Propertarian Myths Debunked

Kevin Carson on the health care monopoly…

Kevin Carson, the most prominent voice of mutualism in modern times, weighs in on the problems of the health care system and their mutualist solutions.

Health care is a classic example of what Ivan Illich, in Tools for Conviviality, called a “radical monopoly.” State-sponsored crowding out makes other, cheaper (but often more appropriate) forms of treatment less usable, and renders cheaper (but adequate) treatments artificially scarce. Artificially centralized, high-tech, and skill-intensive ways of doing things make it harder for ordinary people to translate their skills and knowledge into use-value. The State’s regulations put an artificial floor beneath overhead cost, so that there’s a markup of several hundred percent to do anything; decent, comfortable poverty becomes impossible.

A good analogy is subsidies to freeways and urban sprawl, which make our feet less usable and raise living expenses by enforcing artificial dependence on cars. Local building codes primarily reflect the influence of building contractors, so competition from low-cost unconventional techniques (T-slot and other modular designs, vernacular materials like bales and papercrete, and so on) is artificially locked out of the market. Charles Johnson described the way governments erect barriers to people meeting their own needs and make comfortable subsistence artificially costly, in the specific case of homelessness, in “Scratching By: How the Government Creates Poverty as We Know It” (The Freeman, December 2007).

The major proposals for health care “reform” that went before Congress would do little or nothing to address the institutional sources of high cost.

Walter Block supports child prostitution.

Surprise! Walter Block is still a raving lunatic.

From Libertarianism vs Objectivism; A Response to Peter Schwartz, Reason Papers, Summer 2003.

Suppose that there is a starvation situation, and the parent of the four year old child (who is not an adult) does not have enough money to keep him alive. A wealthy NAMBLA man offers this parent enough money to keep him and his family alive – if he will consent to his having sex with the child. We assume, further, that this is the only way to preserve the life of this four year old boy. Would it be criminal child abuse for the parent to accept this offer?

Not on libertarian grounds. For surely it is better for the child to be a live victim of sexual abuse rather than unsullied and dead. Rather, it is the parent who consents to the death of his child, when he could have kept him alive by such extreme measures, who is the real abuser.

Do you have Facebook?

I was late because of the roadblock.

A: “How could you arrive late? I gave you very specific directions on how to get here.”
B: “There was a roadblock on the I-20 exit you told me to take, so I had to do a detour, which cost me some time.”
A: “That’s impossible! I’ve given these directions to thousands of people, and I was never told that any of them ever arrived late. You must be lying.”

B: “There was a roadblock on the I-20 exit you told me to take, so I had to do a detour, which cost me some time.”
A: “Look, the map is never wrong. Do you see a roadblock on it? No. So you can’t possibly have seen one. It was a hallucination. You must be on drugs or something. What a terrible person you are!”

B: “There was a roadblock on the I-20 exit you told me to take, so I had to do a detour, which cost me some time.”
A: “Only dishonest people would take a detour. You must have made it up and used that extra time to commit a crime. I’m gonna call the police!”

B: “There was a roadblock on the I-20 exit you told me to take, so I had to do a detour, which cost me some time.”
A: “I ordered you to take this route AND to arrive here on time. You failed to obey my orders. What a disappointment you turned out to be. Why can’t you be here on time like everyone else?”

B: “There was a roadblock on the I-20 exit you told me to take, so I had to do a detour, which cost me some time.”
A: “Suck it up and be more professional. No one wants to hear some bullshit roadblock story.”

B: “There was a roadblock on the I-20 exit you told me to take, so I had to do a detour, which cost me some time.”
A: “Excuses, excuses… take some fucking responsibility for your actions. It’s your fault if you’re late, no one else’s. Don’t go blaming the roadblock for your own personal failings.”

B: “There was a roadblock on the I-20 exit you told me to take, so I had to do a detour, which cost me some time.”
A: “How dare you talk back to me? No one cares if there was a roadblock. It was probably your fault anyway! You can’t do anything right! Just shut up!”

B: “There was a roadblock on the I-20 exit you told me to take, so I had to do a detour, which cost me some time.”
A: “You always have some excuse for your lackadaisical behaviour. If you don’t stop being so rebellious, we’re not going to serve you any dessert this evening. It’s as simple as that!”

B: “There was a roadblock on the I-20 exit you told me to take, so I had to do a detour, which cost me some time.”
A: “That’s so self-serving of you! If you hadn’t been late, you wouldn’t have come up with some cockamamie excuse. Good people arrive on time, and when they don’t, they take responsibility for their actions and don’t have to invoke irrelevant roadblocks.”

B: “There was a roadblock on the I-20 exit you told me to take, so I had to do a detour, which cost me some time.”
A: “You need to stay out here and cool off until you change your tune. I don’t want to see someone as agitated as you around the dinner table.”

B: “There was a roadblock on the I-20 exit you told me to take, so I had to do a detour, which cost me some time.”
A: “Are you trying to make me feel guilty for this? Implying that my directions were bad? This is your fault, not mine! You were the one driving!”

B: “There was a roadblock on the I-20 exit you told me to take, so I had to do a detour, which cost me some time.”
A: “Oh fine, just make us wait for you… as if we don’t have anything else to do… It’s not like you care about us anyway…”

B: “There was a roadblock on the I-20 exit you told me to take, so I had to do a detour, which cost me some time.”
A: “As if you didn’t mean for this delay to happen… come on, we know you like to make us wait on you. You are so arrogant…”

B: “There was a roadblock on the I-20 exit you told me to take, so I had to do a detour, which cost me some time.”
A: “That roadblock only exists in your mind. Stop thinking so negatively and you’ll always be here on time. Otherwise, you’ll keep pulling these things into your life.”

B: “There was a roadblock on the I-20 exit you told me to take, so I had to do a detour, which cost me some time.”
A: “This imaginary roadblock is a reflection of your own feelings of inadequacy about yourself. If you only got help and cured those feelings, you wouldn’t be having these problems.”

B: “There was a roadblock on the I-20 exit you told me to take, so I had to do a detour, which cost me some time.”
A: “This imaginary roadblock is created by spiritual entities which latch on to your mind and feed you negativity. Give me money so I can help you get these entities out of your mind, and you’ll have total control over your driving.”

B: “There was a roadblock on the I-20 exit you told me to take, so I had to do a detour, which cost me some time.”
A: “Your problem is that you don’t have enough faith. Let go and let God. With faith, you can do anything. The fact that this happened to you only proves that you don’t have enough faith.”

B: “There was a roadblock on the I-20 exit you told me to take, so I had to do a detour, which cost me some time.”
A: “I don’t care what your excuse is! Being late is morally wrong. You are sick in the head! We need to take away your car so you can’t go anywhere ever again. You are forbidden to ever come here!”

B: “There was a roadblock on the I-20 exit you told me to take, so I had to do a detour, which cost me some time.”
A jumps on B and starts beating him up, screaming obscenities.

B: “There was a roadblock on the I-20 exit you told me to take, so I had to do a detour, which cost me some time.”
A draws a gun and shoots B.

.

Do these answers seem normal to you?

And yet, we use these exact same answers to invalidate people’s feelings constantly, without realizing how absolutely bizarre and insane they are… Is it any wonder that we are all warped in the head, when we are fed this insanity regularly?

This is what it sounds like to die.

From pictures for sad children.