I would buy the private road on which Widow Smith’s house faces, and then I would tell Widow Smith that she may not trespass on my road. We’ll see how she feels about her free decision to sell her property to me or not after a few days of her freely deciding that she will not go to the local store to buy groceries.
Of course, most corporations would much rather the less messy process of eminent domain. But, the fact of the matter is that even if large corporations would not benefit from hard-Libertarianism as much as they do from current circumstances, they would be a whole lot better placed to make the best of a bad deal than a kid from the projects.
Just because you give an instance of Government failing does not mean that government must necessarily fail. In fact, the FEMA debacle is a good argument against libertarianism; the situation in New Orleans was exacerbated by insufficient government involvement, not excessive government involvement. Want to know what disaster response would be like in Libertaria? New Orleans is a good blueprint.
Oh, boy. The Battle of the Hypotheticals. Since we’re just supposin’, let’s suppose that the Widow Smith owns the road as well. Your ball.
Gratuitous assertion, and hardly a fact. What could possibly be more detrimental to a kid from the projects than generations of institutionalized class stigma? His parents and grandparents have been incentivized to be as irresponsible and dependent on government crumbs as possible. Many a tycoon started out by selling wares from the trunk of a car (like Richard Warren Sears) or by parleying childhood savings into financial empires (like Cornelius Vanderbilt). But nowadays, what kid from the projects can afford the legal and consultive staff to manage OSHA, dodge DOT, and bribe the FDA? Nevertheless, you seem to have conceded the original argument, which is that corporations do not support libertarian politics because they see no advantage in the implementation of its policies.
I can give you plenty of instances of government failures, and were that the argument I were making, I would. Even so, I’m not sure that New Orleans is the best case example for authoritarians. After all, it is controversial whether the situation was nearly so bad as first reported. And indeed, the case could be made that government did not respond because it could not. Who would have driven the flooded busses, even if politicians had had the foresight to rally them? Without the power to conscript slaves, how can it enforce its hapless central plans? First responders in most disasters are neighbors and private charities, like the Red Cross.
But those that opt out of the immunization scheme actually benefit from the reduced number of potential carriers. They achieve a level of reduced susceptibility to the disease simply due to others work.
Now this leads to others attempting to benefit in the same way/ This eventually increases the number of potential hosts above a critical level where everyone becomes exposed to the disease. Mandatory immunization acts as a damper on the system, but it only works if a sufficient number of people participate. The problem is, people tend to be opportunistic and short sighted.
You do realize, I hope, that we don’t have mandatory immunization even in the US today. If children are required to be immunized, it is because the state is acting in loco parentis. But there is no law requiring all adults to be immunized against any disease, AFAIK.
And even in your “critical level” analysis, how are people who are immunized affected by those who aren’t? And if you say that they must pay for the hospitilzation of those who are not immunized, well… in a libertarian state they wouldn’t.
If you are at risk for the flu and you opt out of vaccination anyway, then you are putting others at risk if you get the flu because you could end up being a carrier and/or consuming scarce medical resources that people more sick than you are may need. And if you use health insurance you could also drive up insurance rates for everyone else. And if you work for someone else you will likely cost them money in sick leave.
Your flu example is precisely the type of tunnel vision libertarians are susceptible to. Libertarians cannot see the big picture.
Just so you know, ad hominems, slurs, and personal attacks do not forward your argument in this particular forum of the SDMB. The BBQ Pit is reserved for contentless ranting. That said…
(1) A person can be both immunized and a carrier of disease
(2) If people do not have the flu, they do not need the medical resources for treating it
(3) You can’t have it both ways — either deregulate health insurance, or else blame regulators if Smith has to pay for Jones’s insurance
and (4) If you force an employer to pay sick leave, then don’t call your model “libertarian”
If you can muster the self-control to address the argument without insulting me, I’ll continue this discussion with you.
I was thinking along the lines of fire fighting. If all of your neighbors have a fire fighting service, and you opt out, what happens when your house catches on fire? Do the firemen not show up until a neighbor’s house catches? Or, do you benefit from the service because it’s in the interest of your neighbors that your house not go up in flames? Same with police protection. If a block of people can’t/won’t subscribe to police protection, aren’t we giving the criminals a pass on their actions in that area? Do you think it can be contained in one spot?
You’re also neglecting things like property values as an issue. How many actions are proscribed because they make an area less valuable? If you litter profusely on your own land, fail to maintain your dwelling, hold loud parties, etc. It can harm my equity. What you seem to advocate (as a libertarian, not necessarily specific to this thread) is me taking my neighbor to court rather than institute any sort of pre-emptive standard. I’m not a fan of after the fact remedies, especially ones that force the aggrieved party to spend time, effort, and money to redress.
What on earth are you talking about? The closest thing I’ve ever noticed to such a thing is the attack on the “Burkean conservatives” in power who have failed miserably to curtail the size and scope of government as advertised. Surely you will admit that people who make promises and don’t keep them when given the ability to do so have brought criticism upon themselves.
Okay. I read the link, and it seems that there are way more issues involved there than are in the scope of our discussion. The most pertinent point, perhaps, is the notion that at 90% immunity of the populace, the 10% are protected as well. But of course, that’s true because of mathematics, and not because of any political model. Perhaps if we were comparing libertarianism to a society where people are forced to be vaccinated against their will, there would be something relevant there.
Well, with respect to firefighting and police protection (giving for the sake of argument that police protection targets individuals in the US, which it doesn’t) certain jurisdictional issues arise anyway. (Bear with me.) I know from personal experience what it is like for responders to argue with one another over whether your mugging occured in the county or in the city proper. It is entirely possible for a county volunteer fire department to be 100 feet from your home, but a truck to be dispatched from eight miles away through rush hour traffic because your home is just inside the city limits. And since what you offer is a hypothetical, there could be any of countless ways to frame a response. Suppose, for example, that a part of fire protection would be an optional pre-emption response of exactly the sort you describe. If I’ve purchased this service, I can call the fire department when my neighbor’s house is on fire for the sole purpose of protecting my own property. There are also many other possible ways to address the issue. That’s the problem with hypotheticals. If I say that A addresses B, then you can say, well what about C? And it can go on for a very long time, usually with nothing satisfying coming out of it. There are often hard feelings, and mutual accusations of dodging and ducking one another.
There is nothing wrong with people forming land-owner collectives for the purpose of ensuring the viability of their neighborhoods. We belong to one. A man cannot even become our neighbor without accepting the terms our neighborhood imposes. At least, not for fifty more years. At that time, we’ll have another look.
How did I make any personal attack? I was simply pointing out how tunnel vision is characteristics of libertarians- at least the ones I have encountered on the net.
Since I have a degree in biology, you need not lecture me on how disease is spread.
There is some speculation in the medical community that influenza can be transmitted by carriers who never show symptoms of the illness. But, which is more dangerous to others- a carrier with no symptoms or someone with active symptoms? Would someone who is sneezing and coughing be more likely to spread the flu as someone who is not sneezing and coughing?
Then why did the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 kill at least 20 million people worldwide, baffling doctors in the process? Even in a libertarian world the flu can and often does lead to pneumonia which should also receive medical attention.
If you deregulate insurance, then what incentive will the insurance companies have to sell policies to people that are likely to get sick?
Only a rabid libertarian would demand to have a job that offers no sick leave.
You have hit on something that libertarians either cannot understand or ignore.
In the absence of statutory law the judge in any suit of equity has no law to apply. He is therefore free to legislate from the bench. Libertarians wish to trade the possible tyranny of the executive and legislative authorities for the definite tyranny of the judiciary.
The truth is that a libertarian would rather suffer an infringement on his own property rights by another person rather than risk having the government tell the libertarian he cannot do something.
“…the type of tunnel vision libertarians are susceptible to…”
“Libertarians cannot see the big picture.”
And from this, your fourth post:
“…a rabid libertarian…”
Extraordinary rationalizations would be required to frame those as anything other than ad hominem abuses.
Perhaps it is because of the lack of need that I have not done so.
In my opinion, the person who seemed healthy would be more dangerous as people would be less likely to avoid contact with him than with someone who is wheezing and blowing snot all about.
Part of the problem was that most medical scientists of the time thought that the infection was bacterial, and thus sought to treat Bacillus influenza, which was one of the causes of secondary pneumonia. But whatever point you’re making is unclear.
Why should there be any incentive other than high premiums? The whole point of health insurance is to insure against bad health. Insuring people who are likely to get sick is economically pathological.
Strawmen don’t fare well here. People demand a higher calibre of debate.
In the course of discussing what the government should have done to prepare for hurricane Katrina I remarked that the failure to fully evacuate New Orleans lead to people needlessly dieing and the resulting bodies produced a PUBLIC health hazard. One libertarian replied that dead bodies do not spread disease.
I also encountered a libertarian whose neighbor has opened a rescue shelter for 55+ dogs. The noise these dogs produce has prompted this libertarian to move from his property and offer it (he says) for sale at 20% below market value just to avoid dealing with the neighbor. But, yet this libertarian does not see that his own property rights have been violated.
Several other libertarians did a google search on my user name so they could follow me to other boards. How is this not belligerence?
And in discussing the flu vaccine you yourself are displaying typical libertarian tunnel vision by failing to understand how an individual’s action can affect other individuals and society in general.
I am not making ad hominem attacks. My conclusions are supported by the beliefs and actions of various individual libertarians I have encountered on the internet.
What about the health care professionals who come into contact with flu patients? What about the people a flu patient comes into contact with in the course of going to the doctor? What about mothers who have to take care of children who have the flu? It is not all that easy to isolate sick people.
And I doubt that many people who are carriers know to isolate themselves because they do not know that they are carriers.
It is true that the medical technology of 1918 did give doctors the ability to identify the flu virus, but it was actually Pfeiffer’s bacillus that filled the lungs of many flu victims. And many other victims died even without having any trace of Pfeiffer’s in their lungs. Doctors did develop a vaccine against Pfeiffer’s, but no one had any real faith in it.
The Spanish flu killed most of its victims simply by filling their lungs with fluid that was produced by an usually strong immune response. In a normal flu outbreak it is the very young and the very old that usually die. But the Spanish flu tended to kill people in their 20s and 30s. It is believed that children did not yet have a strong enough immune system while the elderly had already lost a strong enough immune system to trigger the drowning response.
What if insurance companies demand genetic screening so they can deny coverage to people who have genes that are likely to cause chronic or fatal diseases? Even the slightly regulated insurance industry we have now refuses to sell policies to some people. If you have had meningitis during the last year, you cannot get health insurance. And my mother is disabled with a form of arthritis that keeps her from getting health insurance.
Before you begin postulating about what libertarian policies can do, perhaps you should make some effort to understand the damage that semi-libertarian policies have done.
What you do is buy all the land around her and do not allow her to leave her property to go to the store. If you are not that mean, you charge her a thousand dollar, one-way egress/exit charge. When she no longer can afford your fee, sue her for her property. Problem solved.
I agree that there would be negative consequences for businesses such as eminent domain, subsidies and the other things you listed. However, I think there would also be some benefits. There would be fewer restrictions on: environmental impact, collusion, who you can sell to and what you can sell.
On another issue, Ron Paul is both a Republican and a Libertarian.
Except, fo course, the Indian state of Kerela, which is arguably one of the best places in India to be in as far as quality-of-life issues are concerned, despite being one of the poorest states.
