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Non-Tech : Alternative energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Doren who wrote (8276)	5/27/2010 8:39:33 AM
From: FreedomForAll	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16955

I'm not sure that libertarians would agree with highways as a federal government institution. Had the feds not built the highway system, would transportation have stopped, been delayed, or been changed for the better? Would we now have much more efficient rail transport if federal support had not been bought by the auto and oil industry? Would the US be energy independent and the dollar be stronger? The face of the world would be very different and the result could have been better (or worse) than we have today. A free market will find better solutions. (Of course there hasn't been anything close to a free market since Lincoln started large scale corporate welfare in the US.) Does a free market imply no regulation? No, not if government does its job of protecting property rights for all parties instead of increasing rights for corporate contributors and destroying rights of competitors. I do think libertarians would be ok with defense, but how you define "defense" is crucial. How would "research" have been changed if trillions of federal funds not gone to "defense" research ? Would mass killing be more or less "efficient"? How would the funds have been allocated by the free market... perhaps toward more energy efficient or lower cost housing ? Why is government a good judge of how to invest in the future? Government has been controlled by private monied interests for a long time and decisions by government on taxing and spending are not egalitarian. A free market will find better solutions but they often will change the power structure, and that is the real error in expecting government to fund research benevolently. In part Wall St is to blame, but government has failed to protect property rights in this area, too. Wall St has had a near monopoly on equity funding for new business, enforced by government. Banking has had a monopoly on debt funding for new business, enforced by government. Competition and innovation has been stifled for generations because of this alone. I think we want many of the same things, but to me government has failed in its most basic function, equal protection of property rights, so I don't trust government to do the other things.