How do libertarians view drunk driving?

[jimprofitanon]

Yes, some people might not be much different intoxicated as opposed to sober. But I don't remember Ayn Rand ever addressing it...

If someone is intoxicated, they've lowered their ability to rationalize presumably, they are also in a several thousand pound vehicle going atleast thirty miles per hour. This is a weapon at this point, and thus, a

Comments

Okay, your post might merit some discussion, if you can tone down the pugnacious buffoonery

[montecristo]

1) Get over yourself. Go eject yourself. Federalism is a perfectly valid approach to the problems brought about by federal meddling and it certainly is how the country was founded to operate

Re: Okay, your post might merit some discussion, if you can tone down the pugnacious buffoonery

[bertro]

in the case of private roads, it could be regarded as a contract violation if, as a condition for driving on an owner's road, the motorist previously specifically agrees not to do so in an inebriated state as a condition for being allowed access.

This is no different for roads owned by the public.

Re: Okay, your post might merit some discussion, if you can tone down the pugnacious buffoonery

[inibo]

Except for the lack of a contract.

Re: Okay, your post might merit some discussion, if you can tone down the pugnacious buffoonery

[bertro]

You've agreed to the terms by using the road. Like with all that computer software and stuff. It's not like the fact you'll get fined and possibly stripped of your license is some secret hidden in the small print.

Re: Okay, your post might merit some discussion, if you can tone down the pugnacious buffoonery

[montecristo]

If I come over to your house with my lawnmower and cut your lawn and then knock on your door and demand $80 for this "service" that is not a contract.

Re: Okay, your post might merit some discussion, if you can tone down the pugnacious buffoonery

[bertro]

Now you're just rolling out libertarian analogies and not even bothering to apply them to the specific topic we're discussing.

If the road in front of your house were privately owned and it was widely known that the owner lets anyone use it as long as they follow a specific set of rules, it would work just the same. The difference is you could decide to buy a whole bunch of houses in a row, knock them down and build your own road next to his, but in reality there'd be little difference for all but a few people.

Re: Okay, your post might merit some discussion, if you can tone down the pugnacious buffoonery

[montecristo]

You keep using the word OWNER as if you are entitled to butress your argument with it. I am disputing that entitlement. "Public ownership" is not ownership. There is a world of difference between government arbitrarily dictating to people and people voluntarily contracting with one another. A private market in roads and transportation would almost certainly have a different set of rules and conditions for usage than would those roads controlled by governments.

Re: Okay, your post might merit some discussion, if you can tone down the pugnacious buffoonery

[bertro]

It's funny, I actually didn't use the words "public owner" in that particular comment.
Our ideological differences are as always. I hold that you'd be subject to whatever rules of the private road you're using same as you are now with the public one's we have. You could look for routes with rules you prefer, but that wouldn't always be possible or cost effective. Then you'd have to deal with whatever effects a lack of unity and the whims of private owners might bring, on which we can only speculate because we've never seen a community rely on private roads, at least that I know.

My home country has showed me that public transportation can actually work like a clock, it need only be handled competently. Some people still wanted to sell all our rail roads into private hands. The public (including me) overwhelmingly said "no way." To me that's public ownership right there.

Re: Okay, your post might merit some discussion, if you can tone down the pugnacious buffoonery

[montecristo]

I was objecting to your assertion that public and private ownership were essentially the same. They're not. Public ownership doesn't even exist as anything other than a floating abstraction. You were asserting that laws against "drunk driving" were essentially the same thing as conditions in a private contract for service; they're not. In a system of private ownership, the owner of the roads in question would more than likely not be as "proactively" intrusive with regards to the states of his customers, although the customer's liability to victims of his own negligence would certainly be higher than under a public system. The result of voluntary trade-offs in a free market would likely produce a much more efficient, moral, and safe balance of rules and expectations for the operation of transportation than the political system produces.

Re: Okay, your post might merit some discussion, if you can tone down the pugnacious buffoonery

[bertro]

The result of voluntary trade-offs in a free market would likely produce a much more efficient, moral, and safe balance of rules and expectations for the operation of transportation than the political system produces.

This claim is what it always comes down to here. It's not provable because it's never been enacted on any significant scale. Much like communists will tell you that communism has never been implemented properly.
People are convinced that relinquishing all force would be just putting us at the mercy of opportunists instead and/or lead to chaos and collapse and so they never will. You feel they're wrong, but most people feel they're right.

Re: Okay, your post might merit some discussion, if you can tone down the pugnacious buffoonery

[montecristo]

You are wrong about that. It is not that the libertarian solutions are never tried: they are the default case. People don't realize it. Most of the world already operates on anarchistic premises. Left in freedom, human beings will tend to cooperate to solve problems. The social sphere, even though crowded by the political sphere, is still larger. The difficulty arises when people listen to power-hungry politicians (are there any other kind) who make promises of preventing or ending certain problems if only they are allowed to trespass on people's liberties to do so. The promises never pay off. No politician ever promises an objective benchmark and then promises that if their proposed "solution" does not meet the criteria for success they will repeal it.

Re: Okay, your post might merit some discussion, if you can tone down the pugnacious buffoonery

[bertro]

Left in freedom, human beings will tend to cooperate to solve problems.

They also steal, sabotage and murder one another to solve problems.

I don't give credit to libertarianism for what people do with the freedom they currently have because I support those freedoms as well, I do not oppose all freedom whatsoever, I merely find the current limits on freedom as they are in most modern democracies to be a reasonable trade-off.

Re: Okay, your post might merit some discussion, if you can tone down the pugnacious buffoonery

[montecristo]

They also steal, sabotage and murder one another to solve problems.

In cases of broad-based social dysfunction scratch any such society and you will find a corrupt political sphere at the root of it. The lawless "Wild West" is a myth.

You only find them a reasonable trade-off because you have encountered limits as to what you can imagine in terms of cooperative solutions to the problems of human needs. As I have said before, the extent of government everywhere defines the failure-boundary of human imagination. As more cooperative methods and solutions are discovered or invented, the political sphere will shrink as the social sphere expands, driven by the demands of a growing and fluid capital base and an expanding and diversifying division of labor network.

Re: Okay, your post might merit some discussion, if you can tone down the pugnacious buffoonery

[reality_hammer]

They do that in Virginia.

Re: Okay, your post might merit some discussion, if you can tone down the pugnacious buffoonery

[inibo]

Maryland’s transportation system is funded through... motor fuel taxes,vehicle titling taxes,registration fees,operating revenues and corporate income taxes.1
Does that mean if I choose not to drive I don't have to pay the motor fuel tax on the gasoline I use in my lawn mower and my employer gets a tax break, or do the "terms" only go one way?

1) Executive Summary of the 2007-2012 Consolidated Transportation Program.

Re: Okay, your post might merit some discussion, if you can tone down the pugnacious buffoonery

[bertro]

Taxation are a whole separate set of terms.