Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site dciem.UUCP Path: utzoo!dciem!mmt From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: Somewhat puzzled reply to Rich Rosen on libertarianism Message-ID: <1157@dciem.UUCP> Date: Sun, 21-Oct-84 15:50:55 EDT Article-I.D.: dciem.1157 Posted: Sun Oct 21 15:50:55 1984 Date-Received: Sun, 21-Oct-84 17:37:54 EDT References: <3249@rabbit.UUCP> Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada Lines: 66 ============== Let's take town sewers as an example. My understanding of the way they typically come about is that the town government decides at some point that the town should have sewers and goes through some long irrelevant process that ultimately results in a construction plan. If I live in this town, I am probably told at this point that a sewer line is going to be constructed onto my property, that I must connect my house to it, that I must pay $3,000 for this connection, and that I must shut down my septic tank. If I don't like those terms, tough. If the sewer line is going to rip up the landscaping I spent five years carefully arranging, tough. If I decide sometime in the future that my sewer bills are too high, tough. If the sewer system were privately constructed, the situation from my viewpoint might look similar, but the differences are important. A representative of the sewer company might come to me and say that for $3,000 they'll hook me up to the sewer system they're building. If I do want to be hooked up, I'll have to sign a contract agreeing to allow them to do the work, agreeing to shut down my septic tank, agreeing to bind anyone to whom I sell my property to the same terms, and so on. In fact, if I wanted to connect to this sewer system, I would probably have to agree to do everything I would have to do if the government were doing it. But there are two crucial differences. (1) If I do sign up, I agreed to it. No one forced me to do it. And therefore I gained more than I gave up. After all, I wouldn't have agreed otherwise, would I? (2) None of my rights were violated. If I had not been willing to live with the restrictions in the contract, I did not have to sign it. If I did not want workers tearing up my yard, I did not have to have them. ============== When you are running your own septic tank, and deciding that you would not hook up to the sewers, do you also pay for people to analyze the groundwater flow to ensure that your effluent stays in your *own* yard? Do you pay for studies to ensure that the smell won't bother your neighbours if your tank overflows? When more people build near you, putting in their own septic tanks, thus turning the whole area into an unhealthy swamp, what is the appropriate libertarian response? Get the neighbours to agree to put in sewers, I suppose. But perhaps they don't agree. Maybe they are less public-spirited (read "responsible") than you, and are willing to let their tanks leak into your yard, and don't worry about the diseases that might result from the mosquitos in the swamp (after all, they are immune, having been through this before). Do you consider using force to stop their tanks leaking, or to get them to use sewers so that YOU don't have to? Where's the morality in this? Sure, you should be FORCED to use and to pay for the sewers if they are installed in your area. You should pay for them even if you use your own septic tank, because only the use by others of the sewers allows your tank to function. If you are so irresponsible as to think that the use of sewers should be a private option, you should be treated the way any small child is treated before it has learned to live in a community. (Incidentally, the septic tank example is not only a good paradigm, but also for me one with a personal history. My parents went through exactly the problem described, with too many septic tanks being built for the area to deal with. Nasty, to say the least!) -- Martin Taylor {allegra,linus,ihnp4,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt {uw-beaver,qucis,watmath}!utcsrgv!dciem!mmt