[Honclfibr]

I support the libertarian idealism as it seems to me to promote accountability for one's own actions. But it seems to imply that everyone lives in a bubble and that one man's actions don't affect others, or at least that everyone has a reasonable respect for the rights and needs of everyone else and that we will all live in peace and harmony without social pressures to regulate this.

Ok so we get rid of environmental laws, so hey if I want to dig a big hole in my garage floor and run a waste oil disposal business where my method of waste oil disposal is to pour all the waste oil into said hole, that's my business, it's my land. Of course, that waste oil might seep into the groundwater and pollute the water supply of my neighbors, but that's not my problem, they can buy bottled water. Or they can come over with their guns and we can decide who's right, after all that's why we have guns right?

I guess that's fine for some but I really don't feel like living in a society where I have to constantly defend my rights by force, so we as a society set forth rules like environmental protection and fair business practices and so forth and hire a police force to enfore those laws to make sure that some idiot can't ruin the world for the rest of us. And in practice that seems like a better solution to me than having to go around shooting all the idiots out there who are treading on my rights.

BTW that whole hole in the floor to dump the waste oil story, that's not just some slippery slope fiction...that actually happened in my hometown in the 70s, some tool was dumping gallons of waste oil down a hole in his garage every day until someone finally noticed and called the EPA. Tell me how we handle situations like that without wild-west-style shootouts every day at high noon to cull the idiot herd, and I'll gladly put my vote in the libertarian camp because other than that I'm pretty well enamored with their ideas.