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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

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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
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