Free as in Health Care
exple.tive.org
exple.tive.org
I think this is totally off base. It assumes that safety innovation is only achieved via regulation, and cannot be achieved in any other way.
It never ceases to amaze me that people still think roads wouldn't be built without the government, or that they would be sub-par. People think that without government, the world would be in complete anarchy, when the only examples we have close to that show the opposite(http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=80...).
I'm not sure that the wild west examples given in that article scale well to large cities.
Most of the world functions just fine without government oversight.
Also, consider that in the absence of government, our lives (and cities) would be full of thousands of tiny corrections, back and forth, as people responded to the new information available to them.
Governments let problems build, and eventually spend a few years trying to deal with the problem, only to arrive at a good solution a few years after everyone else has arrived there. The problem is they cause massive harm in the process.
Reference:
- War on drugs
- Imperialism
- History of who was allowed to marry who
I.E. that which is uncomfortable isn't necessarily wrong. It's just uncomfortable. If I have an idea that is wrong, it doesn't threaten you, if it's just an idea. It would be safe to evaluate it, consider it, try to understand what weakness in my thinking has led me to that conclusion.
The crux of the issue in Mogadishu, as they describe it, is that many basic things which we rely upon in the US just don't exist. E.g. when something gets set on fire, it literally just burns to the ground because there's no fire department to come save yo shit.
My guess is that in the absence of government, large cities would be terrifying. I've not heard of a large city without government before though.
If we define a government as a party with a localized monopoly on force, even an armed robber is a government.
And if one doesn't define government this broadly, that still doesn't invalidate the libertarian argument, since it hinges on opposition to the initiation of force (aggression), as opposed to initiation of strictly government force.
The author is making the claim that legislation can create pressure for producers to create safer products absent consumer demand. I think the car example is well-motivated. We may not like how things work here, maybe things work other ways in other places, but I think his evidence is pretty compelling.
Another example for me is roller coasters. In the US I trust implicitly in their safety. On the other hand, when I was recently presented to ride one of those handbrake car tracks down a mountain in southern China, I thought about the rickety bus I rode to get there, on horrendous streets with serious flooding problems, and I actually did consider the safety because I that I was in a place where it may not be automatic.
Still, your bus/train fairs usually play for 20% ~ 30% of cost in most cities. Tolls for roads offset their cost, not pay for them.
Markets don't exists without States either. The book Debt: The First 5,000 Years talks extensively about this and the great myth of the free market.
A) The old west DID have a government. The US government wasn't exactly helpless out there.
B) If you want an example of an area without a government, the best example is Mogadishu between 1991-2006.
Towards the end of anarchy they had reliable and dirt cheap cell phone coverage, internet access and imported goods were often very cheap (no import taxes) and they had multiple, cheap competing airlines.
The roads were terrible though and you would often be charged for using them (between $3 and $300 depending upon your cargo). According to the BBC there were 7 checkpoints in the 50k stretch between the airport and the city.
Dire poverty and unemployment was the norm and the need for security dominated most people's lives. They largely relied upon remittances to survive.
While there was no national government with a monopoly on violence Somalis reverted to clan based quasi-legal structures to mediate disputes, which was ineffective at mediating disputes across clan boundaries.
The society demonstrated that anarcho-capitalism (or the closest viable approximation) wasn't entirely dysfunctional but it was clearly pretty awful. Life is much better there now. The roads are higher quality and don't have checkpoints any more. The need for security doesn't dominate people's lives. The economy is growing again.
I'm going to leave this here, since you haven't read it:
http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=80...
Which you assume because?
If you're referring to the wagon trains/land clubs/etc. this isn't really all that different to arbitration - which we have today.
"So-called land clubs were organizations established by settlers before the U.S. government even surveyed the land, let alone started to sell it or give it away."
before the U.S. government even surveyed the land
before the U.S. government
You don't read much do you?
Other forms of presents are public services "gifted" by the government to its citizens, like parks. A condition to that gift is that people don't vandalize the park, destroying it for everyone. Shouldn't presents like those should be bound to conditions, both informal and official.
I find that most gifts are given under an implicit or explicit condition, and it seems the norm rather than the exception.
Sorry, you are not better than any other human.
How practical could it be to have laws against trolling? There are online groups who have rules against doxxing, who seem to be able to enforce them. I don't think it would unduly contravene free speech, if public spaces on the internet assumed consent to communication between individuals, with the option of individuals revoking consent. This would be analogous to what people do in public spaces. Then the act of creating a throwaway account on Twitter to continue harassment would be analogous to continue to harass someone in real life. There would be exceptions, but generally, this would be definable and enforceable. (And I would also say, it would be more constructive than picking a figurehead like Milo Yiannopoulos and banning him as a scapegoat. Even if enforcement could only catch a few people.)
How do I "revoke consent" to one-way communication in public spaces? All I can do is avoid known people (if possible) or ignore them.
"Okay, I'm done with this, and with you. I no longer consent to this interaction. If you continue, it's harassment." Then you walk away. In a virtual space, like Twitter, you block them. Then it's incumbent on them to not create a throwaway and continue the behavior. (And in the case of most middle schoolers and other internet willful idiots and trollers, they're probably not competent enough to hide their identity from a knowledgeable enemy.)
One-way communications are not an interaction. You cannot silence someone just by saying "shut up or it's harassment". Harassment, from a legal perspective, rightfully has a high bar that your example does not meet.
>> Then you walk away.
If the person continues the interaction, they have to follow you to do it. Is that (legally) harassment? If not, isn't it something? Or can I just legally follow you down the street, loudly verbally abusing you, and you have no legal recourse?
Without violence or threats of violence, or stalking (which requires more than just following), not in California, AFAICT. Other jurisdictions may differ.
> If not, isn't it something?
Like, some crime? Not for just continuing an unwanted verbal interaction generally. Legally, that's generally called, "Exercising one's First Amendment rights."
> Or can I just legally follow you down the street, loudly verbally abusing you, and you have no legal recourse?
If it is loud and unreasonable noise, it might be actionable as disturbing the peace.
IIRC, the video doesn't actually follow the fact pattern of the hypothetical upthread (its not limited to examples of a conversation being initiated, declined, and pursued), and does include things which might reasonably be included within some aspects of California's laws on criminal threats and/or disturbing the peace.
But, generally, yes, lots of rude and offensive behavior is neither criminal nor even civilly actionable, just rude.
IIRC, "examples of a conversation being initiated, declined, and pursued" were the worst examples shown. Everything else could possibly be argued as "disturbing the peace" but could also have been seen as one person saying something to a passer-by.
Do you really think the state should get involved if someone ignores your demand to stop talking to you?
Regulating "trolling" (however some legislator chooses to define that) would be regulating what people say and allow to be said in their own private websites.
I'm not endorsing this level of micro-management, but it certainly allows recourse for negligence and malpractice.
In what way is allowing open discourse negligent or "malpractice"?
If anything, roads and cars should be more like software. Which is not to say no laws. But the laws should not be so many volumes as to be unapproachable and prescriptive and there should be automated systems for testing and validation. This is certainly doable for software.
You seriously got to the end of that and
the most important thought in your head was
“I wish the text was a different color?”