Wednesday, March 9, 2011


Anarcho-capitalist, Andy Wright, has written something that I've said in various forms & pieces for years and I want to share it in its entirety.

But first... For those who aren't aware, the most over-used, trite, and utterly predictable argument against libertarianism & especially anarchism is that without government we'd have "no roads". We'd also, according to critics, have no schools, no protection from criminals and dangerous madmen, and all those other wonderful "services" that we are forced via taxation to pay for.

That argument is so easily torn apart that it's really not worth going into here, but what all those who always advocate for bigger, more expansive government on those grounds never bother to ask what they're accepting along with those lovely (pot-hole filled?) roads.

Wright nails it [edited slightly and links added for enhancement of the point]:
"Warning: The following comment contains language not suitable for minors or those who are offended easily. So if you don’t like it, don’t read it. Thank you. And now on to my rant.

This government has stolen more than half our income under threat of violence, incarcerates millions of nonviolent people for victimless crimes, puts to death innocent people after denying them access to DNA testing that could potentially have exonerated them, cost tens of thousands of lives with prohibitions, installs cameras in every cop car and on every street corner then arrests anyone who records them, sells off their unborn to foreign countries acquiring trillions of debt, runs Ponzi schemes, admittedly losses hundreds of billions of dollars, prints money, debases it’s currency, never fulfills any of it’s promises, does medical experiments on humans, invades countries who pose no threat and steals their natural resources, bombs innocent families in far away countries, has 1,000 military bases in 140 countries, tasers and brutalizes it’s own people for noncompliance to hundreds of thousands of ridiculous laws, criminalizes “risk”, guards poppy fields, imports drugs and then brutalizes the users, holds suspects without charges indefinitely and tortures those they think might have information. BUT WE GOT F***IN’ ROADS!

I can go on and on. People are being arrested for speech, they did not protect us from attacks (9/11). It does not protect us from criminals. Prisons are a revolving door for rapists and a vault door for pot smokers. We have the worlds highest prison population were 1 in 20 are raped and drugs are easier to get then on the street. So they kidnap people from the street for drug use and put them in a rape cage where drugs are everywhere. They are supposed to protect us from street gangs yet their memberships have increased 25,000 a year for over a decade. Shall I go on?

War on poverty? How’s that going? Victims of Katrina were rounded up and left to die and anyone who tried to escape were executed on the Danzinger Bridge. Judges making money from jailing nonviolent offenders (pot possession). Jury manipulation, politicians and cops getting away with crimes, corruption, murder…the whole damn thing makes me sick! BUT WE GOT ROADS!

You f***ing idiots! If I hear one more comment about our pothole filled, cracked, t-bone causing, head-on collision encouraging, pollution producing deathtraps or any of your other monopolistic and pathetic “services” like your abusive bullies with badges, failing public schools of bullying, propaganda and indoctrination, competition blocking hospitals, mostly volunteer fire fighters, the disgusting fluoride laced tap water, monopoly on the rest of the poorly provided utilities etc I am going to continue this rant and I will not care if it overloads facebook’s servers and shuts them down, which it probably will. And even if the government could provide us with clean water, great schools, cheap energy, affordable health care and beautiful roads, is it worth all the oppression and tyranny of enslavement to debt, violent theft, countless laws, endless wars, overflowing prisons and continued human slaughters?

I apologize for my language. Most of you know me and I rarely, if ever, curse. But this s*** has got to stop! F*** THEIR F***ING, GOD DAMNED, POS, F***ING ROADS!"
Sorry for the redacted language, but as much as I love all manner of language, this has always been kind of a PG13 blog.

Trust me though, not here - but in person - I will gladly use the same language to express this point. Roads aren't a cure-all. Roads can be, have been, and are privately funded, developed & maintained all over the world with no problems. For example... In Sweden:
"The Swedish road network totals about 420,000 km (261,000 miles). Two thirds of this consist of private roads, primarily unpaved forestry roads. Most private roads are open for use by the general public."
And while of course people would think all the private roads would be unpaved, that's not true either. Check out California's 91 Expressway congestion lanes... Also privately owned & operated (and definitely still not what you'd see in a full-on private system). Government isn't needed for roads, and the trade-offs its asked us all to accept just to keep getting force-provided roads are absurd.

I say it's time to drop that ridiculous line of argument and start really asking what we're getting in addition to the roads. Wars? Prohibitions? A fifth of the population in jail?

What Andy Wright said.

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