November 19, 2003

Public Services

Revisiting this silly bunch, the comment thread from this post.

I'll take one representative line -

[I]sn't public transit contrary to Randian philosophy[?]

I'm not a qualified 'Randian,' but public transit is contrary to libertarian philosophy in general. The author, and others on that comment thread argue that a libertarian should not use public transport or other public services since we argue against their existence.

This idea mis-represents libertarianism in an important aspect. We don't believe public transport shouldn't exist, or for that matter the public safety net or other government programs. The problem is not that they exist, but that they are government monopolies funded in an unethical manner. You may remember the bit I wrote about the ethics of the income tax here.

Since some government services are often monopolies, and public transport is a good example, they choke off avenues of private development. Of course there's no completely privately owned city bus systems, no one in their right mind would want to compete with the government owned systems. Since governments have effectively denied people privately owned options, I don't see any ethical dilemma in using the public systems.

Additionally, if the libertarian in question is a wage earner and a taxpayer, it's likely that he's paid his way on the public transport system many times over.

Posted by Walter at November 19, 2003 08:30 AM
Comments

Let's be honest: a lot of those comments were directed by people who just don't like libertarians and were looking to score cheap points at his expense. A lot of them were quite simply being jerks.

Posted by: zombyboy at November 19, 2003 04:25 PM

Amen, brother. The idea that because a person disagrees with a certain policy that they shouldn't use it at all is a silly notion. I disagree with an inordinate number of government policies; the government's space program for instance; yet I still feel a great deal of pride in the accomplishments of the Apollo Program. And while I would prefer that government not spend my money on public transportation, I see no reason not to use it if we're stuck with it.

Posted by: Andrew at November 22, 2003 11:50 AM