…to argue that a tax-collecting government can legitimately protect its citizens against aggression is to contradict oneself, since such an entity starts off the entire process by doing the very opposite of protecting those under its control. —Walter Block
Over 40,000 people die on the nation’s roadways every year, and you or a loved one might one day join this horrid list.
Do not be mislead by the oft made contention that the actual cause of highway fatalities is speed, drunkenness, vehicle malfunction, driver error, etc. These are only proximate causes. The ultimate cause of our dying like flies in traffic accidents is that those who own and manage these assets supposedly in the name of the public—the various roads bureaucrats—cannot manage their way out of the proverbial paper bag. It is they and they alone who are responsible for this carnage.
This does not mean that were thoroughfares placed in private hands that the death toll would be zero. It would not. But, at least, every time the life of someone was tragically snuffed out, someone in a position to ameliorate these dangerous conditions would lose money, and this tends, wonderfully, to focus the minds of the owners. This is why we do not have similar problems with bananas, baskets, and bicycles, and the myriad of other goods and services supplied to us by a (relatively) free enterprise system.
—Walter Block
In 1948, white teenage unemployment in the U.S. was 10.2%, while black teenage unemployment was only 9.4%. This was when the effective minimum wage rate was much lower. Today, in a much less discriminatory epoch, but where teenagers are “protected” by a more stringent minimum wage law, white youth unemployment is 13.9%, while black youth unemployment is an astounding and shameful 33.5%. —Walter Block, The Case for Discrimination, 2010
It is sometimes argued that one of the benefits of legalizing addictive drugs is that they could be taxed, and the government revenues enhanced. From this perspective, this would be the only valid case against legalization. —Walter Block
Libertarianism is neither of the left nor of the right. It is unique. It is sui generis. It is apart from left and right. The left-right political spectrum simply has no room for libertarianism. Think of an equilateral triangle, with libertarianism at one corner, the left at a second corner and the right at the third corner. We are equally distant from both of those misbegotten political economic philosophies. No, better yet, think in terms of an isosceles triangle, with us at the top and the two of them at the bottom, indicating they have more in common with each other than with us. —Walter Block
