No money = no sports

Building roads helps commerce and national defense. One of the key aspects of regulating commerce is giving businesses the tools they need to engage in commerce. Those public roads also help get military resources from Place A to Place B.

 

You hit on a key word here, Sig ... "utopian." It's a place that does not exist, yet it's largely the basis for all libertarian thought.

I can usually put myself in the shoes of just about any ideology, even if I vehemently disagree with it. I struggle mightily to have any understanding for what the fuck might be going through the head of libertarians who look at parks and roads and schools and street lights and see "government theft."

I don't ever think this deeply about it, but if I did, I'd say, "damn I made a good investment in that park with that $17 I paid on my $100,000 house valuation during that bond issue last year." Never been to the park, have no plans to go there, but it sure makes my town a nicer place to live.

Near as I can tell, libertarians like to bitch about shit and never offer a better way. Oh sure, there are pat answers for some things, like schools, but as for how to run a society ... well, there's always utopia.

 

Ah, what fun toying with an ethos must be when freed from the meddlesome restraints of reality and sanity.

 

Wasn't the interstate system originally envisioned as a roadway for military transport?
I'm pretty sure it was and that wacky internet was also originally built for the military.
Interesting to note that Sig hasn't addressed old people starving to death, so one person won't have to pay taxes for food stamps.

 

It's not about ignoring the will of the majority. It's about protecting the rights of the minority--the individual.

Libertarians are no more likely to want to see someone starve to death than anyone else along the political spectrum. They just tend to believe that there are better ways to deal with poverty than to steal from some people. If a society values taking care of elderly people, then the market will meet those values and provide means for people to donate and otherwise care for the elderly. If individuals know that there isn't a lifetime of handouts waiting for them once they decide to hang it up, they will act more responsibly during their lifetime so that they don't face hardships in old age. Obviously all of them won't, but the ones we ought to value as a society will--and they shouldn't be punished for being successful and responsible.

Maybe the 2000 dollars in property taxes that joe-homeowner was forced to pay last year could have saved his life when, in ten years, he got a rare form of cancer and the medication for it was just out of his financial means. That 2000 dollars provided a month's worth of education for a kid that he never had, and because he was forced to give it over to the government, he will now die.

theft is theft, whether the true cost of it comes now or ten years from now--or even if those dire costs never come to be, it is immoral to steal money from your neighbor. It is more immoral to steal money from your neighbor (in the form of taxation) than to let an old person starve to death for two reasons: First, you are potentially depriving your neighbor of the opportunity to become an old person himself. Second, every person who knows the old person has some moral culpability if they allow him to starve. In other words, there are still choices to be made. When you steal from your neighbor through government, there is no choice, just naked aggression against him. Morality is about doing the right thing, and in the case of the starving elderly person, each individual still has the opportunity to do the right thing when there is no government safety net.

 

Heh, you should see this sidewalk in my city. I drive along it every other day or so, have yet to see anyone walking on it (about a mile of lovely sidewalk between nowhere and a strip mall) and every 20 feet there is an intricate lamp post that I'm sure made some city council member's brother-in-law very rich. Yeah, I get pissed off at lamp posts even.

 

Hey, I'm with SigR on this one.

Since I own guns, I don't need the police to protect me. I think it's wrong for me to be taxed to pay for it! Same goes for the military!

 

I'm not even sure what planet you are on.
"The market will take care of it" truly baffles me.

 

From America's Finest News Source:

Libertarian Reluctantly Calls Fire Department
APRIL 21, 2004
CHEYENNE, WY—After attempting to contain a living-room blaze started by a cigarette, card-carrying Libertarian Trent Jacobs reluctantly called the Cheyenne Fire Department Monday. "Although the community would do better to rely on an efficient, free-market fire-fighting service, the fact is that expensive, unnecessary public fire departments do exist," Jacobs said. "Also, my house was burning down." Jacobs did not offer to pay firefighters for their service.

 

Anyone who carries a Libertarian card obviously isn't a libertarian, so I'm calling shennanigans on that story.

 

Does anybody cover schools that have a users' fee for athletes?

 

There were plenty of starving elderly people in the 1930s. The market did not take care of them. The government had to. You forget that the market is controlled by the people who own the market's products. Look at the railroad monopolists in the 19th century. Instead of competing with each other, they got together, and set the rates for everyone. But if workers combined into a union, it was considered anti-American.

It's kind of hard to let the market rule when there are people controlling and manipulating the market. That's why the government is there to help people who are getting screwed by the market (their own personal choices not withstanding).