Thursday, January 6, 2011

Editorial: Quit complaining! This is just how Republicans govern! Deal!

In today's defense of the City's bungling of the New Year storm, the unnamed Courier editor glosses over some salient points that commenters and others are making. Sure, lots of people are making ignorant complaints. But there's wheat among the chaff.

"Road crews worked hard to cinder and plow the ice and snow," says the editor, but residents all over town agree that the plows came much later than usual if at all, and the cinders rarely appeared before Sunday. Timely and sufficient application of cinders alone would have vastly improved safety on the streets and promoted ice melt even under sub-freezing conditions during the day. Today, a week after the snow fell, there still aren't enough cinders on most streets to make a difference. This is in clear contrast to previous practice in similar weather events. People reasonably want to know why.

We've heard all kinds of big talk about focusing on public-safety "needs" over silly "wants" from Mr Lamerson and other Council members and staff. Here we had a clear public-safety need that was poorly addressed, and nothing but lame excuses and promises from official sources.

Someone at City Hall is failing to answer the pertinent questions. With this piece the editor is abetting that failure. If the Council were dominated by Democrats, you can bet that the editor would be far more demanding.

12 comments:

Jon said...

And what's the solution? Privatize roads then the private companies would be beholden to its customers. Government has no obligation to be beholden to its electorate.

Steven Ayres said...

I'm sure that strategy works great in Fantasyland.

Jon said...

Considering you have yours already tried out and it doesn't work I would call yours fantasy land and mine reality.

Why do you like to insult so much? Make love not war. Peace my brother.

Steven Ayres said...

If your idea is reality, go ahead and point to an example of a successful system of the kind you describe. Just one.

Feeling insulted is your choice. The ideas you harp on over and over were fully discredited before the Enlightenment, and they are even less useful today. They can only seem viable with no useful grounding in real-world economics, history, sociology, political science or business management. I was tired of hearing them when I was a freshman in college, and I have little patience left. You're advocating a reinvention of feudalism. It's just stupid.

birther t. bagur said...

Actually, instead of Fantasyland, we can look at places where the government has collapsed to see dovh49's Libertarian ideas in action. Somalia has no government, no taxes, no regulation. Whoever has the most guns controls the infrastructure, creates/plows/tolls the roads, and generally calls the shots in any given area.
The "tell" that indicates that dovh49 and the rest of the John Galt-ian "Master's of the Universe" are not serious about their own ideology is the fact that not a single one of them has moved to Somalia to take advantage of this situation. Instead they sit here sucking up their sweet, sweet, Medicare, and clogging up our government-run "general welfare clause" sewer systems.

Jon said...

birther t. bagur,

"Louis James: What would you say to people who point out that when the government collapsed in Somalia a few years ago, bloodshed ensued, or that when the government disappeared from New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, ugly chaos did erupt?

Doug Casey: It's as you said: a cultural matter. If you have people who've been brought up to believe that the only limits on what you can or should do is the force exerted by the authorities, it's no surprise that when the greater power disappears, they reach out to take whatever they want, by force.

That's clearly the case in Somalia, but it's also true of the people stranded in New Orleans, who were primarily those with no money to flee — in other words, the inhabitants of government housing projects. It's not politically correct to point this out, but those people had, on average, a distinctly different culture from that of the average American.

Actually, ex-police states are the most dangerous places — like Russia in the early '90s, the Congo in the early '60s, or Haiti today, because they have a culture of repression that's like a pressure cooker. When the lid comes off, it's a mess.

L: I seem to recall a flood in West Virginia in recent years that wiped out half of a small town. Instead of raping and robbing each other, those not hurt helped the victims. They housed them, fed them, and even helped them build new houses. And no one made them do it. It wasn't a case of better government — it was just their culture to do so.

Doug: And culture is a matter of education, which means that societies that function on voluntary cooperation, as in Cafayate, Disneyland, or the town you're talking about in West Virginia, are possible.

There is nothing in human nature that makes it impossible to create a society of people who respect each other's rights and follow accepted systems for working out differences, like getting in lines at movie theaters. There would still be criminals and sociopaths to deal with, as these occur in a standard distribution in every population — but the point is that the society doesn't have to be built around an essentially criminal organization, the state."

See http://www.lewrockwell.com/casey/casey45.1.html

PS,

I support myself and my family inasmuch as the state allows me to (i.e., I still use public roads etc). I don't use medicare, medicaid, etc. Never used unemployment or any other ilk like that. I have a masters degree in Electrical Engineering and own my own business.

Jon said...

So statism keeps people from doing great harm from each other? Need we forget that the US is the greatest exporter of violence in the world? Have we forgotten how many innocents have died in the recent past like Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, etc. Do we forget all the economic blockades that we set against nations that result in young children and the elderly dying, e.g., in Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, etc. Do we so soon forget who put these regimes in power? Was it not through the US military and the CIA operatives?

Jon said...

Do we forget who funds many of these fights and child soldiers in Somalia?

The pentagon does.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/maloney/maloney22.1.html

Jon said...

Who's at fault for Somalia becoming shambles?

http://mises.org/daily/2066

The CIA.

From at least 1991 to 2006 the country was doing good being left alone, not perfect but good.

From the CIA Fact book:

"Despite the seeming anarchy, Somalia's service sector has managed to survive and grow. Telecommunication firms provide wireless services in most major cities and offer the lowest international call rates on the continent. In the absence of a formal banking sector, money exchange services have sprouted throughout the country, handling between $500 million and $1 billion in remittances annually. Mogadishu's main market offers a variety of goods from food to the newest electronic gadgets. Hotels continue to operate, and militias provide security."

Jon said...

Steven,

Where has it worked?

Read the following:
"An American Experiment in Anarcho-Capitalism: The - Not So Wild, Wild West"
http://mises.org/journals/jls/3_1/3_1_2.pdf

See also "Conceived in Liberty" by Murray Rothbard and his analysis of the Quakers when there was no state.

We must also remember that anarcho-capatilism isn't no government, it does have governance by the people through peaceful means. It just doesn't have statism.

flounder said...

And there is your proof. Straw men.

Jon said...

I just had a thought. You guys probably think I'm a hard core voluntarist. I believe in it in theory but know if it would actually work or how it would work. Although it is the only pure principled form of governance that could exist without any coercion I would except a compromise, i.e., minarchy, what our country was founded on but we are now far from it. We currently live under authoritarianism. Yes, that's right authoritarianism, the president can kill his fiefs at will. Ask Obama himself. So much for being the president that would bring civil rights back to the people.