this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
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Says “I’m a libertarian but I’m not one of those crazy ones”.
My followup question is usually what’s your opinion on seatbelt laws and drivers licenses.
Both are necessary, there's an argument to strengthen the latter, and neither violate the NAP. I'm not one of those crazy ones 😁
These two statements contradict each other.
The NAP is a substitute for laws for "libertarians" who can't tolerate the thought of other people actually being free.
The entire point is to have something that proactively justifies the forcible imposition of your will upon others. So the instant that somebody does something of which you disapprove, you can decree, by whatever rationale might serve, that it's a violation of the NAP, so you're now entirely justified in shooting them.
Do you think roads, police and fire departments should have a pay-per-use system?
i think air should be bottled and sold on the free market.
The free market will set a fair price.
Lack of regulation will make sure it’s a low price and why would a company want to kill off its customers?
Sure if the market has healthy competition and the time horizon of the shareholders is long and if everyone is perfectly rational.
You know the 3 things each of which almost never happens.
Markets rarely have healthy competition. Usually for all practical purposes consumers have few if any choices where they can spend their money. Your supermarket might have a million items but you only have two supermarket and those million items are made by 10 companies.
Time horizons of shareholders are infamous for being short. With the larger they are the shorter they are. We live in a world where for decades stocks are bought and sold with high frequency trading. Long term means a business quarter.
Homo Economis never existed. If that abomination against all that is decent ever did form it would die off having no offspring. Humans smoke, they eat junk food, they buy boats, they lose their temper, they spend 45 billion dollars on Twatter and run it into the ground. This is why you don't leave things that matter to one asshole and just have faith that your invisible sky friend Market will correct it all eventually.
And of course, if a company successfully corners the market and extracts value beyond the tolerance of some customers who eventually attempt to harm the company and force it out of business, the company is entirely justified in using assassination drones against the insurgent NAP-violators.
More customers dying means fewer people buying, therefore it's better to rent them. See, the invisible hand of the free market(swt) correcting itself.
Way ahead of you:
Yes, if you consider existing in society "use". I think that's just a standard annual tax. Roads, that's tricky. Otherwise no.
I generally just go straight to libraries as it’s not designed to trap/bait and it more often than not leads to productive discussions where we are both attempting to gain mutual understanding.
It’s not a trap or bait, it’s pointing out that it takes money to use and maintain these things.
My apologies, I realize it seems I implied you were baiting/trapping, but that wasn’t my intention. That being said I’m sure libertarians get examples like firefighters a LOT and they probably just glaze over and dismiss it as a result. But again, didn’t mean to imply that you were engaging in bad faith and such.
It’s because it is a fairly obvious example.
It’d be better to have a response that makes sense instead of ‘glazing over and dismissing it’.
Libraries are a great resource for keeping information free and protecting free speech. I think it's very reasonable for taxes to be used in ways that benefit the community as a whole, as that serves the people who pay the taxes.
No - roads are for the public good and should be supported by taxpayers that benefit with the possibility of 'penalizing' heavy vehicles that do more wear on roads.
I personally feel that roads are a complicated issue. A public police force is necessary to ensure the best equal application of the law. Fire departments are sort of a contextual issue -- I am inclined to treat fire departments as more of a utility.
Seatbelt laws would really only make sense if their purpose was to protect others from harm, but, as far as I've been able to think, this would only make sense in 2 scenarios:
As for driver's licenses, that's actually a rather complicated issue.
EDIT 1: As pointed out in this post, there is a third case that I hadn't originally considered in that, in a crash, one's limp, and unrestrained corpse could fly through the windshield and end up causing damage to someone else's property, or bodily harm to another.