to the board:

the common misconception (it would appear from comments i see all over the web) is that libertarians are heartless bastards that would steal the last crust of bread from a child dying of starvation

that they don't want any rules or organization

that they advocate the survival of the fittest

that it's hooray for me and f everyone else

this stereotyping is silly as hell

helen's comment is really a breath of fresh air

real libertarians don't have a problem with helping out the less fortunate

they object to the initiation of force and the use of violence to fund it

regards

and taxes

to the board:

the common misconception (it would appear from comments i see all over the web) is that libertarians are heartless bastards that would steal the last crust of bread from a child dying of starvation

that they don't want any rules or organization

that they advocate the survival of the fittest

that it's hooray for me and f everyone else

this stereotyping is silly as hell

helen's comment is really a breath of fresh air

real libertarians don't have a problem with helping out the less fortunate

they object to the initiation of force and the use of violence to fund it

regards

One of the more intelligent Libertarians I have ever had the honor to know agreed with me last night that "there does have to be some sort of safety net."

if i didn't want to pay for a war of aggression, say us killing innocent peaceful people, how far would you go to force me to pay for it?

by that i mean would you take my money by force (or externalize it to an armed gang) to pay for it?

would you lock me in a cage for refusing to fund the unjust murder of innocent men, women and children?

private insurance companies, attorneys, legal reps, etc. are quite capable of arbitration and dispute resolution

who pays for any assistance the government doles out now?

we do

the government has little or no money, they take ours and then borrow and mortgage the future generations into unfathomable debt, which is a form of economic slavery to cover the difference

saddling little kids and the unborn with massive debt and unfunded liabilities is beyond ignorant and stupid,  it is sheer lunacy

next thing you know our govt will come up with a noble sounding plan to repay the bankers who poofed this monopoly money out of thin air and loaned it to us

can you say austerity?

it's a nice way to say the people running your country owe us a lot of money and we're going to implement a draconian repayment plan and carve up and take any assets you have left

but it's for the homeland

btw, if you haven't looked at the numbers (and i'm assuming that you haven't) you should

regards

A little too abstract and/or vague.

Some people find it offensive to be "forced" to fund something that they do not believe they will use or that they just feel that they should not have to pay for — public schools come to mind.; so do roads.  I do not think you can run very many jursidtctions, if any, in this country based on the Radio Paradise model.

Just curious: Who do you see as providing the arbitration or dispute resolution?  Who is paying for it? If you are talking partly about the courts, that is government. 

Regards.
 
Edit:  Just throwing this out because I was reading a story about the Colorado wildfires.  Under your system, who would pay for all the resources being utilized  to fight those fires?  Where would the money come from if not from governmental entities? Should folk within those jurisdicitons be able to opt out of funding that because they do not want to pay for it?  Is the solution just to let it burn itself out and let individiuals affected figure out how they will pay for the damages caused to their property?  What happens?       

Try this for an explanation towards your concerns about MEK, methyl ethyl ketone, a commonly used chemical in manufacturing surfboards and in the same class as TDI's which the link will discuss in length.

I originally posted this in the HELP thread when swell sailor and I were discussing the turn of events in surfboards and the materials used to make them.

Clark Foam is gone

We just had a discussion about this, and actually the Illinois EPA has many requirements for their business that must be followed, or they will be fined and eventually shut down. They hire a consultant to make sure all the testing gets done and the requirements are met. 

The system is far from perfect, but at least there is one. Before this our air was filthy and people suffered from all kinds of illnesses. Many still do; children who live in industrial areas suffer from asthma. In many places the water is poisoned by local companies. I just heard about a case of how phosphate is poisoning the waters in Idaho and thousands of two headed fish have been found swimming in the water. Shouldn't we have controls over this? Do these companies have a right to poison our environment? 

That would be in the broad context of differentiating my concept of finacially conservate and socially liberal in the context of spending government money and applying taxes and fees.

You are the one who brought up the issue of second hand smoke in response and I reponded to that specifically and not exclusively within the context of my initial statement.  I did add the concept of private property rights to the argument in reponse, which correctly broadens the discussion.

Harm is being brought to the private property owner who was being totally ignored in every discussion.  These are fundamental rights that are being trampled.  Harm is not a one way street is my point.

The calculus then is not whether one person's activity is causing harm to another.

It has shifted to the remedy for the harm, including whether there even should be a remedy.  And it appears, in this instance, to be based on an assumption-of-the-risk analysis.

That was my point.   

The analytical framework put forth by Kurtstrer to which I iniitially responded:
"...you can do what ever you want as long as it does no harm to others and requires no government money to pay for or subsidize it."

hippiechick wrote:
And since we have assigned that task to government we assume that it must be necessary, that there's no other way to do it, and that no one would do it

OSHA is not limiting the "particles" of MEK in the air your friend breathes. I doubt OSHA even monitors the levels of MEK in the air your friend breathes. OSHA has set regulatory limits on MEK (some on airborne levels, which are extremely difficult to measure) and some on storage and processing. If anybody is monitoring and limiting the airborne levels it is your friend's employer, who may be paying $40 a pop for MEK badges and the analysis that goes with them. If OSHA does anything here it's to monitor the results, but I doubt they even do that much. What OSHA does is issue fines.

Fans of the regulatory approach assume they are building a wall that limits behavior, a clear bright line between acceptable behavior and unacceptable. And as far as they are concerned they are—they know exactly where those limits are. They spent years crafting the rules and they know their section cold. But they haven't built a wall. They've built a minefield.

When OSHA or EPA or any of dozens of regulatory agencies writes a rule all that does is establish a penalty for violating it. There is no rule, ever, anywhere that limits behavior. All a rule can do is create a punishment for violating the rule. And as the years go by and the rules accumulate (and overlap, and contradict—they never go away) we have a vast fog of rules. No one knows what they all say, or what many of them even mean. The people who wrote them and actually understood what some of them were for and how they were supposed to be interpreted retired years ago, but they're still on the books. They have become ingrained on the people who have been burned by them, part of company and agency folklore, and they get followed religiously. At least as people understand them. Whether technological advance has rendered them pointless or not, whether they were based on sound science or sloppy thinking or an unrelated agenda.

But most of them are invisible. They aren't known because they can't be known. There are simply too many of them, in too many places, under the control of too many agencies, haphazardly enforced by people who sometimes don't have a clue about what they are inspecting.

Let's say your friend's employer decides they need to come up with a process that eliminates MEK entirely. Do they know what the regulatory limits on the process that replaces it are? Will they still have to monitor for MEK levels, even thought there isn't a drop of MEK left in the plant? Hard to know. If they call up the regulatory agency they can get an inspection...and face a fine if the inspector finds a violation.

And say some chemist somewhere has a better idea and sees an opportunity to set up her own shop, avoiding hazardous chemicals altogether. Does she know which rules she has to follow? How can she? There were 163,333 pages of them as of 2009.

It's not that just there is this one rule on this one page that is such a burden (though that may be true in some cases) but the sheer dead weight of rules is a problem by itself. No one can be sure their shop is in compliance with all of them. The penalties tend to be draconian, and are almost never assessed at book value. This approach has had some success, but it has become a barrier to entry to industry and an incentive to set up shop elsewhere. And every time this approach fails to prevent some problem the reaction is to write another rule, raise the penalties on rules that will have no effect—because only the people who wrote them will know they exist.

The calculus then is not whether one person's activity is causing harm to another.

It has shifted to the remedy for the harm, including whether there even should be a remedy.  And it appears, in this instance, to be based on an assumption-of-the-risk analysis.

That was my point.   

The analytical framework put forth by Kurtstrer to which I iniitially responded:
"...you can do what ever you want as long as it does no harm to others and requires no government money to pay for or subsidize it."

steeler wrote:
Yes, smokers produce smoke, which is bad for people. Kurtster never claimed otherwise.

If someone wants to establish an area for self-destructive behavior that should be his/her prerogative. As long as everybody engaging in the self-destructive behavior (smoking, drinking, tattooing, riding skateboards and/or bulls, Scientology, plastic surgery, studying Keynesian economics, etc.) is doing so voluntarily and without being misled as to the consequences (and if we are too strict on that last point we have to raid all the economics departments and health food stores) this should be permissible behavior. You have a right to do as you please, and others have the right to provide you the means and facilities.

If you want someone to work there you have to restrict your hiring to people who accept the consequences of working around that behavior; you may have to pay them extra to get them to do it. That should be between you and them.

You don't have the right to mislead anyone, ever. That includes employees. But grown-ups get to make their own decisions—including deluding themselves.

My companion works in a plant that makes printing ink. There is a presence in the air of chemicals such as acetone and MEK, but OSHA limits the particles.

Last week we had a discussion about whether or not he is concerned about this, since he has been breathing chemicals for years. He needs to work, so he subjects himself to these chemicals in the air, without knowing what kind of long term damage he might be doing to himself. If we didn't have some (imperfect) government regulation, it would be much worse. We know this from past history.

steeler wrote:
Yes, smokers produce smoke, which is bad for people. Kurtster never claimed otherwise.

If someone wants to establish an area for self-destructive behavior that should be his/her prerogative. As long as everybody engaging in the self-destructive behavior (smoking, drinking, tattooing, riding skateboards and/or bulls, Scientology, plastic surgery, studying Keynesian economics, etc.) is doing so voluntarily and without being misled as to the consequences (and if we are too strict on that last point we have to raid all the economics departments and health food stores) this should be permissible behavior. You have a right to do as you please, and others have the right to provide you the means and facilities.

If you want someone to work there you have to restrict your hiring to people who accept the consequences of working around that behavior; you may have to pay them extra to get them to do it. That should be between you and them.

You don't have the right to mislead anyone, ever. That includes employees. But grown-ups get to make their own decisions—including deluding themselves.

One of the more intelligent Libertarians I have ever had the honor to know agreed with me last night that "there does have to be some sort of safety net."

My companion works in a plant that makes printing ink. There is a presence in the air of chemicals such as acetone and MEK, but OSHA limits the particles.

Last week we had a discussion about whether or not he is concerned about this, since he has been breathing chemicals for years. He needs to work, so he subjects himself to these chemicals in the air, without knowing what kind of long term damage he might be doing to himself. If we didn't have some (imperfect) government regulation, it would be much worse. We know this from past history. 

steeler wrote:
Yes, smokers produce smoke, which is bad for people. Kurtster never claimed otherwise.

If someone wants to establish an area for self-destructive behavior that should be his/her prerogative. As long as everybody engaging in the self-destructive behavior (smoking, drinking, tattooing, riding skateboards and/or bulls, Scientology, plastic surgery, studying Keynesian economics, etc.) is doing so voluntarily and without being misled as to the consequences (and if we are too strict on that last point we have to raid all the economics departments and health food stores) this should be permissible behavior. You have a right to do as you please, and others have the right to provide you the means and facilities.

If you want someone to work there you have to restrict your hiring to people who accept the consequences of working around that behavior; you may have to pay them extra to get them to do it. That should be between you and them.

You don't have the right to mislead anyone, ever. That includes employees. But grown-ups get to make their own decisions—including deluding themselves.