[ExI] note from a foaf in japan

Kelly Anderson kellycoinguy at gmail.com
Mon Mar 21 07:09:13 UTC 2011


On Sat, Mar 19, 2011 at 10:48 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 07:54:54AM -0700, spike wrote:
>Spoken in apparently ignorance of how small Japanese homes are.  Not a lot
> of space there.

A week's worth of food and water tablets can be packed in a backpack
with about 2-3 cubic feet of volume. It could get washed away in
certain kinds of disasters, of course, but lack of space is a pretty
weak argument.

>>This thread seems the typical libertarian response, though.  "Humans are
> insufficiently rational for the pure market, let them die off until
> rationality improves."

I really find this offensive. People have lost the right to die of
starvation UNDER NORMAL CIRCUMSTANCES, and libertarians often find
this to be a loss. However, even the heartless Ayn Rand advocated
helping people in emergency situations get back on their feet. How do
you believe that a statement like this moves any argument forward?
Equating libertarians with people who want to eat small children
doesn't help. It's silly, and we should be able to argue our ideas at
a higher level.

> E)      airlift emergency provisions and donated aid, and hope they pay it
> forward when the same fate eventually hits California for all the same
> reasons.
>
> I choose E and E.

Me too. While the government is fairly good at this sort of thing (big
military helicopters and all) the libertarian part of me is very proud
of the Red Cross, religious relief organizations and the like.

-Kelly




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