The thing is, they all read like people joking around on the internet. Like if someone pretended to be a sovereign citizen on some lemmy shitpost sub I would expect those kinds of comments as humorous playing around. It just boggles my mind how some people really seem to be serious when they sound like the snarkiest internet trolls.
I’ll try to explain this as quickly and correctly as I can
Sov cits believe their name does not represent themselves, but actually a stock/ commodity that belongs to the US government
They believe this stock to be valued at GDP/population
These “coupons” are instructions to whatever entity they don’t want to pay, informing said entity that they should request the funds from aforementioned stock under the Sov Cit’s name.
I don’t think these people think they’re trying to scam anyone or get away with “not paying”. They genuinely think that every citizen has an equal share of the US’s GDP and can just use it like cash.
In very simple terms (explained by someone who also doesn’t have an amazing grasp on macroeconomics), a country’s GDP is the value of everything they produced for a given time period. So a country can owe a shit ton of money to other countries and will pretty much always have a positive GDP. When people say there was a negative GDP they probably mean it went down from last year.
Which means these people’s “logic” essentially grants them infinite money. The US economy could be in shambles, GDP decreasing every year, but they would somehow always be entitled to tens of thousands of dollars.
I’m so torn about these fuckers. On the one hand, they’re so entertainingly batshit; on the other hand, they must give CEOs everywhere migraines with the dumbfuck letters they send.
No, wait… I’m not conflicted at all. I love these village idiots.
It’s a symptom of institutional racism and systemic poverty. It originally started out as a mail order scam targeting people with no education who had been charged with crimes, people who are desperate and willing to believe anything of they think it will help, so it has proliferated in the black community predominantly, including through prisons via “inmate lawyers.”
IDK, I grew up in rural poor white areas, but this wasn’t ever really a thing. I’m wondering if there’s some cultural overlap I’m unaware of, or maybe regional ones.
There are definitely regional groups of sov cits. They aren’t necessarily organized groups, but the scams are typically perpetrated by “gurus” who sell documents and things to their believers, which resulted in certain regional twists on sov cit rhetoric.
This legal opinion documents a number of the gurus in Canada and their lines of argument.
This is correct. Some of the sov cits themes and beliefs have origins in other movements but the proliferation of these beliefs was the result of mail order scams that targeted people who didn’t know better who had been charged with crimes.
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