There is still plenty of laughable stock within Wheelans’ article, even if it is somewhat outdated. If you haven’t read the negation of libertarianism offered by the pop-naked-economist-guy, let me rephrase it for you in its entirety of rigor.
Wheelan gingerly babbles 303 words of…well, something about smarts kids in classrooms and New Hampshire and his twenty years of study before delivering the backbreaker to our camel of liberty, and I quote
“What’s the libertarian point of view on stoplights?”
So without further ado, there it is! Defeat in eight words!
Now, I don’t have a PhD but let me give such an innovative question a cursory attempt. Charles, we libertarians support the stoplight! We believe it is within the markets ability to offer such a complicated device from the seclusion of a private road.
Not only this, but Charles, we also support the stop sign!
Thank you naked-economist
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I hate stoplights. I think roundabouts are the answer.
Socialist!
I’ve got to agree roundabouts are nice.
Roundabouts are a little too much fun with the lateral G’s.
And of course, you could even completely get rid of stoplights – which could, strangely enough, improve the whole affair!
“What’s the libertarian point of view on stoplights?”
Uhh, what’s the libertarian view on basketball, coffee, iPods, curveballs, chairs, bad hair days, or spoons?
I’m against stop lights. We should just have overpasses and underpasses with on ramps and off ramps. Intersections are inefficient.
Of course if we presuppose government’s right to ownership of streets we will concede that government can put up stop signs. If anything, all the naked economist managed to attack would be a peculiar theory of libertarianism that would grant government massive amounts of property while forbidding that government exercise control over that property.
What’s even more disappointing than this charlatan’s laughable attack on such an obvious strawman is how few of the so-called libertarians who commented even understand libertarian theory well enough to refute him. All most of them could do was backpedal to the statist position that roads are a “proper” function of government, instead of correctly pointing out that opposing provision of a good by the state is not the same thing as opposing the good itself.
What an effing MORON!
“That’s kind of silly, so consider a more significant example, like counterterrorism. In a world of libertarians, who finds Osama bin Laden?”
In the world of statism, WHO DID?
Who wanted to?
“WHO DID?” indeed.
Typical “big stick” argument. “In anarchy, you could be invaded!”
Implying, of course, that the entire human history of statism isn’t one of conflict, death, torture, and destruction.
One might ask “In Wheelan’s statist society, how will Iraqi citizens protect themselves from being vaporized in their homes by the U.S.?”
This sort of content is below the usual posting standard.
In many cases, yield signs are better than stop signs.
My position is that stop lights are the State’s response to the mess it made with the way it has planned cities and towns. They are yet another example of the State creating a problem, then imposing another authoritarian rule to paper over the problems it caused in the first place.
Government has asserted that it is in charge of the design of our physical living space. Governments lay out all the roads, dictate all the uses to which people can put their land, telling everyone where they can and can’t live and do things. It falls under the pleasant-sounding euphemism of “land use.” The truth is that land use restrictions are a major source of graft, corruption, bribery, extortion, self-dealing and general incompetence.
Even when these crimes aren’t being committed (which they are routinely), planning is still destructive. It has brought us to the point where we are almost all dependent on cars, shop in anonymous big box stores, and each spend hundreds of zero-productivity hours a year commuting between jobs and over-priced-credit-inflated houses.
These governmental dictates have destroyed the small town, the small retailer, the unique neighborhood. The few nice areas that still exist were built before the heavy hand of government ruined them with their “planning” and stop-lightage. These neighborhoods then are frantically preserved (with still more authoritarian rules to cover-up the consequences of their destructive planning) as though they are museum pieces, which they are.
Excellent!
“Gun Control: If someone is carrying a gun on the street, it’s my business. ”
Lol. What a violent, ignorant fascist.
https://sites.google.com/site/theamericandreammyth/
Try reading just a few articles on here before posting something like this……
It’s a shame that “maturing” seems to mean closing one’s mind to to such narrow avenues of thought (pun intended)! Get an imagination and start thinking on Broad Street!
“I wrote my dissertation on how government regulation can often be politically motivated and counterproductive. But I still think there’s a place for regulation — for lots of it, actually. The more complicated products become, including sophisticated financial instruments, the more difficult it is to live by the aphorism “buyer beware.” How can a consumer reasonably be expected to know that a household cleaning product causes cancer in kids?”Wow…………………………..I have no words, it would be a waste of time.
Is this joker for real or what? How the hell would cleaning products cause cancer unless someone was moron enough to drink them?
LFB
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