Reply from the Great Galt:
Poor little miscreant, Steve:
To reduce it to the barest terms: if I buy a toilet and my neighbor doesn't, and if my neighbor proceeds to poop beside my well, do I then have the right to compel him to buy one? I would say that I do.
John Galt would do more than that, Steve. He would return the favor and completely stuff his neighbors well with poop...right up to the brim! His neighbor committed a clear violation of one's right to his own property. Other contentions may not be so clear.
The defect in the paradigm you present is the assumption that we are
discussing the interest of all humankind. We are not. We are weighing
the relative interests of many different people with many different
preferences. My own economic choice - to buy a toilet or not to buy
one - will have little effect on waste-disposal decisions made by the
managers of a chemical plant down the street. Yet their decisions
will have a very real effect on my health, and in some cases (witness
Bhopal) my survival. Government must regulate the chemical plant in
defense of my right to drink clean water and breathe clean air.
Defect in John Galt's paradigm?...Yet, you assume the following:
1. That John Galt should care about 'humankind' rather than mankind. (There are humans that do not qualify as men...like you, Steve)
2. that free markets has had little or no impact on civilization. (and the impact can only be measured as positive).
3. that government regulation should be the solution to the problem.
(Government is found more often in co-hoots with the polluters).
As for Bhopal, well, accidents do happen. And the probabilities of
accidents increase measurably when the locals have a combined IQ of less than 5. Alternatively, perhaps that chemical plant was
merely "cleaning-out' its' environment?
Environmentalists might point out that if science lacks the capacity
to assess accurately the risk stemming from any given action, it
might be prudent to defer that action until accurate assessment is
available. Cost/benefit analysis only functions when assessment
of costs and benefits is reliable.
Here reflects a most serious flaw in your 'thinking' Steven.
It is the ACTIONS OF GOVERNMENT THAT MUST BE CHECKED!!!
Government must not be in the business of playing a guessing game.
Was it Hitler who 'guessed' Germanic superiority? What of all
tyrannical governments that 'guessed' the best form of economy?
And what of those breast implants????
Our ascendancy as a species is as much the consequence of our
ability to regulate each other as it is of our ability to regulate nature.
If one group is behaving in a way which endangers collective survival
- and we are, after all, a part of the environment - the rest have the right and the responsibility to stop them.
Pure politics, Steve, you little wimp. You are speaking of 'group'
warfare!...and this as man is about to depart a century of the
wholesale slaughter of one group or another...of countless millions,
Steve, you savage little snot!!!
DO NOT TRY THE PATIENCE OF THE MIGHTY GALT!!!
John (the thread waste-cleaner) Galt |
