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Comment by woooooo | Hacker News Reader

Libertarians took over a town in NH and abolished town wide garbage collection. The free market produced a bunch of trash in people's yards, which attracted bears, causing havoc all around town. True story.

That's not to say you can't solve a lot of problems with markets. It just means waving your hands at "the free market" like it's a magic talisman is a childish thing to do.

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> Libertarians took over a town in NH and abolished town wide garbage collection.

Presumably this is the case you’re citing: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-...

That sounds like a case of "Tragedy of the Commons", which is not free market.

Also, police is a requirement because libertarianism relies on government to protect peoples' rights. Gutting the police department is what anarchists do, not libertarians.

If you want to know of a successful libertarian experiement, see the founding of the United States. (Excluding the slave states, of course. Slavery is antiethical to libertarianism.)

You mean the Articles of Confederation that failed because the government wasn’t strong enough?

The Articles of Confederation were not the founding of the United States. The founding was the Constitution.

No true scotsman

Why didn't they just shoot the bears? You'd figure libertarians would be all for that.

Because they couldn't reach a consensus with their governance mechanisms. There were people feeding and encouraging the bears. I guess they could have shot all the bears. Eliminating all the bears because a sensible consensus can't be reached seems like a gross failure of humanity to coexist with the natural (uncontrolled) world.

Sounds like they just couldn't put their money where their mouths were and wanted daddy gov to manage the bears and couldn't agree on how. If the neighborhood has bears just store your stuff better and you won't have to shoot them causing problems with the neighbors. Easier than bickering and cheaper than paying for government to do it.

Edit: I guess this works of thieves too.

It would have violated the NAP.

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