Curious George goes to Libertaria

[pldennison]

And I never said any such thing, Phil. I was questioning the apparent libertarian assumption that there will be enough rich, beneficient altruists to go around. There are a lot of libraries out there.

Fair enough. But you may want to read Lib’s poll. A couple of the same people who give the Libertarians shit all the time say they themselves would not support libraries if they were not taxed for them. I guess we’re learning who the uncharitable ones are.

[Liberal]

labdude

A google search will gives several links:

Here’s one.

[Gadarene]

Fair enough. But you may want to read Lib’s poll. A couple of the same people who give the Libertarians shit all the time say they themselves would not support libraries if they were not taxed for them. I guess we’re learning who the uncharitable ones are.

Give me a break! You’re being more than a little disingenuous here, considering their stated rationales. Jeff says that there’d be too many other causes in need of funding that he’d value more–this says nothing about his lack of charity, nor about the importance of libraries to a prosperous society. Merely that the privatization zeal that would fell the public libraries would do the same to other, more urgent causes. Food and housing for the poor. Medical research. Consumer protection services. Environmental protection services. Not to mention that in a libertarian society we’d all still be paying for our roads, our police, our schools, our hospitals, our military, our post office (and I’ve never seen anything to indicate that private industry can or will offer these things any cheaper; I guess we just have to take your word for it)–how is your average American going to have the time to research and choose his charities, let alone the money left over to be very charitable, even without taxes? We’ll all be picking our one highest priority, more than likely, and donating only to that. Not much of a way to keep a country going.

Like I said on the poll thread, I think that the people who value libraries the most are the ones who can least afford to donate to them. This is the problem with a society relying on fee-for-service and charitable donations: there are many things integral to the health of the country as a whole to which most individuals can’t or won’t contribute very much. So those services likely fall by the wayside, and civic health–not to put to fine a point on it–atrophies.

[Liberal]

Gadarene

and I’ve never seen anything to indicate that private industry can or will offer these things any cheaper; I guess we just have to take your word for it…

Well, now, there’s plenty of that to go around here, isn’t there?

Like I said on the poll thread, I think that the people who value libraries the most are the ones who can least afford to donate to them.

Do we just take your word for that?

We’ll all be picking our one highest priority, more than likely, and donating only to that.

That too?

Merely that the privatization zeal that would fell the public libraries would do the same to other, more urgent causes.

And et cetera…

[Liberal]

Oops. Forgot this:

So those services likely fall by the wayside, and civic health–not to put to fine a point on it–atrophies.

Ah, the wonderful world of hypotheticals!

---

If people are likely to support what they most value, as you seem assured they will, and if government is a representation of the will of the people, as you seem to say it is, then why is government doing anything differently than people would do themselves? (Aside from taking a substantial cut for bureaucratic salaries, staffs of lawyers, and stuff like that.)

[manhattan]

Not to mention that in a libertarian society we’d all still be paying for our roads, our police, our schools, our hospitals, our military, our post office (and I’ve never seen anything to indicate that private industry can or will offer these things any cheaper; I guess we just have to take your word for it)

Nah, you just have to look harder. Just to pick a couple of examples:

Garbage collection and disposal are measurably cheaper in municipalities which require individuals (to hire a private contractor). Predictably enough, sometimes individuals along a road band together to provide the collection companies with a more tempting customer.

About 15% of Americans supplement their existing police protection with home alarms.

If you are a large volume user, FEDEX can offer you a price for overnight letters that is close to that offered by the USPS, and with far higher certainty that the letter is going to get to its destination on time. They would be able to beat USPS prices if USPS didn’t use its monopoly power on first class and junk mail to subsidize its overnight/2-day operation.

There are more examples, but generally things provided by private industry come cheaper, better and more efficient than those offered by the State.

[manhattan]

Please feel free to ignore, as I am, the parentheses around “to hire a private contractor” in the second line of the above post.

[pldennison]

Cold, heartless, guaranteed-to-get-me-in-trouble statement of the day:

This is the problem with a society relying on fee-for-service and charitable donations: there are many things integral to the health of the country as a whole to which most individuals can’t or won’t contribute very much.

I don’t see how someone can argue vociferously, day in and day out, for majoritarianism, then say this with a straight face. If individuals are not willing to contribute for the support of something, then (arguably) it isn’t particularly “integral to the health of the country as a whole.”

[Whack-a-Mole]

Why let lack of facts stop you when rhetoric will suffice!

PLDennison Wrote:

If individuals are not willing to contribute for the support of something, then (arguably) it isn’t particularly “integral to the health of the country as a whole.”

Do you, PLDennison, contribute to every organization you think is worthwhile? There are 640,000+ charities in the United States. Are you conversant with all of the charities that you would willingly support and donate money to them all?

The sad fact is most people don’t donate to many issues till the issue being tackled by so-and-so organization bites that person in the ass.

Here’s a hypothetical for ya:

Let’s say a factory 50 miles from you has been dumping highly toxic waste into a pit for years till the toxic waste leaks into the aquifer supplying your town with water. (Remember…in your Libertarian government there is no EPA to keep a watch for companies like this.)

The first you learn of it is when you and 20 other people in your town have babies born with severe mental and physical defects. Naturally you and others sue the company but they can’t afford this and declare bankruptcy. You all get $1,000 in the settlement. The property value of your house has gone in the toilet…no one will buy your toxic land (not only is the water bad but the water was used for irrigation poisoning the soil as well).

Since your property value has disappeared you can’t take a second mortgage on your house to pay for medical bills or cleanup of your property. The government, being Libertarian, has no such thing as guaranteed low interest loans to provide you help. With no equity left in your house no bank will give you a loan either. Your neighbors can’t really lend a hand since they’re in the same boat as you. Your family is helping as best they can but they aren’t wealthy and there are limits…they have their own kids to worry about. The government also doesn’t have a Superfund to cleanup toxic sites anymore…it’s not the government’s problem being Libertarian. Total cost for cleanup…$1 billion.

Up till now you’ve been donating to your local school, your local library, the NRA and cancer research. These are popular places to donate to. Some people have been donating to environmental groups but the scope of your problem is FAR beyond their means to help given they have a yearly budget of $20,000,000 most of which goes to feel good programs saving whales and protesting nuclear testing. They will, however, write nasty letters to the OP-ED pages of national newpapers bemoaning your plight.

Your children need extreme care. The local school system will have nothing to do with them because your local school funding never provided for this…there had only been two retarded kids in the town in th elast ten years so it fell to those families to make do and not impose on the school district. Your keeds really could use private hospice care of which there are plenty to choose from but you have no money to pay for it. The only places that will take them for ‘free’ are so backlogged with requests that the only people who get their kids in are ones who can pay anyway in the form of ‘donations’. There are no state run facilities having been abolished under Libertarianism and no facilities are under any obligation to take anyone. Need has nothing to do with it anymore…money has everything to do with it.

Now you have to take care of your kids on your own. Unfortunately the care they need is so extreme you keep missing work as a result. Your regular doctor could get you in on appointment but you can’t afford this and the free clinic is so piled with cases it takes 4 hours per visit to have a doctor say, “Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.” Your employer has had enough of you missing work and fires you…plenty where you came from. Again, the Libertarian government has no Family Leave Act to protect your job while your family is in crisis. Since your town has been ruined by toxic waste most businesses have left and there is no work to be had nearby. Since you can’t sell your house, have no job and have spent all of your savings on medical care you can’t afford to move anywhere to find a new job either.

The one good thing I can say to all of this is that since you’ll have a lot of time on your hands at least you’ll have a good library to keep you busy.

[Liberal]

Here’s a hypothetical for ya:

Let’s say a factory 50 miles from you has been dumping highly toxic waste into a pit for years till the toxic waste leaks into the aquifer supplying your town with water. (Remember…in your Libertarian government there is no EPA to keep a watch for companies like this.)

Oh, yeah? Well, here’s you a coupla hypotheticals!

Hanford fire got close to toxic waste
Mysterious material buried in barrels

Saturday, July 1, 2000

By ROBERT McCLURE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

The fire at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation burned within a half-mile of more than 1,200 barrels of waste of unknown origin that contain radioactive and toxic elements, Hanford records indicate.

Wait a minute, that actually happened with an EPA. Okay, how 'bout this?

DID GOVERNMENT APPROVE CITIZENS AS TOXIC WASTE SITES?
ARE WE BEING POISONED?

“Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.”
-Winston Churchill-

It has been a long established joke about not drinking the water in Third World countries. Now it is here in America that the water has been declared unsafe to drink, and it is no joke. Whereas the greatest problem with water in the underdeveloped nations is usually such as amoebic dysentery, serious but reversible, in the U.S. it is rat poison one gets in the drinking water--and it is no accident.

Extensive studies, ignored with a yawn by those who believe they are being served well by the media and various dental associations, have shown that the consumption of fluoride in drinking water and prescription doses is extremely harmful and deleterious in a number of ways.

Reputable researchers from such as Harvard and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and numerable other research investigators, have shown that fluoridation of drinking water can result in brain and other physiological damage producing such abnormalities as:

Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)
Hyperactivity or passive malaise – depending on whether exposure is pre- or postnatal
Alzheimer’s disease or senile dementia
The death of brain cells directly involved in the decision making processes
Cracked, pitted and brittle teeth and bones not being considered as a potential leading cause of osteoporosis
Higher hip fracture rates
Reduction in intelligence and increased learning disability
The list goes on of primary and ancillary defects and damage caused by the addition of a substance used in rat poison.

Oops, real also. EPA exists. Okay, wait a minute. Here we go:

Toxic Waste: out of site out of mind?
Just north of the main Olympic venue, covered by bright orange plastic sheeting, is 400 tonnes of chemical waste containing dioxin, the most toxic chemical made by humans.

This toxic material has been stored illegally for almost 12 months. The Olympic Coordination Authority (OCA) spent over A$130 million to remediate the Olympic site. Now it needs to decide whether the chemical waste it removed will be stored or destroyed.

It isn’t much of a choice. Storage is only a temporary solution. The costs and risks will grow with time. In the past this waste would have been incinerated or buried. But years of experience around the world have shown that these ‘solutions’ don’t work. Incinerators generate more dioxins than they destroy and landfills eventually leak pollution into the surrounding environment.

Alternative technologies have now been developed to chemically treat this sort of waste. Such technologies have the potential to destroy this toxic legacy without contaminating the land, water or air. For the cost of storing it for 10 years, the waste could be treated to render it harmless long before September 2000 when the Games open.

There is another disturbing aspect to this story - some of the waste got away. The first drums of this toxic waste were illegally transported and buried in landfill. According to the OCA this waste will stay there: a toxic legacy of its own.

It’s not just the Olympic venue that needs cleaning up. Greenpeace has highlighted the extensive dioxin contamination of Homebush Bay.

Homebush Bay is one of the five worst sites for dioxin pollution in the world. Both the water and sediment are heavily polluted with organo-chlorines, heavy metals and phthalates.

In June 1997, two weeks after Greenpeace took action to safely store more than 50 drums of highly toxic waste illegally and unsafely stockpiled next to the Olympics site, the NSW Government committed A$21million to cleaning up the sediments in the Bay in time for the Games.

One year on Greenpeace revisited the site. Nothing had changed. The drums were as Greenpeace had stored them and the Bay wasn’t any closer to being cleaned up. Recent comments by Olympics Minister Michael Knight that the clean-up might wait until the Games are over strain the credibility of the Green Games.

At the other end of Homebush Bay the old Orica (formerly ICI Australia) chemical factory is being demolished. The factory was the only producer of phthalates in Australia. Phthalates are chemicals used to soften vinyl plastic and will soon be banned in many European countries because of the risk they pose to children’s health. The sediment next to the factory is highly polluted with phthalates and heavy metals, including lead.

Orica is cleaning up the factory site so it can sell the land and profit from the Olympics housing boom. However, it has not committed to cleaning up its mess in Homebush Bay. Indeed, Orica may be making the problem worse by allowing old stormwater pipes to continue to drain water from the site into the Bay.

Greenpeace demands that Orica publicly releases information on the true extent of pollution in the Bay and takes urgent steps to clean it up. If Orica’s claim to practice ‘Responsible Care’ is to be taken seriously it must act to ensure a clean Bay for both Olympic visitors and future residents.

Yikes, that one was real, too. But hey, who can trust Greenpeace? Okay, one last, er, um, hypothetical:

Toxic Waste Site

Bubbling, oozing, slimy, stinky goo. The United States has at least 36,000 hazardous waste sites containing used oil, battery acid, PCB’s, heavy metals, detergents, pesticides, old paint, plastics, radioactive wastes and more.
Although they are poisonous to us and to most kinds of animals and plants, many of these toxic compounds serve as food to some types of microbes. This is very good news for us, since microbes can eliminate or neutralize many toxic compounds in the environment. Not all of the news is good - sometimes microbes make pollution problems worse, as is the case in acid mine drainage.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has put 1,290 of these waste sites on the National Priority List. Sometimes toxins stored at some of these sites leak out of their containers and make their way into ground water, soil, lakes and rivers. Accidents, such as train derailments or crashes involving tanker trucks transporting toxic wastes or oil spills from ships, can also release large quantities of these dangerous chemicals into the environment. Build-up of toxins can also result from release of small amounts over a large area and/or a long time. An example of this is the runoff of excessive fertilizers and pesticides applied to lawns and farm fields. Cleaning up these toxic wastes has cost $20 billion over the past 15 years in the United States. Cleanup of the rest of the toxins already in the environment (in the U.S.A.) is expected to cost between $100 and $500 billion (that is about $500 to $2500 per person in the United States.)

Dang it. Real after all.

Well, not to worry. The EPA has put a bunch of 'em on a list.

[pldennison]

Naievete Strikes Again…
Why let lack of facts stop you when rhetoric will suffice!

PLDennison Wrote:
quote:

If individuals are not willing to contribute for the support of something, then (arguably) it isn’t particularly “integral to the health of the country as a whole.”

. . .

Here’s a hypothetical for ya:

Wait, wait, wait . . . let me see if I have this straight:

1. You completely miss, deliberately or otherwise, the word “arguably” in my sentence, there, meaning the statement is open for debate, and strong arguments can be made either way; then you
2. Accuse me of “naivete” and “rhetoric” while
3. Attempting to make your point through a, while no doubt heart-wrenching, hypothetical story (i.e., a rhetorical device)?

So where, exactly, were the “facts” in your little diatribe?

Fun talking with you, Jeff. Too bad it’ll be the last time. I have neither the time nor the inclination to argue with someone who is going to pull nonsense like that.

[Ted]

**pldennison ** - K sorry for misunderstanding what you said. I wasn’t quite sure the point you were making with that, and from the context of the previous replies it sounded like an argument that privatly funded libaries were more adapt than public ones… or somthing.

Sorry bout that.
**Jeff_42 ** - what can I say. I’m impressed… so impressed that I’m not going to even say slippery slope… oops… silly me too late =)

Seriously though, it’s a very plausable senario, but many other equaly dreadfull senarios could happen, and have happend under the system we have now. The question isn’t what “could” happen… it’s what is “likely” to happen. With things as vauge and as far reaching as the operantion and effects of a goverment and random chance…well shrug
I like the thought experiment none the less, as it does illustrate many of the faults of such a system.

shrug either way, I’m an anarchist. …well an anarchist who prefers there to be a goverment he can blame and bitch too. =]

[Whack-a-Mole]

Thanks for the support Libertarian! And here I was beginning to wonder if we’d see eye-to-eye on anything…

You see…all you’re telling me with all of your post is that things would be FAR worse under a Libertarian system. WITH the EPA watching companies are still dumping crap all over the place. Without the EPA they can fence off their property and dump to their hearts content.

I’m AMAZED you and PLDennison keep making the mistake that I’m arguing our governement and all its attendent agencies are just swell and without fault. I am FAR from making any such claims. All I am pointing out is that so far the Libertarian argument has YET to make one definitive, supported by facts (any facts) point that Libertarianism is SUPERIOR to our current democracy.

As long as you and PLD keep making the assumption I’m arguing that the current government is perfect or without serious need of reform you make debating you ridiculously easy on me.

[Liberal]

Actually, pollution in Libertaria is a crime (vandalism). There is no EPA to waste money on, and no lawmakers to buy off. So polluters are put in prison and are forced to restore your property.

But you’re way off-base when you say we think libertarianism is superior to democracy. A democracy can be libertarian, so long as it secures the rights of all its citizens (not just the majority). Libertarianism is not a form of government. It’s just a context for any form you like.

[Tretiak]

One point I did not see brought up which I think is interesting is that while the poor may give a higher percentage of their income to charity, they are also much more likely to give that money to religious organizations. The wealthy tend to make chartitable contributions to educational and medical causes.

My question:
Is all charity conisidered equal? I don’t mean to imply that individuals shouldn’t be able to donate to whatever cause they deem worthy. I personally make the bulk of charitable donations to my alma mater.

[Whack-a-Mole]

PLDennison wrote:

So where, exactly, were the “facts” in your little diatribe?

Fun talking with you, Jeff. Too bad it’ll be the last time. I have neither the time nor the inclination to argue with someone who is going to pull nonsense like that.

I never pretended that what I wrote was factual but if you want real world situations Libertarian was nice enough to provide several immediately following my post.

Regardless of whether or not Libertarian posted some real world situations of pollution the hypothetical still provides a valid basis for debate. You could argue that Libertarianism would provide a framework to stop polluters before they get started or that entities would exist to cleanup toxic dumps or socialized medicine might work or that schools for the mentally handicap would be available to those hypothetical children. Maybe those arguments could be made, maybe they couldn’t but you made no attempt at any argument to any of the premises.

Instead you chose to shout me down and rant that you will no longer be speaking with me. That’s fine and that’s your prerogative but you’re not going to get away with painting me the as the bad guy. Take a clue from Libertarian. He may not like me and may even think less of my arguments but he’s got the pluck to hang in there and see it through till the end.
Libertarian Wrote:

Actually, pollution in Libertaria is a crime (vandalism). There is no EPA to waste money on, and no lawmakers to buy off. So polluters are put in prison and are forced to restore your property.

Pollution of this sort is crime today as well also punishable by jail.

You seemed to be arguing that since it clearly happens anyway doing away with the EPA would be a good thing.

To me that is like arguing that since crime happens anyway let’s do away with the police.

I can (probably) agree with you on many points of reform needed in our current system but I’m still not buying the Libertarian ideal at all.

[pldennison]

Well, if all we’re doing is positing hypotheticals, Jeff, I’ll simply solve the problem of everyone in your hypothetical town with a hypothetical of my own:

The entire population of the town is comprised of billionaires.

Boom. Problems solved. Easy, huh? When we’re dealing with hypotheticals, we can do all sorts of stuff.

I don’t like or dislike you, Jeff, as I’ve never met you, but I will not in the same sentence be accused of rhetoric and a lack of facts while being hit with rhetoric and a lack of facts. It proves nothing to anybody.

Whenever I or anybody else points to a successful free-market solution to a problem that someone else claims Libertarians are incapable of solving, said solutions are conveniently ignored. Whenever I or anyone else points out free-market services that are cheaper and better than those offered by the government, they are conveniently ignored. Well, everyone is just going to conveniently ignore the actual answers to the hypotheticals, I guess the debate is over, isn’t it?

[Danielinthewolvesden]

*Originally posted by Libertarian *
I am saying that, given a set, S, of 1000 elements, removing 350 elements from set S leaves a set, S[sub]1[/sub], consisting of 650 elements. Do I need to provide a cite to back me up on that? **

No, but you need a point to go along with that non sequiter statement.

PL: Ah, I know someone was going to mention Carnegie, and his libraries. And why do we all remember the Carnegie libraries? Because it was so unusual for anyone that rich to donate so much. Do you remember the DuPont libraries? the Rockefeller Libraries? Jim Brady? Any of the other some 50 or so “robber baron” rich of that “laizzez fair” period in our history? No, because they were greedy, and they thought Carnegie was an insane idiot. Carnegie IS a good example, indeed- a good example of why “charity” won’t pay for libraries.

manhatten: yes, but the city of Palo Alto runs it’s own utiliies, measurably cheaper than PG&E, etc. Sometimes it is cheaper to let private contractors handle it, sometimes it is cheaper to have Gov’t employees do it. When it is cheaper to have contractors doing it, it is usually because private contractors pay less for the same work. That is not more efficient, that’s cheaper, big difference.

Libertarian: so Pollution is a crime, but there is no EPA? So who investigates the pollution? Beat cops? Homicide dicks? Riiight. :rolleyes: There would be specialist officers, which would be exactly the same as the EPA, but you call them by a different name. It is still a duck. And all they can do, is put folks in Jail? How do you put a corp in jail? And what happens if the polluter has not signed “the contract”? What authority do you have over him?
You keep dodging the question of what your “non-police” can do to non-contractees.

[pldennison]

Ah, I know someone was going to mention Carnegie, and his libraries. And why do we all remember the Carnegie libraries? Because it was so unusual for anyone that rich to donate so much. Do you remember the DuPont libraries? the Rockefeller Libraries? Jim Brady? Any of the other some 50 or so “robber baron” rich of that “laizzez fair” period in our history? No, because they were greedy, and they thought Carnegie was an insane idiot. Carnegie IS a good example, indeed- a good example of why “charity” won’t pay for libraries.

See? I can’t win. Somebody says, “No rich person is going to go around opening up libraries for poor people,” I point out one who opened up 1,500 libraries, and I’m told he doesn’t count because he’s an anomaly. Can someone please explain to me exactly which examples will suffice to prove the statement, “Rich people won’t open libraries for poor people” to be wrong?

Incidentally, my company’s owner, who started the company in his living room in 1967 and has built it into a $1 billion business with 27 offices and a 54% market share has, over the past five years, donated $20 million for a new chemistry building at Stanford, built a school in Israel, endowed two scholarship and several fellowships at Stanford in several subjects, and supported several other projects, to the tune of $55 million. But I bet he’s an anomaly, too. People are just mean and uncharitable.

[Danielinthewolvesden]

*Originally posted by pldennison *
See? I can’t win. Somebody says, “No rich person is going to go around opening up libraries for poor people,” I point out one who opened up 1,500 libraries, and I’m told he doesn’t count because he’s an anomaly. Can someone please explain to me exactly which examples will suffice to prove the statement, “Rich people won’t open libraries for poor people” to be wrong?
But I bet he’s an anomaly, too. People are just mean and uncharitable.

**

The point is not that some rich folks are not very giving, of course they are, thats why we call them “Philanthropists”. The point is: that not ENOUGH rich folks are going to spring for things like libraries. And nobody said “no rich person…”. Argueing from example is one of the poorest forms of arguement. I do not care if you give me an “example”. You have to show me, that, in general, rich folk give more (as a %) than other folks. Or that millionaires in Tax-free Kuwait are generally known to be philanthropists. We have show that they do not. Refute us.