Years ago (less so recently) I participated in discussions on an Internet newsgroup, now defunct. There I saw certain quixotic libertarians argue, supposedly on principle, that they would never a visit a national park. So far as I can recall, their reasoning was that the government ought not to own any land, all land ought to be privately owned, and since the government has violated this “ought” by asserting eminent domain over national park land, they will therefore not visit a national park. Fearing, I suppose, the cognitive dissonance that would arise in them if they enjoyed an experience they knew involved a violation of a fundamental ought of proper human action, namely, taking something, land in this case, by force. (Never mind that history records no examples to the contrary).
I was pretty quixotic myself at the time. Many who know me would say I still am. Nevertheless, the above reasoning bothered me then, and still does. Probably because I like national parks, not because they’re “national,” along with everything that entails, but because there’s cool stuff to see there; I enjoy nature. Nothing unprincipled about that. Would I prefer to hand over my entrance fee to a private property owner rather than a park ranger, sure, I suppose, but that’s not the way things Is. The way things is, is that the government has claimed ownership to these lands, and if I want to see the land I have to pay the government. (Even if you don’t want to see the land, if you pay income tax you pay anyway, but forget about that for now).
So what’s a Red Rocks lovin’ libertarian supposed to do? Forgo the pleasure of observing natural wonders? That’s inconsistent with my moral imperative to do things that make me happy. So no, even while I happen to live in a world that arguably isn’t as it ought to be, it is what it is, and there’s nothing practically I can do about that in the margins of an individual life.
Oddly, what set me to thinking about this was a short, well-reasoned article re: What libertarians really think about big corporations.
Already, the usual fallacies have resurfaced. If you don’t want the government to run education, you must be against education. If you don’t want the government to run healthcare, you must not want people to get healthcare.
This misunderstanding is often summed up with comments like, “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with an ‘every man for himself’ society.” This springs from the absurd assumption that human beings never confer benefits upon one another except when forced to do so at gunpoint.