Guest Post by Eric Peters
Mask wearing is going to get expensive – for the businesses that insist, if we refuse.
I wrote about my decision to cancel my gym membership of more than 15 years’ standing if my gym says I must wear a mask in order to be allowed in the gym. Over the past 15 years, I have paid more than $5,000 in membership fees, not including the additional fees in the same amount paid by my ex-wife over about the same time period. I obviously like this gym – Crunch Fitness in Roanoke – and planned to work out there for another 15 years, at least.
Which would be at least another $5,000 for the gym, just from me. But if the Mask Mandate comes, my cash will go. I won’t pay to play Sickness Kabuki for the sake of Sickness Psychotics who need therapy much more than a workout.
Several of my gym friends agree with this decision and will also cancel their memberships. This will get into real money – maybe enough money to make a difference. Enough financial pressure to make the gym’s owners rethink their Mask Mandate.
This is power – the not-evil kind.
It is the power of voluntary free exchange. Of mutual consent.
The gym, like any business, has the right to establish its terms and conditions. But customers have a right to withhold their business when those terms and conditions are unacceptable to them.
Being told one must wear a surgical mask – while working out – is as preposterous as it is pathological. Probably someone is more likely to die from respiratory distress caused by a mask – which isn’t designed to facilitate the deep and heavy breathing that comes with working out – than might get sick because someone wasn’t wearing a mask.
In any event, the gym can require. But we don’t have to pay.
This power is tremendous and it is time to use it, if you do not like the idea of being made to play Sickness Kabuki by businesses who’ve either bought into Sickness Psychosis or are just playing along for the sake of their own Babbittry. Many businesses in America are like that now. Their product or service is secondary to their insipid virtue-signaling. Which they seem to think matters more than the products or services they offer.
And may, to some.
Not to me, though. And perhaps not to you.
I pay a gym membership to get a workout; not to be schooled. I go there to relieve tension, not aggravate it.
I won’t pay to be aggravated.
If enough of us refused to pay – whether for gym memberships or haircuts or groceries – if those businesses insist on our playing Sickness Kabuki as part of the transaction – then in no time at all, those businesses would be compelled to rescind the Sickness Kabuki requirement.
Not forced.
This distinction is important because it does not involve violence. We simply choose not to do business with you until you change the way you do business. It isn’t fundamentally different than declining to shop at a store where the products are high-quality but the clerks are discourteous or a restaurant where the food is great but the service is lousy.
Let these business decide whether it is more important to please their customers – the ones whose business keeps them in business – or to play along with Sickness Psychosis.
We had the same chance some 20 years ago when we could have stopped Terror Kabuki at the airports by withholding our business. If enough of us – it probably would only have taken 20 percent of the flying public – had made it known we’d never buy an airplane ticket again until we could get on an airplane without being treated as presumptive terrorists, without having to submit to degradations beneath the dignity of free people, those degradations would have stopped and – today – our children, wives and elderly parents would be able to get on a flight without being treated as presumptive terrorists and subjected to degradations beneath the dignity of free people.
But we didn’t. Not enough of us, at any rate. And because of that, our children, wives and elderly parents are subjected to degradations beneath the dignity of free people.
We face the same choice again – in more serious form. If we do not withhold our dollars right now, we will never again be free to withhold our consent. One can avoid being treated as a presumptive terrorist by not buying an airplane ticket. But how will you avoid being treated as a presumptive Typhoid Mary when it is no longer possible to do anything or go anywhere without being required to play the role of Typhoid Mary?
Is that the future you want for yourself? For your children?
It is a future I will not pay for. And if you agree with me, refuse to pay for it now – while doing so still has power.
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Well Said Eric. I stand with you.
This assumes the mask requirement is not a legal mandate. If it’s just a business owner deciding that all patrons must wear a mask, then I’m in agreement with the author.
If it’s a legal mandate, then the business owner is between the proverbial rock and hard place. If the law or even the color of law as is now the case demands we do anything that we didn’t do a few months ago, then we all need to tell the gov’t to fuck off.
There can not be a “legal mandate” to wear a mask. Who the hell do you think you are that you can tell me to wear a mask? GFY
“Probably someone is more likely to die from respiratory distress caused by a mask – which isn’t designed to facilitate the deep and heavy breathing that comes with working out – than might get sick because someone wasn’t wearing a mask.”
you don’t get it. the gym isn’t trying to do anything other than avoid a civil lawsuit. that’s all.
“I won’t pay to be aggravated”
so don’t. the gym will weigh losing a few extremist customers against potentially being sued out of existence, and they’ll make that choice in a heartbeat and never reconsider for a single second.
Then geld the attorneys and judges. They continue to go unregulated in our system to date. It seems every time I turn around someone is concerned about being sued for one thing or another.
“Then geld the attorneys and judges.”
no. the problem is not the lawyers and judges. the problem is the plaintiffs.
no, it’s either lawyers and judges or it’s gangs and shootouts. for an atomized self-centered loner the answer is to knock it all down so there’s nothing larger than themselves because they think they’ll then dominate all, but for a functional society the answer is to clean up the system.
Never in human history has such a complex system of economics, government, and on and on ever successfully implemented enough reform to save itself. Never. The best that’s happened is bits and pieces are left to atrophy so as to consolidate some semblance of “good”. Rome is the example with which most people are familiar. One tiny finger of instability – a coronavirus – just caused America to shut down.
The Laws of Thermodynamics do not stop at the shores of America. It will collapse. If not now, then at some point in the future it is assured. Westerners seem to have a very difficult time with the notion that that which currently exists will not exist in perpetuity. History is oftentimes one of violent (no pun intended) change.
Both you AND the anarchists are full of shit. Neither will happen. And that at least gives posterity a chance. I will bet against both you and them every time and win that bet 99.9999% of the time.
Never in human history has such a complex system of economics, government, and on and on ever successfully implemented enough reform to save itself. Never.”
never in human history has such a complex system of economics, government, and on and on ever been so directly under the control of its constituent citizens. never. so succeed or fail, it’s all on us. and you. whether you want it or not.
“The Laws of Thermodynamics”
have nothing to do with societal success or failure. the citizens either buck up or withdraw, that’s all …
“Neither will happen”
… and you’re arguing not from facts, but towards your wishes.
Prior to WW2, this is true. Otherwise it is not. Americans no longer control their food supply or their ability to work let alone their government. Get real man.
Entropy affects all systems. None is excepted. The amount of energy it would take to keep this zombie afloat is fast approaching infinity. The oil wars are there to keep the Empire alive and it is in the process of collapse. Now unless you have discovered zero point energy or have the unilateral ability to online thorium reactors, you’re wishing for a Skittle shitting unicorn.
It’s not about “bucking up” OR “withdrawing”. It’s simple mathematics.
Oh really? I am arguing from the historical record. America has not always existed and will not always exist. And human beings are always and everywhere the same. The only thing that changes is time. Not Man’s passions.
You obviously choose to believe those wishes are gonna fill up your hand. Good luck. You’re going to need it as much as the anarcho-capitalists.
“The amount of energy it would take to keep this zombie afloat is fast approaching infinity.”
you mean the federal reserve fiat debt ponzi scheme is peaking. but that’s not america.
“Entropy affects all systems.”
category error. you don’t wish it to continue, so you inappropriately apply an unrelated concept to cast what you wish as inevitable. you are the entropy.
No, I don’t mean the FED. Go study hard sciences. The entropy is built into the equation and the more complex the system, the more LITERAL BTUs it takes to resist its natural state, which is one of ever-increasing entropy. Chaos. Do you really think it’s coincidence that we’re at war with – or strive for total control of – nearly every major oil producing nation-state? Do you really think that Washington will relinquish some power and control back to the people and willingly submit to a multi-polar world?
Stop with the stupid and crack a book on basic arithmetic. If you can’t argue from a position of fundamental comprehension of the topic, then why even participate? My “desire” or “yearning” for X has nothing to do with the facts.
You really were a Civvie, weren’t you? It’s OK to be scared. Now shake it and observe the world for what it is and adapt accordingly.
(nod) dude. you are the entropy.
You don’t even know what the word means, liberal arts douche. Go back and collect your CSRS/FERS. You’re welcome.
gman- the problem for a plaintiff in this type of case is, how do you prove where or from whom you contracted a specific disease? Think back–in your entire life, all the times you have become sick, do you know for a fact where you contracted the illness? Considering the incubation time for illness and the fact (most) people move around and have so many daily interactions, it would be impossible to definitively hold a proprietor responsible in a civil lawsuit of this nature (although I’m sure there are more than a few lawyers who would try)
“I’m sure there are more than a few lawyers who would try”
and would succeed. you’re absolutely right, it can’t be proven. but such a lawsuit would not be criminal, but civil, and civil lawsuits do not deal in “proof” but rather in “a preponderance of the evidence”, and convict not on votes of 12-0 but on votes of 9-3. recall the OJ trial, where OJ won the criminal trial and escaped jail but lost the civil suit and forfeited quite a bit of property. a large business owner simply does not want to face those odds, and won’t if they can avoid it. losing one or two overly sensitive customers like peters is a small business expense to pay to avoid a risk of total loss of the business.
I know what you’re saying, I mentioned it would necessarily be a civil action. I was suggesting (hoping) more in the vein that a judge or arbitrator would summarily dismiss. I mean, where would this lead? (rhetorical, I know the answer, and it ain’t good) The possible transmission of a disease (even one that possibly doesn’t even exist, and in any case doesn’t appear to do more than cause minor illness in healthy persons) is now going to be subject to a civil tort ?
So in other words, you don’t believe in “bucking up”. Interesting.
“So in other words, you don’t believe in ‘bucking up’.”
not as you would define it, no.
US schools graduate approximately 15,000 lawyers annually. The need is for about 5000.
Law schools are the cheapest to form and finance. Buy a law library and hire a few old boys and bingo, you have a profitable law school. That’s why there are so many of the cockroaches looking for someone to sue.
yes, this has been noted for decades. the old observation was california produces more lawyers than japan produces engineers – I can only imagine how much worse the comparison with china is.
like I said, freedom is not free. This gym is what I call a suckass.
“freedom is not free”
but that’s exactly what sociopathic rightists want it to be. they want a certain kind of society and a certain kind of government, and they don’t think they should have to do the work to make it happen – it should just be free. they’re good capitalists – stand back and watch while others do the work and make the sacrifices, and when it’s all done and there’s no longer any risk to oneself then move in and skim the benefits while keeping the society that creates those benefits at arm’s length (all while celebrating “personal responsibility” and “individual liberty” of course ….).
Earth to Eric.
The Playa’s don’t need our stinkin munnees. They have giant presses. Remember?
All your doing is hurting the little guy they want to starve out of business or into submission.
I agree regarding the mask but you have to separate the topics.
“you have to separate the topics”
he can’t. to him it’s all “me”.
“…it’s all ‘me.'”
Unfair characterization of the author’s position. Peters honors the right of the gym owner to require masks on his private property.
“Unfair characterization of the author’s position.”
not at all. he considers the matter entirely from his own self-centered and overly-sensitive perspective – the gym owner isn’t considered at all. that that is why he “honors” the gym owner’s private property – he’s simply keeping all external considerations other than his own at arm’s length.
Those that refuse to stand up for their rights, do not deserve any rights. Freedom is NOT free. This covidscare has certainly proven that americans do not deserve their freedoms.
Will let you know if Golds gym in MO will require a face mask. Been a member for 18 years 84 so maybe time to say no way to a mask.
You know what I find odd? That someone would spend $5,000 dollars to go inside a building to waste their time, energy, and physical exertions against a piece of equipment that produces nothing- no power, no goods, no food, no improvements or repairs.
If that makes sense to someone, then an arbitrary mask requirement should seem like a perk.
Ok, high and mighty farmer. Not everyone has the privilege to live on a farm and physically work the land to get in their exercise. Geez. Get off your high horse.
Privilege?
You think it was a gift?
Here’s the thing, your type- the ankle biters and bitter do-nothings who squander your time on Earth-you no longer recognize what’s natural or good because you’re divorced from the very essence of what it means to be a human being. You want all the goodies that come with a complex society because all you have is an unquenchable hunger that modernity will never satisfy. You don’t even see the absurdity of adult human beings living in the kind of environment where labor is looked down upon so your body propels you to do something, anything, even if it’s to jump on your hamster wheel and pay for the experience. You lash out at me for holding a mirror up to your absurd life. There is not an iota of difference between an obese man shoving cheetohs down his pie hole and a man pedaling his ass off on a stationary bike. Both are responses to a need that cannot be filled by doing what it is you’re doing.
You ever see those videos where some guy is driving down the road with one tire missing and shower of sparks trailing out behind them? That’s you. And I’m the guy who pulls up next to you and motions for you to pull over to the side of the road because you are oblivious to what you’re doing.
You comment doesn’t bother me, it only makes me feel pity for you. Was that your intention?
You should wake up. You don’t have to, but now would be a good time.
“Your comment doesn’t bother me…”
I apparently touched a nerve. Look, I’ve read your articles. You’re a decent writer. There’s some intelligence there. It’s your arrogance that’s annoying.
And, by the way, you don’t realize who you’re lecturing to. Another sign of your arrogance. I may live a similar life as you. Difference is that I’m not in the habit of putting others down because they don’t live like me either because they choose not to or can’t for whatever reason.
Enjoy your home grown vegetables, freshly baked bread, and tasty chicken and leave others that don’t have your privilege alone.
Not putting words into his mouth, but I’d imagine he’d be fine with leaving others alone, so long as when SHTF they leave him alone. Therein lies the rub. Everyone wants the First World until they realize it was an illusion and Maslow has come to collect the rent.
Okay, Boomer.
Not a Boomer. Guess again. And, Boomers are the most arrogant??? I’ll even let you have the final word.
Very generous of you.
And after the super fantastic privileged day I just had, bonus!
The boomer comment was, to state the obvious, a rib, a jest, a riposte, not an actual comment on your generational affiliation. I know, it’s hard to tell I’m joking with this mask on*. I get it. A challenge for these times.
Listen, to be fair you’ve posted anonymously so what could I possibly know about you? You’ve confused confidence with arrogance, lots of people make that mistake, especially when they aren’t very sure of themselves or their own accomplishments and they see someone else who isn’t suffering from the same anxieties. Maybe you’re different, but like I said at the top of the paragraph, what could I possibly know about you? I do know that you state you’re not in the habit of putting people down, but in the first two comments you did it twice, so I do know you have either a profound misunderstanding of what you are not in the habit of doing or you’re just dishonest by nature and use that old trick most fibbers employ by letting people know you don’t normally do something when you probably do it all the time and hope no one notices you’ve just done it, twice. On the same thread.
Once again, what could I possibly know when all I have to discern you intent is the words you’ve written.
But let’s do this again soon, okay?
*I am not actually wearing a mask. That was a topical joke.
Nearly 60 is not really Gen-X, Boomer.
😉
The funny part is that I’m a Boomer.
I’m killing me.
Hardly ever have I seen Hardy handle a heckler here. Huzzah!
“Look, I’ve read your articles. You’re a decent writer. There’s some intelligence there.”
Kill ’em with faint praise. That was funny.
HSF that comment is a work of art. I’m in awe.
Gyms do have some utility for apartment dwellers and/city dwellers, everyone else is wasting their money.
On a somewhat related topic, the thing that drives me nuts is when people say stuff like “Stop complaining about all the niggers and just move” or “City dwellers that are too dumb to flee what’s coming deserve what they get.” and so on.
Critiquing how people who blow their money on things like gyms and eating out regularly is one thing, but shaming people who are too broke or otherwise unable to move out of shits-ville is not cool.
I personally would not join a gym as do a lot of firewood by hand/in construction ect.That said,do join martial arts training/something while not impossible hard to completely self learn,and,all the stretching ect. keeps me in shape to bust up wood/haul lumber ect.I would before either doing a gym/martial arts ect get a good used teeter inversion table,will help you with gym workouts/farm work/busting wood ect.,a great investment for your home.
(laugh)
well, the equipment is tailored to certain results. and you get to decide how much work you need to do. and also it’s air conditioned. and there’s pools. and you get to talk to people or watch news while you work.
What do you expect from a columnist who educated the masses with the profound statement; “batteries store electricity” when he used to actually focus on cars?
Before he moved to politics and assorted inanities.
He writes like a libertarian.
Wearing a mask impedes his narcissistic exercise in self-worship. If he was honest with himself he’d come out of the closet and become a wrestler.
Got me there HSF; I thought the purpose of going to a fitness club was to meet fit and frisky women.
You know; the kind that NKIT graciously posts during FF. A woman who takes care of herself.
Can’t stand to even have to look at porkers, bovines and blobs. And in America they are the majority. Perhaps the Great Depression that is expectantly wanting to descend upon the U.S.S.A., and the rest of the world also as it happens, shall bring back the lean and hungry look as fashionable among the fair sex.
And there we have it.
Gyms are primarily a place for the promotion of mating.
I haven’t always been an old man, I get it. From a distance it just seems like a silly way for someone to stay fit because it’s singular in it’s purpose- exercise a muscle or set of muscles, not the holistic blend of work as a means of both staying fit and simultaneously accomplishing something productive. Hand someone a maul and a pile of oak blocks and at the end of the days you have bigger shoulder and a couple of cords of firewood.
I always thought it was weird that they hadn’t discovered a way to tie in all those treadmills, stair climbers and spin machines to a generator. Gyms could become net producers of electricity if they could harass all those burned calories.
I never understood the need for paying money to go to a gym either. I’ve been a runner for 22 years. We bought a treadmill for inclement winter weather. There must be a hundred ways to weight train at home if that’s your thing. Remember the old pushup?
“But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”
As quoted from the Declaration of Independence.
sure. but some people want that to mean throw off government involving other people and replace it with government by themselves alone.
THIS is exactly what I was preaching earlier in the day today, fight back with your wallet. Kill the beast by starving them out of your life.
We need to choose RIGHT NOW what kind of life we want to live going forward and THIS KABUKI ain’t it. It doesn’t matter what is legal or illegal, the sick kabuki as Eric so aptly called it HAS TO GO. Don’t be afraid to say NO, I’m not having this in my life. We have rights as humans here on this plane and you need to stop saying otherwise….just stop it. Push back, be something more than a parrot of the MSM.
If we were hookers, we’d get fuk’d and then turn around and pay the John for screwing us….THAT is just how dumb we are.
How much more would it cost those businesses to close down for yet another extended period of time because their staff gets sick? How much more would it cost those businesses if they get sued by someone or someone’s family because one of their staff infects that someone who then racks up huge medical bills or dies? How much might it cost these businesses from people who will cancel their memberships if the company does NOT require masks and proper sanitizing? Not requiring employees and customers to wear a mask could get a lot more expensive than requiring everybody to wear a mask. Each company is going to have to evaluate the trade offs. It’s their right to require customers to wear a mask. It’s your right to go the f* somewhere else but do you really have to be such an a**hole about it and then play the virtue signalling tear jerking card? You’re worse than the leftists that you profess to be fighting against – whining about masks as if wearing a mask is somehow a major threat instead of a minor inconvenience. No, it does not show what a macho man you are standing up for your “right” to not be polite enough to put a piece of cloth across your face. It makes you look like the whiny bitch that you are.
I know. Here come the down votes. Let me have it! You’re all whiny bitches who are not polite enough to put a piece of cloth across your face, too.
It turns out I have a farm and I am a boomer, but cycling was always a passion for me. I have crossed the US twice. I would have done it a third time, but common sense weighed in, and I calculated that the effort required to do the third trip is the equivalent of building a small house in the country, which I did instead. Now our family has a bolt hole to escape the lock-down mania, the mask fetish, and maybe the virus itself until I get a cup of coffee at the nearby truck stop. The first time I entered a gym, someone stole my friend’s keys and watch, and it was my last workout indoors. As for the the politicians of Covid-Xi-Jin-Ping? A perfect excuse to debase the currency and get their rocks off locking up 330 million people for no good reason.
“I would have done it a third time, but common sense weighed in”
… why didn’t it weigh in the first time?
Annie
A bunch of people in an enclosed space breathing heavily through satuated masks that do not protect agains contamination in the first place will be threatened by someone breathing less heavily due to less restriction of airflow?
heh. six down votes so far. they’ve never run a business.
Masks and vaccines are red herrings. What is being discovered right now and has been known for some time is that the immune system is compromised in people getting these viral diseases. Below is one recent study where VDI (vitamin D insufficiency) was observed to be prevalent in sick people and especially very sick people. Note that where Vitamin D sufficiency occurs there is likely Vitamin C sufficiency owing to people with sufficiency usually taking supplements and not just one supplement. In other examples, sick people who have presented themselves to hospitals have overwhelmingly been VDI even to 100 percent with those with low levels but not excessively low levels recovering when given Vitamin D at the hospital. You can go to Clif HIgh’s YouTube channel for more info.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.24.20075838v1
“Strikingly, 100% of ICU patients less than 75 years old had VDI. Coagulopathy was present in 62.5% of ICU COVID-19 patients, and 92.3% were lymphocytopenic. Conclusions: VDI is highly prevalent in severe COVID-19 patients. VDI and severe COVID-19 share numerous associations including hypertension, obesity, male sex, advanced age, concentration in northern climates, coagulopathy, and immune dysfunction.”
Excellent video here:
Hard to get exposure to sunlight when you’re locked up in a nursing home or an ICU.
So many of the issues are obvious, but there’s always a Rube Goldberg solution to a 2 cent question.
Yes, crazy as it seems, sunlight is necessary for human beings.
Maybe on the next go ’round we’ll get it right. This timeline not so much.
Indeed. I guess people have forgotten the “sun rooms” of the sanatoriums.
I stopped flying when their shenanigans werent even as odious as they would get.