Another week goes by, and still you’re not with us in Galt’s Gulch Chile. No, you’re back in the USSA slaving through a Friday for your two day reprieve. At least there’s TDV’s Friday tradition, your opportunity to provoke, question, and celebrate everything TDV.
Want to join in the discourse? Send your questions, comments, queries, and concerns to tdv@dollarvigilante.com, comment on a post, or get on the forums.
On to the feedback…
ONLY GOVERNMENT CAN DO THE BIG THINGS
Your evacuated tubes would take hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars just to develop, let alone build. What private company is going to take the risk of investing that much, knowing it may ultimately never work, or never work in a cost-effective way?
It is, in fact, the hated government that spent the money to initially develop things such as the Internet and space travel. The first has been taken a long way since by private industry and the second one might in the next few decades, but they would not exist at all were it not for the government spending much more money on R&D than a private concern could ever justify to shareholders.
Your argument has no resemblance to the real world, Gary.
Your Pal Steve
Gary’s Response:
Ah yes, here we go again. There is the false notion that the market is good for nick nacks like cell phones (along with their elaborate support networks) or laptops or cars…but for the really big infrastructure projects and space travel, the laws of economics stop working and violent monopolies somehow become the best way to give consumers what they want.
Also, just because the violent monopoly has put the stolen money into something, there is the assumption that the free market couldn't have done it at all if given a chance. This argument makes about as much as sense as claiming prewar white athletes were automatically better than the black athletes who weren't allowed to compete.
Just because infrastructure has always come from a violent monopoly using stolen loot doesn't mean it must always come from such…or that the violent monopoly is automatically the most efficient way to bring about these things. Do you think economic law stops working just because you've been trained to love your slavery and enjoy fellating the state? No, the ability to withhold funds and give them to a competitor is what drives improvements in a free and voluntary market. Violent monopolies have muted incentive to seek the lowest possible costs and the highest enduser satisfaction…because the enduser has to pay no matter what. This is not a recipe for improving quality and lowering costs.
You think only the all wise government could have the foresight and the muscle to get the big things done. But government is an imposition, not a response to demand. The government can't help but provide perverted versions ot the things people want. That's why public housing sucks, public schools suck and public policing just turns into harassment and the violent enforcement of prohibitions. It's why poverty programs actually create more poverty. It's why publicly provided "defense" actually turns into war and imperialism.
So I don't worry about how the world will run without government. Private entrepreneurs can be visionary and can raise capital, negotiate lots of deals and get useful things done…even things that span the globe. Just because a brainwashed mind lacks the capacity to see how things can be done without slavery and without the theft of taxation or eminent domain doesn't mean they can't be done.
But of course, you're the same genius who actually typed "the government is US" on the TDV public forum. I'm not sure my grasp of the real world is the one we should be questioning.
SOCIALISM BRED TRAYVON TO RESPOND WITH AGGRESSION
Trayvon Martin probably had never been taught at home or in school about the libertarian principal of PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS. He'd probably had militant socialism drummed into him from every angle.
If Zimmerman had questioned him on the street Trayvon would have had every right to get "uppity" mouthy and angry for being questioned when minding his own business. He still would have had *no right to assault* the questioner.
Trayvon probably didn't understand the distinction of being in a PRIVATE gated community where he was a *guest *obligated to the rules of the private community.
Since the number of units in the private gated community doesn't matter in this case, imagine living in a fenced in three unit condominium. You and your neighbors have been broken into several times. You and your neighbors agree to keep an eye out for each other and question anyone they don't recognize as an owner or guest.
Your neighbor sees someone mulling around at night in the rain *inside the fence* and questions the person. Does your neighbor have the right to do so? Of course. The neighbor is an owner/partner of the property.
As it turns out the person mulling around was my guest who had stepped out to make a private phone call and get some air. Did my guest have the right to assault my neighbor for being questioned? Of course not. He was obligated to explain that he wasn't trespassing on private property. Property that the questioner owned a portion of.
–Clik
Gary's Response:
My initial reaction to the Trayvon Martin shooting was outrage. I'm a black dude who lived for a couple of years in the extremely racist little town of Geneva next to Sanford, Florida where Trayvon was killed. I spent quite a bit of my adolescence in Sanford and my dear mother has worked there for the better part of two decades. I can tell you that black people are indeed very much hated in that little corner of the country.
But the facts of this case that have since emerged make it pretty clear that this is a horrible tragedy, but not a case of a white man hunting young black men. Others have dealt with this at length (the best is probably Stefan Molyneux's intelligent dissection) so I'll just posit my libertarian hallucination of how that night should have went…
Trayvon: You've been following me and it's making me nervous. Is there a problem? Also, you should know that I'm armed and capable of defending myself.
George: We've had a lot of burglaries in this neighborhood lately. I'm part of the neighborhood watch and I didn't recognize you and thought you might be one of the thieves.
Trayvon: I can assure you I'm not. I'm new here, yes, but I'm staying with my father who lives in that house over there. You're free to verify that, but I would ask that you do it in a manner that doesn't alarm me or make me feel threatened.
George: Understood. I'll just keep just keep an eye on things from a distance and only approach you if I see you doing something to violate someone else's property.
Trayvon: The only violation I'll be doing is to my own body with this drug I'm about to cook up using this soda and candy.
George: Have at it!
…And nobody gets shot.
Of course, in a stateless world, there wouldn't have been the housing bubble and bust that left the gated community full of abandoned homes…nor the intergenerational poverty that produces criminality like burglary…nor the aggressive, angry, anti-literate black culture that produced Trayvon's juvenile delinquency.
