I recommend the novel “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” by Robert Heinlein. This book involves a bunch of rebels that try to set up a libertarian society on the Moon, but it doesn’t work as well as they had hoped due to the practicalities of maintaining an orderly and functioning society.
Remind me— does China’s “excessive government control” historically include strict environmental regulation? Because if it does and it didn’t help, you’d have a point.
And once again we’re going to tell you that libertarianism is not anarchy.
Ah hell, might as well tell you again
libertarianism is not anarchy
Did you get it that time? Just in case:
libertarianism is not anarchy
Somalia’s problems aren’t because of lax or nonexistent regulations, and has nothing to do with libertarianism. Why? Because libertarianism is not anarchy. The point is not to have a weak government. Libertarianism still has laws, and those laws have to be upheld, otherwise you have anarchy, and libertarianism is not anarchy.
China is hardly lacking in regulations, in fact they have way more regulations than the US. Which is why your plea for more regulations is such a joke. Regulations are meaningless without the ability or desire to enforce them.
Environmental regulations?
No, libertarianism isn’t anarchy; it’s more like feudalism. Where the lords can do as they like and the serfs suffer.
I think you need to re-read that book. First of all, they didn’t ‘try to set up a libertarian society on the Moon’. They were members of a penal colony. They had no choice in the matter.
Second, they did build a libertarian society, because the penal colony governor didn’t care about them so let them run their own society. It worked very well, and the people were happy and built up institutions to replace govermment. For example, line and clan marriages became the mechanism for taking care of retirement, protecting people from loss of income due to injury or illness, and caring for the education of children.
*** Spoiler Alert if you haven’t read the book ***
Where it went wrong was when the lunar authority, the central government, interfered with the grain market and forced grain farmers to meet quotas for shipping grain to earth - quotas that were unsustainable and which were bleeding the moon of its raw resources without proper compensation.
The fix for that in the book was for the colonists to declare independence, then negotiate with Earth under a condition of free trade so they could make sure that their grain only went to earth in exchange for raw materials that would keep the lunar farming system sustainable.
The big worry at the end of the book was that once the colonists had managed to gain their freedom from the lunar authority, the same kinds of power-hungry politicians and bureaucrats and do-gooders would seize the new government’s levers of power and create yet another tiresome big government attempting to manage other people’s lives.
Keep in mind, punishment for these crimes is often execution.
China has plenty of laws and plenty of regulations, where failure to comply results in death.
Again, the point we keep trying to get through to you guys is that there isn’t any point to a regulation if you can’t or won’t enforce it. Regulations in China fail because it’s too easy to bribe the officials. Good thing that never happens in the US.
And here is where Libertarianism falls apart.
Precisely what laws are appropriate?
If you get 100 Libertarians together you are going to get different answers.
If you have LIbertarian Island sooner or later one will want a special tax break or zoning loosened. Sooner or later one Libertarian will step on another Libertarian’s toes and the aggrieved party will want it fixed so that doesn’t happen again (maybe the crazy cat lady living in the apartment next door makes your place smell like a porta-potty on a hot day in Juarez). And so it goes. In time you will have a mish-mosh of laws and regulations and it is no longer Libertarian land.
So I trust this means you’ll stop posting that same shit again right? You’ve now admitted that libertarianism is not anarchy, so comparing it to Somalia is pretty stupid.
Now, the only way this can be like feudalism is if the surfs are not free to leave. You see, it’s pretty hard to be a lord if all your subjects bugger off to a neighbouring hamlet. Otherwise what you have is slavery, and that requires the US government.
Do you have any evidence that the pollution in the prosperity zones is any worse per dollar of GDP output than it is anywhere else in China?
Seriously, you all should go read the information at Paul Romer’s site, and especially watch his TED talks. The arguments here are addressed, and he makes a lot of damned good points. He’s no wild-eyed libertarian: He was a professor of economics at Stanford, he was offered the job as head of the World Bank, and he’s one of the more respected economists in America. He’s not even a libertarian - he’s more of a neo-liberal like Clinton. TIME magazine named him one of America’s 25 most influential people.
Well, I’ve left the U.S., but everywhere I’ve lived has had some sort of sewage treatment. Either via regulations on septic systems or actual sewer and treatment centers.
What I did forget to mention was solid waste. Hard to make a landfill on water.
You mean Somalia, with its warlords?
:rolleyes: No it doesn’t.
FYI: Slavery existed in what was to become the United States in the early 1600’s. My history is a little rusty but pretty sure there was no United States back then.
I seriously doubt you know what you’re talking about, as just one example:
http://www.rense.com/general28/raw.htm
Remember, the reason I’m bringing this up is to counter the fallacy that without government regulations raw sewage will be dumped into the sea. Because it is WITH government that raw sewage flows into the sea. It is flowing through government pipes.
When left to their own devices, corporations cannot be trusted to police themselves, so strong regulations from a strong central government are necessary for the sake of the populace. I agree with this. Laxity when it comes to regulations just doesn’t work.
Der Trihs: You have been told time and time again that Libertarians believe in a strong police force and the rule of law. If Somalia was a libertarian country, there would be an army and police forces rounding up the pirates and warlords and throwing them in jail, just like we would here.
On matters of law and order there is NO DIFFERENCE between libertarians and liberals. We differ on what things should be illegal, but for those things that are (and that includes all forms of coercion including theft, fraud, murder, extortion, graft, etc), libertarians would do exactly what Canada, the U.S., France, or any other country with a strong police force would do - stop the miscreants and arrest or kill them to protect people’s rights.
Some libertarians think that a suitably regulated free market security force could do this, but they’re a small minority. The mainstream of libertarian thought says that the proper role of government is as follows:
- Maintenance of a military to protect citizens from external aggression.
- Maintenance of police forces to protect citizens from internal aggression.
- Maintenance of courts of law to adjudicate disputes among citizens from an objective standpoint.
To meet the costs of these requirements, libertarians recognize that taxes need to be raised - either excise taxes, or income taxes, or sales taxes. Whatever is necessary to pay for these core functions of government.
Again, this is BY FAR the mainstream libertarian view of government. So, your references to Somalia are ignorant and wrong. Consider yourself educated. If you persist in making this comparison, everyone should conclude that you are simply attempting to poke the bear and engage in sophistry by attempting to smear libertarians with the actions of criminals. It’s a despicable form of debate.
Nope, before 1776 the US was a colony of the British government.
And to help you your US history, slavery continued until 1865 thanks to laws and regulations put in place and enforced by the US government.
Ok, I’m not going to say you’re not right, but the root site for this cite is dubious. But also later in that cite it says:
“Under pressure from the EPA, Cincinnati’s sewer district has agreed to spend $43 million to eliminate 17 of its worst overflows. The deal will keep 100 million gallons of raw sewage from being dumped into waterways each year.”
So it seems like federal enforcement is/was working to correct this.
Yeah, I’m having a bit of trouble following emacknight’s argument— government shouldn’t bother regulating pollution because there’s still gonna be pollution if they don’t enforce the regulations? Isn’t it actually a rock-solid argument for stricter regulation?