Larken Rose
I don't know how to make a car. I understand how the various parts work (generally speaking), but I don't have the knowledge (or the equipment) to actually make one myself. Chances are, you don't either. Luckily, SOME people do. Or, to be more precise, lots of different people know how to make lots of different pieces of a car, and other people know how to put them together into an actual car. Now imagine someone asks you, "if government doesn't make cars for all of us, how will the cars be made?" If you're like me, you can't actually answer in any sort of detail. We know that people CAN make them through purely voluntary interaction--since they already do (although they get continually hindered and robbed by the state in the process)--even if we can't describe every detail of the process. Our inability to describe every detail is NOT a good reason to advocate nationalizing the car industry.
The point is that it is the ingenuity, inventiveness, and manual labor of PEOPLE that makes cars exist, and that makes ALL man-made services or things of value exist. So when someone asks a question that starts with "But if not for government, how would we..." I have to wonder what magic ingredient they think "government" adds to the equation. It doesn't add any resources (though it sometimes steals and redistributes them). It doesn't add any know-how, or any actual work. Yet all such questions imply that WITH "government," somehow the problem is much easier to solve. Why the hell do people assume that? Does it help for one group of ignorant parasites to have the ability to FORCE their bad ideas on everyone else? If I was appointed Car Czar, and given unlimited funding and regulatory power, and assigned the task of making it so every family had a car--the design and creation of which I had to micromanage--I would utterly fail, no matter how hard I tried or how good my intentions were. I would, however, be smart enough to RESIGN, and stay the hell out of the way of those free human beings who WOULD make it work, through mutually voluntary cooperation and organization.
The same is true of EVERY challenge or problem facing humanity: what is best for humanity as a whole will NEVER come about through authoritarian domination and coercion. To think otherwise is profoundly juvenile (literally): to imagine that we mere mortals can't possibly figure out how to make things work, but that our glorious lords and masters, with their magical wisdom and altruism (which for some reason is always exerted through extortion and violence) can fix everything. It is the effort of the human mind and body that makes good stuff happen. To expect state coercion to make it easier to accomplish ANYTHING moral and worthwhile is as sane as saying, "but how can I improve my health problems if I don't hit myself in the head with this sledgehammer?"
https://www.facebook.com/larken.rose
I don't know how to make a car. I understand how the various parts work (generally speaking), but I don't have the knowledge (or the equipment) to actually make one myself. Chances are, you don't either. Luckily, SOME people do. Or, to be more precise, lots of different people know how to make lots of different pieces of a car, and other people know how to put them together into an actual car. Now imagine someone asks you, "if government doesn't make cars for all of us, how will the cars be made?" If you're like me, you can't actually answer in any sort of detail. We know that people CAN make them through purely voluntary interaction--since they already do (although they get continually hindered and robbed by the state in the process)--even if we can't describe every detail of the process. Our inability to describe every detail is NOT a good reason to advocate nationalizing the car industry.
The point is that it is the ingenuity, inventiveness, and manual labor of PEOPLE that makes cars exist, and that makes ALL man-made services or things of value exist. So when someone asks a question that starts with "But if not for government, how would we..." I have to wonder what magic ingredient they think "government" adds to the equation. It doesn't add any resources (though it sometimes steals and redistributes them). It doesn't add any know-how, or any actual work. Yet all such questions imply that WITH "government," somehow the problem is much easier to solve. Why the hell do people assume that? Does it help for one group of ignorant parasites to have the ability to FORCE their bad ideas on everyone else? If I was appointed Car Czar, and given unlimited funding and regulatory power, and assigned the task of making it so every family had a car--the design and creation of which I had to micromanage--I would utterly fail, no matter how hard I tried or how good my intentions were. I would, however, be smart enough to RESIGN, and stay the hell out of the way of those free human beings who WOULD make it work, through mutually voluntary cooperation and organization.
The same is true of EVERY challenge or problem facing humanity: what is best for humanity as a whole will NEVER come about through authoritarian domination and coercion. To think otherwise is profoundly juvenile (literally): to imagine that we mere mortals can't possibly figure out how to make things work, but that our glorious lords and masters, with their magical wisdom and altruism (which for some reason is always exerted through extortion and violence) can fix everything. It is the effort of the human mind and body that makes good stuff happen. To expect state coercion to make it easier to accomplish ANYTHING moral and worthwhile is as sane as saying, "but how can I improve my health problems if I don't hit myself in the head with this sledgehammer?"
https://www.facebook.com/larken.rose