So a group of firefighters let a house burn down in a county in Tennessee. Horrible, right? Yes, but not necessarily for the obvious reasons. In this case, the firefighters let the house burn down because the the home owner had not paid the protection fee. Why was he expected to pay a fee rather than jsut get the service as a taxpayer? Because the county has refused to staff a fire department. As a result, the little towns in the county provide fire service to the rural county, for a small fee. The problem is that approximately 75% of the fire calls to those services are in the county. And when the fire department tries to collect for the costs of going to put out fires, they are stiffed more than fifty percent of the time. So the citizens of the cities are paying for fire protection for people who refuse to contribute the common good. So, inevitably, they were forced to make a choice: enforce the penalty for opting out of the community or continue to pay higher and higher costs to protect those who refuse to be fully paid up members of society.
Fire fighting — like all government services — costs money. Firetrucks need to be purchased. 911 systems need to be staffed. Alarm systems need to be maintained. Firefighters need to be clothed, housed and fed while on duty. None of that can exist without money — money that the residents of the county have refused to supply as a community and only sporadically as individuals. So the choice is clear: let people freeload on the taxpayers of the municipalities that do support fire departments and eventually ruin their budgets or let houses burn to the ground. It is, in other words, the perfect libertarian world.
Letting houses burn to the ground is the only result acceptable to a libertarian. If you do not let the house burn to the ground, then you encourage free loading, which eventually bankrupts the fire department or the people who are willing to support the fire department. And when we replace the notion of community and collective action for the good of the community, then we are left with the libertarian schemes that require firefighters to stand by and watch homes burn.
Some of you may think that is just fine, that the man got what he deserved. I would argue that that is immoral — that putting out fires is a community responsibility best shared by the community. In this scheme, a person who is poor or down on their luck might lose everything because they could not pay the flat fee for the protection. Someone just might forget, or have the paperwork lost. It is not just to allow someone to lose their home or life to that kind of mistake if the damage from that mistake can be reasonable mitigated.
If morality doesn’t sway you, then remember that the fire was eventually put out when it spread to the lawn of a neighbor, a neighbor who had paid for the fire protection. So the man’s mistake did damage to his neighbors and the community at large. The only libertarian response is to have the neighbor sue the man. And I am sure that the neighbor will be able to recoup the damages from a person whose house has just been burned to the ground. The destitute are well known for honoring civil judgments.
This fire is a the result of libertarian land. In libertarian land, collective action is forbidden so taxes cannot pay for fire departments. Without taxes, you must rely on the voluntary subscription to services (or after the fact fees, but for something like firefighting that requires a large and constant maintenance cost, after the fact fees aren’t going to be enough to keep a fire department active). If you must rely on a voluntary subscription service, then you must discourage free loaders. If you must discourage free loaders, then you must let the homes of the poor, or unlucky or plan stupid burn to the ground. And if you must let the homes of the poor, the unlucky and the plain stupid burn down, inevitably you will have situations where the fire spreads and damages the property of other people, people who wont be able to recover their damages because their neighbor has probably just watched their largest asset go up in smoke. Damage to the innocent — even in the horrible way that libertarians define innocent — is the inevitable result of libertarian policies.
When you think of the future that Rand Paul and Sharon Angle and Paul Ryan want, think of fire fighters watching houses burn to the ground and fires spreading to the homes of the innocent. Forever.
Judd
Kevin
Kevin T. Keith
leanleft
tgirsch
In libertarian land you don’t have bureaucrats hiding behind “policy” to prevent people who want to provide a service (firefighting) from providing it to other individuals who want it (family with burning house) and are willing to pay.
Just sayin…
Why do we have fire departments? If you look at the monetary cost of equipping, training, and staffing, compared to the value saved by putting out structure fires, it doesn’t make economic sense. We have fire departments for public safety.
Had this been a brush fire, they would have rolled in order to keep it from becoming a wildfire. (And indeed did roll when it became a brush fire). Had someone’s life been at risk, they would have rolled.
Should we be risking firefighter’s lives in order to rescue people’s stuff?
Funny. The Juddster e-mailed this to me approvingly just yesterday, and we had a brief exchange concerning whether or not this was a good example of what Libertopia would look like.
Libs,
…And, if police forces are the same way then if you don’t pay for them either, I can actually commit arson to burn your place down without fear of punishment right? Only if you pay for the jakes can you be aggrieved in the eyes of the law, right?
Oh, but wait, I forgot about the part about how you’d get justice yourself by blazing heat. You’d all be ready to “pop the trunk” like the Beatnuts circa ’93 and “let off and catch wreck, because John Wayne couldn’t even stand the reign of the tec”
But here’s the problem with that (I mean the one besides the fact that you’re a bunch of gun range posers who’d rise to the occasion of actual in-the-streets confrontation like John Starks in Game 7) is that if I pay for the services of Johnny Law, you don’t have impunity for anything you do to me, but I have legal impunity for anything I do to you, plus legal recourse to prosecute you for any retaliatory act in violation of the law.
“Letting houses burn to the ground is the only result acceptable to a libertarian.”
Gotta raise the BS flag on that one. It’s the functional equivalent of “immediate national legalization of same-sex marriage is the only result acceptable to a progressive.”
Just as there’s a range of results progressive will accept (some are willing to settle for civil unions, or a slower road to national recognition of same-sex marriage via the full faith and credit clause — and come to think of it, progressives and libertarians seem to share the same set of ranged ideas on the subject), there’s a range of results libertarians will accept.
Some libertarians (the easiest term to use would probably be “moderate” libertarians) accept defining some services as “public goods” and using taxation to pay for their universal availability (firefighting would probably be one of those services).
Even the most radical libertarian would not claim that letting a house burn down is the only acceptable outcome. Assuming a private firefighting firm (as opposed to a government fire department operating outside the jurisdiction that finances it with taxes), the radical libertarian attitude would be that it’s up to the company to make the decision, unless it’s bound to a particular decision by contract.
Some firefighting companies might demand on-the-spot payment or an enforceable contract for future payment (both presumably at a premium) from non-subscribers.
Some firefighting companies might not even have subscribers — your house is on fire, they show up with a tanker truck, a ladder, and an estimate/contract for you to sign while they’re getting their hoses rolled out.
Some firefighting companies might just refuse to answer the “my house is on fire” call at all if the caller isn’t a subscriber (I’ve argued for that policy even in the instant government FD case, on the premise that there’s substantial capital investment and overhead involved in getting a fire department up and keeping it going, and that accepting payment at point of fire will make it more difficult to raise that capital in advance from subscribers … you can’t run to the fire truck store and stock up after the “my house is on fire” call comes, you have to do it in advance).
And, of course, some firefighting companies might be citizen cooperatives (e.g. “volunteer fire departments”) that hold bake sales to pay for their oxygen tanks and shiny red helmets, answer all calls for help, and hope that those whom they help will buy several tickets to the next Volunteer Fire Department Chili Dinner, and maybe even volunteer themselves.
Knapp,
…demand on-the-spot payment or an enforceable contract…
“Hi, while your house burns, let’s negotiate.” is pretty much the definition of a coerced contract, which is necessarily not enforeable.
[I]mmediate national legalization of same-sex marriage is the only result acceptable to a progressive.
You say this as if you think it’s false. Unless you’re using some strange definition of “acceptable”, it’s quite true and most progressives will say so. If you offer progressives the option of
marriage apartheidcivil unions, instead of a ban on same-sex marriage, some of them will take it as an improvement, and others will reject it as bullshit, but even that first group will still continue to want marriage equality. Civil Unions are not “acceptable”, even if they’re an improvement.Now, I don’t know if the heckler’s veto on community action is as definitional to libertarianism as civil rights are to progressivism, but your citing the above certainly does you no good.
In ancient Rome, a man named Crassus(?) became the richest person in the city-state by showing up at house fires with a “fire department”, and either forcing you to pay to have it put out, or buying your still burning home from you and then putting it out. A hundred years ago, you bought fire insurance and put a plaque out front of your house, and only the fire trucks that belonged to your fire insurance company would come to your house – if another company’s trucks saw your house on fire, they’d just ignore it. We had progressed beyond that in the last century, but I guess we’re rolling back progress all over the place.
I still don’t see why, in a country where private health insurance companies are willing to let people die when they start costing too much, people are surprised or dismayed when the same standard is applied to mere property.
[...] Remember those government employees following government rules and letting house burn as sanctioned by government regulations contracted with another government? Seems that is a fundamental flaw in libertarian philosophy. [...]
Detail:
http://www.ordinary-gentlemen.com/2010/10/think-progress-rural-fire-departments-and-managed-ignorance/
Cost:
http://www.ordinary-gentlemen.com/2010/10/taxes-and-subscriptions-the-same-result/
I’m kinda Libertarian (and registered to vote as one) but am, like Jerry Pournelle, more of a Christian Conservative. I agree with him when he says that unfettered Laissez Faire capitalism will result eventually in human flesh being sold in the market place. I also believe that unlimited government power will eventually result in human flesh being served at the dinners of government officials.
I wonder. How many Libertarians were polled for you to come to this thesis? Are you directly quoting Rand Paul here? Or anyone?
The libertarian land you describe sounds a lot more like social anarchy than libertarian utopia to me. I don’t find that letting a house burn to the ground is acceptable. That doesn’t make me a Democrat or a Republican.
tweaker
Of course, you have the alternative: You turn the $75 fee into a property tax, and anyone who doesn’t pay has his house foreclosed on and taken away by the taxing authority to pay the taxes.
This taxing authority also needs staffing, and so hires personnel to handle the taxes. With this new overhead, the previously voluntary $75 fee is now a mandatory $150 tax.
If you do not pay, they take your house. When they send the sheriff to your house to evict you, if you resist, he activates the SWAT team, and they gun you down. Then they raise the tax to $250 so they can cover the expenses of the SWAT team.
Isn’t that much better?
I love how you’re blaming that $100 for the swat team on the people who want taxes to be fair instead of the thieves who attack the sheriff.
You’d have a point if SWAT teams were only used in high risk situations. The reality is, they are used to serve common warrants as well, just so the department can justify the expense, and so the cops get to play soldier for a bit.
Ah, but no matter whose fault it is, the tax would still be needed. Which is cheaper for society as a whole, a voluntary fee where the occasional freeloader loses his home to fire, or a coercive taxation plan to pay for the fire department that also requires tax collectors, tax courts, and judges to assess a tax that the police must now enforce, all so the police can take the houses of all of the people who didn’t pay?
This results in all (rather than some) of the nonpayers losing their homes, and also results in the payers having to pay for all of the extra employees.
Even so, it is the police who will initiate violence. It goes like this:
Pay your taxes
No
Put your hands behind your back, you are under arrest.
No.
(Taser/gun comes out as police initiate force and attack homeowner)
(Homeowner and family resist force with their own force)
(Cops up the level of force, until homeowners are dead, and house is burned down)
Great system!
I don’t have a problem with this. This might be the incident that leads to a review of the county budget that will find that the folks in power have spent all that money on their own houses/cars/mistresses/whatever, instead of on the fire department.
I doubt very much if the fat-cats took a pay cut the last time they reduced the fire department’s budget. I also doubt that they passed up any raises in salary, ever.
The powers that be are always threatening to cut police, fire, or libraries, to scare us into approving tax increases.
I think that the way to solve this problem is to make sure that any budget shortfalls are taken from the mayor’s salary first, and so on down the hierarchy, until they have saved enough money. Reduce the highest salaries to minimum wage, and watch them spring into action, scrutinizing all expenditures, and squeezing inefficiencies out of the system. Watch them start actually doing the job that we thought they were being paid to do all along.
In my opinion, the problem isn’t money, it’s priorities.
This is a town of 2,500 people. The fire department is a volunteer department. The town pays for equipment and fuel. The homeowner was not a resident of the town, and lived outside city limits. The town offered to supply fire services to non-residents living outside the city limits for a fee. The homeowner declined the service. His house caught fire. Since his area had no fire department, he is SOL.
The citizens of the area have two choices:
1 Form their own volunteer department
2 Pay the fee to the fire department from the neighboring town.
http://roguemedic.com/2010/10/comment-from-a-fire-fighter-in-obion-county/
[...] to indulge in “no true Scottsman libertarian” nonsense around the TN fire contracts mentioned in this post. The comments and some pingbacks are full of people insisting that, no, the honoring of the terms [...]
I’m kinda Libertarian (and registered to vote as one) but am, like Jerry Pournelle, more of a Christian Conservative. I agree with him when he says that unfettered Laissez Faire capitalism will result eventually in human flesh being sold in the market place. I also believe that unlimited government power will eventually result in human flesh being served at the dinners of government officials.
(Bold mine)
But, what’s the problem, don’t you eat the flesh of a human every Sunday at service when you line-up a receive communion?
+1 for a what I though was a great joke
-2 for open tag
Divemedic,
Which is cheaper for society as a whole, a voluntary fee where the occasional freeloader loses his home to fire, or a coercive taxation plan to pay for the fire department that also requires tax collectors, tax courts, and judges to assess a tax that the police must now enforce, all so the police can take the houses of all of the people who didn’t pay?
There are other considerations than economics when making decisions regarding whether to fight fires.
Both fire fighting and local police forces originated as private institutions, and both were conceived of by business men to protect businesses and not people. The roots here are on your side; these institutions were conceived to protect wealth, not people.
Many would argue that there is an inherent moral component to this. I doubt you’ll find anybody with a lower opinion of libertarianism as worldview than me, however I don’t really disagree with you on this:
The citizens of the area have two choices:
1 Form their own volunteer department
2 Pay the fee to the fire department from the neighboring town.
#1 is actually a non-insane libertarian-leaning solution, but they chose not to do that either. Even if you feel that tax is theft by coersion, a civilized society must have a means to fight fires. So, for residents who think that taxation is unethical because it forces them to submit to a single, top-down to opt out of the fight fires by taxes system they must come up with an alternate solution to fight fires, or forego the privelege of owning a home (since a home is pretty much a fire risk). A volunteer fire dept. would work, I presume. But, you can’t absolve your moral duty to protect the lives and wellbeing of others by having a means to fight fires by virtue of a political philosophy. That’s apparently how the couny residents were acting and how some libertarians are arguing in relation to this point.
Here’s what I don’t exactly get. Presumably, most of these people are not exactly homeowners, outright. Banks own at proportion of almost all these homes, one would guess. So, if a bank can stipulate that a homeowner must maintain insurance to protect what’s partly the bank’s investment, then why can’t the banks just stipulate that all homeowners must address fire protection needs for that unit? There you go, a private market solution.
I would think that the homeowners insurance would at least require fire protection (and if you have a mortgage, you are required to have insurance), maybe even place the money for the yearly fee in escrow. I mean, they do that for property taxes, so why not?
Maybe the guy owned the property free & clear, in which case, he’s an idiot for not paying the fee. Maybe he didn’t, in which case his bank & insurance companies are gonna want to have a word with him.
What I don’t get is why everyone is upset that the guy had to pay a fee instead of a tax? Same thing, except one is voluntary, and one is not. The end result is the same, if you fail to pay the fee, or your property taxes, you run the risk of losing your home.
Zack,
I don’t have a problem with this. This might be the incident that leads to a review of the county budget that will find that the folks in power have spent all that money on their own houses/cars/mistresses/whatever, instead of on the fire department.
In some very important ways, I actually don’t have that much of a problem with it either. But, you start to get a bit loony after this.
I doubt very much if the fat-cats took a pay cut the last time they reduced the fire department’s budget. I also doubt that they passed up any raises in salary, ever.
You mean all the ostentacious fat cats making their home in, and financing their jetsetting Kardasian-esque lifestyles by participating in the local government of Obion, Tennessee?
Umm, yeah, right on, speak truth to power, bruh!
I think that the way to solve this problem is to make sure that any budget shortfalls are taken from the mayor’s salary first, and so on down the hierarchy, until they have saved enough money. Reduce the highest salaries to minimum wage, and watch them spring into action, scrutinizing all expenditures, and squeezing inefficiencies out of the system. Watch them start actually doing the job that we thought they were being paid to do all along.
1. Ohh, yes, I love when I get to use conservaitve arguments for my own purposes.
[in uppity white man voice] That would create a disincentive to success. Why would anybody strive to be a mayor, when they are subject to all of these additional risks of office, when they could just sit on their asses all day and collect welfare instead?
2. So, should I pretty much assume that you don’t have any personal debt?
divemedic,
Even so, it is the police who will initiate violence.
So, what you’re saying is that you’re A-OK with thieves stealing from everybody else as long as they don’t do any violence in the process, and the police are at faults for using force to stop the theft.
Thanks for clearing that up.
You make the mistake of “the excluded middle” in that you present an all or nothing scenario. There are other options for those who refuse to pay taxes, such as forming their own bucket brigade volunteer fire department. In Idaho a man turned his pickup into a small pumper and provided services over 200 square miles of back country.
Nothing in Libertarian philosophy prevents acts of charity by private individuals (such as volunteering for the bucket brigade). But the reality that government services cost money doesn’t go away, and freeloaders will always bankrupt a system eventually.
Those are some harsh equations right there, but it is what it is.
Knapp:
Some firefighting companies might demand on-the-spot payment or an enforceable contract for future payment
Ooh, an agreement made under duress! What could possibly go wrong here, I wonder? But I see Dan M has already been there.
And as for your “even the most radical libertarians” argument, you obviously haven’t met the radical libertarians I’ve met. They’d argue that allowing the house to burn to the ground is the only correct solution. And to show their utter lack of understanding of human nature, they argue that eventually people would collectively learn a lesson from this and all voluntarily pay for the service.
digg:
I fixed your open tag.
MRS:
I would think that the homeowners insurance would at least require fire protection
This assumes that the insurance company even considered the possibility that fire protection might not actually be a tax-funded public service in the area. Until very recently, it was actually safe for them NOT to consider that possibility.
AM:
Nothing in Libertarian philosophy prevents acts of charity by private individuals (such as volunteering for the bucket brigade).
True, but nothing in Libertarian philosophy prevents firefighters watching people’s houses burn to the ground; nor does anything in that philosophy even discourage it. In fact, I’d argue that it encourages it, because once you take away the possibility of using taxes to fund a universal public service, your only remaining enforcement mechanism is to let the houses burn.
Seeing as how such fee arrangements seem common in rural TN, the insurance/mortgage company would have to be “Joe’s Fly-By-Night Insurance, Mortgage, Liquor, & Hot Wings Shack of Boston” to not have known about the setup.
These arrangements are common here? Jesus fucking Christ on a pogo stick! I knew Tennessee was a backward-ass state, but I had no idea that parts of it hadn’t quite made it to the 20th century yet. Should have known better, I suppose.
It’s a better arrangement than a rural Volunteer FD. I mean, rural Volunteer FDs are great, we relied on them in rural WI for my entire childhood, but they are very limited in what they can do.
Not only are they almost always hard up for cash, they do not have a crew in the firehouse at all times. Instead, when a 911 call comes in, the firefighters are paged/called and they all come running from wherever they are to the firehouse, then they get geared up, then they start driving to the fire.
The running joke was that the VFD was great, they haven’t lost a foundation yet.
Living in the country meant that if your house/barn caught fire, you were gonna lose it, and the VFD was gonna show up and put it out, but not to save the place, only to keep it from spreading. My family & my neighbors all kept a healthy supply of quality fire extinguishers and hoses handy. Better to fight it on your own and buy time until the VFD got there, then hope they made it in time.
This may seem like a radical idea, but how about having an ACTUAL, full-time fire department?
Not possible, not enough tax base to fund a full department with enough men & women for 4 full shifts, plus support staff.
Many people live in the country to avoid taxes, not encourage more. They understand the risks, and find the rewards worth it.
Of course it’s possible. It may not be possible to have a department dedicated only to the residents of rural areas outside of municipalities, but a county-wide fire department that serves both rural and municipal residents is entirely within the realm of possibilities.
And clearly a lot of them don’t understand the risks, or they wouldn’t be complaining about firefighters watching houses burn to the ground.
Not possible, too much territory to cover for an urban department to respond to without greatly increasing the number of engine companies in a given area or accepting very long response times. Fire companies are not cheap, not even a little bit. Asking urban residents to finance additional fire companies to cover a small handful of rural residents is a bit much, even if you do add a tax to the rural owners (you can’t tax them more than the city dwellers just because there are fewer of them).
And yes, some people are unaware of the hazards and features of living in the country, and they pay the price for their ignorance (like folks who move into the housing development surrounded by farms, or near a gun range, and then complaining about the noise/smell/danger/etc). Such ignorance is not the problem of everyone else, and they shouldn’t be forced to pay a tax for a service because some people are stupid.
The problem with your arguments against having a taxpayer-funded fire department is that they’re equally valid arguments against having a fire department of any kind. Yes, there will be trade-offs, like longer response times. But that’s the trade-off you make by living in the country, not having no fire service at all. Or, at least, that’s not the way a decent society would do it.
And as for taxing the rural people more “because there are fewer of them,” you can’t do it for that reason, but you CAN tax ‘em by the acre.
Yes, there are tradeoffs, but what is the use of paying taxes for a fire department that will arrive in time to put out the cinders? Travel times in the county are not quick. Take my county for example, it’s 36 miles from the southern to the northern border, and 60 miles east to west. All of the urban development is on the far western edge of the county, and the far eastern side is mountains. There is no way an engine company is gonna get from the eastern side to the western in time to save a life or property, so why would they pay for an urban company to respond?
Instead, they use a mix of county resources & volunteers to man fire brigades that are in the county. It’s not perfect, but it works better than relying on the urban FD.
As for the folks in TN, they all made the choice to not have standing or VFD fire companies, and maybe now they will re-evaluate that choice, but it is their choice. And if the guy in question had a problem with that, he should have lived in the city.
Except that we’re not discussing rural parts of a county not using the fire fighters of a distant urban center. We’re discussing whether letting a place that was successfully reached burn down is a better alternative to actually paying the fire department to provide service to that area that they’ve shown they can reach.
I’ll also add that this type of event, where an FD does not act, is the outlier, not the norm, else it would not have made the news.
Ergo, the system in place must be working pretty well.
“Works pretty well” = “Only occasionally allow houses to burn to the ground.” I guess you’ve got a bit lower standards for “pretty well” than I do.
But what about showing up just to prevent the fire from spreading? Somebody’s gotta do that, right? So, that issue has to be addressed one way or another. Even if one concedes that it is wholly an individual’s decision to evaluate the value proposition of living far enough from a fire fighting center that he/she is foregoes the realistic possibility of a fire company arriving in time to save his/her home, the bare societal minimum is to have some mechanism in place to prevent the spread of danger to the innocent and surrounding environment, right?
…Like we all pay for roads and shit, right? Some of us drive and some of us don’t. But, at the bare minimum we use those services by consuming goods that were transported to their point of sale by those roads, by having friends travel via those roads to visit us, etc. One can certainly get more individual benefit out of their support of the road by buying a car, but there is a minimum that everybody – and society as a whole – benefits by having this infrastructure, so you’re not allowed to opt out of paying for it. Seems like there’s a bare minimum in fire protection too, and the residents of Obion were neither meeting it on their own, nor were they paying to “outsource” the meeting of that requirement.
Look, I agree with MRS on this about as closely as I ever will agree with anything he ever has or will say, but the county residents need some plan for things like this to satisfy me – almost any plan, actually. Shrugging your shoulders to the potential dangers your decisions pass on to others is not a plan. Feeling entitled to freeload off the closest city’s resources, and expressing moral outrage when you’re turned down (if it’s a moral outrage that the city doesn’t put out the fire, isn’t initially a moral outrage to not have such protections in place in the first place?) is not a plan.
And they do, everywhere in the country, if you call 911, a FD of some stripe or another will arrive to put out the fire to prevent it from spreading (provided those resources are not otherwise occupied fighting a different fire, but counties have coverage agreements in place, so if rural FD-A is engaged, urban FD-B will roll to handle a fire in the county, & vice versa).
The real flaw in Obion county was that there was no clear mechanism for what to do about free-riders (eat the cost, bill the owner, etc.). If 90% of the rural residents in a county are paying the voluntary fee, then eating the cost for the other 10% may not be a problem. However, if only 50% are, then there is a problem (not sure where that magic percentage is). I mean, that is a big part of the problem with our health care system right now, and one of the things ObamaCare (as screwed up as I think that bill is) is trying to address.
Going back into the “radical idea” drawer, you could just have the urban FD bill the county for calls outside their municipalities, and have the county cover those costs through *gasp* property taxes. You know, the way most modern societies do.
A perfectly reasonable option, too bad the county residents/government choose not to exercise that option.
No matter which way you look at it, the system in Obion is the system the people there chose to live with (well, maybe they would have liked for the FD to still put out the fire & come up with a different way to pay it), and if individuals have issue with it, they are free to move, or lobby for the system to change.
Right, and I’m free to ridicule it as being idiotic.
That is the wonderful thing about a free society.
…if you call 911
I hear this a lot from libertarian types. More frequently regarding health emergencies, in the form of the nobody is actually without healthcare argument, but now in the form of fire protection.
But, in “libertarian land” wouldn’t 911 basically be non-existant as well? It’s a system run by governmental agencies that dispatches precious resources to anybody who asks for them. …It’s socialism!
Why should these people who don’t pay for fire service get any just because they request that service by calling 911? I don’t understand how that distinction is meaningful within a libertarian problem solving rubric. You pay for fire service, you get fire service. You don’t, you don’t.
…How is 911 funded, anyway. I think the 911 system is funded through federal dollars, but local operations like dispatchers and stuff are probably funded through regional dollars. (I made a real cursory effort to look this up, but kept getting stuff about how the 911 attacks were funded, or allegedly funded). But, anyway, at the end of the day it is local resources that are being deployed at the end of a 911 call anyway. So, unless, all these local fire services get some sort of general funding from a 911 caller outside of normal jurisdiction pot, why wouldn’t calling 911 just classify as another form of freeloading under the libertarian purview?
Digg:
If I’m not mistaken, 911 service is usually funded via a surcharge on your phone bill. If you look at your mobile phone bill or land line bill, you should see a separate line item for 911 service. My cell phone bill has a $1.00 “911 Service Fee” listed.
But it’s absolutely socialism (in the oft-misused “big government” sense, if not in the actual “government owns and controls the means of production” sense). The fee is not optional, if my understanding is correct, not even for the phone service provider.
Okay, I think I actually knew that. But, anyway, what does that fee cover? The infrastructure, I guess? Maybe even the emloyees? But, unless it subsidizes the agencies that actually show up at the end of a call, it’s just a means for freeloading, as an “alternative” in the Obion situation.
To me, this “solution” sounds like yet another instance of libertarians happily using and benefitting from government services while condemning them. In this case, like the emergency room medical care argument, they actually advocate the apotheosis of an inefficient governmental “solution” to rectify the absolute civil minimum a non-libertarian forces them to acknowledge after having advanced some morally bankrupt and highly impractical notion.
And, that’s a problem. Profound libertarianism doesn’t afford even the slightest protection of the bare minimum of civic responsibility and resepct of the next man’s safety, etc. And, when called on it, its proponents then look outside their own philosophical convictions to fix it, and often in the most bloated and inefficient ways. So, we get, ahh, just go to the emergency room, or some other engine company will just have to drive from 50 miles away to ensure I don’t kill the dude down the block. All of that is wasteful and impractical, compared to just paying property tax, or enabling all people to access preventative medical care. If tax is theft by coersion, then libertarianism is arson by syllogism.
Shorter digg: Libertarians have no way of dealing with the free rider problem.
More than that though – they keep the bathwater and throw out the baby, or something. They don’t see that when you make the last line of defense the only line of defense for broad sections of the population, it is wildly expensive and impractical. …So, they get to opt out of what they don’t want, but end up still relying on a big government to take care of the freeloaders just even to satisfy the bare moral minimum of civilized society. …They implicitly know the shortcomings of their ideas at the margin, and they just ignore those situations, leaving em to the hands of the government, but don’t acknowledge that as a shortcoming of the process. …Like the guy who is putting together a piece of furniture without instructions and thinks he has successfully assembled it, only to find himself with extra pieces, who just dumps them in the trash. Or, the lazy student who answers only the first half of the questions in his homework assignment and then pretends he wrote down the wrong page numbers in his homework pad.
Some of the libertarians I’ve encountered don’t even acknowledge that there IS such a thing as a “bare moral minimum of civilized society.” I’ve seen them argue that there’s no such thing as society, from a practical perspective.
Which libertarians are you guys reading? Almost all of your thoughts on libertarian positions seem to address only the most extreme positions, and not the positions that are actually considered practical.
Are you guys confusing Tea Party rhetoric with actual libertarian thought?
“Actual libertarian thought” is a myth, though I don’t mean that to sound as condescending as it almost certainly does. What I mean by that is that in my experience, no two libertarians agree on anything at all beyond the most superficial levels. They can agree on “government should do as little as possible,” but beyond the most vague platitudes, they can’t come to any sort of agreement on things that the government should and should not do.
What I’m referring to are libertarians who ascribe to the “non-aggression principle” and believe that “taxation is [always] theft.” Which, to varying degrees, seem to be most of them. Among the [less in]sane libertarians I’ve met, fire and police are clearly in the “government should do” category, even for them.
You could say the same thing about conservatives or progressives, although I will admit, libertarians are more divided in philosophy, depending on how far left or right they lean.
The libertarian positions I am most familiar with is not the extreme you describe, but more along the lines of “government should not assume responsibilities or functions that individuals can do for themselves”, i.e. an individual can not solve a crime, or successfully fight a fire, or build a road, or fight a war, but they can make their own decisions, they can choose their own associations, or lack of associations, plan their own future, and (except in extreme cases) they can provide for their own basic needs.
There is a lot of wiggle room in there, and it can even be said that there are certain times when government should assume a greater role in the lives of it’s citizens. The problem arises from the unwillingness of government to step back when intervention is no longer necessary.
MRS,
gattsuru, number 9 – whatever his name is, and some other regular to semi-regular commenters at this very site seem to employ some of those radical libertarian positions we have been referring to throughout this discussion. Now, surely, that’s anecdotal, but it seems to me that the “there is no bare minimum – this is survival of the fittest” perspective isn’t all that marginal in the libertarian community – though it may just be that those folks scream the loudest.
But, back to my previous question, where does calling 911 fall into your philosophy? 911 is just the mechanism by which resources are delpoyed. If these folks aren’t paying for those resources, why the channel through which the request them matter; why should they be entitled to fire service through 911?
Now, one may argue that fire fighters themselves have some sort of moral obligation to at least stem a fire from spreading. But, who even that standard requires resources – so who pays for them; who pays for the deadbeat county? Certainly not the neighboring city, right? So, what other option is there if not forcing, “coercing” payment from the county? Having some fund made available to those who handle these situations outside of their juridiction that is made available by a larger governmental entity would seem the next most equitable thing, but that too violates the extreme libertarian position.
…So, I still don’t really understand how libertarianism addresses the “some standard of civic responsibility must be met” idea? Seems to me, the libertarians either throw that notion out entirely because it’s hard, so they say, well if nobody wants to pay to stop it, we’ll just let the whole forest burn down. Or, they abort their convictions and say, “well, the government will take care of that.” and leave in tact the mechanisms that most egregiously contradict the underpinnings of their stated philosophy – bloated, inefficient, socialist-like protection mechanisms, like a 911 freeloader option, or medical care by emergency room. (Come to think of it, that’s 911-based too.)
Try reading Reason.com, Jason Kuznicki, Radley Balko, etc for a more reasonable overview of libertairian thought.
I’m always amazed at how easily some self-described libertarians commit hypocrisy to even the most basic of libertarian principles if some pet quirk of theirs is addressed (legal abortions, gay marriage, police powers, etc.). I am also amazed at how many of them rail against lawmakers passing laws without considering the unintended consequences, while doing the same thing themselves when they declare that some government function should end immediately and completely.
Take for instance 911. Even if emergency services were wholly privatized, there would still need to be a way to dispatch those services to subscribers. Assuming that each area has a selection of private police, fire, & EMS you could subscribe to, a person would have to know the phone number of each company. Also, how would a person know, say, which fire company you subscribed to if they walked past your burning house while you were out? Also, 911 was chosen as an easy number to remember, and dial if you were in distress.
Even if all emergency services were private, a 911 system would still exist in some capacity, and it would be funded through a surcharge to subscribers, much as it is now. The 911 operator would have a database of who was subscribed to which services and the ability to contact those services quickly for dispatch.
So 911 itself is not anti-libertarian, nor is the current setup of 911 being a public resource (honest libertarians recognize the need for government & taxes & the services those taxes provide, the break is a matter of scale & scope). Yes, it could be done differently, but that doesn’t mean we have to do it that way.
As for free-riders, that is always a problem in any society, from the libertarian utopia to the scoialist one. Personally, I liked tgrisch’s idea of having the city bill the county for any free-riders the county might have, and let the county decide how they want to recoup the cost.
Personally, I think the libertarian utopia would have less of a free-rider problem, but more of a complexity problem (government does streamline a lot of decisions for us, sometimes that is good, sometimes it’s bad). I also think that unless a libertarian society has an extremely tight sense of community that takes care of the poor, it would have a much higher rate of crime & death (dead crime victims, & dead criminals), which is never a good thing.
MRS:
Believe it or not, at least among the self-described libertarians I typically encounter, your willingness to acknowledge that a certain basic level of infrastructure must be provided by governments in any modern society puts you in fairly rarefied territory. But I do want to address something you wrote earlier. You said:
With a minor revision, I don’t think that’s much different from what most people (liberal, conservative, or otherwise) believe. My revision:
Government should not assume responsibilities or functions that individuals or the private sector can do for themselves, and either: (A) we can be confident that individuals or the private sector will do them; or (B) we’re willing to accept the outcomes when individuals or the private sector do not do them.
The devil, as always, is in the details here, and different groups are likely to disagree about those details. For an excellent example of this, look at a couple of favorite libertarian stalking horses: helmet laws and seat belt laws. The libertarian thinking on this is that “MY personal safety is MY business, and nobody else’s,” so it’s not the government’s job to make people wear them. But that logic only holds if we as a society are willing to refuse assistance to anyone who’s injured in an accident who was not wearing these safety devices. Once we decide that we WILL help such people (often at public expense), then YOUR decision not to wear them potentially costs ME (and everyone else) money.
Though it seems like personal choice and personal responsibility, it’s not just about you any more. The only way to make it strictly personal is if we refuse help to anyone who is injured while not wearing a helmet/seat belt unless they can personally cover all the costs. We as a society have decided that in cases such as these, the answer to sub-clause (B) above is “no” — we are not willing to accept those outcomes — and thus, such laws are on the table.
As long as we have a reasonable, intelligent, and honest libertarian on our hands, let me get a question or two in as well.
Picking up slightly from TG’s point, let’s take something like drug development. We might think that the private sector does a good enough job of developing the medicines our society needs. But, what about something like the FDA; would you argue that we can privatize the regulatory system?
Further, what about developing drugs for either rare diseases, or neglected diseases for which there is very little to no market? Should people just continue to die all around the world because a private corporation won’t be able to recoup its investment in developing malaria vaccines or TB drugs? This certainly wouldn’t be anything new, as such was largely the case for decades, until private philanthropists and donor governments started funding PDPs.
Am I correct in assuming that there would room for non-profit work in a libertarian utopia, but that the political will and willingness to fund such work would have to come exclusively from individuals, basically private philanthropy?
The thing that worries me most about these ideas is that people are so often inclined to put off any of tomorrow’s threats to just have a better time tonight. I think we’d do a crappy job (even worse so than we do now) at preparing for future threats under the libertarian model. I admit, I’m really jaded here, but it seems that so many libertarian ideas that I encounter really stem from myopic self-interest – like spoiled children whining, I don’t want to have to cut into any of my profits to protect anything in the ocean.
Agreed. That is exactly what most people want, and what any honest libertarian wants And yes, the devil is in the details.
As to the helmet/seat belt issue, I agree with you. We either have a law mandating their use, or we need to accept that some people are going to accept the risk of doing without, and we need to be prepared to let them suffer the consequences of their actions in full.
(Personally, rather than a law, I’d stick with the insurance mandate for drivers, make it a rule that police can stop un-helmeted or un-belted operators & passengers, and make it a rule that if you choose to operate a vehicle without a Seat Belt or a helmet, you must have a current insurance rider that covers your medical expenses should you meet a bad outcome; get caught without the rider, and you get cited; get in a wreck without the rider and need medical care beyond what you or your family can afford, and you are SOL)
I think that is the big difference between libertarians and others (left or right), we are quite prepared to allow people to suffer the consequences of their own foolishness. Kids should be protected from adult foolishness as much as possible, but once you are an adult, you can, to paraphrase Denethor, go forth and die in whatever manner you see fit. Unless, of course, your actions begin impacting more than your immediate family and friends, then a problem exists that society has to deal with.
Digglahhh
Regulation should always be a government function, but there are two things we have to be careful of – Regulatory capture/rent seeking & bureaucratic over-reach. One guts the very regulations designed to protect (think Minerals Management Service, or the SEC), the other cripples the industry being regulated (e.g. CPSIA, or ask any business owner who’s found themselves on the wrong side of a regulator with a burr up their ass, or look at the cost companies pay just to obey regulators or the money paid to get permission to proceed – drugs cost a lot in part because of the cost of meeting regulatory requirements).
Could it be privatized? Maybe, don’t know, never thought about it. It can certainly be improved upon.
As for development of drugs that have a low market yield, this is one area where I see government being able to do good. Imagine if we took all the money we’ve been pissing away in the middle east for the past 8 years and turned that into research grants for low market drugs. We’d have made a lot of progress toward those cures, and, since the government paid for the research, the government can set the price. I’m always a supporter of publicly funded research, especially in areas that don’t directly yield a high market value (not a whole lot of money in discovering exo-planets, yet)
Still, even without research grants, scientists are out there doing the work the big companies won’t do. Citizen scientists, university researchers, etc. I recall reading about one guy who got sick of how much pharmaceutical companies were charging for the only known cure for malaria (most of the cost was due to the rarity of the plant the cure was extracted from & the difficulty of the extraction process), so he bio-engineered a bacteria to make the drug and can produce it by the gallon to the tune of about $1/dose (not sure where he is in clinical trials).
I do agree that our business & political leaders have all lost the ability to think & plan long term. It might do us a service to re-game our system so that politicians are not facing re-election so often (while making it easier to recall or impeach them should they behave badly). I don’t think 2-4 years is long enough anymore to be able to focus on long term plans.
The libertarian thought on a lot of things is not, “stop making me lose money because you want to hug a polar bear”, but rather, “how can we make protecting this thing profitable, or at the very least, make it zero-cost?”. For example, you can save the Bison by encouraging people to eat Bison meat – it’s leaner, tastier, and modern business will go out of their way to protect the supply of a known source of income.
Something I often tell my friends, who wonder what being a libertarian means:
If you want to know who is liberal, conservative, or libertarian, just make a statement like this – “There ought to be a law against . It’s for the children!”
Liberals & conservatives will be happy or sad at the disparaging of the given bogeyman. Libertarians will be incensed at the idea that there ought to be a law, and the addition of “For the children” should make their head explode.
stupid html tags
“There ought to be a law against (liberal/conservative bogeyman) . It’s for the children!”
Personally, rather than a law, I’d stick with the insurance mandate for drivers, make it a rule that police can stop un-helmeted or un-belted operators & passengers, and make it a rule that if you choose to operate a vehicle without a Seat Belt or a helmet, you must have a current insurance rider that covers your medical expenses should you meet a bad outcome; get caught without the rider, and you get cited; get in a wreck without the rider and need medical care beyond what you or your family can afford, and you are SOL
Is that really vastly superior than just citing them for not wearing them? In practice, I suspect most insurers would either not offer such riders, or would make those riders prohibitively expensive, unless some law prevented these outcomes. So you’d effectively end up with the same thing, but with vastly more complication.
And you’re still putting a lot of burden on the citizen, more than most libertarians I know would support. Because the citizen must not only be willing and able to personally cover any harm he may do to himself and/or others, but he must at all times be able to demonstrate that he could do so if necessary, and he must be able to do this at a moment’s notice.
And all of this falls apart in the “random stranger” scenario. What do you do in Libertopia when you witness an accident involving a helmetless rider, which renders the rider unconscious and at immediate risk of death? Suppose he has no identification with him, or it’s not easily accessible, so you can’t confirm whether or not he has the rider you’re asking for, or his financial ability to cover his medical expenses. Do you just leave him to die?
One more thing:
how can we make protecting this thing profitable
That’s another fatal flaw I see in libertarianism. Not everything worth doing can be done for a profit (or even at a break-even point), no matter how much you rig the system.
That is a recognized fact, but often, when something comes up that needs protecting, the first impulse is always, “Pass a law protecting it”, without asking the question, “Can it be protected without creating a criminal statute?”
For the most part, passing a law to do anything should always be the last resort, not the first, since the very act of creating a law opens things up for rent seeking, regulatory capture, special cases, exceptions, etc. Not to mention that by creating a criminal violation, you grant the government the authority to enforce that law via, ultimately, lethal force. An authority that is, quite often, abused and results in needless deaths at the hands of the state.
As for the insurance thing, I agree, it could be more complicated, but I think the insurance pricing would send a much clearer message than a $10-$50 ticket. As for the stranger issue, of course you render assistance, but if the person needs advanced medical care, say long term care due to a coma, funding for that care needs to come from a non-taxpayer source (family, estate, charity, etc.). And yes, I’d be willing to let those foolish persons die. Our society, however, is not so willing to stomach that.
The fact that we are unwilling to stomach the final result of self-inflicted tragedy is a big reason we have a free-rider problem.
The fact that we are unwilling to stomach the final result of self-inflicted tragedy is also a big reason we still have a useless & wasteful drug war.
Whatever happened to “Evolution in Action”. I mean, we all laugh at Darwin Award nominees & winners, but those are only the fools who’ve managed to off themselves before society could intervene. We can’t stomach allowing people to die slowly from their own foolishness, even though such people are even more deserving of a Darwin Award.
so he bio-engineered a bacteria to make the drug and can produce it by the gallon to the tune of about $1/dose (not sure where he is in clinical trials).
That’s a great story. But, clinical trials cost hundred of millions of dollars. I mean, I don’t for one minute buy the big pharma 800M to 1.2B estimates, but no citizen scientist is going to afford that. Well, actually on second thought, there is a citizen who is paying for this kind of stuff – his name is William Gates.
And, where do those university research grants come from? From governments, of course. And, yes, you assert that this types of ventures would be a good use of government resources, but would most libertarians agree that spending tens, hundreds of billions of dollars to eradicate diseases that affect few people, or are rampant in many areas of the world, but rare in the U.S. and most of the developed world is a good idea, worth doing, or a wide use of resources?
I mean, if the crux of your political philosophy is that the government should first look to incentivitizing behaviors without engaging the legal system, before resorting to regulations and/or prohibition, that’s a sensible perspective, IMHO. And, if you think individuals should be held to a greater standard of individual accountability for the exchange of broader behavioral freedoms, then I think you run into a lot of practical problems, but I can’t exactly claim this to be an irrational thought either. The trouble is, in my experience, such moderation is the minority voice within your larger circle. Self-identified libertarians often want a lot more than that.
In my experience, a lot of self-described libertarians are people who’ve read one or two things about libertarian philosophy and grunted, “oooooh, pretty, me like!”, without really delving into it and trying to understand the core principles (non-aggression) as well as the realistic goals (aggression is a human feature and all philosophical explorations of policy need to remember that).
You do have the basic idea down. No one really thinks that we can do without government, only that we should only engage as a last resort, and then only carefully.
I think most ibertarians view the market as a grand experiment in motion, much like evolution, and if left alone it could create some very interesting things. Humans, however, are not interested in the apparent randomness of the market (or evolution, for that matter), and will always seek to control the market in order to reduce or eliminate the built-in risk.
Too much control, and you get a ‘niche’ market, one that works very well under very tightly controlled conditions. But much like the Panda Bear, or the Koala Bear, a niche market can not well survive any disturbing outside influences, because it’s is inflexible (Koalas & Pandas are very limited in their ability to survive thanks to the fact that they have a very specific food source that only grows in a very specific location).
Government, however, is viewed as a sledgehammer, very good at what it does, but imprecise and heavy handed for a lot of tasks. It should be used carefully since anyone under it will not come out doing too well.
A person at the whims of the market might have a bad outcome, but also might do very well.
In the end, the hammer is needed to shape the market, but it should be done so very carefully, because it’s very easy to damage that market instead of shaping it.
Our current government, GOP or Dem, swing with abandon as the electorate cheers them on.
No one really thinks that we can do without government
I actually know a few who believe exactly that.
The fact that we are unwilling to stomach the final result of self-inflicted tragedy is also a big reason we still have a useless & wasteful drug war.
It’s more complicated than that. I’d be the first to agree that most drugs should be legalized and regulated like alcohol and tobacco, but I can’t see ever legalizing pushing, for example. The problem is that we’re talking about highly physically addictive substances, so it’s not always just a simple matter of free choice. Our “drug war” approach has been disastrous, but I don’t think “do nothing” is a good choice, either.
On the topic of self-inflicted tragedy more generally, how much we’re willing to stomach it is going to depend a great deal on how much of it there is. Most libertarians I know typically argue that if we allow people to suffer the full consequences of their stupid and/or self-destructive behavior, people will collectively learn from this, and the behavior will become substantially less prevalent. Of course, to believe this, you have to ignore everything we know about human nature and the vast weight of human history. Though this doesn’t seem to be a problem for most libertarians.
(Actually, that’s not entirely fair. We collectively do learn from such things; but one of the lessons we’ve learned is that relying solely on individuals to take those lessons to heart and act accordingly is foolhardy.)
Actually, I was getting at the fact that because the citizenry can not stomach the (fearmongered) idea that legalizing drugs would result in the streets littered with junkies and addicts, even if drugs were regulated like alcohol & cigarettes. If they could stomach that idea, the Drug War would have been over a long time ago, if it ever got started.
Same with the War on Terrorism.
I do think people can learn from the stupidity of others, it just takes a while. I mean, we no longer serve wine in lead goblets, even though it makes the wine sweeter. We are learning that smoking is a bad thing, especially since we started treating smoking as a public health issue and began education campaigns to curb it, instead of glamorizing it. So yeah, we can learn, it just takes a generation or two sometimes.
I mean, we no longer serve wine in lead goblets
Because it’s illegal to do so, and has been for some time.
But the larger point is that while many people learn from the mistakes of others and act accordingly, many don’t. And the “many” that don’t makes up a very large portion of the human population. Now I suppose we could go all Social Darwin and say that letting those people screw themselves and ultimately kill themselves helps out the gene pool, but that’s not the kind of society I envision.
Actually, many stopped using lead before it became illegal, but the actual hazards of lead weren’t known until the 60′s or 70′s, when lead paint & lead pipes were discontinued.
There are times when I really want to go all Social Darwin, but even I recognize that such a world would be a bad place to live.
So, this discussion, in structure, reminds me strongly of a point that Greta Christina makes (as does PZ Myers).
She explains that when arguing with theists (Note that I’m not claiming here that Libertarianism is a religion; any any resemblance to such is purely coincidental in this case.), it’s fairly common for those who have more explicit learning of theology to claim that atheist critiques of believers do not address the claims of theologians. Insofar as this is true (only sometimes), it’s entirely uninteresting, because the majority of those who believe in gods are not theologians and do not themselves comply with the claims of theologians.
What MadRocketScientist is saying in this thread, however well it reflects on him as a self-identified libertarian, pretty much doesn’t matter, because the vast majority of libertarians don’t systematically apply the Non-Aggression Principle (Go on, ask any three of them what counts as aggression and see what they can agree on.), agree that some amount of enforcement is requisite to minimal human dignity, or even realize that property is a social construct.
(FYI ya’ll can just use MRS, no need for everyone to type out MadRocketScientist)
Dan:
The same can be said for any political (or religious, or philosophical) movement. There is always a small group that spends the time & mental effort to understand the first principles of the movement, and then a much, much larger group who like the sound of it, but aren’t really interested in the nuts & bolts of it, or only have a passing familiarity with the first principles.
I can’t tell you how many liberals I know who push & push for more laws protecting this or that, or outlawing something, who then turn around and get incensed when those laws have unintended consequences, or when people who are innocent of breaking a law (or at least were not knowingly breaking a law) are destroyed by our legal system because some cop/DA/regulator got a bug up his butt.
They don’t see the link to expanding government power, and the selfsame abuse of that power. IMHO, this is because they like the idea of the government doing something about the thing they don’t like, so that they don’t have to tolerate it, or think about it, or spend any of their money or time doing something about it. They miss what liberal philosophy requires of them, that they must devote some of their time, vigilance, and political awareness toward keeping government in check (because ultimately, liberals do not trust government to govern itself).
And to be fair, conservatives do the exact same damn thing, as do a lot of libertarians. Everyone likes the bennies, everyone ignores the responsibilities & cost.
Basically, the kind of “libertarianism” you’re advocating for is one in which the government does not get involved in anything unless it’s necessary or prudent (from a societal perspective) for it to do so. Well, we have another word for people who believe this: EVERY-fucking-body!
Hardly, T, but I’ll bite.
Are you comfortable with the level of responsibility the government assumes? If yes, what would it take to make you uncomfortable? If no, what would you like to see pared back?
Well, see, that’s the thing. What the government “should” or “should not” do is going to depend greatly upon who’s answering that question. I think that the government should do more in some areas and less in others. So does almost everyone else (except the people who have no care about consequences and just want the government to do less of everything, or nothing at all). But from one person to the next, it’s going to vary a great deal on the particulars: what specific things they thing the government should do more of, and what specific things they think it should do less of. I’d be glad to give you particulars specific to me, but they’re irrelevant to the point I’m making.
Then, of course, there are the people who haven’t thought about it at all. That’s where you get the “Keep the government’s hands off my Medicare” people.
So really, except for a few key issues, we are all quibbling over details. It bugs me how everyone is outraged over health care being the end of liberty, but totally unconcerned over torture, the use of state/executive secrets/privilege, and the fact that our president has decided he can execute a US citizen without trial. I mean, we can fix the health care laws if some of the dire predictions come true, but rolling back such executive powers, once the precedent is set, is not so easy.
Still, I’d be interested in the details you have. I am actually very sympathetic to a lot of liberal ideals, I just think we go about executing those ideals rather clumsily (see my hammer analogy from above).
And please don’t get me started on the “Keep the government’s hands off my Medicare” people. I damn near spit out my coffee the first time I heard someone say that. It’s right up there with the folks who want less government entitlement spending, but don’t touch my SS or Medicare (HELLO! Have you seen the federal budget lately?!).
Yeah, those people obviously don’t know what “government entitlements” are.
As for my details, you hit on quite a few of them right there, actually, when you talked about expanded executive power and our cavalier disregard for the Geneva conventions, human decency, etc. Apart from that, there’s the drug war stuff that we’ve already largely agreed upon. I’d like to see the military budget go down to about half of what it is right now. I’d like to see all “faith based” anything go out the window — we’re supposed to have a secular government, dammit.
As for where I’d like to see more government involvement, it mostly comes down to regulation. I’d like to reinstate much of the regulatory apparatus that we’ve spent the last 30 years dismantling, especially with respect to banking and finance. I’d like to see increased government involvement in transit and transportation, too (besides highways). Any place in the world that has a top-notch transportation network has it because the government built it and in most cases also operates it. Infrastructure is never profitable on its own, so this must be provided by government. Speaking of infrastructure, I think the nation would benefit tremendously from a coherent nationwide high speed internet infrastructure.
And as you know, I think the government has a role to play in health care. Like it or not, we’re getting our collective ass kicked in almost every measurable category by countries that have much more government involvement than we do in that area.
Is it worth reading through 77 comments to get up to speed with and then participate in an Internet Shouting Match?
Nah. I’ll just go for lolcats.
To be fair, no shouting match here; it’s more a running around in circles not saying much match.