substitute for it “physical violence or the threat thereof,” with the only loss being in literary style rather than in the substance of the argument. What anarchism proposes to do, then, is to abolish the state, that is, to abolish the regularized institution of aggressive coercion.
It need hardly be added that the state habitually builds upon its coercive source of income by adding a host of other aggressions upon society, ranging from economic controls to the prohibition of pornography to the compelling of religious observance to the mass murder of civilians in organized warfare. In short, the state, in the words of Albert Jay Nock, “claims and exercises a monopoly of crime” over its territorial area.
The second criticism I would like to defuse before beginning the main body of the paper is the common charge that anarchists “assume that all people are good” and that without the state no crime would be committed. In short, that anarchism assumes that with the abolition of the state a New Anarchist Man will emerge, cooperative, humane, and benevolent, so that no problem of crime will then plague the society. I confess that I do not understand the basis for this charge. Whatever other schools of anarchism profess — and I do not believe that they are open to the charge — I certainly do not adopt this view. I assume with most observers that mankind is a mixture of good and evil, of cooperative and criminal tendencies. In my view, the anarchist society is one which maximizes the tendencies for the good and the cooperative, while it minimizes both the opportunity and the moral legitimacy of the evil and the criminal. If the anarchist view is correct and the state is indeed the great legalized and socially legitimated channel for all manner of antisocial crime — theft, oppression, mass murder — on a massive scale, then surely the abolition of such an engine of crime can do nothing but favor the good in man and discourage the bad.
A further point: in a profound sense, no social system, whether anarchist or statist, can work at all unless most people are “good” in the sense that they are not all hell-bent upon assaulting and robbing their neighbors. If everyone were so disposed, no amount of protection, whether state or private, could succeed in staving off chaos. Furthermore, the more that people are disposed to be peaceful and not aggress against their neighbors, the more successfully any social system will work, and the fewer resources will need to be devoted to police protection. The anarchist view holds that, given the “nature of man,” given the degree of goodness or badness at any point in time, anarchism will maximize the opportunities for the good and minimize the channels for the bad. The rest depends on the values held by the individual members of society. The only further point that need be made is that by eliminating the living example and the social legitimacy of the massive legalized crime of the state, anarchism will to a large extent promote peaceful values in the minds of the public.
We cannot of course deal here with the numerous arguments in favor of anarchism or against the state, moral, political, and economic. Nor can we take up the various goods and services now provided by the state and show how private individuals and groups will be able to supply them far more efficiently on the free market. Here we can only deal with perhaps the most difficult area, the area where it is almost universally assumed that the state must exist and act, even if it is only a “necessary evil” instead of a positive good: the vital realm of defense or protection of person and property against aggression. Surely, it is universally asserted, the state is at least vitally necessary to provide police protection, the judicial resolution of disputes and enforcement of contracts, and the creation of the law itself that is to be enforced. My contention is that all of these admittedly necessary services of protection can be satisfactorily and efficiently supplied by private persons and institutions on the free market.
One important caveat before we begin the body of this paper: new proposals such as anarchism are almost always gauged against the implicit assumption that the present, or statist system works to perfection. Any lacunae or difficulties with the picture of the anarchist society are considered net liabilities, and enough to dismiss anarchism out of hand. It is, in short, implicitly assumed that the state is doing its self-assumed job of protecting person and property to perfection. We cannot here go into the reasons why the state is bound to suffer inherently from grave flaws and inefficiencies in such a task. All we need do now is to point to the black and unprecedented record of the state through history: no combination of private marauders can possibly begin to match the state’s unremitting record of theft, confiscation, oppression, and mass murder. No collection of Mafia or private bank robbers can begin to compare with all the Hiroshimas, Dresdens, and Lidices and their analogues through the history of mankind.
This point can be made more philosophically: it is illegitimate to compare the merits of anarchism and statism by starting with the present system as the implicit given and then critically examining only the anarchist alternative. What we must do is to begin at the zero point and then critically examine both suggested alternatives. Suppose, for example, that we were all suddenly dropped down on the earth de novo and that we were all then confronted with the question of what societal arrangements to adopt. And suppose then that someone suggested: “We are all bound to suffer from those of us who wish to aggress against their fellow men. Let us then solve this problem of crime by handing all of our weapons to the Jones family, over there, by giving all of our ultimate power to settle disputes to that family. In that way, with their monopoly of coercion and of ultimate decision making, the Jones family will be able to protect each of us from each other.” I submit that this proposal would get very short shrift, except perhaps from the Jones family themselves. And yet this is precisely the common argument for the existence of the state. When we start from the zero point, as in the case of the Jones family, the question of “who will guard the guardians?” becomes not simply an abiding lacuna in the theory of the state but an overwhelming barrier to its existence.
A final caveat: the anarchist is always at a disadvantage in attempting to forecast the shape of the future anarchist society. For it is impossible for observers to predict voluntary social arrangements, including the provision of goods and services, on the free market. Suppose, for example, that this were the year 1874 and that someone predicted that eventually there would be a radio-manufacturing industry. To be able to make such a forecast successfully, does he have to be challenged to state immediately how many radio manufacturers there would be a century hence, how big they would be, where they would be located, what technology and marketing techniques they would use, and so on? Obviously, such a challenge would make no sense, and in a profound sense the same is true of those who demand a precise portrayal of the pattern of protection activities on the market. Anarchism advocates the dissolution of the state into social and market arrangements, and these arrangements are far more flexible and less predictable than political institutions. The most that we can do, then, is to offer broad guidelines and perspectives on the shape of a projected anarchist society.
One important point to make here is that the advance of modern technology makes anarchistic arrangements increasingly feasible. Take, for example, the case of lighthouses, where it is often charged that it is unfeasible for private lighthouse operators to row out to each ship to charge it for use of the light. Apart from the fact that this argument ignores the successful existence of private lighthouses in earlier days, as in England in the eighteenth century, another vital consideration is that modern electronic technology makes charging each ship for the light far more feasible. Thus, the ship would have to have paid for an electronically controlled beam which could then be automatically turned on for those ships which had paid for the service.
Let us turn now to the problem of how disputes — in particular disputes over alleged violations of person and property — would be resolved in an anarchist society. First, it should be noted that all disputes involve two parties: the plaintiff, the alleged victim of the crime or tort and the defendant, the alleged aggressor. In many cases of broken contract, of course, each of the two parties alleging that the other is the culprit is at the same time a plaintiff and a defendant.
An important point to remember is that any society, be it statist or anarchist, has to have some way of resolving disputes that will gain a majority consensus in society. There would be no need for courts or arbitrators if everyone were omniscient and knew instantaneously which persons were guilty of any given crime or violation of contract. Since none of us is omniscient, there has to be some method of deciding who is the criminal or lawbreaker which will gain legitimacy; in short, whose decision will be accepted by the great majority of the public.
In the first place, a dispute may be resolved voluntarily between the two parties themselves, either unaided or with the help of a third mediator. This poses no problem, and will automatically be accepted by society at large. It is so accepted even now, much less in a society imbued with the anarchistic values of peaceful cooperation and agreement. Secondly and similarly, the two parties, unable to reach agreement, may decide to submit voluntarily to the decision of an arbitrator. This agreement may arise either after a dispute has arisen, or be provided for in advance in the original contract. Again, there is no problem in such an arrangement gaining legitimacy. Even in the present statist era, the notorious inefficiency and coercive and cumbersome procedures of the politically run government courts has led increasing numbers of citizens to turn to voluntary and expert arbitration for a speedy and harmonious settling of disputes.
Thus, William C. Wooldridge has written that

Wooldridge adds the important point that, in addition to the speed of arbitration procedures vis-à-vis the courts, the arbitrators can proceed as experts in disregard of the official government law; in a profound sense, then, they serve to create a voluntary body of private law. “In other words,” states Wooldridge, “the system of extralegal, voluntary courts has progressed hand in hand with a body of private law; the rules of the state are circumvented by the same process that circumvents the forums established for the settlement of disputes over those rules…. In short, a private agreement between two people, a bilateral “law,” has supplanted the official law. The writ of the sovereign has cease to run, and for it is substituted a rule tacitly or explicitly agreed to by the parties. Wooldridge concludes that “if an arbitrator can choose to ignore a penal damage rule or the statute of limitations applicable to the claim before him (and it is generally conceded that he has that power), arbitration can be viewed as a practically revolutionary instrument for self-liberation from the law….”2
It may be objected that arbitration only works successfully because the courts enforce the award of the arbitrator. Wooldridge points out, however, that arbitration was unenforceable in the American courts before 1920, but that this did not prevent voluntary arbitration from being successful and expanding in the United States and in England. He points, furthermore, to the successful operations of merchant courts since the Middle Ages, those courts which successfully developed the entire body of the law merchant. None of those courts possessed the power of enforcement. He might have added the private courts of shippers which developed the body of admiralty law in a similar way.
How then did these private, “anarchistic,” and voluntary courts ensure the acceptance of their decisions? By the method of social ostracism, and by the refusal to deal any further with the offending merchant. This method of voluntary “enforcement,” indeed proved highly successful. Wooldridge writes that “the merchants’ courts were voluntary, and if a man ignored their judgment, he could not be sent to jail…. Nevertheless, it is apparent that … [their] decisions were generally respected even by the losers; otherwise people would never have used them in the first place…. Merchants made their courts work simply by agreeing to abide by the results. The merchant who broke the understanding would not be sent to jail, to be sure, but neither would he long continue to be a merchant, for the compliance exacted by his fellows … proved if anything more effective than physical coercion.”3 Nor did this voluntary method fail to work in modern times. Wooldridge writes that it was precisely in the years before 1920, when arbitration awards could not be enforced in the courts,

It should also be pointed out that modern technology makes even more feasible the collection and dissemination of information about people’s credit ratings and records of keeping or violating their contracts or arbitration agreements. Presumably, an anarchist society would see the expansion of this sort of dissemination of data and thereby facilitate the ostracism or boycotting of contract and arbitration violators.
How would arbitrators be selected in an anarchist society? In the same way as they are chosen now, and as they were chosen in the days of strictly voluntary arbitration: the arbitrators with the best reputation for efficiency and probity would be chosen by the various parties on the market. As in other processes of the market, the arbitrators with the best record in settling disputes will come to gain an increasing amount of business, and those with poor records will no longer enjoy clients and will have to shift to another line of endeavor. Here it must be emphasized that parties in dispute will seek out those arbitrators with the best reputation for both expertise and impartiality and that inefficient or biased arbitrators will rapidly have to find another occupation.
Thus, the Tannehills emphasize:

If desired, furthermore, the contracting parties could provide in advance for a series of arbitrators:

Arbitration, then, poses little difficulty for a portrayal of the free society. But what of torts or crimes of aggression where there has been no contract? Or suppose that the breaker of a contract defies the arbitration award? Is ostracism enough? In short, how can courts develop in the free-market anarchist society which will have the power to enforce judgments against criminals or contract breakers?
In the wide sense, defense service consists of guards or police who use force in defending person and property against attack, and judges or courts whose role is to use socially accepted procedures to determine who the criminals or tortfeasors are, as well as to enforce judicial awards, such as damages or the keeping of contracts. On the free market, many scenarios are possible on the relationship between the private courts and the police; they may be “vertically integrated,” for example, or their services may be supplied by separate firms. Furthermore, it seems likely that police service will be supplied by insurance companies who will provide crime insurance to their clients. In that case, insurance companies will pay off the victims of crime or the breaking of contracts or arbitration awards and then pursue the aggressors in court to recoup their losses. There is a natural market connection between insurance companies and defense service, since they need pay out less benefits in proportion as they are able to keep down the rate of crime.
Courts might either charge fees for their services, with the losers of cases obliged to pay court costs, or else they may subsist on monthly or yearly premiums by their clients, who may be either individuals or the police or insurance agencies. Suppose, for example, that Smith is an aggrieved party, either because he has been assaulted or robbed, or because an arbitration award in his favor has not been honored. Smith believes that Jones is the party guilty of the crime. Smith then goes to a court, Court A, of which he is a client, and brings charges against Jones as a defendant. In my view, the hallmark of an anarchist society is one where no man may legally compel someone who is not a convicted criminal to do anything, since that would be aggression against an innocent man’s person or property. Therefore, Court A can only invite rather than subpoena Jones to attend his trial. Of course, if Jones refused to appear or send a representative, his side of the case will not be heard. The trial of Jones proceeds. Suppose that Court A finds Jones innocent. In my view, part of the generally accepted law code of the anarchist society (on which see further below) is that this must end the matter unless Smith can prove charges of gross incompetence or bias on the part of the court.
Suppose, next, that Court A finds Jones guilty. Jones might accept the verdict, because he too is a client of the same court, because he knows he is guilty, or for some other reason. In that case, Court A proceeds to exercise judgment against Jones. Neither of these instances poses very difficult problems for our picture of the anarchist society. But suppose, instead, that Jones contests the decision; he then goes to his court, Court B, and the case is retried there. Suppose that Court B, too, finds Jones guilty. Again, it seems to me that the accepted law code of the anarchist society will assert that this ends the matter; both parties have had their say in courts which each has selected, and the decision for guilt is unanimous.
Suppose, however, the most difficult case: that Court B finds Jones innocent. The two courts, each subscribed to by one of the two parties, have split their verdicts. In that case, the two courts will submit the case to an appeals court, or arbitrator, which the two courts agree upon. There seems to be no real difficulty about the concept of an appeals court. As in the case of arbitration contracts, it seems very likely that the various private courts in the society will have prior agreements to submit their disputes to a particular appeals court. How will the appeals judges be chosen? Again, as in the case of arbitrators or of the first judges on the free market, they will be chosen for their expertise and their reputation for efficiency, honesty, and integrity. Obviously, appeals judges who are inefficient or biased will scarcely be chosen by courts who will have a dispute. The point here is that there is no need for a legally established or institutionalized single, monopoly appeals court system, as states now provide. There is no reason why there cannot arise a multitude of efficient and honest appeals judges who will be selected by the disputant courts, just as there are numerous private arbitrators on the market today. The appeals court renders its decision, and the courts proceed to enforce it if, in our example, Jones is considered guilty — unless, of course, Jones can prove bias in some other court proceedings.
No society can have unlimited judicial appeals, for in that case there would be no point to having judges or courts at all. Therefore, every society, whether statist or anarchist, will have to have some socially accepted cutoff point for trials and appeals. My suggestion is the rule that the agreement of any two courts, be decisive. “Two” is not an arbitrary figure, for it reflects the fact that there are two parties, the plaintiff and the defendant, to any alleged crime or contract dispute.
If the courts are to be empowered to enforce decision against guilty parties, does this not bring back the state in another form and thereby negate anarchism? No, for at the beginning of this paper I explicitly defined anarchism in such a way as not to rule out the use of defensive force — force in defense of person and property — by privately supported agencies. In the same way, it is not bringing back the state to allow persons to use force to defend themselves against aggression, or to hire guards or police agencies to defend them.
It should be noted, however, that in the anarchist society there will be no “district attorney” to press charges on behalf of “society.” Only the victims will press charges as the plaintiffs. If, then, these victims should happen to be absolute pacifists who are opposed even to defensive force, then they will simply not press charges in the courts or otherwise retaliate against those who have aggressed against them. In a free society that would be their right. If the victim should suffer from murder, then his heir would have the right to press the charges.
What of the Hatfield-and-McCoy problem? Suppose that a Hatfield kills a McCoy, and that McCoy’s heir does not belong to a private insurance, police agency, or court, and decides to retaliate himself? Since under anarchism there can be no coercion of the noncriminal, McCoy would have the perfect right to do so. No one may be compelled to bring his case to a court. Indeed, since the right to hire police or courts flows from the right of self-defense against aggression, it would be inconsistent and in contradiction to the very basis of the free society to institute such compulsion.
Suppose, then, that the surviving McCoy finds what he believes to be the guilty Hatfield and kills him in turn? What then? This is fine, except that McCoy may have to worry about charges being brought against him by a surviving Hatfield. Here it must be emphasized that in the law of the anarchist society based on defense against aggression, the courts would not be able to proceed against McCoy if in fact he killed the right Hatfield. His problem would arise if the courts should find that he made a grievous mistake and killed the wrong man; in that case, he in turn would be found guilty of murder. Surely, in most instances, individuals will wish to obviate such problems by taking their case to a court and thereby gain social acceptability for their defensive retaliation — not for the act of retaliation but for the correctness of deciding who the criminal in any given case might be. The purpose of the judicial process, indeed, is to find a way of general agreement on who might be the criminal or contract breaker in any given case. The judicial process is not a good in itself; thus, in the case of an assassination, such as Jack Ruby’s murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, on public television, there is no need for a complex judicial process, since the name of the murderer is evident to all.
Will not the possibility exist of a private court that may turn venal and dishonest, or of a private police force that turns criminal and extorts money by coercion? Of course such an event may occur, given the propensities of human nature. Anarchism is not a moral cure-all. But the important point is that market forces exist to place severe checks on such possibilities, especially in contrast to a society where a state exists. For, in the first place, judges, like arbitrators, will prosper on the market in proportion to their reputation for efficiency and impartiality. Secondly, on the free market important checks and balances exist against venal courts or criminal police forces. Namely, that there are competing courts and police agencies to whom victims may turn for redress. If the “Prudential Police Agency” should turn outlaw and extract revenue from victims by coercion, the latter would have the option of turning to the “Mutual” or “Equitable” Police Agency for defense and for pressing charges against Prudential. These are the genuine “checks and balances” of the free market, genuine in contrast to the phony check and balances of a state system, where all the alleged “balancing” agencies are in the hands of one monopoly government. Indeed, given the monopoly “protection service” of a state, what is there to prevent a state from using its monopoly channels of coercion to extort money from the public? What are the checks and limits of the state? None, except for the extremely difficult course of revolution against a power with all of the guns in its hands. In fact, the state provides an easy, legitimated channel for crime and aggression, since it has its very being in the crime of tax theft, and the coerced monopoly of “protection.” It is the state, indeed, that functions as a mighty “protection racket” on a giant and massive scale. It is the state that says: “Pay us for your ‘protection’ or else.” In the light of the massive and inherent activities of the state, the danger of a “protection racket” emerging from one or more private police agencies is relatively small indeed.
Moreover, it must be emphasized that a crucial element in the power of the state is its legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of the public, the fact that after centuries of propaganda, the depredations of the state are looked upon rather as benevolent services. Taxation is generally not seen as theft, nor war as mass murder, nor conscription as slavery. Should a private police agency turn outlaw, should “Prudential” become a protection racket, it would then lack the social legitimacy which the state has managed to accrue to itself over the centuries. “Prudential” would be seen by all as bandits, rather than as legitimate or divinely appointed “sovereigns” bent on promoting the “common good” or the “general welfare.” And lacking such legitimacy, “Prudential” would have to face the wrath of the public and the defense and retaliation of the other private defense agencies, the police and courts, on the free market. Given these inherent checks and limits, a successful transformation from a free society to bandit rule becomes most unlikely. Indeed, historically, it has been very difficult for a state to arise to supplant a stateless society; usually, it has come about through external conquest rather than by evolution from within a society.
Within the anarchist camp, there has been much dispute on whether the private courts would have to be bound by a basic, common law code. Ingenious attempts have been made to work out a system where the laws or standards of decision-making by the courts would differ completely from one to another.7 But in my view all would have to abide by the basic law code, in particular, prohibition of aggression against person and property, in order to fulfill our definition of anarchism as a system which provides no legal sanction for such aggression. Suppose, for example, that one group of people in society holds that all redheads are demons who deserve to be shot on sight. Suppose that Jones, one of this group, shoots Smith, a redhead. Suppose that Smith or his heir presses charges in a court, but that Jones’s court, in philosophic agreement with Jones, finds him innocent therefore. It seems to me that in order to be considered legitimate, any court would have to follow the basic libertarian law code of the inviolate right of person and property. For otherwise, courts might legally subscribe to a code which sanctions such aggression in various cases, and which to that extent would violate the definition of anarchism and introduce, if not the state, then a strong element of statishness or legalized aggression into the society.
But again I see no insuperable difficulties here. For in that case, anarchists, in agitating for their creed, will simply include in their agitation the idea of a general libertarian law code as part and parcel of the anarchist creed of abolition of legalized aggression against person or property in the society.
In contrast to the general law code, other aspects of court decisions could legitimately vary in accordance with the market or the wishes of the clients; for example, the language the cases will be conducted in, the number of judges to be involved, and so on.
There are other problems of the basic law code which there is no time to go into here: for example, the definition of just property titles or the question of legitimate punishment of convicted offenders — though the latter problem of course exists in statist legal systems as well.8 The basic point, however, is that the state is not needed to arrive at legal principles or their elaboration: indeed, much of the common law, the law merchant, admiralty law, and private law in general, grew up apart from the state, by judges not making the law but finding it on the basis of agreed-upon principles derived either from custom or reason.9 The idea that the state is needed to make law is as much a myth as that the state is needed to supply postal or police services.
Enough has been said here, I believe, to indicate that an anarchist system for settling disputes would be both viable and self-subsistent: that once adopted, it could work and continue indefinitely. How to arrive at that system is of course a very different problem, but certainly at the very least it will not likely come about unless people are convinced of its workability, are convinced, in short, that the state is not a necessary evil.

[Murray Rothbard delivered this talk 32 years ago today at the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy (ASPLP), Washington, DC: December 28, 1974. It was first published in The Libertarian Forum, volume 7.1, January 1975, available in PDF and ePub.]

https://mises.org/mises-daily/society-without-state
In attempting to outline how a “society without a state” — that is, an anarchist society — might function successfully, I would first like to defuse two common but mistaken criticisms of this approach. First, is the argument that in providing for such defense or protection services as courts, police, or even law itself, I am simply smuggling the state back into society in another form, and that therefore the system I am both analyzing and advocating is not “really” anarchism. This sort of criticism can only involve us in an endless and arid dispute over semantics. Let me say from the beginning that I define the state as that institution which possesses one or both (almost always both) of the following properties: (1) it acquires its income by the physical coercion known as “taxation”; and (2) it asserts and usually obtains a coerced monopoly of the provision of defense service (police and courts) over a given territorial area. An institution not possessing either of these properties is not and cannot be, in accordance with my definition, a state. On the other hand, I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of an individual. Anarchists oppose the state because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of individual rights.
Nor is our definition of the state arbitrary, for these two characteristics have been possessed by what is generally acknowledged to be states throughout recorded history. The state, by its use of physical coercion, has arrogated to itself a compulsory monopoly of defense services over its territorial jurisdiction. But it is certainly conceptually possible for such services to be supplied by private, non-state institutions, and indeed such services have historically been supplied by other organizations than the state. To be opposed to the state is then not necessarily to be opposed to services that have often been linked with it; to be opposed to the state does not necessarily imply that we must be opposed to police protection, courts, arbitration, the minting of money, postal service, or roads and highways. Some anarchists have indeed been opposed to police and to all physical coercion in defense of person and property, but this is not inherent in and is fundamentally irrelevant to the anarchist position, which is precisely marked by opposition to all physical coercion invasive of, or aggressing against, person and property.
The crucial role of taxation may be seen in the fact that the state is the only institution or organization in society which regularly and systematically acquires its income through the use of physical coercion. All other individuals or organizations acquire their income voluntarily, either (1) through the voluntary sale of goods and services to consumers on the market, or (2) through voluntary gifts or donations by members or other donors. If I cease or refrain from purchasing Wheaties on the market, the Wheaties producers do not come after me with a gun or the threat of imprisonment to force me to purchase; if I fail to join the American Philosophical Association, the association may not force me to join or prevent me from giving up my membership. Only the state can do so; only the state can confiscate my property or put me in jail if I do not pay its tax tribute. Therefore, only the state regularly exists and has its very being by means of coercive depredations on private property.
Neither is it legitimate to challenge this sort of analysis by claiming that in some other sense, the purchase of Wheaties or membership in the APA is in some way “coercive.” Anyone who is still unhappy with this use of the term “coercion” can simply eliminate the word from this discussion and substitute for it “physical violence or the threat thereof,” with the only loss being in literary style rather than in the substance of the argument. What anarchism proposes to do, then, is to abolish the state, that is, to abolish the regularized institution of aggressive coercion.
It need hardly be added that the state habitually builds upon its coercive source of income by adding a host of other aggressions upon society, ranging from economic controls to the prohibition of pornography to the compelling of religious observance to the mass murder of civilians in organized warfare. In short, the state, in the words of Albert Jay Nock, “claims and exercises a monopoly of crime” over its territorial area.
The second criticism I would like to defuse before beginning the main body of the paper is the common charge that anarchists “assume that all people are good” and that without the state no crime would be committed. In short, that anarchism assumes that with the abolition of the state a New Anarchist Man will emerge, cooperative, humane, and benevolent, so that no problem of crime will then plague the society. I confess that I do not understand the basis for this charge. Whatever other schools of anarchism profess — and I do not believe that they are open to the charge — I certainly do not adopt this view. I assume with most observers that mankind is a mixture of good and evil, of cooperative and criminal tendencies. In my view, the anarchist society is one which maximizes the tendencies for the good and the cooperative, while it minimizes both the opportunity and the moral legitimacy of the evil and the criminal. If the anarchist view is correct and the state is indeed the great legalized and socially legitimated channel for all manner of antisocial crime — theft, oppression, mass murder — on a massive scale, then surely the abolition of such an engine of crime can do nothing but favor the good in man and discourage the bad.
A further point: in a profound sense, no social system, whether anarchist or statist, can work at all unless most people are “good” in the sense that they are not all hell-bent upon assaulting and robbing their neighbors. If everyone were so disposed, no amount of protection, whether state or private, could succeed in staving off chaos. Furthermore, the more that people are disposed to be peaceful and not aggress against their neighbors, the more successfully any social system will work, and the fewer resources will need to be devoted to police protection. The anarchist view holds that, given the “nature of man,” given the degree of goodness or badness at any point in time, anarchism will maximize the opportunities for the good and minimize the channels for the bad. The rest depends on the values held by the individual members of society. The only further point that need be made is that by eliminating the living example and the social legitimacy of the massive legalized crime of the state, anarchism will to a large extent promote peaceful values in the minds of the public.
We cannot of course deal here with the numerous arguments in favor of anarchism or against the state, moral, political, and economic. Nor can we take up the various goods and services now provided by the state and show how private individuals and groups will be able to supply them far more efficiently on the free market. Here we can only deal with perhaps the most difficult area, the area where it is almost universally assumed that the state must exist and act, even if it is only a “necessary evil” instead of a positive good: the vital realm of defense or protection of person and property against aggression. Surely, it is universally asserted, the state is at least vitally necessary to provide police protection, the judicial resolution of disputes and enforcement of contracts, and the creation of the law itself that is to be enforced. My contention is that all of these admittedly necessary services of protection can be satisfactorily and efficiently supplied by private persons and institutions on the free market.
One important caveat before we begin the body of this paper: new proposals such as anarchism are almost always gauged against the implicit assumption that the present, or statist system works to perfection. Any lacunae or difficulties with the picture of the anarchist society are considered net liabilities, and enough to dismiss anarchism out of hand. It is, in short, implicitly assumed that the state is doing its self-assumed job of protecting person and property to perfection. We cannot here go into the reasons why the state is bound to suffer inherently from grave flaws and inefficiencies in such a task. All we need do now is to point to the black and unprecedented record of the state through history: no combination of private marauders can possibly begin to match the state’s unremitting record of theft, confiscation, oppression, and mass murder. No collection of Mafia or private bank robbers can begin to compare with all the Hiroshimas, Dresdens, and Lidices and their analogues through the history of mankind.
This point can be made more philosophically: it is illegitimate to compare the merits of anarchism and statism by starting with the present system as the implicit given and then critically examining only the anarchist alternative. What we must do is to begin at the zero point and then critically examine both suggested alternatives. Suppose, for example, that we were all suddenly dropped down on the earth de novo and that we were all then confronted with the question of what societal arrangements to adopt. And suppose then that someone suggested: “We are all bound to suffer from those of us who wish to aggress against their fellow men. Let us then solve this problem of crime by handing all of our weapons to the Jones family, over there, by giving all of our ultimate power to settle disputes to that family. In that way, with their monopoly of coercion and of ultimate decision making, the Jones family will be able to protect each of us from each other.” I submit that this proposal would get very short shrift, except perhaps from the Jones family themselves. And yet this is precisely the common argument for the existence of the state. When we start from the zero point, as in the case of the Jones family, the question of “who will guard the guardians?” becomes not simply an abiding lacuna in the theory of the state but an overwhelming barrier to its existence.
A final caveat: the anarchist is always at a disadvantage in attempting to forecast the shape of the future anarchist society. For it is impossible for observers to predict voluntary social arrangements, including the provision of goods and services, on the free market. Suppose, for example, that this were the year 1874 and that someone predicted that eventually there would be a radio-manufacturing industry. To be able to make such a forecast successfully, does he have to be challenged to state immediately how many radio manufacturers there would be a century hence, how big they would be, where they would be located, what technology and marketing techniques they would use, and so on? Obviously, such a challenge would make no sense, and in a profound sense the same is true of those who demand a precise portrayal of the pattern of protection activities on the market. Anarchism advocates the dissolution of the state into social and market arrangements, and these arrangements are far more flexible and less predictable than political institutions. The most that we can do, then, is to offer broad guidelines and perspectives on the shape of a projected anarchist society.
One important point to make here is that the advance of modern technology makes anarchistic arrangements increasingly feasible. Take, for example, the case of lighthouses, where it is often charged that it is unfeasible for private lighthouse operators to row out to each ship to charge it for use of the light. Apart from the fact that this argument ignores the successful existence of private lighthouses in earlier days, as in England in the eighteenth century, another vital consideration is that modern electronic technology makes charging each ship for the light far more feasible. Thus, the ship would have to have paid for an electronically controlled beam which could then be automatically turned on for those ships which had paid for the service.
Let us turn now to the problem of how disputes — in particular disputes over alleged violations of person and property — would be resolved in an anarchist society. First, it should be noted that all disputes involve two parties: the plaintiff, the alleged victim of the crime or tort and the defendant, the alleged aggressor. In many cases of broken contract, of course, each of the two parties alleging that the other is the culprit is at the same time a plaintiff and a defendant.
An important point to remember is that any society, be it statist or anarchist, has to have some way of resolving disputes that will gain a majority consensus in society. There would be no need for courts or arbitrators if everyone were omniscient and knew instantaneously which persons were guilty of any given crime or violation of contract. Since none of us is omniscient, there has to be some method of deciding who is the criminal or lawbreaker which will gain legitimacy; in short, whose decision will be accepted by the great majority of the public.
In the first place, a dispute may be resolved voluntarily between the two parties themselves, either unaided or with the help of a third mediator. This poses no problem, and will automatically be accepted by society at large. It is so accepted even now, much less in a society imbued with the anarchistic values of peaceful cooperation and agreement. Secondly and similarly, the two parties, unable to reach agreement, may decide to submit voluntarily to the decision of an arbitrator. This agreement may arise either after a dispute has arisen, or be provided for in advance in the original contract. Again, there is no problem in such an arrangement gaining legitimacy. Even in the present statist era, the notorious inefficiency and coercive and cumbersome procedures of the politically run government courts has led increasing numbers of citizens to turn to voluntary and expert arbitration for a speedy and harmonious settling of disputes.
Thus, William C. Wooldridge has written that

Wooldridge adds the important point that, in addition to the speed of arbitration procedures vis-à-vis the courts, the arbitrators can proceed as experts in disregard of the official government law; in a profound sense, then, they serve to create a voluntary body of private law. “In other words,” states Wooldridge, “the system of extralegal, voluntary courts has progressed hand in hand with a body of private law; the rules of the state are circumvented by the same process that circumvents the forums established for the settlement of disputes over those rules…. In short, a private agreement between two people, a bilateral “law,” has supplanted the official law. The writ of the sovereign has cease to run, and for it is substituted a rule tacitly or explicitly agreed to by the parties. Wooldridge concludes that “if an arbitrator can choose to ignore a penal damage rule or the statute of limitations applicable to the claim before him (and it is generally conceded that he has that power), arbitration can be viewed as a practically revolutionary instrument for self-liberation from the law….”2
It may be objected that arbitration only works successfully because the courts enforce the award of the arbitrator. Wooldridge points out, however, that arbitration was unenforceable in the American courts before 1920, but that this did not prevent voluntary arbitration from being successful and expanding in the United States and in England. He points, furthermore, to the successful operations of merchant courts since the Middle Ages, those courts which successfully developed the entire body of the law merchant. None of those courts possessed the power of enforcement. He might have added the private courts of shippers which developed the body of admiralty law in a similar way.
How then did these private, “anarchistic,” and voluntary courts ensure the acceptance of their decisions? By the method of social ostracism, and by the refusal to deal any further with the offending merchant. This method of voluntary “enforcement,” indeed proved highly successful. Wooldridge writes that “the merchants’ courts were voluntary, and if a man ignored their judgment, he could not be sent to jail…. Nevertheless, it is apparent that … [their] decisions were generally respected even by the losers; otherwise people would never have used them in the first place…. Merchants made their courts work simply by agreeing to abide by the results. The merchant who broke the understanding would not be sent to jail, to be sure, but neither would he long continue to be a merchant, for the compliance exacted by his fellows … proved if anything more effective than physical coercion.”3 Nor did this voluntary method fail to work in modern times. Wooldridge writes that it was precisely in the years before 1920, when arbitration awards could not be enforced in the courts,

It should also be pointed out that modern technology makes even more feasible the collection and dissemination of information about people’s credit ratings and records of keeping or violating their contracts or arbitration agreements. Presumably, an anarchist society would see the expansion of this sort of dissemination of data and thereby facilitate the ostracism or boycotting of contract and arbitration violators.
How would arbitrators be selected in an anarchist society? In the same way as they are chosen now, and as they were chosen in the days of strictly voluntary arbitration: the arbitrators with the best reputation for efficiency and probity would be chosen by the various parties on the market. As in other processes of the market, the arbitrators with the best record in settling disputes will come to gain an increasing amount of business, and those with poor records will no longer enjoy clients and will have to shift to another line of endeavor. Here it must be emphasized that parties in dispute will seek out those arbitrators with the best reputation for both expertise and impartiality and that inefficient or biased arbitrators will rapidly have to find another occupation.
Thus, the Tannehills emphasize:

If desired, furthermore, the contracting parties could provide in advance for a series of arbitrators:

Arbitration, then, poses little difficulty for a portrayal of the free society. But what of torts or crimes of aggression where there has been no contract? Or suppose that the breaker of a contract defies the arbitration award? Is ostracism enough? In short, how can courts develop in the free-market anarchist society which will have the power to enforce judgments against criminals or contract breakers?
In the wide sense, defense service consists of guards or police who use force in defending person and property against attack, and judges or courts whose role is to use socially accepted procedures to determine who the criminals or tortfeasors are, as well as to enforce judicial awards, such as damages or the keeping of contracts. On the free market, many scenarios are possible on the relationship between the private courts and the police; they may be “vertically integrated,” for example, or their services may be supplied by separate firms. Furthermore, it seems likely that police service will be supplied by insurance companies who will provide crime insurance to their clients. In that case, insurance companies will pay off the victims of crime or the breaking of contracts or arbitration awards and then pursue the aggressors in court to recoup their losses. There is a natural market connection between insurance companies and defense service, since they need pay out less benefits in proportion as they are able to keep down the rate of crime.
Courts might either charge fees for their services, with the losers of cases obliged to pay court costs, or else they may subsist on monthly or yearly premiums by their clients, who may be either individuals or the police or insurance agencies. Suppose, for example, that Smith is an aggrieved party, either because he has been assaulted or robbed, or because an arbitration award in his favor has not been honored. Smith believes that Jones is the party guilty of the crime. Smith then goes to a court, Court A, of which he is a client, and brings charges against Jones as a defendant. In my view, the hallmark of an anarchist society is one where no man may legally compel someone who is not a convicted criminal to do anything, since that would be aggression against an innocent man’s person or property. Therefore, Court A can only invite rather than subpoena Jones to attend his trial. Of course, if Jones refused to appear or send a representative, his side of the case will not be heard. The trial of Jones proceeds. Suppose that Court A finds Jones innocent. In my view, part of the generally accepted law code of the anarchist society (on which see further below) is that this must end the matter unless Smith can prove charges of gross incompetence or bias on the part of the court.
Suppose, next, that Court A finds Jones guilty. Jones might accept the verdict, because he too is a client of the same court, because he knows he is guilty, or for some other reason. In that case, Court A proceeds to exercise judgment against Jones. Neither of these instances poses very difficult problems for our picture of the anarchist society. But suppose, instead, that Jones contests the decision; he then goes to his court, Court B, and the case is retried there. Suppose that Court B, too, finds Jones guilty. Again, it seems to me that the accepted law code of the anarchist society will assert that this ends the matter; both parties have had their say in courts which each has selected, and the decision for guilt is unanimous.
Suppose, however, the most difficult case: that Court B finds Jones innocent. The two courts, each subscribed to by one of the two parties, have split their verdicts. In that case, the two courts will submit the case to an appeals court, or arbitrator, which the two courts agree upon. There seems to be no real difficulty about the concept of an appeals court. As in the case of arbitration contracts, it seems very likely that the various private courts in the society will have prior agreements to submit their disputes to a particular appeals court. How will the appeals judges be chosen? Again, as in the case of arbitrators or of the first judges on the free market, they will be chosen for their expertise and their reputation for efficiency, honesty, and integrity. Obviously, appeals judges who are inefficient or biased will scarcely be chosen by courts who will have a dispute. The point here is that there is no need for a legally established or institutionalized single, monopoly appeals court system, as states now provide. There is no reason why there cannot arise a multitude of efficient and honest appeals judges who will be selected by the disputant courts, just as there are numerous private arbitrators on the market today. The appeals court renders its decision, and the courts proceed to enforce it if, in our example, Jones is considered guilty — unless, of course, Jones can prove bias in some other court proceedings.
No society can have unlimited judicial appeals, for in that case there would be no point to having judges or courts at all. Therefore, every society, whether statist or anarchist, will have to have some socially accepted cutoff point for trials and appeals. My suggestion is the rule that the agreement of any two courts, be decisive. “Two” is not an arbitrary figure, for it reflects the fact that there are two parties, the plaintiff and the defendant, to any alleged crime or contract dispute.
If the courts are to be empowered to enforce decision against guilty parties, does this not bring back the state in another form and thereby negate anarchism? No, for at the beginning of this paper I explicitly defined anarchism in such a way as not to rule out the use of defensive force — force in defense of person and property — by privately supported agencies. In the same way, it is not bringing back the state to allow persons to use force to defend themselves against aggression, or to hire guards or police agencies to defend them.
It should be noted, however, that in the anarchist society there will be no “district attorney” to press charges on behalf of “society.” Only the victims will press charges as the plaintiffs. If, then, these victims should happen to be absolute pacifists who are opposed even to defensive force, then they will simply not press charges in the courts or otherwise retaliate against those who have aggressed against them. In a free society that would be their right. If the victim should suffer from murder, then his heir would have the right to press the charges.
What of the Hatfield-and-McCoy problem? Suppose that a Hatfield kills a McCoy, and that McCoy’s heir does not belong to a private insurance, police agency, or court, and decides to retaliate himself? Since under anarchism there can be no coercion of the noncriminal, McCoy would have the perfect right to do so. No one may be compelled to bring his case to a court. Indeed, since the right to hire police or courts flows from the right of self-defense against aggression, it would be inconsistent and in contradiction to the very basis of the free society to institute such compulsion.
Suppose, then, that the surviving McCoy finds what he believes to be the guilty Hatfield and kills him in turn? What then? This is fine, except that McCoy may have to worry about charges being brought against him by a surviving Hatfield. Here it must be emphasized that in the law of the anarchist society based on defense against aggression, the courts would not be able to proceed against McCoy if in fact he killed the right Hatfield. His problem would arise if the courts should find that he made a grievous mistake and killed the wrong man; in that case, he in turn would be found guilty of murder. Surely, in most instances, individuals will wish to obviate such problems by taking their case to a court and thereby gain social acceptability for their defensive retaliation — not for the act of retaliation but for the correctness of deciding who the criminal in any given case might be. The purpose of the judicial process, indeed, is to find a way of general agreement on who might be the criminal or contract breaker in any given case. The judicial process is not a good in itself; thus, in the case of an assassination, such as Jack Ruby’s murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, on public television, there is no need for a complex judicial process, since the name of the murderer is evident to all.
Will not the possibility exist of a private court that may turn venal and dishonest, or of a private police force that turns criminal and extorts money by coercion? Of course such an event may occur, given the propensities of human nature. Anarchism is not a moral cure-all. But the important point is that market forces exist to place severe checks on such possibilities, especially in contrast to a society where a state exists. For, in the first place, judges, like arbitrators, will prosper on the market in proportion to their reputation for efficiency and impartiality. Secondly, on the free market important checks and balances exist against venal courts or criminal police forces. Namely, that there are competing courts and police agencies to whom victims may turn for redress. If the “Prudential Police Agency” should turn outlaw and extract revenue from victims by coercion, the latter would have the option of turning to the “Mutual” or “Equitable” Police Agency for defense and for pressing charges against Prudential. These are the genuine “checks and balances” of the free market, genuine in contrast to the phony check and balances of a state system, where all the alleged “balancing” agencies are in the hands of one monopoly government. Indeed, given the monopoly “protection service” of a state, what is there to prevent a state from using its monopoly channels of coercion to extort money from the public? What are the checks and limits of the state? None, except for the extremely difficult course of revolution against a power with all of the guns in its hands. In fact, the state provides an easy, legitimated channel for crime and aggression, since it has its very being in the crime of tax theft, and the coerced monopoly of “protection.” It is the state, indeed, that functions as a mighty “protection racket” on a giant and massive scale. It is the state that says: “Pay us for your ‘protection’ or else.” In the light of the massive and inherent activities of the state, the danger of a “protection racket” emerging from one or more private police agencies is relatively small indeed.
Moreover, it must be emphasized that a crucial element in the power of the state is its legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of the public, the fact that after centuries of propaganda, the depredations of the state are looked upon rather as benevolent services. Taxation is generally not seen as theft, nor war as mass murder, nor conscription as slavery. Should a private police agency turn outlaw, should “Prudential” become a protection racket, it would then lack the social legitimacy which the state has managed to accrue to itself over the centuries. “Prudential” would be seen by all as bandits, rather than as legitimate or divinely appointed “sovereigns” bent on promoting the “common good” or the “general welfare.” And lacking such legitimacy, “Prudential” would have to face the wrath of the public and the defense and retaliation of the other private defense agencies, the police and courts, on the free market. Given these inherent checks and limits, a successful transformation from a free society to bandit rule becomes most unlikely. Indeed, historically, it has been very difficult for a state to arise to supplant a stateless society; usually, it has come about through external conquest rather than by evolution from within a society.
Within the anarchist camp, there has been much dispute on whether the private courts would have to be bound by a basic, common law code. Ingenious attempts have been made to work out a system where the laws or standards of decision-making by the courts would differ completely from one to another.7 But in my view all would have to abide by the basic law code, in particular, prohibition of aggression against person and property, in order to fulfill our definition of anarchism as a system which provides no legal sanction for such aggression. Suppose, for example, that one group of people in society holds that all redheads are demons who deserve to be shot on sight. Suppose that Jones, one of this group, shoots Smith, a redhead. Suppose that Smith or his heir presses charges in a court, but that Jones’s court, in philosophic agreement with Jones, finds him innocent therefore. It seems to me that in order to be considered legitimate, any court would have to follow the basic libertarian law code of the inviolate right of person and property. For otherwise, courts might legally subscribe to a code which sanctions such aggression in various cases, and which to that extent would violate the definition of anarchism and introduce, if not the state, then a strong element of statishness or legalized aggression into the society.
But again I see no insuperable difficulties here. For in that case, anarchists, in agitating for their creed, will simply include in their agitation the idea of a general libertarian law code as part and parcel of the anarchist creed of abolition of legalized aggression against person or property in the society.
In contrast to the general law code, other aspects of court decisions could legitimately vary in accordance with the market or the wishes of the clients; for example, the language the cases will be conducted in, the number of judges to be involved, and so on.
There are other problems of the basic law code which there is no time to go into here: for example, the definition of just property titles or the question of legitimate punishment of convicted offenders — though the latter problem of course exists in statist legal systems as well.8 The basic point, however, is that the state is not needed to arrive at legal principles or their elaboration: indeed, much of the common law, the law merchant, admiralty law, and private law in general, grew up apart from the state, by judges not making the law but finding it on the basis of agreed-upon principles derived either from custom or reason.9 The idea that the state is needed to make law is as much a myth as that the state is needed to supply postal or police services.
Enough has been said here, I believe, to indicate that an anarchist system for settling disputes would be both viable and self-subsistent: that once adopted, it could work and continue indefinitely. How to arrive at that system is of course a very different problem, but certainly at the very least it will not likely come about unless people are convinced of its workability, are convinced, in short, that the state is not a necessary evil.

[Murray Rothbard delivered this talk 32 years ago today at the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy (ASPLP), Washington, DC: December 28, 1974. It was first published in The Libertarian Forum, volume 7.1, January 1975, available in PDF and ePub.]

I have wanted get the 7 day survivor achievement since the release of DR1. I attempted several years ago, made it to the 13 hour-ish mark and ended up falling asleep (I had started the attempt some time in the evening and had planned to stay awake all night like an idiot) and my friend eventually woke me up to a crashed xbox, no idea how long I was asleep with a crashed xbox, but it was what it was.
I didn't bother attempting again until today. I was watching some old game grumps videos and the inspiration to get the achievement hit me after watching their attempt to play through the game. I spent the last few days playing the story, maximizing my pp rewards to get to 50, started a separate playthrough to get the zombie genocider achievement to get the real mega buster all in effort to prepare for my attempt. I had a few days off and today was gonna be the day I finally got the achievement.
I started my infinite mode playthrough, and my thought was I was just gonna test the waters. I didn't feel like following a guide, and just doing it like I had done years ago; get hp books, make smart use of the food drops, and take it slow and steady.
This "testing of the waters" turned into 8 hours of my day. I had my buster, the 3 health books and a full inventory of food that would restore my hp to full, and was going from section to section of the mall to find more psychopaths to take down. At some point, between zombie damage and the hp drain, I was down to 4 blips, and was heading into the entrance plaza on my hunt. A zombie caught me right at the door, taking 1 blip of hp, and I guess with whatever mechanic there is with Frank's exhaustion, I got into a qte with 3 prompts, which I hadn't seen before, I had only seen 1 to 2 prompts, never 3. My reaction speed is lacking, and was only able to clear 2. On failure, the zombie took all 3 remaining blips of my hp, and ended my 8 hour run.
I was stunned. I had never seen the 3 interaction prompt or zombies deal more than 1 blip of damage at a time, even in my story mode playthrough at times where I wasn't fully paying attention, I had never seen zombie chunk my hp so hard. I feel totally robbed on what I feel was otherwise a solid attempt.
I do have one more day off from work on my little break, and I still want to get the achievement, but damn was that a blow to my confidence.
Anyway, sorry for the long text, but that was my most recent attempt at the 7 day survivor achievement. I hope to update with a success lol

Today's anniversaries are:
2011

• David Maxim Micić - Би̏ло (Bȉlo) (metal, radosavljevic, sasa lokner, vasil hadzimanov, ambient, electronic, fusion, progressive, progressive metal, rock, Београд)
  
• Jardín de la croix - Ocean Cosmonauts (instrumental rock, math rock, progressive rock, rock, alternative, experimental, instrumental, post-rock, progressive, Madrid)
  
• Terrestrial Exiled - Duodecimal Levorotation (Pop)
  

2014

• Contemplator - Orb (metal, avant-garde metal, instrumental, math metal, progressive metal, progressive rock, Quebec City)
  
• Destiny Potato - Lun (rock, indie rock, pop, Belgrade)
  

2016

• Eclecta - A Symmetry (pop, eclectic, jazz, performance, Zurich) Read our review.
  
• Fatal - New Horizon (alternative, edm, trancecore, progressive trancecore, russiancore, Russia)
  
• Gorguts - Pleiades' Dust (Metal) Read our review.
  
• Phobocosm - Bringer of Drought (black metal, dark descent records, death metal, metal, montréal, canada, doom metal, Colorado) Read our review.
  
• Polyphony - Simple Math (punk, dayenu, explosive, fuck, hardcore, math, mathcore, mathcorerevival, mathrock, post-hardcore, progressive, Maplewood)
  
• Spotlights - Tidals (rock, doom-gaze, post-metal, post-rock, shoegaze, sludge, sludgegaze, New York)
  
• Sylvaine - Wistful (alternative, blackgaze, alternative rock, atmospheric metal, doomgaze, post-rock, shoegaze, \u200eblackgaze, Oslo) Read our review.
  
• Triple Sun - The City Lies in Ruins (alternative, experimental, rock, Paris) Read our review.
  
• Wings Denied - Voyager (metal, progressive rock, alternative rock, clean vocals, djent, prog, progressive metal, Washington)
  

2017

• B L A C K I E… All Caps, with Spaces - Remains (experimental, Houston)
  
• Teth-Nahash - Ι Α Ω (Iota Alpha Omega) (black metal, experimental, metal, rituals, dark ambient, occultism, United States)
  

2018

• Plastic Bag Face Mask - How to Kill a Dead Franchise (metal, hardcore, mathcore, metalcore, noisecore, rock, Fresno)

2019

• À l'ombre d'Héméra - En route vers le grand vide (metal, ambiant, post-metal, post-rock, Levis)
  
• Glyptoglossio - Yottaannums in the Byss (metal, New York)
  
• Incel Crusher - Both Sides Are Bad (metal, sjwcore, acoustic black metal, cuckcore, folk punk, folkgrind, grind, Medina)
  
• Kamasz - Eight Rocks from Grandma's Box (polish jazz, the outer limits, avant-garde, electroacoustic, Poznań)
  

2020

• Michael Foster, Dave Rempis, Jason Roebke, and Tyler Damon - The Eagle (free improvisation)
  
• コシュニエ (Ko shu nie / Cö shu nie) - Overkill (J-rock)
  
• 中谷達也 (Nakatani Tatsuya) & Rob Magill - Valley Movements (free improvisation)
  

2021

• Arigarnon Friends - Muscle Memories (math rock)
  
• Oriflamme - L'Égide ardente (black metal)
  

2022

• 8-Bit & the Single Players - Let's Play (jazz fusion)
  
• Aara - Triade Ⅱ: Hemera (atmospheric black metal)
  
• Allison Fleischer - Black Friday (experimental electro)
  
• Ante-Inferno - Antediluvian Dreamscapes (atmospheric black metal)
  
• Arcas - Arcas (atmospheric black metal)
  
• Bríi - Corpos transparentes : finados neto pai avô filha mãe irmão avô neta irmã (atmospheric black metal)
  
• Cairns - Keening (post-black metal)
  
• Carl Mayotte - Escale (jazz fusion)
  
• Carlotta Valdes - Praha (progressive rock)
  
• Cavernlight - As I Cast Ruin upon the Lens that Reveals My Every Flaw (sludge metal)
  
• Charming Hostess - The Ginzburg Geography (contemporary classical)
  
• Chase Elodia - Portrait Imperfect (modern jazz)
  
• Church of the Cosmic Skull - There Is No Time (psychedelic rock)
  
• Corpus christī - The Bitter End of Old (black metal)
  
• Deathvoid & Sentiero dei principi - Immanent Domains (avant-garde black metal)
  
• Dim Lights - Starspire (ambient synthwave)
  
• Emma Ruth Rundle - Electric Guitar 2: Dowsing Voice (ambient post-rock)
  
• Entgeist - Rēs gestae (progressive black metal)
  
• Eucalyptus - Moves (avant-garde jazz)
  
• Findlay - The Last of the 20th Century Girls (indie pop)
  
• Fracture Type - Pickaxe (post-hardcore)
  
• Francois Houle & Daniel Janke - Crystalline (modern jazz)
  
• Giant Walker - All in Good Time (progressive alternative metal)
  
• Gilad Hekselman - Far Star (modern jazz)
  
• Gonemage - Master of Disgust… (experimental black metal)
  
• Gospel - The Loser (post-hardcore)
  
• Hard Rubber Orchestra - Iguana (jazz fusion, big band)
  
• Hedras Ramos - Angels (nu prog)
  
• Hirsute - Miniatures du dedans (jazz fusion)
  
• In Twilight's Embrace - Lifeblood (blackened death metal)
  
• Jacob Garchik - Assembly (experimental jazz, big band)
  
• Joseph A Peragine - 33 (mathcore)
  
• Katharos - Of Lineages Long Forgotten (blackened death metal)
  
• Kendrick Lamar - Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers (conscious hip-hop)
  
• La Fièvre - Tu ne les as jamais entendus crier, mais ils crient (experimental pop)
  
• Mary Halvorson - Amaryllis (modern jazz)
  
• Mary Halvorson - Belladonna (modern jazz)
  
• Master Boot Record - Personal Computer (chiptune metal)
  
• Mimesis - Trilogy (progressive metal)
  
• Moldmouth & Homeskin - Split (blackened hardcore)
  
• Moon Tooth - Phototroph (progressive rock)
  
• Morgue Supplier - Inevitability (deathgrind) Read our review.
  
• Norilsk - Beyond the Mountains (doom metal)
  
• Olanza - Olanza (noise rock)
  
• Patricia Kopatchinskaja & Joonas Ahonen - Le Monde selon George Antheil (classical)
  
• Primitive Man - Insurmountable (sludge metal) Read our review.
  
• Primo - Primo Stirs (stoner metal)
  
• R Murray Schafer, Imant Raminsh, and Ernst Schneider, played by the Okanagan Symphony Orchestra - Canadian Soundscapes (contemporary classical)
  
• Relayer - Relayer (math rock)
  
• Sacred Son - The Foul Deth of Engelond (atmospheric black metal)
  
• Serling, Hopscotch Battlescars, Kilpréz, and Clifford Hoyt - Split AM (mathcore)
  
• Shane Cooper & Mabuta - Finish the Sun (nu jazz)
  
• Skortue - Sous l'emprise de la haine (progressive death metal)
  
• Spread Joy - Ⅱ (indie punk)
  
• Steaksauce Mustache - All Juice, No Noise (mathcore)
  
• String Noise - Way (contemporary classical)
  
• Sun Stare - 𒍣𒌓𒋤𒁺 (Ziusudra) (post-metal)
  
• The Motion Mosaic - Bed Sores & Domino Effect (mathcore)
  
• The Observer Effect - Apotheosis (progressive metal)
  
• The Smile - A Light for Attracting Attention (alternative rock)
  
• Töfie & Vorace - Organic Love (darkwave)
  
• Torben Snekkestad & Søren Kjærgaard - Another Way of the Heart (modern jazz)
  
• Urine Hell - Weakling (noisecore)
  
• Void Wraith - Ⅱ (black metal)
  
• William Covert - Time Fog: Music for Liminal Moments (electro-rock)
  
• Woorms - Fatalismo (sludge metal)
  
• Yves Jarvis - The Zug (indie pop)
  
• Zero Hour - Agenda 21 (progressive metal)
  
• Александр Маноцков и вокальный ансамбль «Элеон» (Aleksandr Manockov i vokal'nyj ansambl' "Èleon") - Хождение (Xoždenie) (contemporary classical, choir)
  

2023

• Albionic Hermeticism - Nova Nātīvitās mundī (black metal)
  
• Auld Ridge - Folklore from Further Out (black metal)
  
• Chafouin - Trois, quatre (experimental folk)
  
• Kreise - Miraculeuse (progressive metal)
  
• Vomitorium - Nauséabonde et pourri (goregrind)
  

There have been so many films of The Three Musketeers story but this is one of my favorites. It follows all the story beats you've seen before. The big selling point is the stunt work.
HK vet Xin-Xin Xiong handles the stunt choreography here & does an amazing job. If you allow yourself to accept the absurdity of all the flips & crazy swordplay you're going to have a great time. There are 4 stellar set pieces here & while the finale apes Once Upon a Time in China, it isn't any less spectacular.
Director & director of photography Peter Hyams maximizes his $36 million dollar budget. He really captures the period setting & shoots a gorgeous flick. The cast is pretty decent including: Catherine Deneuve, Mena Suvari & Stephen Rea. Tim Roth steals the show though as a villain that makes his swordsman in Rob Roy seem reasonable.
Sadly the movie isn't available for streaming. I know in this day & age expecting someone to pick up $3 copy on eBay is a bit of an ask. I think it's worth the effort though.

In this post we explore a recent interview with Sean Khunkhun, President and CEO of Dolly Varden Silver Corp. The interview, conducted by Kier Reynolds on tokstocks, delves into various aspects of Dolly Varden's recent achievements, exploration plans, and market outlook. With a focus on key statistics and insights from the interview, we uncover the company's strategic initiatives, investor engagement efforts, and its potential to become a significant player in the precious metals sector.
Stock Performance and Financing:
•⁠ ⁠Dolly Varden's stock price increased by approximately 50% since the previous discussion, showcasing strong market performance.
•⁠ ⁠The company successfully closed a $15 million bought deal, demonstrating investor confidence and access to capital.
•⁠ ⁠Key investors participating in the financing include Eric Sprott, contributing $3 million, and other institutional investors.
Exploration Plans and Targets:
•⁠ ⁠Dolly Varden plans to conduct a significant drilling program, totaling 25,000 meters, indicating a robust exploration agenda.
•⁠ ⁠Exploration efforts will focus on high-priority targets, including the Homestake area, where significant silver and gold discoveries have been made.
•⁠ ⁠The company aims to validate the potential connection between Dolly Varden and Homestake, exploring the hypothesis of a district-scale project.
•⁠ ⁠Exploration targets also include areas with promising drill results, such as the Torbit and Wolf deposits, aiming to expand known mineralization and discover new deposits.
Market Outlook and Investor Engagement:
•⁠ ⁠Sean highlights increased M&A activities and financing in the precious metals sector, indicating a positive market environment.
•⁠ ⁠The company is actively engaging with investors globally, attending conferences, and utilizing digital platforms to communicate its value proposition.
•⁠ ⁠Dolly Varden's strong team of scientists, led by Ryan Weymark and Rob McLeod, enhances its exploration and development capabilities, instilling confidence in shareholders and investors.
•⁠ ⁠Major shareholders, including Hecla Mining Company (15%), Eric Sprott (10%), and Fury Gold Mines (19%), demonstrate strong support and alignment with the company's vision.
Potential for District-Scale Project:
•⁠ ⁠Sean discusses the hypothesis of a district-scale project, suggesting a potential connection between Dolly Varden and Homestake.
•⁠ ⁠The company aims to validate this hypothesis through targeted exploration, focusing on key areas with significant mineralization.
•⁠ ⁠The proximity of deposits, such as Torbit and Wolf, and the potential linkage between them indicate the possibility of a larger mineralized system.
Overall Outlook and Conclusion:
•⁠ ⁠Despite the company's impressive stock performance and exploration success, Sean emphasizes the need for continued diligence and exploration to maximize value for shareholders.
•⁠ ⁠The company's commitment to exploration, combined with a positive market outlook for precious metals, positions Dolly Varden Silver for future growth and success.
It becomes evident that Dolly Varden Silver Corp is focuses on achieving growth and success in the coming years. With a strong management team, exploration plans, and positive market dynamics in the precious metals sector, the company is well-positioned to capitalize on its promising assets and deliver value to its shareholders. As exploration efforts continue and market conditions remain favourable, Dolly Varden Silver Corp remains a compelling opportunity for investors seeking exposure to the silver and gold markets.
*Posted on behalf of Dolly Varden Silver.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHe2_NRYOYQ&ab_channel=TokStocksSmallCapPodcast

In this post we explore a recent interview with Sean Khunkhun, President and CEO of Dolly Varden Silver Corp. The interview, conducted by Kier Reynolds on tokstocks, delves into various aspects of Dolly Varden's recent achievements, exploration plans, and market outlook. With a focus on key statistics and insights from the interview, we uncover the company's strategic initiatives, investor engagement efforts, and its potential to become a significant player in the precious metals sector.
Stock Performance and Financing:
•⁠ ⁠Dolly Varden's stock price increased by approximately 50% since the previous discussion, showcasing strong market performance.
•⁠ ⁠The company successfully closed a $15 million bought deal, demonstrating investor confidence and access to capital.
•⁠ ⁠Key investors participating in the financing include Eric Sprott, contributing $3 million, and other institutional investors.
Exploration Plans and Targets:
•⁠ ⁠Dolly Varden plans to conduct a significant drilling program, totaling 25,000 meters, indicating a robust exploration agenda.
•⁠ ⁠Exploration efforts will focus on high-priority targets, including the Homestake area, where significant silver and gold discoveries have been made.
•⁠ ⁠The company aims to validate the potential connection between Dolly Varden and Homestake, exploring the hypothesis of a district-scale project.
•⁠ ⁠Exploration targets also include areas with promising drill results, such as the Torbit and Wolf deposits, aiming to expand known mineralization and discover new deposits.
Market Outlook and Investor Engagement:
•⁠ ⁠Sean highlights increased M&A activities and financing in the precious metals sector, indicating a positive market environment.
•⁠ ⁠The company is actively engaging with investors globally, attending conferences, and utilizing digital platforms to communicate its value proposition.
•⁠ ⁠Dolly Varden's strong team of scientists, led by Ryan Weymark and Rob McLeod, enhances its exploration and development capabilities, instilling confidence in shareholders and investors.
•⁠ ⁠Major shareholders, including Hecla Mining Company (15%), Eric Sprott (10%), and Fury Gold Mines (19%), demonstrate strong support and alignment with the company's vision.
Potential for District-Scale Project:
•⁠ ⁠Sean discusses the hypothesis of a district-scale project, suggesting a potential connection between Dolly Varden and Homestake.
•⁠ ⁠The company aims to validate this hypothesis through targeted exploration, focusing on key areas with significant mineralization.
•⁠ ⁠The proximity of deposits, such as Torbit and Wolf, and the potential linkage between them indicate the possibility of a larger mineralized system.
Overall Outlook and Conclusion:
•⁠ ⁠Despite the company's impressive stock performance and exploration success, Sean emphasizes the need for continued diligence and exploration to maximize value for shareholders.
•⁠ ⁠The company's commitment to exploration, combined with a positive market outlook for precious metals, positions Dolly Varden Silver for future growth and success.
It becomes evident that Dolly Varden Silver Corp is focuses on achieving growth and success in the coming years. With a strong management team, exploration plans, and positive market dynamics in the precious metals sector, the company is well-positioned to capitalize on its promising assets and deliver value to its shareholders. As exploration efforts continue and market conditions remain favourable, Dolly Varden Silver Corp remains a compelling opportunity for investors seeking exposure to the silver and gold markets.
*Posted on behalf of Dolly Varden Silver.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHe2_NRYOYQ&ab_channel=TokStocksSmallCapPodcast

In this post we explore a recent interview with Sean Khunkhun, President and CEO of Dolly Varden Silver Corp. The interview, conducted by Kier Reynolds on tokstocks, delves into various aspects of Dolly Varden's recent achievements, exploration plans, and market outlook. With a focus on key statistics and insights from the interview, we uncover the company's strategic initiatives, investor engagement efforts, and its potential to become a significant player in the precious metals sector.
Stock Performance and Financing:
•⁠ ⁠Dolly Varden's stock price increased by approximately 50% since the previous discussion, showcasing strong market performance.
•⁠ ⁠The company successfully closed a $15 million bought deal, demonstrating investor confidence and access to capital.
•⁠ ⁠Key investors participating in the financing include Eric Sprott, contributing $3 million, and other institutional investors.
Exploration Plans and Targets:
•⁠ ⁠Dolly Varden plans to conduct a significant drilling program, totaling 25,000 meters, indicating a robust exploration agenda.
•⁠ ⁠Exploration efforts will focus on high-priority targets, including the Homestake area, where significant silver and gold discoveries have been made.
•⁠ ⁠The company aims to validate the potential connection between Dolly Varden and Homestake, exploring the hypothesis of a district-scale project.
•⁠ ⁠Exploration targets also include areas with promising drill results, such as the Torbit and Wolf deposits, aiming to expand known mineralization and discover new deposits.
Market Outlook and Investor Engagement:
•⁠ ⁠Sean highlights increased M&A activities and financing in the precious metals sector, indicating a positive market environment.
•⁠ ⁠The company is actively engaging with investors globally, attending conferences, and utilizing digital platforms to communicate its value proposition.
•⁠ ⁠Dolly Varden's strong team of scientists, led by Ryan Weymark and Rob McLeod, enhances its exploration and development capabilities, instilling confidence in shareholders and investors.
•⁠ ⁠Major shareholders, including Hecla Mining Company (15%), Eric Sprott (10%), and Fury Gold Mines (19%), demonstrate strong support and alignment with the company's vision.
Potential for District-Scale Project:
•⁠ ⁠Sean discusses the hypothesis of a district-scale project, suggesting a potential connection between Dolly Varden and Homestake.
•⁠ ⁠The company aims to validate this hypothesis through targeted exploration, focusing on key areas with significant mineralization.
•⁠ ⁠The proximity of deposits, such as Torbit and Wolf, and the potential linkage between them indicate the possibility of a larger mineralized system.
Overall Outlook and Conclusion:
•⁠ ⁠Despite the company's impressive stock performance and exploration success, Sean emphasizes the need for continued diligence and exploration to maximize value for shareholders.
•⁠ ⁠The company's commitment to exploration, combined with a positive market outlook for precious metals, positions Dolly Varden Silver for future growth and success.
It becomes evident that Dolly Varden Silver Corp is focuses on achieving growth and success in the coming years. With a strong management team, exploration plans, and positive market dynamics in the precious metals sector, the company is well-positioned to capitalize on its promising assets and deliver value to its shareholders. As exploration efforts continue and market conditions remain favourable, Dolly Varden Silver Corp remains a compelling opportunity for investors seeking exposure to the silver and gold markets.
*Posted on behalf of Dolly Varden Silver.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHe2_NRYOYQ&ab_channel=TokStocksSmallCapPodcast

Hey everyone.
Just the last weekend I finally finished HM and got my dice, thanks to the best companion... Gale (JK, first time using him but I love him now).
So before I explain the title, I'll just say this was my 5th or 6th try, having lost to the gith patrol before the Mountain pass the previous time.
This time I thought, I was gonna play it safe and don't try anything new, and stick to what I know. Right...
I wanted to do the 10/2 SSB Tav, starting Paladin to 8 then respec. I wanted to get immortal Ice wizard Gale, but I thought it came online pretty late so I went with TB OH Astarion, ThrowZ Karlach and BM Laezel.
I did the usual level 4 (almost) without fighting, then started the druid/goblin conflict. My goal was to get to level 5 and try to get the Silver sword. I know, cheese but I was kinda scared already so I thought to maximize my survival chances and get Voss' sword and Raphael's armor.
I only did a normal run before, and a tactician durge run, so there's a lot to this game I haven't done yet and sometimes that wins me over and I started improvising. Never in combat, but in HM dialog and interactions are just as important. So I got to level 5, went to Ethel's first and tried to get the Bitter Divorce (dind't end up using it once lol) and this broke my oath. First time meeting the Oathbreaker Knight (level 12 btw) went fine. 1000 gold? Sure, I learned to pick up everything and sell it for profit. Immediately after, I went to get the SIlver sword with Ranger Wyll's Bear and Gale's portent dice. I got it and got the hell away from it, still scared from last run's TPK. After calming down, I went and invis surprise run the gith mfs, and wipe the rest even using haste potions. A bit much you may say but I was having Vietnam flashbacks by then.
By now, I had everything almost done except the Underdark, so I decided to go to the Mountain Pass and get the infernal armor now. I go to camp, it's night. I am redeemed but that Knight is still there, fine... I get Shadowhart into the party for Laezel, prepare Silence and cast it only on Raphael. Suddenly all hell breaks loose, everyone on camp except Withers is against me, even Volo, Halsin, and Scratch. And even the freakin' level 12 Knight, except Raphael ofc. I realize I'm f'ed, almost click exit game right then and call it done. I figure ok, let's try to learn from this, turn on the non-lethal and try to knock some of my 'former' allies, because they're far from the Knight. Nvm Laezel just crits and downs Astarion, I manage to put down Volo, Halsin, and Scratch, but the Knight kills Tav and Shadowheart and Wyll knocks down Karlach. That's it I think... Wait, for some reason Karlach is at 1 hp and unconcious, even tho Astarion and the other 2 are dead. A minute passes, 2, maybe 5 or an hour for all I care. I stare at Karlach's HP. She gets up, camp goes about its business normally.
I go to Withers, revive everyone, get back the 600 gold with Astarion ofc, and I think what the hell? Let's try again. What could go wrong(er)? Shadowheart silences Raphael, the Knight, Volo, and Scratch aggro me but no-one else... an improvement. I knock down Scratch, Volo dies for some reason and then I put all of my damage on the Knight, thankfully I have the Silver sword and GWM. I do a lot of damage but Tav goes down, so does Shadowheart then Karlach but first leaving it near dead, so Astarion finished it with just a handful of hit points remaining. I'm freaking out. The bastard only had meh items but I get my 1000 gold back. So I revive back every one, get back my gold (sorry Withers, you won't use it anyway) and at this point I'm mad at the devil for just standing there while I get almost TPK in 2 instances back-to-back, so I silence him for the 3rd time and just go to town with my Silver sword set to stun. After like 10 minutes, he goes down, I get the hellish armor and he gets up like nothing happened, just a little bruised while almost all the camp is littered with blood like I was a Durge with a visiting bard.
Anyway, I had some other near-misses and almost run ending moments (like that time I dumped a priestess Gut body in the Myconid colony because of reasons and everyone just went freakin' mental and attacked me), but that gave me the spirit to go all the way and face 3 Chosen of the Gods and almost die of uncertainty cause I didn't know if Gale would offer to save my run or not at the end.
TL;DR I tried to rob a Devil in my camp, which aggroed everyone in camp, beat my ass but Karlach survived in 1 hp; so I tried again and killed a 12 level Oathbreaker guy with a party of 4 level 4 PCs (more like 3 since Shadowheart had no items). Scratch made it unscathed tho.

On Friday December 1st, I was logged into the app and on my way to pick up a passenger, when a teenage girl rear ended my stopped car at about about 30 mph and totaled it. My insurance and gap wouldn't cover me because when I got my car, a year before I even considered doing rideshare, I missed the small detail in a book worth of contracts and documents that said they wont cover commercial vehicles. Which sounds to me like it means company owned trucks or something, but apparently that includes rideshare and even pizza delivery guys. And I never even heard of rideshare insurance before this. According to what I've read online, this is one of the most common mistakes drivers make. Lyfts insurance backed out, because the other party's insurance accepted liability, but only covered about $12500 out of $15500 that I still owed. There's nothing I legally can do about that part.
When I got home that night I applied for the Lyft express rental program with Hertz. When I signed up for the rental I had to wait until Monday to get a ride 20 minutes out, just to be told the rental wasn't ready. So then I had to wait until Wednesday, December 6th to pick up the rental. When I got in the accident, I was trying to pay my apartments rent, that was due on the 5th. If I didn't pay it all by the 31st Id be evicted in the middle of winter, and homeless since I had nobody to stay with.
Part of the rental signup process required me to read a thing that said explicitly, "The deposit is the only fee you'll need to pay ahead of your first billing period. You won't pay for any other costs on pickup day." It also rephrases this statement in the help section, and again on the website. And it says In the rental contract, "Amounts will be deducted from your account or charged to the payment method You have authorized for Lyft's use in connection with the Lyft platform each tuesday for the prior weekly period." What this means is that I shouldn't be charged for anything other than the $150 deposit until Tuesday, December 12th. Which would make sense, since the vehicle is being rented for a job, giving me a week to get some gas money in advance so I can use the vehicle to pay the rent next week. When I started driving, I completed 10 rides, and was low on gas, so I went to go put gas in the rental car. But it turned out my account was empty, because they were taking the money from every ride I did. So when I looked in the app, I found in the earnings section that I had to pay $175.92 between December 4th and December 10th, and for some reason 11 rides instead of the 20 rides described in the contract. I had to complete rides to pay this off before my direct account could be unlocked. So at the least, they intentionally mislead me with confusing and contradictory information, a common practice for them. But if I am understanding this correctly, this would be the 1st breach of contract, because they were charging me 2 days before I picked up the vehicle, on the day of the reservation, when hertz failed to provide me a vehicle, when there was no prior week for me to be charged for, nor any Tuesdays within the time that I had the rental up to that point, and they mislead me with all of the false information they provided and even required me to read. In doing this, they caused me to run out of gas and money for gas before I could pay the whole cost for this unexpected charge, physically preventing me from completing the available jobs in the app, which were described to be available in the contract, which I am required to complete in order to pay for the rental and complete my part of the agreement. And by saying I am required to pay the full weekly rental cost by completing the unspecified necessary number of jobs provided by lyft each week, they are guaranteeing me a sufficient amount of work available through Lyft to pay for the rental, and by stating that there will be jobs available to me throughout the week, they are guaranteeing me additional wages. They made me lose those wages. So when some people ignorantly tell me "well you didnt have to accept the job," that doesnt apply to this situation.
When I called support to ask what this charge was for, they initially told me that I wasn't supposed to be charged for this, that they ran into this situation before and they would escalate it to a specialized team, and to call back in 24 hours if they dont follow up by then. This happened a few times. I contacted several support members throughout the week. Some of them told me I would receive a reimbursement of the $93.59 in my lyft direct account in a few days for the 10 rides I completed, And when I didn't receive that money I called them back and was told I actually owe the remaining $82.33 and whoever I talked to before was wrong. They went back and forth with this, giving me inconsistent, false information about what Lyft owes me and what I owe Lyft, sometimes blatantly lying to me. Some of them said they couldn't find anything regarding this $175.92 charge and had no idea what I was talking about. A couple of them told me that I had to contact hertz for information on billing and receipts, but when I went to hertz they could only show me a weekly charge of $311 and said they don't know why it says that and I need to discuss costs with lyft. Then when I called back Lyft, they gave me a fake phone number supposedly for hertz billing, but instead went to some random factory or warehouse. One of them had me in such a confusing nonsense conversation that I had to elaborate and ask her "So you are saying there are 3 separate types of charges I'm dealing with here, the $150 deposit when I pick up the rental, the weekly rental charge of $307, and a separate rental fee of $175.92 that I immediately have to pay in the first week beginning the moment I pickup the car, is that correct?" And she said yes there are 3 types of charges. I also watched the earnings page change back and forth between me owing and being owed the money for that week. I think all this Should be considered fraud. And I've screenshotted several things regarding this and even sent one to a support member. I ended up with a late fee because of this and had to pay the remaining balance of 82.33 on top of second week's 307.85.
So after a week of getting the run around from support, halfway into the month, I became so desperate that I had to increase the limit on the credit card that I was trying to pay off for food gas and some of the bills. I got it to help with my education and was actually planning on paying most of it off after I paid my bills that month, because I hate the anxiety of being in debt and it was the one time I tried to use one. Instead Lyft forced me to max it out. For those idiots that asked me "Why dont you just get a real job?" because they obviously never had a real job themselves: Walking around and applying for jobs and calling managers for application followups takes weeks. Then you have to wait for your start date, then you gotta wait a week or 2 for your 1st check, which wouldn't have arrived by the 31st, and wouldnt have even been enough for rent even if it did.
So I spent all of December in this situation, where I was trying to work things out with my apartment management, I had to pay the $400 bill for that car loan before it hurt my credit, making it even harder to get a new car in the near future, which they gave me a few extra weeks only because the insurance was sending them 12500, and I had to worry about the rest of my bills for the month. I had to go up to hertz about 6-8 times, 40 minutes there and back each, and spend hours on the phone on hold, because they were so understaffed and kept making mistakes. I also had to spend several hours almost every day on the phone, or driving around, reading contracts and documents, researching things online about my situation, begging people to give me more time for my bills, dealing with banks and insurance companies, trying to get more money for my totaled car, trying to find a new car, trying to find loans and additional credit cards, and of course spending countless hours on the phone with lyft support, typing up emails, waiting for responses, being sent on wild goose chases, being lied to and screwed around, because they are so fucking negligent, incompetent, and unprofessional, and then they have the audacity to thank me for being a valued member of the Lyft community. So when I was finally able to start driving the rental, I did 9-12 hours almost every day (only counting time online), it was like I had 3 jobs but I was only getting paid for 1 of them. Constantly drinking energy drinks and sometimes taking 30 minute naps to combat the sleep deprivation, while having to hide the constant panic attacks and pretend everything is ok when riders wanted to talk to me. A dangerous situation I never wanted to be in, but it was that or lose everything I have and potentially freeze to death. Lyft forced me into that situation and trapped me. So I'm dealing with all this crazy shit, I've lost my car, I'm about to be homeless in the middle of winter, I'm gaining thousands of dollars of debt, my credit is about to be ruined, I'm all alone in this situation, and all of these companies are at my throat.
So after I was able to pay December's rent on the very last day before eviction, I had to start focusing on the soon to be late rent for January. But Lyft breached the contract the 2nd time and physically prevented me from working again. This time Hertz didn't update my insurance info in the lyft app for January 1st like they were supposed to, and I didnt want to get deactivated for driving with expired insurance. The hertz agent wouldn't update my insurance when I called him because he was too busy, so I had to drive up there again, so that I could get physical copies of the insurance and send them to Lyft myself. I cant even be mad at the guy because I saw how understaffed and overwhelmed he was every time I talked to him. When I tried to send the insurance document to lyft so they could update it, they turned it into another one of their stupid ass games, and after several messages and emails, they finally updated the insurance on the fucking 9th. But by then I had already returned the car because I had no way to pay for it. The Hertz agent set my return date to December 29th to help me out after I explained how bad I was getting screwed, and because I talked the insurance company into reimbursing rental charges up to that date (didnt recieve that check until the end of January), and I had barely used the car since then. But lyft continued trying to charge my empty account after that return date, including late fees. When I emailed them about it and told them they owe me money back for that time, and sent them the hertz receipt, they completely ignored the email, and instead continued trying even harder to charge me, now multiple times a day. They eventually stopped and then about a month later I got paid about $270 for "BONUS", with no other explanation, so I dont even know if that had anything to do with the rental. The remaining rental fee also changed to $4 in the app at some point and hasnt changed since.
It tried emailing Lyft (4 months before this post 5/5) explaining all of the damages they caused me and they ignored that email too, and every email related to it. Any time I contact support regarding this, they refuse to discuss anything and tell me to wait for the email response, which is obviously never going to happen. But they still answer emails about other subjects.
I managed to get a loan from my bank on top of my other debts to pay January's rent while I walked around in snow storms looking for jobs around me. They also told me if I can hold a job for a month or 2 they would get me a loan for a car, because banks dont consider rideshare to be a reliable source of income unless you are one of those unicorns that have survived 2 years in this fucked up business. So most full time drivers cant even get their car replaced if something happens to it. Anybody see the fucking pattern here yet? Most places I could find weren't hiring at the time so the best thing I could find in walking distance was $14 an hour, and after 2 months they told me they couldn't finance me because my debt to income was too high. Ive been keeping up with my credit card payment and that loan for January's rent, but the bank that loaned me for the car says the $14000 they got from me since I lost my car and job at the same time doesn't count toward my monthly payments, because their fucking predators. I had to tell them Im not avoiding contact with them, and I wish I could pay them, but its out of my physical ability right now, and theres nothing I can do. So now its hurting my credit, and by the time I can get a car, my credit will be ruined. Something went wrong with my tax return so I just found out I wont get that for 3 more months. Im weeks behind on rent every month, nearly $1000 in late fees. Getting threats of my power and internet being shut off every month, which I need to keep working on my education.
In the last 5 months I have called hundreds of lawyers, specializing in various practices like employment, business to business, consumer rights, class actions, and other random shit. The ones that actually answered the phone or replied to messages went 1 of 2 ways. Either they cut me off mid sentence before I could even begin explaining the situation the short way or the long way, just to talk to me like I was an idiot and tell me to get a job and that nobody will take my case. Or the ones that weren't total arrogant morons and actually listened, said it sounded like I have a solid case, but its out of their area of expertise, and anyone they referred me to told me the same thing. There were a few law firms where the receptionist would take a summary of my situation and send it to their attorneys for review, just for me to get a brief message or email saying the exact same thing along the lines of "Unfortunately we are unable to assist you with your current legal issue. Please note that this is not an assessment of the strength of your potential claims. We encourage you to contact another attorney, blah blah go fuck yourself." I havent been able to get a single consultation, and nobody will explain to me what the problem is or if somehow I made a mistake, or why the law just doesn't give a fuck.
So I've come to the conclusions that A: As soon as they hear the part that Im broke and in debt they arent interested, despite the fact that they would get paid a lot if I actually won a class action lawsuit, because fuck the average hard working American, especially the poor ones. If us peasants happen to get financially ruined by the criminal actions of rich predatory assholes, they are legally untouchable, making any contract or agreements we sign useless to us. But of course if we do something wrong, they have all the money and resources to stomp the legal shit out of us. And B: No lawyer would ever dare to face off against these big bad rideshare companies, because the only existing federal law that could potentially protect a contractor from damages (Fair labor standards act 16B) Is a massive grey area where the verdict is completely up to the court's discretion. Meaning pursuing such a claim is a far too risky due to unknown results. In other words, again there are no laws to protect us. So I've given up on lawyers completely, and turned to the government for help.
100 more phone calls and a bunch of research later, I learn that government agencies like State and US departments of labor, Labor standards, Employment rights, better business bureau, and anything else like that wont accept complaints from contractors. Again, there are no laws to protect us. So I looked up the class action lawsuits against Lyft/Uber going on in New York and California, and contacted them for any information I can find on how to start one here in Missouri. Because if I'm right, they are breaching the contract with everyone who rents through them, and I cant be the only person who got fucked up by it. They politely explained to me that they legally cant give me legal advice. But I did figure out that the Attorney Generals of those states played a big part of it. So I called them, and when I finally got ahold of somebody at their offices, they were actually really helpful. They couldn't give me legal advice, but they both explained how the class actions got started. Basically, the Attorney General's Office in each state initially will say they dont handle this kind of thing, which is what the MO AGO told me. But if they get bombarded by phone calls from enough people, they will have to take it seriously, and might actually do something about it. Thats what happened in NY and CA, and what would have to happen in MO, or whatever state you're in, for any kind of legal action to be taken against Lyft/Uber in most cases.
I'm not just talking about my situation, I'm talking about how wronged drivers can hold these corrupt companies accountable in general. 80% of the posts I see on lyftdrivers are pissed off drivers talking about the shitty conditions we have to work in and the way they constantly treat us. Those class action lawsuits were over other things like unfair wages and misclassification. They constantly mislead people with false information. Many drivers view and treat passengers like the opposition and straight up dont care about them because of shit that lyft has done to turn us against them. Passengers get put in potentially life threatening situations like getting stranded in the middle of nowhere at 3 AM because of supports constant failures and total disregard for human life. These companies are robbing all of us everyday and getting away with it because they really have been above the law this whole time.
OSHA was established to protect people from unsafe work conditions to prevent unnecessary death and injuries. Clearly in this modern age, new federal regulations need to be established ASAP to protect the physical, mental and financial well being of workers from the dangers of rideshare and gig jobs, and other corporations and institutions who make policies specifically intended to single out or take advantage of these wronged workers. It should be illegal for insurance companies to force extra charges for "Rideshare Insurance" on top of full coverage. Banks and leasing agencies shouldn't be able to tell full time drivers that we dont have a reliable source of income when were making 4-6k+ a month with instant pay, depending on how much we choose to work everyday. A functional car is the primary required tool for our job, so we should have advantages regarding vehicle options and security over people with jobs that dont necessarily require a vehicle to complete. Instead we are at a greater disadvantage over everybody. A $2500 deductible for minimal insurance while on the job, and $307 a week to rent a work vehicle is outrageous, and often not worth it. There should be a reliable way to get loans or replacements for our vehicles.
There should be a minimum standard requirement for our pay and work conditions, transparency and accuracy of information displayed in these apps, and the competency and reliability of support staff. Imagine the shit show our military would be if our troops had to talk to Lyft Support every time they needed intel, evac or air support. That might be a pretty dramatic comparison, but when were out here driving strangers around through the night, situations can get pretty serious sometimes, and you can't usually rely on emergency services until danger is imminent or somebody has already been hurt. Financial security can often be a time sensitive situation when you're struggling to get by. And the manipulative mind games they like to play often feels identical to the way that narcissists in my past have emotionally abused me, and I've straight up had panic attacks and emotional break downs just trying to communicate with support. Im almost convinced that its intentionally bad, as part of a corporate manipulation strategy to keep people confused and discouraged from doing anything when they're hurt by this corrupt company. Because I have never encountered customer service as bad as this anywhere else, and I didn't even think it was possible.
These companies are operating nationwide, so the fact that the existing lawsuits are confined to the specific states they are in, and most people who have the same problems cant join because they don't live within those specific boarders, is a total failure of our society. As technology advances, more companies outside of rideshare are going to require new laws and regulations, and if our outdated legal system cant adapt faster than this, our country is gonna be completely fucked in a couple decades. If they can treat us like we are "independent contractors", but turn around and shove a bunch of corporate bullshit down our throats when its convenient to them, and we stand on the line between being classified as Employees or Contractors, than obviously "Gig Jobs" need their own classification with specific laws and regulations that actually apply to the situation. Its not like some dude hired some guys to go around fixing houses in the city for his roofing business. This is obviously different and something needs to change.
So I figured Id make this post to see what people think and if I can get some answers. If I dont find anything here, my next move is to contact the Missouri House of representatives, and then I guess congress or something, even if I have to work my way up to Joe Fucking Biden. Im not a lawyer, I hate politics, and I really dont have time for this shit. I just want to learn how to build the technology I cant stop thinking about, train in martial arts, and recover from my fucked up childhood so I can learn how to function in society some day. But I keep getting fucked up by the ruthless greed and dysfunction in this country, its not getting any better, and I'm not gonna fucking take shit anymore!

On Friday December 1st, I was logged into the app and on my way to pick up a passenger, when a teenage girl rear ended my stopped car at about about 30 mph and totaled it. My insurance and gap wouldn't cover me because when I got my car, a year before I even considered doing rideshare, I missed the small detail in a book worth of contracts and documents that said they wont cover commercial vehicles. Which sounds to me like it means company owned trucks or something, but apparently that includes rideshare and even pizza delivery guys. And I never even heard of rideshare insurance before this. According to what I've read online, this is one of the most common mistakes drivers make. Lyfts insurance backed out, because the other party's insurance accepted liability, but only covered about $12500 out of $15500 that I still owed. There's nothing I legally can do about that part.
When I got home that night I applied for the Lyft express rental program with Hertz. When I signed up for the rental I had to wait until Monday to get a ride 20 minutes out, just to be told the rental wasn't ready. So then I had to wait until Wednesday, December 6th to pick up the rental. When I got in the accident, I was trying to pay my apartments rent, that was due on the 5th. If I didn't pay it all by the 31st Id be evicted in the middle of winter, and homeless since I had nobody to stay with.
Part of the rental signup process required me to read a thing that said explicitly, "The deposit is the only fee you'll need to pay ahead of your first billing period. You won't pay for any other costs on pickup day." It also rephrases this statement in the help section, and again on the website. And it says In the rental contract, "Amounts will be deducted from your account or charged to the payment method You have authorized for Lyft's use in connection with the Lyft platform each tuesday for the prior weekly period." What this means is that I shouldn't be charged for anything other than the $150 deposit until Tuesday, December 12th. Which would make sense, since the vehicle is being rented for a job, giving me a week to get some gas money in advance so I can use the vehicle to pay the rent next week. When I started driving, I completed 10 rides, and was low on gas, so I went to go put gas in the rental car. But it turned out my account was empty, because they were taking the money from every ride I did. So when I looked in the app, I found in the earnings section that I had to pay $175.92 between December 4th and December 10th, and for some reason 11 rides instead of the 20 rides described in the contract. I had to complete rides to pay this off before my direct account could be unlocked. So at the least, they intentionally mislead me with confusing and contradictory information, a common practice for them. But if I am understanding this correctly, this would be the 1st breach of contract, because they were charging me 2 days before I picked up the vehicle, on the day of the reservation, when hertz failed to provide me a vehicle, when there was no prior week for me to be charged for, nor any Tuesdays within the time that I had the rental up to that point, and they mislead me with all of the false information they provided and even required me to read. In doing this, they caused me to run out of gas and money for gas before I could pay the whole cost for this unexpected charge, physically preventing me from completing the available jobs in the app, which were described to be available in the contract, which I am required to complete in order to pay for the rental and complete my part of the agreement. And by saying I am required to pay the full weekly rental cost by completing the unspecified necessary number of jobs provided by lyft each week, they are guaranteeing me a sufficient amount of work available through Lyft to pay for the rental, and by stating that there will be jobs available to me throughout the week, they are guaranteeing me additional wages. They made me lose those wages. So when some people ignorantly tell me "well you didnt have to accept the job," that doesnt apply to this situation.
When I called support to ask what this charge was for, they initially told me that I wasn't supposed to be charged for this, that they ran into this situation before and they would escalate it to a specialized team, and to call back in 24 hours if they dont follow up by then. This happened a few times. I contacted several support members throughout the week. Some of them told me I would receive a reimbursement of the $93.59 in my lyft direct account in a few days for the 10 rides I completed, And when I didn't receive that money I called them back and was told I actually owe the remaining $82.33 and whoever I talked to before was wrong. They went back and forth with this, giving me inconsistent, false information about what Lyft owes me and what I owe Lyft, sometimes blatantly lying to me. Some of them said they couldn't find anything regarding this $175.92 charge and had no idea what I was talking about. A couple of them told me that I had to contact hertz for information on billing and receipts, but when I went to hertz they could only show me a weekly charge of $311 and said they don't know why it says that and I need to discuss costs with lyft. Then when I called back Lyft, they gave me a fake phone number supposedly for hertz billing, but instead went to some random factory or warehouse. One of them had me in such a confusing nonsense conversation that I had to elaborate and ask her "So you are saying there are 3 separate types of charges I'm dealing with here, the $150 deposit when I pick up the rental, the weekly rental charge of $307, and a separate rental fee of $175.92 that I immediately have to pay in the first week beginning the moment I pickup the car, is that correct?" And she said yes there are 3 types of charges. I also watched the earnings page change back and forth between me owing and being owed the money for that week. I think all this Should be considered fraud. And I've screenshotted several things regarding this and even sent one to a support member. I ended up with a late fee because of this and had to pay the remaining balance of 82.33 on top of second week's 307.85.
So after a week of getting the run around from support, halfway into the month, I became so desperate that I had to increase the limit on the credit card that I was trying to pay off for food gas and some of the bills. I got it to help with my education and was actually planning on paying most of it off after I paid my bills that month, because I hate the anxiety of being in debt and it was the one time I tried to use one. Instead Lyft forced me to max it out. For those idiots that asked me "Why dont you just get a real job?" because they obviously never had a real job themselves: Walking around and applying for jobs and calling managers for application followups takes weeks. Then you have to wait for your start date, then you gotta wait a week or 2 for your 1st check, which wouldn't have arrived by the 31st, and wouldnt have even been enough for rent even if it did.
So I spent all of December in this situation, where I was trying to work things out with my apartment management, I had to pay the $400 bill for that car loan before it hurt my credit, making it even harder to get a new car in the near future, which they gave me a few extra weeks only because the insurance was sending them 12500, and I had to worry about the rest of my bills for the month. I had to go up to hertz about 6-8 times, 40 minutes there and back each, and spend hours on the phone on hold, because they were so understaffed and kept making mistakes. I also had to spend several hours almost every day on the phone, or driving around, reading contracts and documents, researching things online about my situation, begging people to give me more time for my bills, dealing with banks and insurance companies, trying to get more money for my totaled car, trying to find a new car, trying to find loans and additional credit cards, and of course spending countless hours on the phone with lyft support, typing up emails, waiting for responses, being sent on wild goose chases, being lied to and screwed around, because they are so fucking negligent, incompetent, and unprofessional, and then they have the audacity to thank me for being a valued member of the Lyft community. So when I was finally able to start driving the rental, I did 9-12 hours almost every day (only counting time online), it was like I had 3 jobs but I was only getting paid for 1 of them. Constantly drinking energy drinks and sometimes taking 30 minute naps to combat the sleep deprivation, while having to hide the constant panic attacks and pretend everything is ok when riders wanted to talk to me. A dangerous situation I never wanted to be in, but it was that or lose everything I have and potentially freeze to death. Lyft forced me into that situation and trapped me. So I'm dealing with all this crazy shit, I've lost my car, I'm about to be homeless in the middle of winter, I'm gaining thousands of dollars of debt, my credit is about to be ruined, I'm all alone in this situation, and all of these companies are at my throat.
So after I was able to pay December's rent on the very last day before eviction, I had to start focusing on the soon to be late rent for January. But Lyft breached the contract the 2nd time and physically prevented me from working again. This time Hertz didn't update my insurance info in the lyft app for January 1st like they were supposed to, and I didnt want to get deactivated for driving with expired insurance. The hertz agent wouldn't update my insurance when I called him because he was too busy, so I had to drive up there again, so that I could get physical copies of the insurance and send them to Lyft myself. I cant even be mad at the guy because I saw how understaffed and overwhelmed he was every time I talked to him. When I tried to send the insurance document to lyft so they could update it, they turned it into another one of their stupid ass games, and after several messages and emails, they finally updated the insurance on the fucking 9th. But by then I had already returned the car because I had no way to pay for it. The Hertz agent set my return date to December 29th to help me out after I explained how bad I was getting screwed, and because I talked the insurance company into reimbursing rental charges up to that date (didnt recieve that check until the end of January), and I had barely used the car since then. But lyft continued trying to charge my empty account after that return date, including late fees. When I emailed them about it and told them they owe me money back for that time, and sent them the hertz receipt, they completely ignored the email, and instead continued trying even harder to charge me, now multiple times a day. They eventually stopped and then about a month later I got paid about $270 for "BONUS", with no other explanation, so I dont even know if that had anything to do with the rental. The remaining rental fee also changed to $4 in the app at some point and hasnt changed since.
It tried emailing Lyft (4 months before this post 5/5) explaining all of the damages they caused me and they ignored that email too, and every email related to it. Any time I contact support regarding this, they refuse to discuss anything and tell me to wait for the email response, which is obviously never going to happen. But they still answer emails about other subjects.
I managed to get a loan from my bank on top of my other debts to pay January's rent while I walked around in snow storms looking for jobs around me. They also told me if I can hold a job for a month or 2 they would get me a loan for a car, because banks dont consider rideshare to be a reliable source of income unless you are one of those unicorns that have survived 2 years in this fucked up business. So most full time drivers cant even get their car replaced if something happens to it. Anybody see the fucking pattern here yet? Most places I could find weren't hiring at the time so the best thing I could find in walking distance was $14 an hour, and after 2 months they told me they couldn't finance me because my debt to income was too high. Ive been keeping up with my credit card payment and that loan for January's rent, but the bank that loaned me for the car says the $14000 they got from me since I lost my car and job at the same time doesn't count toward my monthly payments, because their fucking predators. I had to tell them Im not avoiding contact with them, and I wish I could pay them, but its out of my physical ability right now, and theres nothing I can do. So now its hurting my credit, and by the time I can get a car, my credit will be ruined. Something went wrong with my tax return so I just found out I wont get that for 3 more months. Im weeks behind on rent every month, nearly $1000 in late fees. Getting threats of my power and internet being shut off every month, which I need to keep working on my education.
In the last 5 months I have called hundreds of lawyers, specializing in various practices like employment, business to business, consumer rights, class actions, and other random shit. The ones that actually answered the phone or replied to messages went 1 of 2 ways. Either they cut me off mid sentence before I could even begin explaining the situation the short way or the long way, just to talk to me like I was an idiot and tell me to get a job and that nobody will take my case. Or the ones that weren't total arrogant morons and actually listened, said it sounded like I have a solid case, but its out of their area of expertise, and anyone they referred me to told me the same thing. There were a few law firms where the receptionist would take a summary of my situation and send it to their attorneys for review, just for me to get a brief message or email saying the exact same thing along the lines of "Unfortunately we are unable to assist you with your current legal issue. Please note that this is not an assessment of the strength of your potential claims. We encourage you to contact another attorney, blah blah go fuck yourself." I havent been able to get a single consultation, and nobody will explain to me what the problem is or if somehow I made a mistake, or why the law just doesn't give a fuck.
So I've come to the conclusions that A: As soon as they hear the part that Im broke and in debt they arent interested, despite the fact that they would get paid a lot if I actually won a class action lawsuit, because fuck the average hard working American, especially the poor ones. If us peasants happen to get financially ruined by the criminal actions of rich predatory assholes, they are legally untouchable, making any contract or agreements we sign useless to us. But of course if we do something wrong, they have all the money and resources to stomp the legal shit out of us. And B: No lawyer would ever dare to face off against these big bad rideshare companies, because the only existing federal law that could potentially protect a contractor from damages (Fair labor standards act 16B) Is a massive grey area where the verdict is completely up to the court's discretion. Meaning pursuing such a claim is a far too risky due to unknown results. In other words, again there are no laws to protect us. So I've given up on lawyers completely, and turned to the government for help.
100 more phone calls and a bunch of research later, I learn that government agencies like State and US departments of labor, Labor standards, Employment rights, better business bureau, and anything else like that wont accept complaints from contractors. Again, there are no laws to protect us. So I looked up the class action lawsuits against Lyft/Uber going on in New York and California, and contacted them for any information I can find on how to start one here in Missouri. Because if I'm right, they are breaching the contract with everyone who rents through them, and I cant be the only person who got fucked up by it. They politely explained to me that they legally cant give me legal advice. But I did figure out that the Attorney Generals of those states played a big part of it. So I called them, and when I finally got ahold of somebody at their offices, they were actually really helpful. They couldn't give me legal advice, but they both explained how the class actions got started. Basically, the Attorney General's Office in each state initially will say they dont handle this kind of thing, which is what the MO AGO told me. But if they get bombarded by phone calls from enough people, they will have to take it seriously, and might actually do something about it. Thats what happened in NY and CA, and what would have to happen in MO, or whatever state you're in, for any kind of legal action to be taken against Lyft/Uber in most cases.
I'm not just talking about my situation, I'm talking about how wronged drivers can hold these corrupt companies accountable in general. 80% of the posts I see on this subreddit are pissed off drivers talking about the shitty conditions we have to work in and the way they constantly treat us. Those class action lawsuits were over other things like unfair wages and misclassification. They constantly mislead people with false information. Many drivers view and treat passengers like the opposition and straight up dont care about them because of shit that lyft has done to turn us against them. Passengers get put in potentially life threatening situations like getting stranded in the middle of nowhere at 3 AM because of supports constant failures and total disregard for human life. These companies are robbing all of us everyday and getting away with it because they really have been above the law this whole time.
OSHA was established to protect people from unsafe work conditions to prevent unnecessary death and injuries. Clearly in this modern age, new federal regulations need to be established ASAP to protect the physical, mental and financial well being of workers from the dangers of rideshare and gig jobs, and other corporations and institutions who make policies specifically intended to single out or take advantage of these wronged workers. It should be illegal for insurance companies to force extra charges for "Rideshare Insurance" on top of full coverage. Banks and leasing agencies shouldn't be able to tell full time drivers that we dont have a reliable source of income when were making 4-6k+ a month with instant pay, depending on how much we choose to work everyday. A functional car is the primary required tool for our job, so we should have advantages regarding vehicle options and security over people with jobs that dont necessarily require a vehicle to complete. Instead we are at a greater disadvantage over everybody. A $2500 deductible for minimal insurance while on the job, and $307 a week to rent a work vehicle is outrageous, and often not worth it. There should be a reliable way to get loans or replacements for our vehicles.
There should be a minimum standard requirement for our pay and work conditions, transparency and accuracy of information displayed in these apps, and the competency and reliability of support staff. Imagine the shit show our military would be if our troops had to talk to Lyft Support every time they needed intel, evac or air support. That might be a pretty dramatic comparison, but when were out here driving strangers around through the night, situations can get pretty serious sometimes, and you can't usually rely on emergency services until danger is imminent or somebody has already been hurt. Financial security can often be a time sensitive situation when you're struggling to get by. And the manipulative mind games they like to play often feels identical to the way that narcissists in my past have emotionally abused me, and I've straight up had panic attacks and emotional break downs just trying to communicate with support. Im almost convinced that its intentionally bad, as part of a corporate manipulation strategy to keep people confused and discouraged from doing anything when they're hurt by this corrupt company. Because I have never encountered customer service as bad as this anywhere else, and I didn't even think it was possible.
These companies are operating nationwide, so the fact that the existing lawsuits are confined to the specific states they are in, and most people who have the same problems cant join because they don't live within those specific boarders, is a total failure of our society. As technology advances, more companies outside of rideshare are going to require new laws and regulations, and if our outdated legal system cant adapt faster than this, our country is gonna be completely fucked in a couple decades. If they can treat us like we are "independent contractors", but turn around and shove a bunch of corporate bullshit down our throats when its convenient to them, and we stand on the line between being classified as Employees or Contractors, than obviously "Gig Jobs" need their own classification with specific laws and regulations that actually apply to the situation. Its not like some dude hired some guys to go around fixing houses in the city for his roofing business. This is obviously different and something needs to change.
So I figured Id make this post to see what people think and if I can get some answers. If I dont find anything here, my next move is to contact the Missouri House of representatives, and then I guess congress or something, even if I have to work my way up to Joe Fucking Biden. Im not a lawyer, I hate politics, and I really dont have time for this shit. I just want to learn how to build the technology I cant stop thinking about, train in martial arts, and recover from my fucked up childhood so I can learn how to function in society some day. But I keep getting fucked up by the ruthless greed and dysfunction in this country, its not getting any better, and I'm not gonna fucking take shit anymore!

What is the most money that you've made in story mode, without cheating, across all 3 characters? If you've ever done a max money run, let me know how much you made in the comments! I just made about $20.8 billion combined. That is not a typo... Michael ~$9.4B, Trevor ~$5.8B, Franklin ~$5.6B
This post is a guide on how to maximize your money at the end of the game. I know there's other guides out there sharing the same info, but I haven't seen one complete list. I've went through all the various guides and compiled every detail that was perhaps missed in one guide or another. Is it necessary to have infinite money? Absolutely not, but if you want to do it anyways, here's what you need to do:

• First, turn off autosave. You don't want the game accidentally saving if you need to reset and load a save.
• Second, don't spend ANY cash throughout the game until you've completed the the last stock market investment. If you die or get busted by the cops, reload your file to save that $5,000. Don't buy any properties (with one exception), vehicles, weapons, etc. You can get through the story on the bare minimum. For weapons and ammo, just loot people throughout missions and events.
• Third, get gold medals on all shooting range challenges across all 3 characters. The 25% discount comes in handy especially if you ignored my last point about not buying weapons and ammo lol. Regardless, some missions require you to stop at the gun store, so best to get the shooting range out of the way ASAP. For Franklin, do it BEFORE The Long Stretch, for Trevor do it BEFORE Nervous Ron (I was able to loot what I needed and didn't need to spend any cash for the mission), and for Michael do it BEFORE Boiler Suits heist setup (I don't think these are discounted which means Michael doesn't have any missions that require him to stop at the gun range).
• Fourth, later on when I'm talking about investments, you need to save scum. By that I mean, using multiple save slots to save and/or reload the game to manipulate the stock market. This is especially important on the LCN. The LCN fluctuates and there's no telling what it'll do next. You want to invest in every stock at its minimum and sell at its maximum. Sounds obvious, right? But most people don't save scum before the investment and just buy the stock as-is. I was able to get higher returns on the LCN market than advertised by being patient and investing at the low point.
  • In order to save scum, take one of the characters to their safehouse, check the price of the stock you're about to invest/sell, quick save the game (on your phone), and then go to sleep (but DO NOT SAVE... if you save during the sleep, the save file is in the advanced time... Michael sleeps for 6 hours, Franklin 8 hours, and Trevor 12 hours). Once you wake up, check the stock again. If the stock price has moved up or down in the right direction, quick save again in a new time slot (ALWAYS keep a backup save in case you mess up), sleep and repeat this process until you find the high or low point. If the stock price did not move in the right direction, either sleep again or reload a previous save. However, when you reload a save, please note there is no guarantee the stock will be at its same relative price since the LCN is completely unpredictable. The goal here is to sleep multiple times until you find the relative peak/valley and then invest/sell with all 3 characters when you get to the point.
  • BAWSAQ is controlled by GTA Online and sleep advancing time in-game doesn't affect the market. There's no need to save scum before the investment if the stock is on the BAWSAQ network.
  • At some point, you will have more money in the stock market than the game allows each character to carry ($2,147,483,647). When you get to this point, DON'T hit the 'SELL ALL' button. Either the game won't let you sell that much or it glitches and you lose your excess money over the money cap. What you need to do is hit the 'Plus' button until you reach the money cap, sell off $2.1B, and then reinvest that money in a random stock at its low point. Sort stocks by their change in value, find one doing poorly and eventually it'll rebound and you'll earn a little extra profit on top. (NEVER invest in LifeInvader, Richards Majestic, or Merryweather). Then repeat this process in $2.1B increments until all your money is out of the stock that was manipulated by the mission. When you need to reinvest all that money, you'll need to buy in $2.1B increments, sell off the random stock in $2.1B increments, and buy again until all your money is in the stock.
• The goal of this guide is to penny pinch. You want to earn every last dollar possible while spending the bare minimum that the game requires to progress the story. You want to exhaust the game of all its money possible BEFORE EACH investment. For the mathematically challenged, your money will increase much faster if you collect all that you can before the investments. Every dollar that you earn now, will multiply and become about $750 later. For example, if you skip a $100,000 opportunity early in the game, you missed out on a potential $75 million(!) depending when you later collect that $100k.

Here is the exhaustive list of missions and events that earn you money and when you need to complete them by throughout the story. If a random event is available to all 3 characters, Michael won't need it as he ends up with the most money. You'll want to purchase the Sonar Collections Dock with either Franklin or Trevor (I chose Trevor), and whomever doesn't purchase this property will be the one that should collect the rest of random choice money. It's easier to earn money by targeting security vans (and you should hit all 10 at least once… and anytime when they appear) but if you're doing a completionist run like me, might as well collect the smaller money earnings too before The Hotel Assassination. Also, if something can be purchased to progress the story with any of the characters then choose Michael.

• AFTER Daddy's Little Girl
  • Complete The Good Husband optional mission to avoid a $5,000 loss from Amanda
• BEFORE Casing the Jewel Store Job
  • Complete the Getaway Driver random event to unlock Packie McReary as a heist member
  • Wait for Rickie Lukens to call Michael AFTER Friend Request to unlock as a heist member
• Casing the Jewel Store Job
  • Smart Approach
  • Crew: Karim Denz (driver), Packie McReary (gunman), Rickie Lukens (hacker)
  • Take: Michael $1,223,073, Franklin $293,539 (paid out AFTER Fame or Shame)
• BEFORE The Jewel Store Job
  • Kill Simeon Yetarian (missable random event)
  • Chaos (optional Dr. Friedlander mission... missable content)
    • Costs $500 but Michael has plenty of money
• BEFORE Did Somebody Say Yoga?
  • Complete the Epsilon Program's (8) missions and steal the $2.1M (net $2,009,500 profit)
    • If you die during the betrayal, my game glitched and gave me the $50,000 back
  • AFTER completing the Epsilon Program, invest all of Michael's money in a random stock to avoid a $3,000 loss from Jimmy
• AFTER Did Somebody Say Yoga?
  • Sell all of the money in the random stock (always save scum for profit, never take a loss)
• BEFORE The Hotel Assassination
  • Trevor
    • Drop 4 people off at the Altruist Cult ($3,000) and pickup 4 briefcases after shootout ($100,000 profit)
    • Drug Shootout (~$60,000+)
    • (4) Maude Bail Bonds Missions (net $40,00) (Complete Abandoned Vehicle 1 and use Trevor’s special to obtain a stun gun)
    • Complete Vinewood Souvenirs - The Last Act and release Al once he offers $10,000
    • Complete all Hunting activities
    • Win a game of Tennis ($14, $25, or $36)
  • Franklin
    • Complete (5) Hao street races (net $15,075 profit)
    • Complete Paparazzo Reality Check (~$2,000 in money drops)
  • Any (recommend Trevor or Franklin)
    • Purchase the Sonar Collections Dock and collect all (30) nuclear wastes (net $690,000 profit)
    • Collect (11) underwater briefcases worth $143,500 total (I know these are glitched but I only collected each one once)
    • Bike Thief City 1 (wait until email and then sell stock immediately for $100,000)
    • Burial ($60,000 plus another ~$4,000 in money drops)
    • Deal Gone Wrong ($25,000)
    • Countryside Robbery ($10,000)
    • Security Van 1 (respawns)
    • Security Van 2 (respawns)
    • Security Van 3 (respawns)
    • Security Van 4 (respawns)
    • Security Van 5 (respawns)
    • Security Van 6 (respawns)
    • Security Van 7 (respawns)
    • Security Van 8 (respawns)
    • Security Van 9 (respawns)
    • Security Van 10 (respawns)
    • (6) Off Road Races ($3,000 total)
    • Chase Thieves City 1 ($2,000)
    • Mugging 3 ($2,000)
    • Shop Robbery 1 ($2,000)
    • Shop Robbery 2 ($2,000)
    • Robbery 10 - Limited LTD Gasoline (~$1,200) (respawns)
    • Robbery 7 - 24/7 Supermarket (~$1,100) (respawns)
    • Robbery 12 - 24/7 Supermarket (~$1,050) (respawns)
    • Countryside Gang Fight ($1,000)
    • Gang Intimidation (~$1,000 in money drops)
    • Robbery 1 - 24/7 Supermarket (~$950) (respawns)
    • Robbery 13 - Limited LTD Gasoline (~$880) (respawns)
    • Robbery 19 - Limited LTD Gasoline (~$880) (respawns)
    • Robbery 16 - Limited LTD Gasoline (~$800) (respawns)
    • Escape Paparazzi ($750)
    • Border Patrol 1 (~$700 in money drops)
    • Border Patrol 2 (~$700 in money drops)
    • Border Patrol 3 (~$700 in money drops)
    • Robbery 8 - 24/7 Supermarket (~$700) (respawns)
    • Robbery 17 - Rob's Liquor (~$700) (respawns)
    • Robbery 4 - 24/7 Supermarket (~$600) (respawns)
    • Robbery 11 - 24/7 Supermarket (~$600) (respawns)
    • Robbery 14 - Rob's Liquor (~$600) (respawns)
    • Robbery 15 - Rob's Liquor (~$600) (respawns)
    • ATM Robberies ($500) (respawns)
    • Robbery 2 - Limited LTD Gasoline (~$500) (respawns)
    • Chase Thieves City 2 ($500)
    • Robbery 5 - Scoops Liquor Barn (~$350) (respawns)
    • Robbery 18 - 24/7 Supermarket (~$300) (respawns)
    • Arrest 1 ($250)
    • Arrest 2 ($250)
    • Chase Thieves Country 1 ($250)
    • Mugging 1 ($200)
    • Robbery 3 - 24/7 Supermarket (~$200) (respawns)
    • Robbery 6 - 24/7 Supermarket (~$200) (respawns)
    • Chase Thieves Country 2 ($120)
    • Robbery 9 - Rob's Liquor (~$100) (respawns)
    • Robbery 20 - Trevor’s meth lab (~$100) (respawns)
    • Drunk Driver 1 ($80 then beat up and loot the guy)
    • Domestic ($80)
    • Rogue Altruists ($80)
    • Luring Girl Into Alley (~$25 in money drops)
  • AFTER collecting all the money, invest in Betta Pharmaceuticals
    • Michael should have around $3.3M, Trevor ~$1M, and Franklin ~$700k (swap Trevor and Franklin depending who purchased the Sonar Collections Dock)
• AFTER The Hotel Assassination
  • Sell Betta Pharmaceuticals (50% return)
  • Invest in Bilkington Research
  • Sell Bilkington Research (100 - 110% return)
• AFTER completing the investments, buy Boiler Suits and Masks (Blitz Play setup) with Michael
• BEFORE Mr. Richards
  • Evil (optional Dr. Friedlander mission... missable content)
    • Costs $1,000 but Michael has plenty of money
• BEFORE Caida Libre
  • Complete What Lies Beneath after collecting all (30) submarine parts ($10 profit)
  • Lastly, invest in Vangelico with Michael and Trevor (they become unavailable so need to invest now)
• BEFORE Minor Turbulence
  • Invest in Vangelico with Franklin
• AFTER Minor Turbulence
  • Sell Vangelico (42.57% return)
• The Paleto Score Setup
  • Crew: Norm Richards (gunman). Note: he will die, so be sure to pickup his money drop
  • Take: ~$455,577 each for Michael, Trevor, and Franklin
• BEFORE Derailed
  • Negativity (optional Dr. Friedlander mission... missable content)
    • Costs $1,500 but Michael has plenty of money
• BEFORE Bury the Hatchet
  • Invest in Gruppe Sechs with Michael (he will become unavailable so need to invest now)
• BEFORE Fresh Meat
  • Complete all (13) parachute jumps ($4,500 profit)
  • Complete Uncalculated Risk ($5,000 in money drops)
  • Complete An American Welcome ($1,000 total from first two CBP missions)
  • Lastly, invest in Gruppe Sechs with Trevor and Franklin
• AFTER Fresh Meat
  • Sell Gruppe Sechs (15 - 20% return)
• BEFORE Architect's Plans
  • Complete Crash Rescue to unlock Taliana Martinez as a heist member
• Architect's Plans
  • Roof Entry
  • Crew: Rickie Lukens (hacker), Daryl Johns (gunman), Taliana Martinez (driver)
  • Take: Franklin $242,346
• BEFORE Reuniting the Family
  • Fucked Up (optional Dr. Friedlander mission... missable content)
    • Costs $1,500 but Michael has plenty of money
• BEFORE Meltdown
  • Abandonment Issues - kill Dr. Friedlander and pickup ~$2,000 in money drops
  • Lastly, invest in FlyUS
• AFTER Meltdown
  • Sell FlyUS (100% return)
• Planning the Big Score
  • Obvious Approach
  • Crew: Taliana Martinez (driver 1), Karim Denz (driver 2), Daryl Johns (gunman 1), Hugh Welsh (gunman 2)
  • Take: $41,664,000 each for Michael, Trevor, and Franklin
• BEFORE The Third Way
  • Invest In Augury Insurance
• The Third Way
  • Make sure it is dawn when you start this mission. There's a cutscene at 8pm and if you finish the mission later, it will advance time to the next day and you will miss out on a bigger return.
• AFTER The Third Way
  • IMMEDIATELY invest The Big Score earning into Augury Insurance (it's too late if the stock jumped more than a few percentage points)
  • Sell Augury Insurance (100% return)
• BEFORE The Multi Target Assassination
  • Invest in Debonaire
• AFTER The Multi Target Assassination
  • Sell Debonaire (~50% return)
  • Invest in Redwood
  • Sell Redwood (~300% return)
• BEFORE The Vice Assassination
  • Invest in Fruit
• AFTER The Vice Assassination
  • Sell Fruit (25% return)
  • Invest in Facade
  • Sell Facade (33.3% return)
• AFTER The Bus Assassination
  • Invest in Vapid
  • Sell Vapid (100% return)
  • This is the point I reached the money cap, so be sure to keep your excess money in random stocks
• BEFORE The Construction Assassination
  • Invest In GoldCoast
• AFTER The Construction Assassination
  • Sell GoldCoast (~40% return)
• BEFORE Hitch Lift 1
  • Invest In Tinkle
  • You earn more money saving this for after the assassination missions
• AFTER Hitch Lift 1
  • Sell Tinkle (33% return)

And that's it! Please note that the investment return percentages are approximate and reported from various max money guides. I actually received a higher percentage on some of the investments on the LCN market. No one knows how the stock market truly works, but by save scumming here are the return percentages I got (if not noted, I got the reported percentage listed above):

• Bilkington: 106.3%
• Vangelico: 53.6%
• Gruppe Sechs: 35.7%
• FlyUS: 117.6%
• Augury Insurance: 101.2%
• Debonaire 64.5%
• Redwood: 337.9%
• GoldCoast: 57.6%

“Where’d you get the black eye?” my wife said to me when I got home that evening. She was making a classic dish from her homeland, and I was starving. But before dinner, it was time for a confession.
“I got into a fight at a strip club,” I said. She knows instantly if I fib, and I gave up trying years ago.
“You were at a strip club?” The fight and the black eye meant nothing to my wife; the strip club was all that mattered to her. But I was sure I was on safe ground; I’d been at the club for a perfectly good reason. I opened my mouth to explain, but she held up a wooden spoon like a weapon. “Let me guess. You’re about to tell me that you were there with clients. That you were there for business.”
I had been about to tell her just that. “If you hear me out, I promise you that you won’t be mad at me.”
“Promise?” she said. My wife was angry, but she loved my stories. I could tell from the look on her face that she suspected a good one was coming.
“Pinky swear,” I said, “but I can’t tell you until tomorrow.” I had almost been out of trouble, but this comment got her even more angry.
“Oh, so you can’t tell me because it’s privileged? Is that it?” My wife knew about the solicitor-client privilege thing, and that I never talked about anything other than what happened in open court, on the record.
“I can tell you all about it when it’s this time tomorrow,” I said, “it’s a privilege thing, like you said.”
“Privilege, my ass,” my wife said, dropping the wooden spoon to the counter where it landed with a loud clatter, scattering droplets of what I was sure was a delicious sauce. “You come home with the biggest black eye I’ve ever seen, and you tell me you got it in a strip club. You drop that shit on me, and then you say the rest is privileged. Well guess what? Your dinner is privileged, too, and you just lost your dinner privileges.”
“But I’m hungry,” I said, “and my face hurts. Don’t do that, please,” I said as my wife picked up the pan with the night’s dinner. “Please don’t,” I said, as she opened the garbage bin. “Look, if you’d--” The dinner hit the bottom of the bin with a loud blurping sound. “It’s pizza night for you,” she said.
I slept on the couch that night, and not the living room couch, but the basement couch, where my only company was an old black and white t.v., the internet not yet having yet been invented.
When I woke up the next morning I slunk out of the house silently, like a criminal, and arrived at the courthouse unshaven, in my second best suit and a shirt that was missing a button. When I looked in the bathroom mirror before going to court, I saw that the black eye had spread. Not even sunglasses could hide it. I would have to go to court and face the crown’s witness, the man who had given me the black eye. It was going to be an interesting day.
* * *
A few weeks earlier I’d been at the Jet Set, but only to pick up some cash. I had picked up a few of the bouncers there as clients, and my guy was waiting at the door with an envelope.
“What’s with the car?” I said to Sebastian as he passed me the envelope. He was the Jet Set’s head of security, which was a fancy way of saying he was the club’s bouncer-in-chief. We came from the same part of town, and got along great, but I was wary of him, because he was also the most vicious man I’ve ever met. I wanted to count the cash, but I didn't think that was a good idea around Sebastian. I shoved the envelope in my pocket.
“The Boss is doing a charity thing,” Sebastian said. The car was on blocks, its tires removed, and a sign on top said that all proceeds went to one of the local hospitals.
“Who would buy an old beater like that?” I said. It was an old Mustang, maybe late 70s, and it looked like a complete wreck.
“The car isn’t for sale,” he said, “it’s a fundraiser. You pay ten bucks, you can hit the car with a hammer. A hundred bucks gets you a shot with a sledge hammer. And for five hundred, you put on a welding mask, and use a blow torch.” That explained the burn marks. “Looks like a lot of people got their money’s worth already,” I said. Sebastian nodded. “I’d give it another few days, and then it’s off to the wrecker. Care to take your best shot at it?”
“No thanks,” I said. I needed cash to keep the office lights on; I had to take a pass on a charity, even if that meant missing out on the chance to take a sledgehammer to a car.
“At least take a hammer to it,” a voice said from behind Sebastian. A man stepped through the door and joined us outside. He was an older guy, big, and going to pot, but still a tough customer, bald and with a graying goatee. He looked like an aging biker.
“Peter,” the man said, shaking my hand, “I’m the Jet Set’s owner.”
“Calledinthe90s”, I said. Peter picked up a hammer that had been sitting just inside the door, and told me to take a swipe. It would only cost ten bucks, he said. I took the hammer from him, and took a swing at a side mirror that dangled loosely. I took two more little swipes at it, but it refused to fall off. I handed the hammer back to Peter.
“That’ll be thirty bucks,” he said.
“Thirty bucks? I thought it was only ten.”
“It’s ten bucks per swing,” he said. I opened the envelope that Sebastian had given me, and pulled out one of the G-notes it held.
‘I’ll need change,” I said. Peter gave the bill to Sebestian, and told him to get change, and I watched as Sebastian, the toughest, meanest man I ever met, said, “Yes, Boss,” and departed to get me change.
“Sebastian told me how you got him off that assault thing.”
I’d defended Sebastian on more than a few of his ‘assault things’, and so instead of saying, ‘which one,’ I feigned ignorance. “You know the one I mean,” Peter said, and I did, but I had to make him say it first; that privilege thing again.
“You know the one I’m talking about,” Peter continued, “the one where he beat the shit out of five guys.”
“You heard about that?” I said.
Peter laughed. “Everyone’s heard about that.” Sebastian had committed a violent assault, all of it caught on a video that one of his buddies made, but the trial ended with my client walking, the crown enraged, and me receiving a nice five grand fee, the last of which was now in my pocket, minus the thirty buck tax that the hammer thing had cost me.
“Sebastian showed me the tape, and now he’s showing it to everyone else, and charging ten bucks to see it. Better than any Bruce Lee shit, I told him. Sebastian’s the best. Am I right or am I wrong?” When it came to beating the crap out of people, I had to agree that Sebastian was the best, and said as much. Sebastian returned, bearing seventy bucks in change.
“I need a lawyer,” Peter said. I asked if he wanted to make an appointment to see me at my office. “Nah, we can talk in my office. Come on in.” He threw open the door and we headed inside.
The place had no windows and most of the lights were off. “We don’t open for a while,” Peter said as Sebastian and I followed him down a hall. He opened the door to a small office and gestured for us to have a seat. “I need a lawyer,” he said again, when we settled in.
“For yourself?” he nodded. He must have caught my glance towards Sebastian, because he added, “Sebastian stays. I tell Sebastian pretty well everything.” Having a non-lawyer present could prevent the conversation from being protected by privilege, and I said as much, but Peter said it was fine.
“So what do the cops say you did?” You never ask a client what he actually did; that was like asking him to confess. Instead, you always asked him what the cops said he did.
“They say I slapped my son in the face.” That was a change from the rough stuff that Peter’s bouncers were always getting charged with. It must have been one hell of a slap, otherwise why would the cops even bother?
“Any witnesses,” I said.
“I saw it,” Sebastian said, “plus Earl. He was on door duty that night, plus a couple of dancers.”
“Anyone else?” I said. If the only witnesses were Peter’s faithful employees, then it would be Peter’s word against his son’s, and in an assault case, you were half-way to a not guilty if there were no independent witnesses.
“Three cops,” said Sebastian, “they were hanging around there, just waiting to bust someone from the club.”
“This is gonna be a tough one, I know,” Peter said, turning towards the wall safe behind him. He spun the lock three times with practiced fingers, without giving more than a glance,and the door fell open.
“Here’s five for a start,” he said, counting out fifty G-notes, which he me made me count back to him. “And there’s five more if you do for me, what you did for Sebastian.” Ten Gs for common assault? It sounded too good to be true.
“It’s only a slap,” I said, “and I don’t normally charge that much for something that small.”
“I want you to fight for me the way you did for Sebsatsian. I gotta win this thing. The liquor license guys are always up my ass, and if I get so much as a speeding ticket, they’ll try to pull my liquor license. So fix this for me, Calledinthe90s.”
“Fix this for me,” Peter said again, “the trial’s in a month, and I need a lawyer, and you’re the guy. Do for me what you did for Sebastian.”
“But they have three cops who saw you do it,” I said.
“And the cops had a videotape of me, when I beat those five guys,” said Sebastian, “but you still got me off.” This was true, but I had done some serious outside the box thinking, plus taken some personal risks, to get Sebastian out from under a slam dunk crown case.
“I’ll do my best,” I said. I asked for paper and pen, and in Peter’s small office, I listened to the story of why Peter had given his son a big slap in front of some cops.
* * *
“I’m proud of my son, but when he was growing up, sometimes I had to straighten him out. Give him the big slap now and again.” I could tell that Peter really was proud of his son, Bruce; I could hear it in his voice. Peter’s pride came out loud and clear as he spoke of Bruce, how he’d been a whiz at math in high school, a star athlete (boxing and judo), did good in university, and was now an actuary in some huge insurance company downtown.
“I was so proud of that kid. I even bought him a car when he graduated, even the insurance was prepaid.” Bruce had been proud of his success, too, maybe too proud, and his success had gone to his head. He was a young man with a wealthy father and money of his own and a new Porsche 944, and he drove up and down the strip, hitting clubs on the weekends, partying with the dancers, spending his money.
“Which is all good,” Peter said, “after all, what’s a young guy gonna do when he’s got money in his pocket and girls to help him spend it?” But Bruce had been banned from some of the places on the strip, for being too handsy with the dancers, and one place had thrown him out, none too gently. “Those five guys Sebastian beat? That was me who sent him there. I sent Sebastian there to straighten them out, after they roughed up my son.” For the first time I understood why Sebastian had gone to the club just up the street and beaten five bouncers unconscious.
It wasn’t long before there was only one club left that Bruce could go to: the Jet Set that his father owned. “But I had to ban him, too,” Peter said, “he was all over the girls, all the time, and I can’t have that.” Peter was protective of the women who worked for him.
“So how did that lead to the Big Slap?” I asked.
“He showed up in that car of his, squealing tires in the lot,” Peter said. Earl had been the bouncer on duty and had denied him entrance, there being standing orders in place to keep Bruce out. “Bruce dropped Earl with a sucker punch, and walked in,” Peter said.
I raised an eyebrow. Earl was another client of mine, a giant of a man and I knew that no sucker punch of mine would ever knock out Earl. I raised an eyebrow. “Your son can handle himself,” I said.
“Bruce’s is no slouch when it comes to that kind of thing,” Peter said, and again the pride showed in his voice. “Just like his old man. Not in Sebastian’s league, but still, he’s not a guy to mess with.”
“Was Earl ok?”
“It’s hard to tell. Good bouncers are like big dogs; they never let you know when they’re hurting. Irregardless, the guys are teasing him, getting knocked out like that, sucker punched before he even raised a hand.” After Bruce had bulldozed his way into his father’s club, the other bouncers had tackled him, and dropped him outside, gently enough, and unscathed.
“What happened next?” I said.
“There were cops in the parking lot,” said Sebastian, “they like to hang around sometimes, watching for drunks, so that they can get them for impaired.” I took notes, and listened to the narrative, sometimes Peter talking, sometimes Sebastian, and together they told me the rest of the story. Bruce got back on his feet, and tried to push past the bouncers, but he was getting nowhere. Then Peter came out, and when Bruce pushed again, Peter gave him the Big Slap, a hard open hand that had rocked his son. That brought the cops out of their car, and in no time at all Peter found himself under arrest for assault.
“Typical cops,” Sebastian said, “they miss Bruce knocking out Earl, they miss him trying to force his way in. All they seen is the slap to the face. Bullshit charge, and Bruce doesn't even wanna testify, but the cops got him under subpoena.”
“Tunnel vision,” Peter said, “they got tunnel vision. They’re always trying to find a reason to shut me down.”
That was the story Peter and Sebastian told me, but from the way the cops told it in the disclosure I read, they’d been quietly minding their own business in the parking lot of a strip club, when suddenly and without warning my client stepped up to his son, and for no reason at all, slapped him across the face. Maybe the liquor license guys weren’t the only ones who had it in for Peter.
Not long after that, I was at court for a set date. The court was packed, and we were following the usual routine: a case is called, counsel steps forward, a date is set, the judge calls the next case. The judge was taking no shit from delaying defence counsel, and he was moving his list along with impressive speed, until my case with Peter was called.
“Calledinthe90s,” I said, putting my name on the record, as Peter stepped up from the body of the court. The crown had been powering through the list, but when he heard my name, his head whipped around. His name was Polgar, and he looked at me with hate. He’d been the crown at Sebastian’s five-bouncer case, and he was looking for revenge.
“The case is complicated,” I said to the judge, “with lots of witnesses. We’ll need at least an hour for the pretrial, and the trial itself will be a couple of days.” I hadn’t thought of a defence, and the more time the court gave me to think of one, the better.
“Skip the pretrial, and the trial will be a half-day,” the crown said. “In fact, let’s triage this thing. Expedite it.” I objected, and spoke of the number of witnesses, the long history between father and son, the importance of a fair trial and time to prepare. The judge looked at me like I was an idiot. Like I was a lawyer using delay tactics, which of course is exactly what I was.
“It’s a common assault charge,” the judge said, “a simple slap across the face.” He marked it for a half-day trial, and gave me a trial date in two months. That was super fast, but the Askov case had recently come down, and the courthouse was trying to move things along, otherwise cases would get dismissed for delay. The court recessed after Peter’s case, but before I could leave, Polgar the vengeful crown collared me.
“You pull any shit like you did last time, I’ll complain to the Law Society.” Last time he’d been upset that his victims had all recanted before trial, and had not thought to mention this to him, not even when examined in chief at Sebastian’s trial for beating them senseless.
“Trying to be tough like your Daddy?” I said. Polgar’s father was the Crown Attorney for the County. For decades the elder Polgar had courted a reputation as the toughest Crown in the land, but all he had achieved was massive delay in the courthouse, and a reputation for obtaining convictions, sometimes wrongful convictions, at any cost. Polgar Junior ignored my taunt.
“You know what I mean. If you so much as whisper to the victim, contact him in any way, I’m gunning for your license.”
“Put that in writing, or fuck off,” I said. Peter and I left the courtroom and parted ways. I head back to my office, wondering how I was going to get Peter a not guilty verdict, but I’d been thinking about that for weeks, and I had no idea.
* * *
Trial was a month away, then a week, then two days, and then one day, and I still had no idea how I was going to defend Peter. Three cops had seen him slap his son, and I had no idea what to do.
I was sitting in my office, a beautiful office the loss of which I mourne to this day. It was the only office I’d ever been in that had balconies and doors which opened out to them. It was ten o’clock on a beautiful summer morning, and I was sitting on the balcony with Peter’s file in my hand, and wondering what to do. I read through the crown brief again, and flipped through my Martin’s, a book that I’d fallen in love with when I was fifteen years old, but I found nothing in it that inspired me. Sure, I could argue that Peter had merely been defending his property, preventing a trespass. That was an ok defence, a decent defence, a defence that might fly in front of the right judge, if the evidence came out right. And that would be my defence, if I couldn’t think of anything better.
But I knew there was something better. I was certain of it, and it was driving me crazy that I hadn’t figured it out. I think best when I have a pen in my hand and I’m making notes, so I went through my file for the fifth time that morning, looking at each statement, checking out the Information for flaws, trying to find an angle. In frustration, I went to the notes that I’d taken when I first spoke to Peter, back in his office, after he’d made me pay thirty bucks for charity.
“I was so proud of my son, I bought him a car,” I had noted Peter as saying. I read that again, and the questions about the car that had followed, and how Peter paid for the insurance, on the car, too, and then my brain lined up some dots and connected them, and I gave Peter a call. We spoke, I put my plan together, and later that day I was at the Jet Set, hanging around Peter and his bouncers.
* * *
It was after six p.m., and the sun was thinking about getting ready to set, maybe an hour or so to go. I chilled with Peter and his guys, sitting on lawn chairs outside the Jet Set. Peter was telling stories about the old days, about the times he got robbed, about the cops hassling him, about the liquor license assholes and about the trial next day, and that if he got convicted, the liquor license assholes would pull his license.
“You sure this is gonna work, kid?” he said, putting a massive arm around me.
“I’m not sure,” I said, “but it’s worth a shot.” Peter put his arm down, and looked at his watch.
“The charity event starts in twenty minutes, but I could still call it off.” Peter was nervous; the stunt I was pulling was a bit much, even for me, and I could tell he was worried. “We still got time to pull the plug. Let’s run through this again, ok?”
“Ok,” I said. The parking lot was busy, lots of people buzzing around for the charity. The old Ford Mustang had been taken away to the wreckers. But the Mustang was only a warm up. It was time for the main act, and unlike the aged Mustang, this car was new, a shiny black Porsche 944 that club regulars recognized on sight. It was Bruce’s car, a car famous up and down the strip that ran near the airport.
The shiny 944 stood on blocks, its tires removed, ready to be sacrificed for charity. A large, happy crowd, a slightly drunk crowd, milled around the car. Some were laying claim to a window, others to a door or a light. One man said he was going to torch his name into the hood.
“I should have thought of this earlier,” I said to Peter. I got up, and asked him to follow me. We moved away, and were able to speak with a bit of privacy despite the busy parking lot, because Sebastian and Earl stood guard, and no one tried to get past them.
“What made you think of this thing now, the day before the trial?” That’s what Peter wanted to know, and I didn’t really have an answer for him.
My best ideas come to me randomly. Sometimes they come to me the instant I open the file, giving me a path to a win that I know must follow. I loved it when the dots connected for me right at the start. But what really sucked, was when the dots connected too late, after the case was over, and when that happens, my gift for thinking outside the box is a curse. There’s no point in having a great idea after the case is over.
Defending a criminal case is often like being down a goal in the third period. You’re going to get only so many shots on net, so you better take them when you can, and I hated not taking shots, I hated not taking shots a lot more than I hated missing them. So of late, I’d started forcing myself to think, to examine the facts, to review them over and over again, in the hope of finding a shot.
“I should have thought of it earlier,” I said again.
That’s what I’d said to Sebastian, when Peter had loaned him out to me to fulfill a mission. He dropped by my office to pick up a letter that I wanted him to deliver. He already had the spare set of keys for Bruce’s Porsche, and my instructions on repossessing it. “Once you get the Porsche,” I continued , “park it in another building, then go back to Bruce’s office, and leave this letter for him at reception.”
“What does the letter say?” Sebastian said, and I repeated it from memory:
Dear Bruce,
I am your father’s lawyer, and your father is the owner of your car, a car that he has now repossessed. Your father told me to give you this letter, to let you know as a courtesy that you will have to find some other way home.
Your father will not be letting you drive the car again. No one will ever drive the car again, because your father intends to give it to charity, tonight, at the parking lot outside the Jet Set.”
“Is this even legal? Sebastian said.
“It is a bit like a kidnapping,” I admitted. “But legal. Perfectly legal. Call me from the club when you drop off the Porsche.”
* * *
“My son was pretty pissed when he got the letter,” Peter said, as we waited together for the pending sacrifice of Bruce’s 944. “Yup,” I said. My receptionist had received a series of threatening calls from Bruce, with him promising to fuck me up real good the first chance he got. I was gonna eat that fucking letter, Bruce had said in another message. After he fucked me up real good, he added in another. Bruce left a lot of messages for me.
He left messages at the club, too, and for his father, and they were all the same, that he was coming to the club, and if anyone touched his fucking car, he would kill them.
I saw a yellow cab roll into the parking lot, and a young man jumped out, a young, very angry man. His suit was sharp and his shoes gleamed. He paid the driver in bills, with quick flips of the wrist, the bills falling through the air as the driver snatched at them. Then the young man turned, and stormed towards his father, and towards me. Sebastian and Earl closed ranks, but Peter told them to back off, that he would deal with his son. “This the lawyer?” Bruce asked his father. “Sure am,” I said, standing up. I was ready for him. I’d been in my share of fights in high school, and I knew that I could handle myse--
I felt no pain when Bruce’s hard fist connected with my face. There was a flash, like a lightbulb going off inside my head, and I went down in a heap.
“Guy’s got a good left hook, I’ll give him that,” Sebastian said when he sat me up, “he laid you out real good.”
The right side of my face was already swelling. I opened my mouth to make a witty remark, a manly aside to show my indifference to pain. “It hurts,” I moaned, and it hurt, it really, really hurt. “It really hurts,” I said again, realizing that I’d never actually been in a fight before, and that those fights back in high school weren’t real fights, just me and another kid pushing each other while the other kids yelled ‘fight fight fight’ over and over again.
Earl came over, and together he and Sebastian helped me up. “Never been knocked out, I’m guessing,” Sebastian said. I nodded, and then regretted nodding.
I turned, and saw another figure being helped up. His shoes were now scuffed, and his suit was wrecked, but even with both his hands over his face, I knew it was Bruce.
Peter went over to comfort his son, but Bruce slapped his hand away, and I saw that his face was a bloody mess, like he’d gone a few rounds while keeping his hands down. The cab he’d arrived in was still there. Bruce stumbled over to it, got in the back, and then he was gone. As I watched the cab drive away, I tried to clear my head.
“The Boss is gonna fire me, for fucking up his son,” Sebastian said quietly.
“He’s gonna fire me, for not stepping in to save him,” Earl said. They exchanged looks, and then glanced at me, as if they were about to ask for advice about wrongful dismissal. But my head was starting to clear, and despite the pain, I was happy, I felt good. I felt stoked. My plan had succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.
“You look look pretty happy for someone who just got knocked out,” Peter said to me.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and for any Americans reading this, in Canada ‘sorry’ has a lot of meanings, and in this case, ‘sorry’ meant that I was delighted, that I was over the moon with joy. “I really regret that I have been turned into a witness, even a victim. I don’t see how I can do your trial tomorrow, Peter,” I said to him, “I have a conflict of interest.”
I hadn’t planned on getting punched in the face. I hadn’t expected to have a black eye, either, but when I realized what Bruce had done, I knew that I had a shot at delaying the case, and back then, like it sometimes is now, delaying a case was almost as good as a win.
Delaying a case even a few months could be as good as a win, because the courts were dismissing cases like crazy if they took too long to get to trial. If I could string out the case for a year, it was sure to get bounced. I was so stoked that when I got home I forgot about my black eye, until my wife asked me about it when I walked into the kitchen, and we had our fight that ended with me sleeping in the basement. I went into court the next day feeling low, and looking worse, because my wife hadn’t waited around that morning, and I was pretty sure she was still mad at me.
“Not my fault I was at a strip club,” I said resentfully to myself as I drove to the courthouse, saying things that I hadn’t had the balls to say to my wife. “Not my fault that I got punched in the face, either,” I said, but that was not quite correct; it was my fault, actually. Totally my fault.
* * *
“This is all Calledinthe90’s fault,” Polgar the Crown said the next morning, when at ten o’clock sharp Judge May walked in and his court started like it always did, on time and the parties ready to go, or else. The courtroom was small and the gallery almost fully occupied by young women from the Jet Set, mostly dancers but a few servers as well, along with a few of the bouncers. The court door banged every time it closed, and it stopped banging when the last of the dancers arrived, dressed like she was in a club, dressed for a night on the town.
The dancers attracted a lot of attention, as usual, except from Bruce. Bruce wasn’t looking so good. His face had stopped bleeding at least, but it hadn’t even started to heal, and he was a mask of purple and red and black.
Everyone shut up the moment the judge came in, and in the silence I repeated what had made Polgar so angry the first time I said it.
“I have a conflict,” I said again. My face ached, but I was having trouble suppressing a smile. I gave the judge a brief account of my attendance at the Jet Set the day before to supervise a charity event, when Bruce, the Crown’s key witness, suddenly and without warning or provocation, punched me in the face, hitting me so hard that I almost fell down. When I finished speaking I heard the courtroom door bang behind me, and I turned to see what caused the interruption, and what I saw surprised me. It was my wife.
“Sorry, Your Honour,” my wife said, in quiet apology for the interruption.. She looked around for a seat. Some of the girls from the club shuffled over, and my wife joined them. “Thank you,” she whispered, settling in. I tried to catch her eye, but she looked past me, like I didn’t exist. I gave up when I heard Polgar the Crown start to complain again.
“Nothing ever is normal when Calledinthe90s is involved,” he said, “there’s always something.” He threw his pen onto the counsel table as he spoke. “But this excuse is the worst I’ve ever heard. He gets himself punched in the face, and now he wants an adjournment.”
“And you are opposed to that request?” Judge May said, his raised eyebrows revealing his surprise.
“Yes, I’m opposed. There’s no reason why this trial can’t--”
“Your key witness gave defence counsel a black eye,” Judge May said, “and I think that’s a pretty good reason.” He shuffled some papers in front of him, and closed a file. “I’ll remind you that a lot of cases are getting dismissed for delay, and anything we can get off the docket is a big help.” The judge stood, and so did everyone else. The judge turned to me, and then back to the Crown. “I’ll recess for fifteen minutes, and when I come back you two will tell me that you’ve sorted this out.” The court stood frozen as the judge exited. I was trying to catch my wife’s eye, but she was still ignoring me. Polgar grabbed my jacket and pulled me around.
“You did this deliberately,” he said, “you provoked him by stealing his car.”
“Exercising a lawful act of repossession is not provocation under the law, otherwise repo men would always get the shit beat out of them.” I was using the legal part of my brain to talk, but the rest of my mind was wondering why had my wife come to court? Why today of all days? Did she not trust me? Did she not think that I would be honest with her when I got home, and tell her about everything that happened at court that day?
“Repo men are different. It’s their job to repo. It’s just not the same,” Polgar the Crown said, but the argument that followed was weak, not worth refuting.
“Fuck repo men,” Sebastian said from behind me, “I hate them as much as cops.”
“Not here, Sebastian,” I said, and then I focused my attention back on the Crown, and almost forgot about my wife. “You heard the judge,” I said, “he’s not gonna make me do a trial. He’s gonna give me an adjournment.”
“Fine,” Polgar the Crown said, “but only one, and peremptory.”
“Oh, not at all,” I said. I laughed slightly, ignoring the pain in my face. “The first adjournment is required for medical reasons, to see if I am concussed.”
“So we’ll come back fast, next week, on a set date. I can arrange it.”
“But if I’m concussed,” I continued, “we might need another adjournment. Maybe two, while I get my bearings.”
“Fine. Six weeks, max, then we set a trial date.” He asked the clerk for dates, but I told her to hold off.
“Once the doctors say I’m fit, we’ll need to schedule a motion I’ll be filing, seeking a declaration on whether I’m in a conflict or not.”
“But you already said you were in a conflict.”
I smiled. “I might be wrong. It’s safer to get a judge’s opinion. And that might take a while. Especially if one of us appeals.”
“But you’re just dragging this out, trying to Askov the thing.” Of course that was what I was trying to do, but an important part of Aksoving a case, of getting it dismissed for excessive delay, is never to admit that you’re deliberately causing delay.
“What’s more embarrassing,” I said, appealing to Polgar’s practical side, “having the case dismissed for delay, or having it dismissed because your witness, your so-called victim, punched defence counsel in the face? It’s getting dismissed, one way or the other and it’s only a slap. Common assault. Why don’t you take the easy route?”
When the judge returned Polgar the Crown took the easy route. He stood, and told the judge that the Crown had decided to drop the charge.
I ought to have been thrilled. I ought to have been ecstatic. That’s how I feel when everything goes according to plan, when the last dot gets connected.
But my wife was angry, and when my wife was angry at me, nothing else seemed to matter. I felt as bad as if I’d lost the case, that I’d gotten myself punched out for nothing. But then Judge May, that great man, came to my rescue.
“Dropping the charges, you say? Good idea. So recorded.” Then the judge turned to me.
“Calledinthe90s, will you be filing any charges at the man who gave you that shiner?”
I’m a little ashamed of what I did next, but not really, because my wife was watching and I did what I had to do. I let the judge’s words hang for an instant, and then I turned manfully towards Bruce, the man who had injured me, the man whose face was battered and bruised far worse than mine. “No need, Your Honour, he and I settled things last night. I’m satisfied, if he is.” Sebastian was trying hard not to laugh, and so was Earl, but I kept a straight face. Bruce, on the other hand, looked like he was ready to explode.
“I should think so,” said the judge, “next case.”
I walked out with Peter and Sebastian and Earl, and we waited outside as everyone else came out, all the servers from the club, and the dancers and a couple of more bouncers, and then my wife came out last of all.
“Who is that,” Peter said, ‘Is she one of my girls?”
“That girl is my wife,” I said.
“Is that why you said that stuff at the end, where you kinda implied that you beat the shit out of my son? Trying to impress your wife?” He smiled at me, but I pretended I didn’t understand.
My wife took me home, gave me tylenol and put me to bed, and when I woke up, I told her about what happened, about the dots that I’d connected, about the things that I’d done and the money that I’d made, and how I’d made it. I told her about the rules that I almost broke, and the customs that I hadn’t followed. I confessed everything, or at least, almost everything. I did leave out the odd little bit.
“Did they teach you how to do that in law school,” she said.
“Do what?”
“Beat the shit out of people, like that guy in court.”
“It was just guy stuff, settling a score, that’s all,” I said, like what I’d been through was nothing.
She took me downstairs, and settled me on a couch. I basked in her attention as she fussed over me, brought me soup and a cup of tea.
“I had no idea you were so tough,” she said as she joined me on the couch. I would have replied, but she shushed me when the show was about to start. By now I knew that I was forgiven, that the squall had passed, and I settled contendly on the couch, despite my black eye and my throbbing face. But then my wife hit the mute button.
“One more thing,” she said, pointing the control at my head like a gun, “You go near that strip club, for any reason, and you’ll be sleeping in the basement for a long, long, time.”
“But--”
“No buts. I saw those girls in the courtroom. I don’t want you hanging them. If your bouncer clients need to see you, they can see you at your office, like any other client.”
“But--”
“No buts.” She turned the volume back on.
“Ok,”I said.
“Ssshhh. It’s starting,” she said.

After paying an accounting firm (local not big franchise) in Ontario to complete my husband and I's tax returns I feel conflicted. After reviewing the details of the return they submitted on my behalf I noticed that they did not complete the Work From Home credits, though I work 1 full time hybrid position and 1 part time, WFH exclusively. I received the necessary T2200 forms from both employers and provided our utilities costs and the square footage of our apartment. They also didn't claim any donations on my behalf- claiming in either case that it wouldn't affect my return my much or would be a wash for the amount of work it would take. I got approx. $350 as a current tax return. I can't help but feeling they are being lazy and aren't really trying to help me maximize what I could be getting, it didn't help that the receptionist was low key rude.
Is it worth finding a better accountant or getting a second opinion? Or at the very least tell the owner of the firm so they know these employees are possibly shortcutting their clients?

The procedure itself you're unconscious for, so I'll just start from recovery. Except that I will mention I was prescribed docusate which is a laxative. I started taking it 2 days before surgery and I am supposed to continue taking for 2 days after.
When I woke up from surgery they asked me how my pain level was and I said a 6 or 7. They gave me fentanyl. It did nothing. After a while they gave me dilaudid. Between the 2 of them, maybe it went down to a 5 but it still hurt pretty bad. I was in recovery for about an hour because I was kind of light headed from the pain meds. They gave me ginger ale and some crackers. I tried to urinate but I couldn't. I was pretty unstable walking to the bathroom. They said it's okay that I couldn't urinate and just let me leave.
Initially, the pain felt like I had my tail bone smashed with a baseball bat. It was a dull pain but it wouldn't let up at all.
I got home around 5PM, and by 8 or 9 I was starting to panic a little because I still couldn't urinate even though I drank a bunch of water. I called my doctor and he said to try taking a warm bath. I asked him what about the packing and bandages and he said if you have to remove it, just remove it. So I did. I got in the bath and I was able to urinate.
Soaking in your own urine isn't the best but it beats not being able to empty your bladder. The alternative was going to the ER and getting a catheter inserted to drain it. I'm not sure why they didn't give me tamsulosin/flomax or something like that at the surgery center. If you get this procedure done, I would suggest requesting that. After the bath, i took a shower and tried to go to bed.
I didn't sleep well last night. I woke up about once an hour. But I was able to urinate when I did get up so that was very assuring. Also I'm happy that I can do stairs without much of a problem.
I've been alternating between tylenol and motrin ib every 3 hours. I also have a nitroglycerin ointment (4x per day). A warm bath with epsom salt helps a lot, and an ice pack helps too when you're not in the bath. I almost think having a thrombosed hemorrhoid is sometimes more painful than or on par with what I am feeling right now on day 2.
This morning I made a really small BM. It stung/burned but no blood or anything.
The doctor's office called me this morning to see how was doing and the receptionist told me they were supposed to have called in some other kind of pain medication for me that they forgot to do... so I'm waiting for my family member whom I am staying with to get out of work to pick up those pain meds from the pharmacy.
It's not a pleasant experience but it seems like this is not quite the nightmare that hemorrhoidectomy patients have described. I have been consistently uncomfortable for the last 24 hours no matter what position, so I am not able to focus on watching movies or reading any of the books I planned on getting to, and I'm not the nicest person to be around right now, but the pain level isn't going above a 3 or 4 which is half what it was yesterday.
That said, I was given a nerve block during the surgery and we'll see if things change when it wears off. I will give you guys updates if anything important comes up.
Small update: I took another bath, and it made me need to pass another BM. This time was more stool and it hurt quite a bit. I cleaned up with the bidet, and put some nitroglycerin ointment but it didn't really help, so I just got back into the tub and that brought it back down to a 2 or so after about half an hour. I'm now laying in bed with an ice pack under my butt sitting at around a 1 or 2 pain level.
The additional pain meds the doctor prescribed is called SEGLENTIS. I don't think I'm going to take it because the first side effect is constipation which seems unwise to take for a hemorrhoid surgery. But if the pain gets bad enough, maybe I'll take my chances.
If you get this procedure done, have a lot of epsom salt on hand, and prepare to spend a whole lot of time soaking in the bath tub.
Day 2 ended pretty uneventfully. It's now Day 3. I woke up this morning around 3:30AM needing to have a BM. It was a pretty normal sized BM, which was pretty painful. It really burned/stung, so I cleaned up and took a hot bath. Took some tylenol and went back to bed.
Had a weird dream where a guy was trying to rob me, so I grabbed him and shoved him and in real life I jumped up and that really hurt. It was an awful way to start the morning. Also, after the bath I put an ice pack under my butt which helped a lot but I fell asleep on it ad it was there for like 2 hours which is really bad for your skin. Please don't do what I did.
I had breakfast and 2 motrin and went back to bed. It's now almost 11 AM. I'm thinking I want to hold off on another bath until after lunch. So that I can have motrin at 2 with food and then relax in the tub.
I have not tried the seglentis. Although I still have some pain, especially after a BM, the chance of constipation is not worthwhile for me. I feel that everyday is significantly better than the last.
day 3
my pain is being kept under a 2. ibuprofen seems to work better than Tylenol but you can't take it on an empty stomach. I don't think the nitroglycerin does anything.
I'm making 2 BMs a day and they hurt but each hurts less than the last and each has more blood than the last. for some reason they are coming out very forcefully. I'm doing my best to try to relax but it's kind of out of my control that my body rockets these turds like a cannon. so all I can do is try to relax and make sure to get up after 2 minutes. i'm telling you epsom salt baths are your best friend. I'm still taking like 3 of them a day.
if I was to chart out my progress it would be a curve going generally upward but at each bm it goes back down a bit. but then continues back up until the next one.
and one last thing, I don't know why but my farts are absolutely rancid. I assure you I'm not eating poorly. I'm eating very little. just a high fiber cereal, soup, fruit and vegetables basically. I have no explanation for the stench but it is truly palpable.
Day 4
Pain is very low. Below 1. I have stopped taking the laxative. Stopped using the ice packs. I have had to use the bathroom 3 times today and every time for some reason it shoots out very forcefully. It's a little alarming, but it's not actually super painful like it was before. Definitely still seeing some blood, but not as much as I sometimes did with just having hemorrhoids. Also this pain today is for sure significantly less than just having a thrombosed hemorrhoid.
If you are sure that your roids aren't going to go away on their own, and they are causing you significant pain or bleeding, I think it's worth it to get this procedure done. I haven't been on a date in a while because this is something always on my mind. I had to cancel a lot of overtime opportunities and business trips, and time out with friends over this, and I'm really looking forward to getting my life back and not having to plan out my every moment around my bathroom schedule.
Days 5 and 6
I'm not going to lie to you guys, days 5 and 6 have been rough. there's a constant pressure up there and i have to make 4 or 5 BMs a day. and every time i do it's very painful. and there's blood. This morning I woke up, had high fiber cereal for breakfast with oat milk. i just needed something in my stomach so i could take the motrin, and immediately i had to go to the bathroom. so i did, was done in 2 minutes. ran the bath, cleaned up with witch hazel wipes, and got in the bath for about half an hour. got out, applied nitroglycerin ointment and maybe 15 minutes later had to go right back in and repeat the whole process except that i used up all the hot water on the first bath. so its pretty unpleasant to take a room temp bath.
also i can't tell the difference between if i have to fart or drop a bm. so anytime i have that feeling i have to run to the toilet just in case.
after the second bath, i went right back to bed with an ice pack, woke up around 2pm. really just wasting the entire day. I mean I'm recovering, I guess it's normal, but it sucks.
And I am very dehydrated from a combination of laxatives, and super hot baths. so i keep drinking water gatorade and coconut water but my urine is pretty dark yellow.
I'll say it again, get your ass off the toilet after 2 minutes. Heed my warning or share my fate. It's that simple. You don't want this.
Update: I just got around to googling it and a sense of frequent rectal urgency is called "Tenesmus" and it is a common side effect of this procedure and it is supposed to last about a week. As I recall, the same thing happened when I got one banded a few years ago as well. So if you get that, I guess it's normal. I'm not going to say don't worry about it because it is incredibly annoying and inconvenient but I guess, don't worry too much because it should clear up on it's own after a few days.
Day 7:
I really haven't had any pain today. Now I just have the lingering feeling that I need to make a BM. This is the only thing keeping me home still. The last few days I just keep going to the bathroom again and again but today I just went once in the morning without pain and once in the afternoon and I've mostly just refused to go and I haven't messed myself yet. In between, sitting or laying on an ice pack and taking Ibuprofen helps to make that feeling go away. I'm not usually the kind of person who can lay around all day, especially for a week, but I have to admit it is the best way to actually feel better. Walking around for sure makes it worse. If possible you should try to hold out until you're about to soil yourself and then run to the bathroom. After my second BM, I didn't have any pain and I didn't feel like running a bath so I just didn't. Which is amazing progress considering how the last few days have been.
Day 8 and 9:
Basically I think I'm out of the woods now. Yesterday, day 8 was the first day that I didn't feel like I had to go to the bathroom all day. I did still go 3 times, but that's a lot better than the 6 or 7 before. Maybe because I had coffee wit breakfast. I'm also not feeling like sitting in the bathtub is necessary anymore. There's no more burning or stinging pain. Just a slight feeling that I'm not quite finished.
Yesterday I went to my doctor for the follow up. He only looked at the outside, he said it would be inhumane at this point to check inside but he said it seemed like I'm healing very well and should come back in about 2 to 3 months . He told me it's very normal to feel like I have to go to the bathroom several times a day and that I won't do any damage by actually going. He also explained that nitroglycerin is no supposed to help with pain, it just makes your body send more blood to that location in order to help with healing. He gave me the okay to return to work as normal except that I can not lift anything heavier than 30 lbs for 4 to 6 weeks, which I'm not complaining about.
Also last night during my BM was the most blood I've seen so far. I was a little worried but today there wasn't any so I'm hoping that means I lost a particularly egregious hemorrhoid yesterday. I took an iron supplement after that and will continue taking them for a few days and eating an iron rich diet.
In Conclusion:
All in all, unless there are any major changes for the worse, I will probably not update again. Overall, would I recommend the surgery? Basically yes, because I feel like it was successful and it might be the easiest way to get rid of hemorrhoids.
But only if you can handle about a week of pretty serious pain and discomfort that does not relent. Can you take 2 weeks off work? Can you lay in bed cycling out new ice packs all day? Can you sleep an hour at a time? Can you handle going to the bathroom 6 or 7 times a day? Can you handle intense pain in your ass that may not let up for 4 or 5 days straight? Do you have a week's worth of food in your house, because I promise you will not be capable of going to the grocery store. Do you have probably 10 bags of epsom salt? Can your home's hot water heater give you 3 or 4 inches of hot water 5 times a day? Do you have witch hazel flushable wipes? Do you have ibuprofen and tylenol? Do you have lots and lots of drinking water in your bedroom to keep hydrated? Is your doctor on call in an emergency? And lastly, have you changed the habits which caused hemorrhoids to form in the first place? Are you weight lifting? Are you sitting on the toilet for too long? do you have frequent diarrhea or constipation?
Best of luck, and I'll do my best to answer any questions.

I'm canceling my subscription to the post. There have been other garbage opinion pieces, but this one takes the cake. Even at my 70% off rate, I can no longer support this nuttery. If you're short on time, skip to the last three paragraphs for a good scream.
Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/04/30/family-size-big-families/
"The ideal number of kids in a family: Four (at a minimum)
By Timothy P. Carney April 30, 2024 at 5:45 a.m. EDT
Timothy P. Carney is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of “Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs To Be.”
“How do you do it?”
As parents of an unusually large brood, my wife and I get that question a lot. Sometimes I respond by bragging about my mass-produced breakfast sandwiches and zoo-trip techniques.
But if I’m honest, there are two truer answers to “How do you do it?” One is that we don’t do a lot of things: travel sports, twee Saturday morning arts and crafts, Disney World.
The other is that the “you” who makes Sunday morning breakfast, assembles Ikea furniture and walks the first-grader to school is our older kids. The best way to make parenting and childhood happier and less stressful is to have more kids, not fewer of them.
I grew up with three older brothers, and my wife is the fourth of eight (and so we met in the middle and have six kids). What we learned from our childhood families, and what the social science affirms, is that many of the supposed demands of modern parenthood are really just the demands of a misguided culture.
It’s typical to describe shrinking families as progress. “With fewer children to support,” Brookings Institution scholar Isabel Sawhill once wrote, “parents and society can both invest more in each child, helping them to climb the ladder and become productive citizens in their adult years.”
Economists have a charming name for this approach: the quantity-quality trade-off. I chuckle that my wife and I (and our parents before us) obviously chose the “quantity” option. But I also know this framing is a lie.
There’s nothing high-quality about the intensive parenting that is typical in today’s middle and upper-middle classes. Racing your kid from school to tutoring session to a travel tournament robs them of crucial elements of childhood: independence, self-determination and some salutary boredom. This rat race might increase your kids’ odds of an Ivy League acceptance or a Division I scholarship, but it almost certainly deprives them of some of the habits, experiences and virtues that make happy adults.
Studies show that more parental control yields more anxiety and depression00111-7/abstract). Children who have more independent play not only have a lot of fun but also get to develop00111-7/abstract) “capacities for coping with life’s inevitable stressors.”
Letting children off the leash is good for them and for parents, but our culture tells parents to tighten the collar on the false belief that we can control our children’s outcomes.
A large clan disabuses parents of the illusion of control. Those of us with larger families mostly know that we cannot micromanage our kids’ lives, and so we don’t try — and everyone ends up happier. In 2018, when “Today” commissioned a survey of 7,000 U.S. mothers, it found that while mothers of three were more stressed than moms of one or two, mothers of four were less stressed.
In larger families, independent play doesn’t need to mean a choice between loneliness or the frantic scramble for a play date. Bored kids with multiple siblings have live-in playmates with whom to play make-believe or front-yard Wiffle ball.
The long-term impact of such built-in company is born out in a Norwegian study of 114,500 children that found that those in larger households had better mental health. And there’s nothing better for socializing kids than giving them roommates with whom to play, argue, plot, fight and make up. “Siblings smooth our rough edges,” as psychologist and mother of 13 Anne Perrottet puts it.
The biggest difference, though, isn’t about parenting practices but about philosophy.
Smaller households, where the parents adhere to the quality-over-quantity mind-set, tend to become child-centric. In the best circumstances, this teaches the children to focus all their energies on self-improvement to maximize individual success.
The best large-family model is neither child-centric nor parent-centric but family-centric. Everyone has roles to play in pursuit of a common good. Children in this model still have the freedom and independence to decide who they want to be but aren’t crafting their life scripts on a blank page: They’re establishing their identities in relation to their parents, siblings and cousins.
A larger family is less exhausting for parents not because everyone minds their own business but because parents aren’t trying to quarterback the entire family. In a large family, parents foster a family culture, and that culture — perpetuated by everyone in the family — does the work day in and day out.
Of course, this isn’t easy. The early years, with four little kids, could be maddening on occasion. But still, many of my wife’s favorite memories come from this time.
On an unseasonably cool July day 10 years ago, we left the windows open so that we could hear our four children playing in the backyard.
My wife, Katie, and I sat in the living room and didn’t talk much. Our hearts too occupied with the sounds floating past the curtains: laughter, delighted screams, childhood voices conjuring up imaginary worlds. It’s hard to describe the joy of witnessing your children freely loving one another’s company. They were ages 8 and younger, but in that moment, we felt like we had succeeded as parents.
I wanted to go out and join them because it sounded like they were having so much fun. I didn’t, because I knew I had to give these four the gift of independence — and because I had to stay inside with Katie, who was at that moment in labor with Baby No. 5."

INTRO
I am currently in my 8th week of DoggCrapp, which matches how long I ran it…13 years ago, before competing in my first powerlifting meet and completely abandoning the program in pursuit of becoming a better powerlifter. Oddly enough, at that meet I set my best ever bench press in competition (342lbs as a 198 lifter), which was probably a lesson I should have learned but never did. But, either way, I’ve had 13 years to mature since then, and once again felt the call to take on DoggCrapp again, and after another 8 weeks I saw fit to get some thoughts down on it. This isn’t a full on program review, as I’m not “done” with DoggCrapp, but a quick check-in to express my thoughts so far: what’s been good, what’s been bad, what’s simply “been”, and, of course, my tweaks and mutations.
BACKGROUND
Let’s start with “what the hell is DoggCrapp?” DoggCrapp is the unfortunate name that Dante Trudel gave his training style, which was a joke of a name he came up with on an online forum in the early aughts that regrettably stuck with it for the rest of its life. Anyone that was online in that era totally understands how these dumb decisions you make in the heat of coming up with a screenname can last with you the rest of your life (self-included), but rest assured that the programming style itself is no joke. Dante, himself not a bodybuilding trainer at the time but simply an enthusiast, had made several observations on what were the variables in bodybuilding training that seemed to ensure maximal success, and decided to just take all those winning strategies together and make it into its own training style, very similar to the alleged history of Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do: take what is useful and discard what isn’t. These ideas were circulated through various forum posts and eventually captured and consolidated in a thread known as “Cycles for Pennies”, with Dante eventually creating his own forum known as “intense-muscle”, where he poured our more of his nearly prophetic ideas.
For myself, my first exposure to DoggCrapp came via a t-nation article titled “How to Build 50 Pounds of Muscle in 12 Months” by Nate Green, which I’ll link here, because it’s honestly a very solid primer on DoggCrapp and still what I rely on to this day.
https://forums.t-nation.com/t/how-to-build-50-pounds-of-muscle-in-12-months/284515
And while we’re talking about background, where was I when I started DoggCrapp again? I had JUST finished up 5/3/1 Building the Monolith which, in turn, I took on because, prior to that, I was running Jamie Lewis’ “Famine” protocol and was honestly burnt out with lifting 4-6 days a week and wanted to cut it down to 3. Building the Monolith gave me that opportunity, after which I went on a Disney Cruise, ate my face off, came back home and STILL only wanted to lift 3 days a week, and be able to spend the rest of my days walking or conditioning, which was a great fit for DoggCrapp.
PROGRAM SUMMARY
You really should just read that primer I linked, but for a quick overview of how DoggCrapp works.

• 3 days a week of lifting (yes, there are other splits out there in DC, they are for advanced trainees, which I am not as far as bodybuilding is concerned)
  
• Alternating A/B style workouts. The A workout is chest-shoulders-triceps-back width-back thickness, the B workout is biceps-forearms-calves-hamstrings-quads. Yes, it is in THAT order.
  
• 3 workouts PER workout. What that means is, you have an A1, A2 and A3 day, and a B1, B2 and B3 day. So it takes a total of 2 weeks to get through all workouts (A1-B1-A2, B2-A3-B3, repeat).
  
• One movement per muscle, one workset per movement (in most cases). Rest pause for the majority of the worksets.
  
• “Beat the logbook”. Each workout, you either do more total reps than last time, more weight, both, OR, if you can’t beat the logbook, you change out the movement.
  
• After the workset, engage in a weighted stretch for the muscle (60-90 seconds).
  
• 30 minutes of cardio on the non-lifting days (ideally fasted).
  
• 2g of protein per pound of bodyweight for the diet.
  

HOW I HAVE CHANGED THINGS

• I’ve honestly kept things pretty close to original. The biggest thing is I removed the forearm work and replaced it with a shrug variant. I genuinely don’t care about my forearm size, and figure I can get it to grow with grip strength work. Meanwhile, I DO care about the size of my traps, and wanted to use this as a chance to maximize it. I felt like these were both “small” muscle groups, and fit in well as a swap, and having owned Kelso’s Shrug Book for a decade, I’m at no shortage of shrug variations to employ.
  
• I am also still implementing ROM progression deadlifts, because I have found that, for me, this once a week pulling really gets me strong on the deadlift and doesn’t tax my recovery enough to impact other training. I’ve even managed to factor it into DoggCrapp: I include it in my A2 workout as my backwidth exercise. On the week I DON’T do the A2 workout, I do a ROM progression deadlift on Saturday. It’s one set and 5 minutes of work, and I often count it toward my “sprint workouts” (described below).
  
• I also tend to go above the recommended cardio recommendation. I still keep it low intensity, because I dig how that’s effective for burning fat, but I tend to go on a weighted vest walk for 40-50 minutes, and will also use this training day to hit some odds and ends (kb swings, reverse hyper, band pull aparts, neck work and some lateral raises tend to be the go to).
  
• I also include 3x10 standing ab wheels on the end of the lifting days. Direct ab work really serves me well. Some folks don’t need it, but I do.
  
• I lift M-W-F, I do the walking/odds and ends on Tues/Thurs, and on the weekends I’ll get in non-fasted walking and “sprint” workouts. These are 3-6 minute high intensity conditioning workouts: things like the Grace/Fran WODs, TABEARTA, 5 minutes of ABCs, etc. It’s in my best interest to keep those on the short side, as the lifting is intense and I don’t want to dip too far into my recovery. And, as I wrote above, once every 2 weeks I’ll be including a ROM progression deadlift workout on a Saturday.
  
• With me eating carnivore, I imagine I’m getting those protein recommendations, but I’m not counting or measuring to be able to say for sure.
  

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT DOGGCRAPP

• Once again, the big draw was 3 days a week of lifting, giving me more time to walk. With it being spring leading into summer, I want to get outdoors more often rather than be trapped inside a gym, and this style of training allows me to get in the hard training that I need while affording me the opportunity to enjoy being outside. That’s also a one/two punch as far as the goals of a bodybuilding program goes, because I find walking to be the best physique improving non-lifting activity to engage in. Low heartrate level exercise tends to be the exercise that relies on fat as a fuel source rather than carbs, and I find it’s an effective way to either strip fat away from the body OR, at least minimize its accumulation when eating aggressively. It also allows me to get out in the sun, get a tan, and just be in a great head space.
  
• This style of progression totally clicks with me. I hate percentages, and am somehow able to overcome that when it comes to 5/3/1 and Deep Water primarily because they just use them as a starting point, but in my most ideal world I’d never bother with them. DC is just about doing more than last time until you can’t, and then switching it up again. That’s what I grew up on with Pavel, and it still clicks to this day.
  
• But along with just not having percentages, I ALSO appreciate how the progression is “slow”. And I put that in quotes because it’s much like how silly people say 5/3/1’s progression is slow. What we really mean when we say slow progression is “infrequent opportunities to progress”. You only play with the TM of 5/3/1 after the cycle is over, but you can still progress as fast as you want. You only get a chance to beat the logbook once every 2 weeks, but in between those 2 weeks you can make LOTS of progress.
  
• And you really DO make a lot of progress between those attempts because of how intelligently the whole thing is set up. Forcing you to pick different movements for 3 different workouts is going to force you to work the muscles/movements from different angles, which is going to force you to bring up weakpoints whether you want to or not. So, for example, Dips for chest on day A1 strengthens the Incline Bench used on day A2 which strengthens the Dumbbell Bench used on day A3, which strengthens the dip. This, once again, funnily enough harkens back to my days following Pavel’s 3-5 out of his “Beyond Bodybuilding” book, which was supposed to, of course, be BEYOND bodybuilding, yet here we are again. I’ve also used this approach for Super Squats as well, and it’s really a lesson I just need to learn in general. Rather than having to keep a movement locked in for 6 weeks at a time and then do a whole new training block, we can vary the movements WITHIN the block to stretch it out longer.
  
• Just to keep speaking to how much I like the set-up: a 2 week break from a movement isn’t enough time to get detrained on it, assuming you come into DoggCrapp with a solid enough base. This is something I learned first hand with Deep Water, where it was 2 weeks between movements on the actual Deep Water days. And considering Dante said not to take on the program unless you had 3 years of training and were over 26 years old, there was something in place there to ensure that. It’s honestly just a great cyclical periodization approach.
  
• The order of the split/movements makes total sense to me. I like saving my hardest movement for last in a workout, vs most folks doing it first. And I most likely picked this up from the first time I ran DoggCrapp. But saving widowmaker squats for the end of the workout REALLY allows you to put your all into it and not have to worry about the swim back. Additionally, the “back width” exercise at the end of the A days allows you to employ a deadlift variant, which can make DoggCrapp more like a 3x a week full body workout vs a bodybuilding split, and, once again, you can REALLY go all out on the deadlift.
  
• I like how unbodybuilder-esque this bodybuilding training is. Dante is really big on the whole 80/20 principle, and for movement selection it means picking big movements you can go heavy on. A big part of that is because you have to “beat the logbook”. If you’re doing 15lb lateral raises, it’s hard to progress each workout, but if you’re pressing 185lbs overhead, your shoulders have some wiggleroom. This really gels well with my meathead background. There isn’t much nuance to execution either. No tempo counts or rep range trickery. The calves are the most nuanced bodypart to train in the program, and I can tolerate that.
  
• I dig the inclusion of a heavy set of quad work before hitting the widowmaker. Once again: very 5/3/1, and I feel like it does a good job of allowing me to stay strong. And being able to include a deadlift for my back width work allows a similar benefit.
  
• Mandatory cardio. I’m honestly pretty good about doing that stuff on my own volition these days, but much like how 5/3/1 has conditioning in it, Jamie Lewis includes required walking, and even Deep Water has an active recovery day, I appreciate programs that are PROGRAMS and not just a lifting routine. Taking the whole picture into account is good. AND, laying out that the cardio is a 30 minute walk gives a good perspective of how hard to work on those non-lifting days. Complying with that has been good for my recovery.
  
• I love Dante’s approach to nutrition. Once again, his 80/20 approach shines through. He wants dudes to focus on getting BIG while they run DoggCrapp. Leanness can come AFTER we get big. And according to Dusty Hanshaw, Dante’s philosophy was “If you’re going to overeat, it may as well be the stuff that muscle is made of”, which is how he settled on 2g of protein per pound of bodyweight, which aligns exactly with the same conclusion of Jamie Lewis in “Issuance of Insanity”, and is very close to the recommendation in “Feast, Famine and Ferocity” during the Feast phase. Trainees NEED this sort of reinforcement. Plus, with the thermic effect of food being a thing, there’s a fair chance that overeating this much protein is going to result in the same sort of fat spillover that one would experience with carbs or fats. And since insulin AND glucagon tend to rise together when protein is consumed, there shouldn’t be as many blood sugar spikes compared to what one experiences when overeating carbs. I think there’s a lot of method to this madness, and it once again appeals to me as a nutritional alchemist.
  

WHAT I DON’T LIKE ABOUT DOGGCRAPP

• Workouts run longer than I care. I typically limit my weight training to an hour, and was getting most of my training done in about 45-50 minutes before DoggCrapp, but on DC it’s pretty rare for me to get a workout done in under 65 minutes. A big contributor to this is the warm-up sets. Because the dirty secret of High Intensity Training style programs is this: though there is only “one” workset, there is a LOT of volume to be found in the warm-ups. This style of training uses a ramping up warm-up, where you’re not necessarily burning out in the warm-ups, but you ARE getting a solid pump and putting in some work before you actually get to that work set. You want to really prime your system for max execution. Once again, 5/3/1 already trained you on this with the way Jim builds the lifts leading up to the topset of the mainwork, and we saw this also back in The Complete Keys to Progress. People will LOOK at a DoggCrapp workout and think “I’ll be in and out of the gym in 15 minutes”, which is once again why I say you can’t judge a program until you run it. When you actually do the workouts, to include the warm-ups in a meaningful way, it’s going to take some time to get it done.
  
• A solution to the above would be to follow a split that has fewer muscle groups per day, but this would require training MORE days per week, which would rob me of the benefit of only lifting 3x per week. Instead, I just wake up 15 minutes earlier.
  
• And because I’m being a good DoggCrapp citizen, I’m not in there knocking out giant sets or squeezing in a million assistance exercises between sets like I would on other programs. I AM keeping those warm-up sets very tight and short, but I’m still keeping myself focused on the movement, and will even grant myself a full minute rest before the squat and deadlift workouts. It’s hard for me to stay disciplined liked this, and I would prefer to get in a LOT of training density, but I also recognize how much I’ve written about periodization to know that I’ve done a LOT of training density work, so now it’s time to go abbreviated.
  
• It’s really hard to care about calves, and they take SUPER long to train on the program, because each rep itself is 20 seconds long at least (5 second eccentric, 15 second hold), followed by a 70-90 stretch once it’s done. Just another way for the training days to run very long.
  

WHAT I AM INDIFFERENT ABOUT DOGGCRAPP

• The weighted stretching. It’s just something I do because it’s part of the program, similar to the pullovers in Super Squats. It does suck because it’s just more time spent in the gym (adding to the long run time), but I don’t feel like it’s the secret weapon of the program NOR do I feel like it’s stupid to the point that I don’t need to do it. With only one big workset per bodypart, I figure the loaded stretch is just another way to get some more time under tension.

BORROWING IDEAS

• I like to think of DoggCrapp as “conjugate bodybuilding”, and I feel like a lot of its ideas could be lent to other programs. I have an idea in my head of taking Super Squats and turning it into 3 separate workouts to be run in a week (A1-A2-A-3, repeat). Still only go up 5-10lbs each time you cycle back. It would allow the program to be run for longer…which might not be a good thing at all! But also, dig how you do the pullovers in Super Squats and how that is a “weighted stretch”: it was DoggCrapp before it was cool. You could also move the squat to the very end like DoggCrapp and have the DC blessing even if it goes against the instructions of Super Squats.
  
• Meanwhile, if we’re worried that we’re not getting strong enough with DoggCrapp, one could always take Easy Strength and use that to nudge up numbers. Think about how completely different the programs are: one is about cycling through 3 different workouts, not coming back to a movement for 2 weeks. Easy Strength has you stick with the same movement 5 days a week for 40 workouts. And Dan specifically says Easy Strength is there to take care of the strength work so that you can go on to “everything else”, and in a recent podcast specifically stated bodybuilding work as being included in the “everything else” portion of things. So you could open up with Easy Strength and roll into DoggCrapp if you had that some of training time. And since Easy Strength can be run as infrequently as 2-3x a week, there’s even an avenue to do it on NON-lifting days of DC. Especially if you run “Easy Strength for Fat Loss”, which specifically has you go for a fasted walk AFTER the Easy Strength workout. That may actually be a fantastic idea that I might just have to steal sometime. If you have any pet lifts that aren’t getting the love they need, this could be the answer.
  

IN SUMMARY
Holy crap, look at how much I write when it’s NOT a program review. I haven’t even done a before/after or talked about results, or even my specific set-up this rotation (which is a good overview on how to make the most of a home gym, considering Dante advises strongly against trying that), but needless to say I am progressing well on this and have my first cruise ala “blast and cruise” coming up at the end of May, at which point I’ll have to see what my appetite is for continued crapping.
Thanks for reading! Always happy to discuss further. And if there is any interest in seeing the program in action, I've recorded every session and uploaded it to my youtube. Some of the videos got blocked for muscie, which is lame.

INTRO
I am currently in my 8th week of DoggCrapp, which matches how long I ran it…13 years ago, before competing in my first powerlifting meet and completely abandoning the program in pursuit of becoming a better powerlifter. Oddly enough, at that meet I set my best ever bench press in competition (342lbs as a 198 lifter), which was probably a lesson I should have learned but never did. But, either way, I’ve had 13 years to mature since then, and once again felt the call to take on DoggCrapp again, and after another 8 weeks I saw fit to get some thoughts down on it. This isn’t a full on program review, as I’m not “done” with DoggCrapp, but a quick check-in to express my thoughts so far: what’s been good, what’s been bad, what’s simply “been”, and, of course, my tweaks and mutations.
BACKGROUND
Let’s start with “what the hell is DoggCrapp?” DoggCrapp is the unfortunate name that Dante Trudel gave his training style, which was a joke of a name he came up with on an online forum in the early aughts that regrettably stuck with it for the rest of its life. Anyone that was online in that era totally understands how these dumb decisions you make in the heat of coming up with a screenname can last with you the rest of your life (self-included), but rest assured that the programming style itself is no joke. Dante, himself not a bodybuilding trainer at the time but simply an enthusiast, had made several observations on what were the variables in bodybuilding training that seemed to ensure maximal success, and decided to just take all those winning strategies together and make it into its own training style, very similar to the alleged history of Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do: take what is useful and discard what isn’t. These ideas were circulated through various forum posts and eventually captured and consolidated in a thread known as “Cycles for Pennies”, with Dante eventually creating his own forum known as “intense-muscle”, where he poured our more of his nearly prophetic ideas.
For myself, my first exposure to DoggCrapp came via a t-nation article titled “How to Build 50 Pounds of Muscle in 12 Months” by Nate Green, which I’ll link here, because it’s honestly a very solid primer on DoggCrapp and still what I rely on to this day.
https://forums.t-nation.com/t/how-to-build-50-pounds-of-muscle-in-12-months/284515
And while we’re talking about background, where was I when I started DoggCrapp again? I had JUST finished up 5/3/1 Building the Monolith which, in turn, I took on because, prior to that, I was running Jamie Lewis’ “Famine” protocol and was honestly burnt out with lifting 4-6 days a week and wanted to cut it down to 3. Building the Monolith gave me that opportunity, after which I went on a Disney Cruise, ate my face off, came back home and STILL only wanted to lift 3 days a week, and be able to spend the rest of my days walking or conditioning, which was a great fit for DoggCrapp.
PROGRAM SUMMARY
You really should just read that primer I linked, but for a quick overview of how DoggCrapp works.

• 3 days a week of lifting (yes, there are other splits out there in DC, they are for advanced trainees, which I am not as far as bodybuilding is concerned)
  
• Alternating A/B style workouts. The A workout is chest-shoulders-triceps-back width-back thickness, the B workout is biceps-forearms-calves-hamstrings-quads. Yes, it is in THAT order.
  
• 3 workouts PER workout. What that means is, you have an A1, A2 and A3 day, and a B1, B2 and B3 day. So it takes a total of 2 weeks to get through all workouts (A1-B1-A2, B2-A3-B3, repeat).
  
• One movement per muscle, one workset per movement (in most cases). Rest pause for the majority of the worksets.
  
• “Beat the logbook”. Each workout, you either do more total reps than last time, more weight, both, OR, if you can’t beat the logbook, you change out the movement.
  
• After the workset, engage in a weighted stretch for the muscle (60-90 seconds).
  
• 30 minutes of cardio on the non-lifting days (ideally fasted).
  
• 2g of protein per pound of bodyweight for the diet.
  

HOW I HAVE CHANGED THINGS

• I’ve honestly kept things pretty close to original. The biggest thing is I removed the forearm work and replaced it with a shrug variant. I genuinely don’t care about my forearm size, and figure I can get it to grow with grip strength work. Meanwhile, I DO care about the size of my traps, and wanted to use this as a chance to maximize it. I felt like these were both “small” muscle groups, and fit in well as a swap, and having owned Kelso’s Shrug Book for a decade, I’m at no shortage of shrug variations to employ.
  
• I am also still implementing ROM progression deadlifts, because I have found that, for me, this once a week pulling really gets me strong on the deadlift and doesn’t tax my recovery enough to impact other training. I’ve even managed to factor it into DoggCrapp: I include it in my A2 workout as my backwidth exercise. On the week I DON’T do the A2 workout, I do a ROM progression deadlift on Saturday. It’s one set and 5 minutes of work, and I often count it toward my “sprint workouts” (described below).
  
• I also tend to go above the recommended cardio recommendation. I still keep it low intensity, because I dig how that’s effective for burning fat, but I tend to go on a weighted vest walk for 40-50 minutes, and will also use this training day to hit some odds and ends (kb swings, reverse hyper, band pull aparts, neck work and some lateral raises tend to be the go to).
  
• I also include 3x10 standing ab wheels on the end of the lifting days. Direct ab work really serves me well. Some folks don’t need it, but I do.
  
• I lift M-W-F, I do the walking/odds and ends on Tues/Thurs, and on the weekends I’ll get in non-fasted walking and “sprint” workouts. These are 3-6 minute high intensity conditioning workouts: things like the Grace/Fran WODs, TABEARTA, 5 minutes of ABCs, etc. It’s in my best interest to keep those on the short side, as the lifting is intense and I don’t want to dip too far into my recovery. And, as I wrote above, once every 2 weeks I’ll be including a ROM progression deadlift workout on a Saturday.
  
• With me eating carnivore, I imagine I’m getting those protein recommendations, but I’m not counting or measuring to be able to say for sure.
  

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT DOGGCRAPP

• Once again, the big draw was 3 days a week of lifting, giving me more time to walk. With it being spring leading into summer, I want to get outdoors more often rather than be trapped inside a gym, and this style of training allows me to get in the hard training that I need while affording me the opportunity to enjoy being outside. That’s also a one/two punch as far as the goals of a bodybuilding program goes, because I find walking to be the best physique improving non-lifting activity to engage in. Low heartrate level exercise tends to be the exercise that relies on fat as a fuel source rather than carbs, and I find it’s an effective way to either strip fat away from the body OR, at least minimize its accumulation when eating aggressively. It also allows me to get out in the sun, get a tan, and just be in a great head space.
  
• This style of progression totally clicks with me. I hate percentages, and am somehow able to overcome that when it comes to 5/3/1 and Deep Water primarily because they just use them as a starting point, but in my most ideal world I’d never bother with them. DC is just about doing more than last time until you can’t, and then switching it up again. That’s what I grew up on with Pavel, and it still clicks to this day.
  
• But along with just not having percentages, I ALSO appreciate how the progression is “slow”. And I put that in quotes because it’s much like how silly people say 5/3/1’s progression is slow. What we really mean when we say slow progression is “infrequent opportunities to progress”. You only play with the TM of 5/3/1 after the cycle is over, but you can still progress as fast as you want. You only get a chance to beat the logbook once every 2 weeks, but in between those 2 weeks you can make LOTS of progress.
  
• And you really DO make a lot of progress between those attempts because of how intelligently the whole thing is set up. Forcing you to pick different movements for 3 different workouts is going to force you to work the muscles/movements from different angles, which is going to force you to bring up weakpoints whether you want to or not. So, for example, Dips for chest on day A1 strengthens the Incline Bench used on day A2 which strengthens the Dumbbell Bench used on day A3, which strengthens the dip. This, once again, funnily enough harkens back to my days following Pavel’s 3-5 out of his “Beyond Bodybuilding” book, which was supposed to, of course, be BEYOND bodybuilding, yet here we are again. I’ve also used this approach for Super Squats as well, and it’s really a lesson I just need to learn in general. Rather than having to keep a movement locked in for 6 weeks at a time and then do a whole new training block, we can vary the movements WITHIN the block to stretch it out longer.
  
• Just to keep speaking to how much I like the set-up: a 2 week break from a movement isn’t enough time to get detrained on it, assuming you come into DoggCrapp with a solid enough base. This is something I learned first hand with Deep Water, where it was 2 weeks between movements on the actual Deep Water days. And considering Dante said not to take on the program unless you had 3 years of training and were over 26 years old, there was something in place there to ensure that. It’s honestly just a great cyclical periodization approach.
  
• The order of the split/movements makes total sense to me. I like saving my hardest movement for last in a workout, vs most folks doing it first. And I most likely picked this up from the first time I ran DoggCrapp. But saving widowmaker squats for the end of the workout REALLY allows you to put your all into it and not have to worry about the swim back. Additionally, the “back width” exercise at the end of the A days allows you to employ a deadlift variant, which can make DoggCrapp more like a 3x a week full body workout vs a bodybuilding split, and, once again, you can REALLY go all out on the deadlift.
  
• I like how unbodybuilder-esque this bodybuilding training is. Dante is really big on the whole 80/20 principle, and for movement selection it means picking big movements you can go heavy on. A big part of that is because you have to “beat the logbook”. If you’re doing 15lb lateral raises, it’s hard to progress each workout, but if you’re pressing 185lbs overhead, your shoulders have some wiggleroom. This really gels well with my meathead background. There isn’t much nuance to execution either. No tempo counts or rep range trickery. The calves are the most nuanced bodypart to train in the program, and I can tolerate that.
  
• I dig the inclusion of a heavy set of quad work before hitting the widowmaker. Once again: very 5/3/1, and I feel like it does a good job of allowing me to stay strong. And being able to include a deadlift for my back width work allows a similar benefit.
  
• Mandatory cardio. I’m honestly pretty good about doing that stuff on my own volition these days, but much like how 5/3/1 has conditioning in it, Jamie Lewis includes required walking, and even Deep Water has an active recovery day, I appreciate programs that are PROGRAMS and not just a lifting routine. Taking the whole picture into account is good. AND, laying out that the cardio is a 30 minute walk gives a good perspective of how hard to work on those non-lifting days. Complying with that has been good for my recovery.
  
• I love Dante’s approach to nutrition. Once again, his 80/20 approach shines through. He wants dudes to focus on getting BIG while they run DoggCrapp. Leanness can come AFTER we get big. And according to Dusty Hanshaw, Dante’s philosophy was “If you’re going to overeat, it may as well be the stuff that muscle is made of”, which is how he settled on 2g of protein per pound of bodyweight, which aligns exactly with the same conclusion of Jamie Lewis in “Issuance of Insanity”, and is very close to the recommendation in “Feast, Famine and Ferocity” during the Feast phase. Trainees NEED this sort of reinforcement. Plus, with the thermic effect of food being a thing, there’s a fair chance that overeating this much protein is going to result in the same sort of fat spillover that one would experience with carbs or fats. And since insulin AND glucagon tend to rise together when protein is consumed, there shouldn’t be as many blood sugar spikes compared to what one experiences when overeating carbs. I think there’s a lot of method to this madness, and it once again appeals to me as a nutritional alchemist.
  

WHAT I DON’T LIKE ABOUT DOGGCRAPP

• Workouts run longer than I care. I typically limit my weight training to an hour, and was getting most of my training done in about 45-50 minutes before DoggCrapp, but on DC it’s pretty rare for me to get a workout done in under 65 minutes. A big contributor to this is the warm-up sets. Because the dirty secret of High Intensity Training style programs is this: though there is only “one” workset, there is a LOT of volume to be found in the warm-ups. This style of training uses a ramping up warm-up, where you’re not necessarily burning out in the warm-ups, but you ARE getting a solid pump and putting in some work before you actually get to that work set. You want to really prime your system for max execution. Once again, 5/3/1 already trained you on this with the way Jim builds the lifts leading up to the topset of the mainwork, and we saw this also back in The Complete Keys to Progress. People will LOOK at a DoggCrapp workout and think “I’ll be in and out of the gym in 15 minutes”, which is once again why I say you can’t judge a program until you run it. When you actually do the workouts, to include the warm-ups in a meaningful way, it’s going to take some time to get it done.
  
• A solution to the above would be to follow a split that has fewer muscle groups per day, but this would require training MORE days per week, which would rob me of the benefit of only lifting 3x per week. Instead, I just wake up 15 minutes earlier.
  
• And because I’m being a good DoggCrapp citizen, I’m not in there knocking out giant sets or squeezing in a million assistance exercises between sets like I would on other programs. I AM keeping those warm-up sets very tight and short, but I’m still keeping myself focused on the movement, and will even grant myself a full minute rest before the squat and deadlift workouts. It’s hard for me to stay disciplined liked this, and I would prefer to get in a LOT of training density, but I also recognize how much I’ve written about periodization to know that I’ve done a LOT of training density work, so now it’s time to go abbreviated.
  
• It’s really hard to care about calves, and they take SUPER long to train on the program, because each rep itself is 20 seconds long at least (5 second eccentric, 15 second hold), followed by a 70-90 stretch once it’s done. Just another way for the training days to run very long.
  

WHAT I AM INDIFFERENT ABOUT DOGGCRAPP

• The weighted stretching. It’s just something I do because it’s part of the program, similar to the pullovers in Super Squats. It does suck because it’s just more time spent in the gym (adding to the long run time), but I don’t feel like it’s the secret weapon of the program NOR do I feel like it’s stupid to the point that I don’t need to do it. With only one big workset per bodypart, I figure the loaded stretch is just another way to get some more time under tension.

BORROWING IDEAS

• I like to think of DoggCrapp as “conjugate bodybuilding”, and I feel like a lot of its ideas could be lent to other programs. I have an idea in my head of taking Super Squats and turning it into 3 separate workouts to be run in a week (A1-A2-A-3, repeat). Still only go up 5-10lbs each time you cycle back. It would allow the program to be run for longer…which might not be a good thing at all! But also, dig how you do the pullovers in Super Squats and how that is a “weighted stretch”: it was DoggCrapp before it was cool. You could also move the squat to the very end like DoggCrapp and have the DC blessing even if it goes against the instructions of Super Squats.
  
• Meanwhile, if we’re worried that we’re not getting strong enough with DoggCrapp, one could always take Easy Strength and use that to nudge up numbers. Think about how completely different the programs are: one is about cycling through 3 different workouts, not coming back to a movement for 2 weeks. Easy Strength has you stick with the same movement 5 days a week for 40 workouts. And Dan specifically says Easy Strength is there to take care of the strength work so that you can go on to “everything else”, and in a recent podcast specifically stated bodybuilding work as being included in the “everything else” portion of things. So you could open up with Easy Strength and roll into DoggCrapp if you had that some of training time. And since Easy Strength can be run as infrequently as 2-3x a week, there’s even an avenue to do it on NON-lifting days of DC. Especially if you run “Easy Strength for Fat Loss”, which specifically has you go for a fasted walk AFTER the Easy Strength workout. That may actually be a fantastic idea that I might just have to steal sometime. If you have any pet lifts that aren’t getting the love they need, this could be the answer.
  

IN SUMMARY
Holy crap, look at how much I write when it’s NOT a program review. I haven’t even done a before/after or talked about results, or even my specific set-up this rotation (which is a good overview on how to make the most of a home gym, considering Dante advises strongly against trying that), but needless to say I am progressing well on this and have my first cruise ala “blast and cruise” coming up at the end of May, at which point I’ll have to see what my appetite is for continued crapping.
Thanks for reading! Always happy to discuss further. And if there is any interest in seeing the program in action, I've recorded every session and uploaded it to my youtube. Some of the videos got blocked for muscie, which is lame.