I can't even tell what they're thinking. It sounds like they're trying to pay their bills with chaos magic
Sovereign citizens often get started by the siren song of magic money loopholes, which unfortunately people charge them money for as part of a pretty gnarly scam.
The basic logic of the scam is that when we moved off the gold standard, money stopped being money because it wasn't backed up by anything "real".
Since money isn't actually real money, you can instead give a "coupon" or other named bit of paper that says it's redeemable for the substance that backs the money, because that's what money is.
So instead of paying with hard to get paper that's not backed by gold, you pay with easy to get paper that's not backed by gold.
The catch, of course, is that's not what money is, how it works, someone is charging real money for this, and it's a federal felony.
So this person is, at best, in financial distress leaving them vulnerable to a cruel scam, and ignorant and gullible enough to believe some very odd things about the law involving YOUR NAME IN CAPITAL LETTERS being legally distinct from Your Name In Title Case.
I believe that's called counterfeiting, technically speaking.
It's not counterfeiting because they're not passing it off as US currency. It's using a fictitious financial instrument, which is more when you're pretending it has value, as opposed to pretending it's something that has value.
I think the distinction really only matters legally or if someone has specifically said they're being technical. :)
So like crypto?
Not quite. Cryptocurrency is property in the eyes of the law. It's a "thing" you can transfer ownership of.
What the sovereign citizens do is make up something that serves a purpose closer to that of a check, or money order: a thing that is redeemable for money, but doesn't have value itself.
If you find a Bitcoin (somehow just laying on a note card I guess?), it's the same as finding an expensive watch. You now have a thing you own that you can exchange for legal tender. The previous owner has nothing.
If you find a filled out check on the ground, it's worthless to you because it's not made out to you.
You crumple it up and throw it away, and the owner hasn't lost anything.
It's why the sovcits call them coupons, or promissory notes.
The idea that gold should be valuable or the standard for trade simply because it's rare always seemed silly to me, as that standard was set before the time when people knew most of the valuable physical properties of gold for scientific/technological use. To think that countless conflicts and deaths have occurred simply because of that is madness. We really can be fickle beings.
I always thought the reason gold became so valuable to many human societies was that its really unreactive and doesnt corrode over time as easily so it seems ageless, and you can easily determine its quality without advanced tools (touchstones).
In terms of actual value lead is now more valuable than gold. I always think that's ironic.
The other fantastic thing is you can turn lead into gold you just need to ton of radiation and the end result will be that you have less valuable product. And also it's radioactive so you can't use it anyway.
Look at me, doing alchemy with my philosophers stone :)
I think it’s something about how if you write your name in all caps that counts as a different legal entity because magic words. So business as usual for these folks.
tldr - Birth certificates are actually “ownership documents” over a “corporation” or “entity” or “person” (which is also somehow different than the individual?), which is signed over to the government by the parents. These have names in ALL CAPS as does other documents.
Sovcits believe the ALL CAPS name is the “entity” and Normal Case name is the “individual’s name”
edit - this is the explanation im poorly recalling https://lemmy.world/post/11345648
So I was right
Have they tried cumming on their letters first? I hear that charges the sigils really good
I haven't heard of cum, but some of them do put a bloody thumbprint with their signature. And everybody knows that blood magic is powerful.
instructions unclear, now a catholic priest... please advise
It would blow these people's minds if somebody pointed out to them that the ALL CAPS thing was due to nothing more than a technological limitation of really old computers.
I thought it was about boats or someshit.
This is some seriously weird shit. I can understand not willing to be a part of a country forced upon you. Not how it would work, but I get the idea in an abstract way. But the moment this boat bullshit gets brought up... oh boy.
Yeah - Birth certificate is a “berth certificate” in their eyes
Yeah, they claim all courts operate improperly under maritime law, because the judges are actually agents of a foreign power, and that a gold fringed American flag signifies that. But it's secret. So they put the flag up so everything is "proper" but they don't actually have jurisdiction.
It's a clusterfuck of terrible theories based on outdated laws and treaties.
This explains some of the mental issues i have seen here.
It's kind of similar to numerology and cargo cults. They understand there is a cause and effect, but think that ritualistic actions are the cause to achieve their effect, instead of understanding that actual law is only superficially similar to ritual.
Welcome to sovcit café, where the menus taste like bacon
Didn’t you read her letter? This living woman is clearly aware of… well… things.
I don't think she is.
Delusions born of desperation and falling for cons from what I can tell.
Here’s a good video on them: https://youtube.com/watch?v=KcxZFmKrxR8
rolled a natural 1
I miss believing in Chaos Magick
It's more fun to be wrong. Many mistakes are available, hail Eris.
To be fair, money is a magic coupon too. So they just didn’t pay with the right magic coupon.
I agree and get the joke. A long time ago we all agreed it's a bit silly to carry all these valuables around, so we write them on pieces of paper and trade those. The value of an asset the paper represents is magic, but the paper itself has a "direct" value.
Somewhere we decided 50 cows are worth a car, and 10 cars are worth a house. The paper is just to help communicate and trade. Don't hate the paper, hate the game.
Krapopolis did an episode that covered it quite well.
"Just remember ALL CAPS when you spell the man's name."
These fuckin goofs think they merit the same respect as DOOM.
Or SQL statements
Or HTML…code…language…
—hacker…um…
ADOBE. Computer. Modem. Dell…h…p…?
The more I see these, the more I want to read the responses people in the group give. Like what do they say 'to help'?
A lot of them just told her to pay her bills, which surprised me.
Because they aren't magic people. It is not as if this actually works and none of it is based in law although they seem to think it is some kind of loophole or something.
If she doesn't pay her bills all that will happen is she'll get her power switched off and then she'll get evicted. It's not like she's going to win in this case.
The name of this place is insanepeoplefacebook yet 99% of the posts are about the same group of idiots who seem to think being sovereign comes with legal protection to not Pay for services they do/did receive. And that the system will just let them.
Frankly its giving actual moral objection againt the state and acts of civil disobedience a bad name.
To truly become a sovereign citizen is to expacf to become a martyr, to drink the hemlock out of moral conviction. which is a discussion i would love to have on anarchist lemmy but appeared to be impossible here.
I’ll see myself out.
InsanePeopleFacebook
Screenshots of people being insane on Facebook. Please censor names/pics of end users in screenshots. Please follow the rules of lemmy.world