{"id":1186,"date":"2012-10-23T13:56:58","date_gmt":"2012-10-23T21:56:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/?p=1186"},"modified":"2012-10-23T16:24:58","modified_gmt":"2012-10-24T00:24:58","slug":"national-parks-and-other-fallacies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/archives\/1186","title":{"rendered":"National Parks and Other Fallacies"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/em> not to own any land, all land ought <\/em>to be privately owned, and since the government has violated this “ought<\/em>” 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<\/em> of proper human action, namely, taking something, land in this case, by force. (Never mind that history records no examples to the contrary).<\/p>\n

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<\/em>. The way things is<\/em>, 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).<\/p>\n

So what’s a Red Rocks lovin’ libertarian<\/a> 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<\/em> to be, it is<\/em> what it is<\/em>, and there’s nothing practically I can do about that in the margins of an individual life.<\/p>\n

Oddly, what set me to thinking about this was a short, well-reasoned article<\/a> re: What libertarians really think about big corporations.<\/p>\n

Already, the usual fallacies have resurfaced. If you don\u2019t want the government to run education, you must be against education. If you don\u2019t want the government to run healthcare, you must not want people to get healthcare.<\/em><\/p>\n

This misunderstanding is often summed up with comments like, \u201cI\u2019m not sure I\u2019m comfortable with an \u2018every man for himself\u2019 society.\u201d This springs from the absurd assumption that human beings never confer benefits upon one another except when forced to do so at gunpoint.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wikipediapreview_detectlinks":true,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1186"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1191,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186\/revisions\/1191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}