Libertarian Think Tank

I had a similar conversation to this one, but without the moderator. I said that I was displeased about the Seattle smoking ban which demands that smokers stay 25 feet away from the entrance of an eating or drinking establishment. A friend of a friend (who seemed inordinately upset about the topic) exclaimed that he liked the ban because he didn’t have to breathe smoke while getting plastered at the Pacific Inn. I tried to explain that that wasn’t my point, but alas, it was to no avail. He assumed I was a smoker demanding an indoor puff and we got all derailed from there. I am not a smoker.

The moral is that the electorate votes on what they like, not theoretical understandings of personal liberties. You need tyrannical regimes and revolutions to make them think like that. But even after our own revolution, we founded a republic in the hope that representatives could think more abstractly than the majoritarian will. I still hope about that.

Here is a prime example of that. The woman insists that secondhand smoke and transfats are bad, but skips to the conclusion that they should be outlawed. She makes no argument to that effect (though, to be fair, she didn’t have much time). For her, it just simply follows.

Great Reason.tv piece. It may very well be that it’s stupid for bacondogs to be illegal, but my beef is that Los Angeles City forces vendors to shell-out $26,000 for a hotdog cart if they want to sell the highly-demanded bacondogs. Question: if the cops patrol the streets enough to throw away vendors’ carts without due process, why can’t they just write tickets for violations?

A friend of mine, who is wedded to the idea that Democrats are the poor man’s champions, often asks me how limited government can ever help the poor. Elizabeth Palacios is my answer. Her bacondog sales earned her a car and house. The city has mandated that she purchase a hotdog cart 5 times as expensive as the one she has now. She spent 45 days in the cooler because she couldn’t. Keep seeling those dogs, sister.  

One small county in Arizona has abrogated citizens’ rights to allow dancing on their property. After spending over $100,000 in efforts to comply with harrassment regulations, restaurant owner Dale Bell and his son Spencer say, “They’re going to have to take me on all the way to the Supreme Court, because I don’t believe that you can tell people…that they can’t dance”.

Judge Andrew Napolitano waxes libertarian all over history. Turns out, the Constitution was intended to limit the powers of government. For God’s sake, get this man back into public office.