A friend of mine recently commented that he believed he was living his life more in accordance with my philosophy that me. This took me aback. But when he went on to explain that I contradict myself by playing by the very rules I denounce, that he was more lawless than I, and therefore more humanpreneurial, I realised how his incomprehension had occurred. And it led me to think that some clarification of my philosophy was due; this rectification will form part of this article.

First off: with my indictment against government control with rules and regulations - I am NOT promoting lawlessness. Personally, I do break some rules where I believe I'm right. In England, it's the law to wear a seatbelt when driving a car - sometimes I don't want to because I don't feel in enough danger to warrant putting it on. It's illegal to overtake on the left hand lane on highways - sometimes I do when a car is hogging the right hand lane and it's unnecessarily slowing me down.

Sticking with the whole driving theme, you're not allowed to use a mobile phone when at the wheel - sometimes I do if I have to make or take a call and I don't feel it will put myself in danger to do so. Like most developed countries, there are speed limits, here - I happily break them when I want to get somewhere quicker and I'm not putting anyone in danger.

A few years ago, I was driving about twenty five miles over the seventy miles an hour speed limit along a motorway - the M25 for those that know it. It was 1.30am; it was dark, and there were hardly any other cars on the large, open road. I'd just dropped some people off at Gatwick Airport, and I was irritably tired and ready for my bed. I reasoned that since the road was practically empty, it was safe to put my foot down.

Needless to say, eventually, flashing lights were following me, beckoning me to pull over. The officers that wrote out my ticket told me that it was my kind of 'dangerous' driving that caused accidents. Probably one of the most irrational things I'd heard, since I was nearly the only road user on that vast expanse of tarmac. The only person that I could have been a danger to was myself. Yet, I was travelling well within the realms of my skill level, and therefore was not a danger to myself.

When breaking rules, I only do so within the scope of my own ability. I.e., I wouldn't drive faster than I have to the skill to control - that is dangerous. And I only break them if the punishment is not so big that it would hinder my life purpose; i.e., imprisonment or a hefty fine. What good can I do from a jail cell? How would a big fine help me when I'm investing all my capital in my business?

I just know that when I tell you I use my mobile phone when driving, your immediate reaction is, "Oh my God! What a lawless, selfish, dangerous criminal!" But, to paraphrase what I have been saying all along: I only break laws I believe are ridiculous and that have been passed on the assumption that all humans are irrational. I only break them if the punishment is small enough to yield good value for my breaking it. I act rationally with my law-breaking. I am not a libertine, nor am I a lawless anarchist.

To use the 'mobile phone while driving' example, I will point out that a very tiny amount of car accidents have resulted in a fatality when a driver was using his phone. But it wasn't the phone that caused the accident: it was incompetence - the driver choosing, irrationally, to make a call at a bad time and not paying due attention to his driving. Yes, it takes a lot more concentration to use a mobile phone and drive at the same time, but guess what? Humans are actually capable of doing it! Yes! We are actually skilful enough to do so.

Driving fast is a skill that can be learnt. Time is limited, so it makes sense that the faster you can drive from A to B, the more time you will have there. Yes, there are irrational humans that would choose to drive faster than they are capable of doing. But they are a tiny minority. And by climbing into your car, you are making the conscious choice that you will share the road with the good and the bad. Remember what Bilbo Baggins said? "It's a dangerous business stepping out of your door, you step into the road and if you don't keep your feet, there's no telling where you might be swept off to."

Someone also recently reasoned that I must have believed that anarchy is the answer. But this couldn't be further from the truth. Unfortunately, there is a minority of irrational human beings that seek nothing other than to make the lives of the rational a misery.

It is for this reason that we need some objective laws to protect the freedom of the rational from the irrational - not what we have now, which is subjective laws that free the irrational to attack the rational in any way they please.

Ideally, we need laws to protect the rational from the irrational, not bundle them all into the same box of incompetent, violent, lawless animals, so that we end up as we are nearly experiencing now: Living a life shooting through a pinball machine, where, if you buffet the sides, it's 'game over'. Humans are brilliant. We have the power of choice over every action we can take, but the rules we are forced to adhere to mean we live with a gun to our head at the face of the 'wrong' choices - all just to feed the power-hungry bureaucrats.

And to assume a society would become anarchic without the control of rules and regulations is to have no faith in humans, assuming they are irrational. It is only because of the abundance of laws catered for every instance of human endeavour that creates more criminals, since there are too many rules to abide by to live a normal life without inadvertently - innocently - breaking a few of them.

With the passing of every law that assumes humans are by nature, irrational, comes the stripping away of freedom, and an extra ounce of permission for the government to fulfil its power-hungry desires by legally using brute force to enslave the free at the point of a gun. If you don't believe me, try breaking any of these laws and proclaiming your innocence with any amount of vigour. See what happens, then.

Using the 'UK smoking ban' as an example, recall the acclaim that the law was met with - from the non-smokers. Their jubilation was centred around the 'fact' that freedom had been granted to the non-smokers, in that they could no longer be 'forced' to breathe someone else's smoke. How they can reason that extra control constitutes freedom is beyond me.

The real solution is individual rights, accountability, self-responsibility and freedom of choice. Ideally, every human would have a choice as to what he wanted to do. Smoke? Not smoke? Drink where there's smoke? Drink where it's smoke-free? And if there were no state-run institutions such as free health care, schools, etc, there would be no problem, since noone would be forced to hand over his hard-earned money to pay for someone else's lung cancer treatment.

We are slowly being cajoled into living our lives unconsciously. The government is slowly pilfering our choices. With laws such as mandatory motor insurance, there is no conscious choice allowed in the decision of whether you feel it's financially viable to have it or not - if you drive, you are forced to have the insurance. We don't have to think. But we really must. We musn't become robots. We musn't become nil by mind. We musn't lose our fight.

But the solution is not to break the rules arbitrarily. Doing so will only allow them to exert their punishment and dump you in a jail cell for your trouble. The solution will have to be something more intelligent, more planned and rational. Breaking the rules is akin to rolling out the red carpet for them.

It's time to pull the rug from underneath them.

To freedom,

Scotty Stevens