This bothers me about Obama....

enderkin
Thu, 03 Apr 2008 23:35:18 +0000

who pays the reparations? the state? but you sold off everything!

“murderer=evil
murderer + green costume=protecting your freedom”

that isn’t patriotism. that’s vigilantism. People like it because it is a quick, easy fairy tale form of ‘justice’. superheroes themselves represent dreams that people have of being extraordinary. it has nothing to do with loving one’s country (although original American comics were of course infused with American themes to help them sell).

your libertarian remedy suggests that all people are inherently good, intelligent, moral people. it believes that people will do the right thing regardless of whether a law exists or not.

would companies really be so nice and caring as to set up independent safety committees to judge the quality of their products? i didn’t know that companies cared about their customers–I assumed that they all were concerned mainly with profit margins. what if no drugs had any safety seals? drugs would obviously still be bought and used regardless. what incentive would a company have to make an independent group that could potentially reject their work and set them back millions of dollars? that is, of course, assuming that a group of companies could even make a nonpartisan committee in the first place. would you trust a Phillip-Morris Seal of Approval for cigarettes? and what happens to competitors with a genuine product but no seal of approval? how does Levitra break into the ED market when Viagra has the only credible Seal of Approval and wants to keep it that way?

when the state can’t control who gets patents, then no one can hold one and say that it has any value. no real patents means no protection against copy-cats. take the cotton gin. it was simple and multiplied the efficiency of cotton picking by a huge factor. but without patent protection, Eli Whitney never earned the millions that he would have been privy to had he secured a patent (it was too easy to recreate). the same can be said for Nikola Tesla and his inventions. no patents means no money for companies.

drug prices may fall, but so will quality and the assurance of safety. you can not seriously assert that companies will test their products or the products of their competitors without bias.

speeding cameras are still a developing field. the british (who use them extensively) find that they reduce speeding violations by a significant amount. america (which uses them much more sparingly) has mixed studies–Virginia reports an increase, NC a vast decrease, Texas a large decrease when combined with other factors. whether they work or not is inconclusive. but they aren’t there just to make money; they’re also there to make sure that the law (even ones we all break) isn’t being defied to the danger of others.

i’m too tired to fight anarcho-libertarianism tonight. i’ll continue tomorrow.