Wishful thinking

March 6th, 2004 – 11:57 am
Tagged as: Uncategorized

Over on John & Belle Have a Blog, there’s a brilliant post about this discussion of the libertarian dream.

Now, everyone close your eyes and try to imagine a private, profit-making rights-enforcement organization which does not resemble the mafia, a street gang, those pesky fire-fighters/arsonists/looters who used to provide such “services” in old New York and Tokyo, medieval tax-farmers, or a Lendu militia. (In general, if thoughts of the Eastern Congo intrude, I suggest waving them away with the invisible hand and repeating “that’s anarcho-capitalism” several times.) Nothing’s happening but a buzzing noise, right?

Now try it the wishful thinking way. Just wish that we might all live in a state of perfect liberty, free of taxation and intrusive government, and that we should all be wealthier as well as freer. Now wish that people should, despite that lack of any restraint on their actions such as might be formed by policemen, functioning law courts, the SEC, and so on, not spend all their time screwing each other in predictable ways ranging from ordinary rape, through the selling of fraudulent stocks in non-existent ventures, up to the wholesale dumping of mercury in the public water supplies. (I mean, the general stock of water from which people privately draw.) Awesome huh? But it gets better. Now wish that everyone had a pony.

It’s very funny, and it pretty much skewers this bizarre view that libertarians seem to have of the wonderous free-market paradise that they claim to be striving toward. Go and read the whole thing, and some of the links they’ve got in there too.

[via Sisyphus Shrugged]

No Comments

» RSS feed for comments on this post

No comments yet.


Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.