Liberals are brought up to believe that if the government doesn't do it, it won't get done, or it will be done wrong.

In communist countries, they are raised to think that if the government does not make bread, shoes, cars, houses, eyeglasses, or television sets, then obviously no one will. Are they right?

"Government's only role is to help individuals defend themselves from force and fraud."

This is basically right. Heck, radical libertarians don't even want this much government, but I'm a limited-government libertarian for the most part. The trick apparently is keeping it limited.

The important thing to remember is that protection from force and fraud covers a wide area. Policemen, courts, military, contract enforcement, and other things are included.

If you have read libertarian literature, you know there have been many methods proposed for dealing with most of your objections. I can come up with a few simple ones.

If they meant that, there would be no roads or highways except where private industry finds them profitable. Toll bridges where profitable.

If a road or bridge is really needed, you can make money from it. Or more likely, highly-traveled toll roads would help subsidize less profitable ones. And no one would stop a group of people or a small town from financing a road themselves if they needed one. You can bet that roadbuilding would be a damn sight cheaper if it wasn't currently used as a giant political pork sinkhole for taxes. And hey, maybe other methods of getting around would finally start to look good--like mass transit and trains. Sure, it might be more difficult to build towns in the middle of nowhere. Brazil thought so, and is financing logging roads into the rain forests. The loggers couldn't afford them, see.

No safety regulations for cars. No emissions controls, either. Return to backyard burning.

The liberal assumption that all businessmen are crooks, and all politicians are saints, may not actually hold up under close examination. One assumes that safer cars would sell slightly better than ones that explode. Sure, airbags would be an option instead of being shoved up your nose.

As for emissions, many pollution controls can be properly dealt with under issues of violation of property rights, and could be considered a legitimate area for law enforcement. Like throwing trash in your neighbor's yard, basically.

No regulation of nuclear power plants or of dams. There would be no building of levees. No NOAA (weather bureau), no Bureau of Standards, if one is to believe what they say.



Regulation of many dangerous industries could easily be handled via the private insurance industry. It is ironic that had nuclear power plants not been artificially protected from such liability by the government, there probably wouldn't be any...at least of the kind that required massive liability protection. As for levees, are you trying to convince me that everything done by the Corps of Engineers was a great idea? Maybe you need to talk to an environmentalist. Maybe without levees fewer people would be living on flood plains. Who knows? Again, nothing would keep a group of people from getting together and financing something like that. Voluntarily.

And are you trying to convince me that no one would pay to find out the weather? And a Bureau of Standards, like any other regulatory organization, need not be a government agency. There are many private standards organizations.

No food or drug regulation, testing, standards. It's not "fraud" if nothing is claimed.

So, how well do you think a can of "Campbell's God Only Knows What's In It" soup would sell? Again, standards do not necessarily imply Federal government involvement, and most food businesses are really not out to kill their customers.

No NIH, subidies for health or other research. No public schools, no school for people who thought they couldn't afford it, no universities, no NASA.

How much of the NIH money is well-spent? How much wasted? The assumption again is that no private organization would ever perform pure research. Only governments are apparently so enlightened.

We've gone over public schools before. Like any other essential service, there is no reason it needs to be provided by a government, and quite a few reasons it shouldn't. There is no reason that decent schooling couldn't be affordable by almost everyone, although maybe not in the form it is today. As for universities, many of the best ones are private, in case you missed it. Stanford, here in my neighborhood, was founded by an evil railroad baron, and is largely financed by rentals on huge land holdings in Palo Alto and elsewhere.

No NASA. At least not for civilian space flight. Ouch. But hey, if I can't stand my own ox being gored, I have no business calling myself a libertarian.

Restructure the military so it can help "individuals", not groups, not the nation, "defend themselves", not their neighbor, not the townspeople, no their fellow Americans. It says "help individuals defend themselves".

Not sure what this means. Limited government definitely includes a military for national defense.

People without means would starve in the streets, without medical care. Doing anything wouldn't fit "fraud" or defending from force. A starving person isn't very strong, usually.

Again, the bizarre assumption that charity and help must proceed from Washington, or it will never happen. Wjere do people learn to think like this? Where is this written? Is the welfare money from Washington doing the job? Or is it perpetuating a stable of captive voters?

Do you really think most people are not as smart as politicians? Do you really think we can't do a better job of running our own lives?

Now, only an idiot would believe that we could suddenly wave a magic wand and bring about a libertarian society. All I want to see is for us to slow down our mad race towards total government control of our lives and fortunes, and at least turn around and start to slowly head in the other direction.

We are spending over two trillion dollars this year, and the growth is increasing rapidly. This is over twice what the government spent in 1974, in constant dollars adjusted for inflation. Is it that unreasonable to assume that maybe every dime is not absolutely essential? That maybe our government is doing more than it really needs to?