Do individual sovereign citizens last long or do the groups keep churning through new members? I imagine at some point they have to realize that their non-payments never go through.
They cling to this like shit to a bear’s fur. Nothing deters them.
I imagine “wins” are sprinkled into the group to foster enough survivorship bias to avoid most of them using the critical thinking that they don’t have.
I ran a small business because I had time to waste. The first thing you learn is how to deal with non-payment. While in this country it’s pretty “simple” to send a letter of demand and then go to tribunal, it’s a huge waste of time. I imagine plenty of people just decide “fuck this, this person is clearly a sad enough individual as is” and don’t bother following up. Especially if your legal system is iffy in regards to civil matters. How anyone think this will work on corporations who have lawyers and accountants though is beyond me.
Where I am it’s theoretically cheap to submit a claim to a small claims court if the debt is below a particular limit, but in reality it’s a few hours work for someone to get the paperwork together, send it in, answer the bogus rebuttal you’ll inevitably get, then have someone spend half a day at the court waiting for a hearing, getting an enforcement order, then having them still refuse to pay over a few hundred dollars of unpaid phone bill.
For most places it’s easier and cheaper to just cancel your service, blacklist you, register the debt with a credit rating agency and hand it over to a debt collector
Below a certain threshold even that is too much work for the debt. You’re better off writing it off. It gives them a win, which goes to the survivorship bias, but you’re not wasting time trying to recover $50 when you could be making $200 with the same effort.
These sovcit posts look like they belong in the wizarding world or something to me. They read like
“I sent three eyes of newts to the ministry of dark arts, and one wing of fairy to the department of destinies, but the overlords of magic constraint still won’t let me fly my broomstick to the neverland. Why are they illegally preventing me from binding with the one true dark form? What did everyone else do to get their vessels stamped for approval?”
Meanwhile, their electric company is like, “Yo, you used $50 worth of electricity. We need you to send us $50 in usable currency if you want to continue using electricity from us. Please send us usable currency instead of jars of spiders like you did last month. Thanks.”
An eye of newt is actually a mustard seed. This isn’t terribly helpful, but there ya go.
Mustard seeds come from newts? TIL
You left out the part where they pay someone else $200 to be told how they are supposedly going to avoid paying that $50.
Exactly. Every time I read one of these I get the impression they are trying really hard to say the right incantation of non-sensical legalese that will make creditors go away.
I mean that’s there whole idea right? You just have to mention all the magic case numbers or “ucc 3” and boom you can legally steal stuff from others!
I love this observation lol
That’s exactly how I think of their logic, they genuinely believe language is magic, and if they say the right combination of crazy things, they get free stuff.
It’s sad that the letter from T Mobile is clearly a template. This isn’t some one off, they get so many they have a standard response.
T Mobile definitely gets a lot of sovcit abuse.
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I mean, the company doesn’t feel it, so much as all the rank-and-file worker folks they put in the way to suffer this abuse for them lol.
It’s one thing to agree with the terminology and another to actually feel bad about it. I hope they have to send hundreds of these letters a month.
Think of it this way- it’s the employees who are experiencing abuse in the name of making money for the company.
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“Also, it was GOOD thing when they shut off my electricity and water. I will be adding it to my legal case against THE STATE.”
“uh, which body are you going to use to prosecute the state?”
THE ATLANTIC
Why do the SovCits go through all this trouble with all of these complicated quasi official forms? I would think someone who doesn’t want to be associated with the government would want to avoid signing anything that looks remotely official… Shouldn’t they be paying their bills with gold krugerrands they keep buried in mason jars in the backyard or something?
The problem with gold is that it has a lot of value and these people don’t want to part with anything valuable. These forms cost almost nothing. So their bias towards not wanting to give away something of value helps them maintain their cognitive dissonance.
The whole aim is to get away with never paying bills with anything.
Sometimes they do send in pieces of silver as payment for a house.
What else can I send? Bro send money.
I’d watch a movie about a heartless “lawyer” who just bilks these people, without sincerely believing any of this sovcit nonsense themselves. It could be hilarious.
Has anyone made a comedy about SovCits yet? Seems like a perfect concept.
Better Call Saul when he gets out of prison.
Everytime I read up on sovcit stuff it always strikes me how similar to gambling addiction some of it is.
These people seem to think the meme about the spider picture sent in an email as payment was a how-to and not a joke.
what are they trying to pay with here?
The version of sovcit… ideology? lore? that I’ve seen goes something like:
- Because reasons, any time a US citizen gives birth, the US government is obligated to open a bank account at the federal reserve with $1 million in it, and keep paying interest into these accounts over time
- However, the way the law is worded only “natural persons” are allowed to access their account, and by signing your birth certificate you are actually a “corporate entity”, not a person
- If you do these things and fill out these forms with these exact words and file them in this exact way and sign it with a blood fingerprint you can declare yourself not a corporate entity but a natural person, and access your account
- The federal reserve won’t just let you withdraw cash from your account, but if you send a letter to someone who you owe a debt with this specific language on it, they can forward that to the federal reserve who will pay the debt on your behalf
Obviously this is all nonsense.
I’m imagining they are trying to pay their phone bill with one of these magic letters, and is surprised that whatever under paid corporate drone is running the collections team at T Mobile isn’t in on the super secret conspiracy that only they are smart enough to uncover
ok your post was so incredulous that i went down a bit of a rabbit hole here… jesus i don’t know whether to laugh or cry at everything.
good summary btw. and the craziness goes even further… my favorite bit of “lore” is the fact that sovcits who operate a motor vehicle for non-commercial purposes can claim to be “traveling” rather than “driving” and therefore do not need a valid drivers’ license or valid plates on their car. MY SIDES
Someone once tried to explain the plot of Kingdom Hearts to me and my brain short circuited in the same way.
It’s kinda the perfect scam, you can sell people the secret knowledge (and obviously you need cash rather than one of these magic letters cos the government can track the magic letters), and if your rube tries it and it obviously doesn’t work then they must have done it wrong and you need to do this other thing to undo that thing and on and on.
It’s also not just a US thing, it’s popped up all over the world, especially in places with an indigenous people - that one I can understand the motivation on a bit better, “fuck the government you can’t control me your authority is derived from colonial violence” rather than “I don’t want to pay taxes but also want to live in a society”
the sovcit subs on reddit are one thing i actually miss. seeing those people’s crazy misadventures and watching them get pwned was always a hoot.
Yeah they were pretty good, but I was most of r/AmIBeingDetained until Reddit banned me, so you get all the good shit here
Like, at least one of these sovcits has got to be a small business owner, right? What would happen if you tried to pay them in the same way?
They would shit their pants with rage and go red in the face screaming at you to pay them now because they are all giant hypocrites?
I have zero doubt they have an answer.
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If they’re true believers and as honest as they are delusional, they would probably accept it, and take your “payment” as “proof” that others should accept it as well.
I am legit curious if this thing has ever worked in the history of mankind, you’d assume someone has cracked the code for there to be this many bullshit out there
Not once!
