The proof that ALL market interactions have externalities

Hybrids good, right?

People use less energy, create fewer greenhouse gases, and even make less noise than conventional automobiles....

.... and will apparently run over and kill blind pedestrians in larger numbers than was previously the case.

[Because they can't hear them coming.]

Now--in all seriousness--some pundits are considering artificial means of making hybrids louder.

I am sure this all makes sense in somebody's world.

Just not mine.

Comments

Anonymous said…

(My response posted on the original article as well...)

Hmmm…. This researcher apparently hasn’t bothered to point out that it is the DRIVER’s responsibility to watch out for pedestrians (blind or sighted… ;) and that in most states the law REQUIRES drivers to stop to allow blind people (usually self identified by canes and / or dogs) to cross…
This sounds to me like a responsibility copout, with a very NON-Libertarian solution…
Ironically, in the motorcyclists rights community, one battle is over exhaust noise, with one side advocating that “Loud pipes save lives” because car drivers can hear them - with the opposition complaining about the noise being a tresspass. Now this guy wants to FORCE owners of quiet vehicles to be committing a tresspass???!

ART
LPMA Operations Facilitator

August 7, 2008 at 8:10 PM

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

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More of This, Please

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Posts here have been in short supply as I have been living life and trying to get a campaign off the ground. But "11 questions to see if Libertarians are hypocrites" by R. J. Eskrow, picked up at Salon , was just so freaking lame that I spent half an hour answering them. In the end (but I'll leave it to your judgment), it is not that Libertarians or Libertarian theory looks hypocritical, but that the best that can be said for Mr. Eskrow is that he doesn't have the faintest clue what he's talking about. That's ok, because even ill-informed attacks by people like this make an important point: Libertarian ideas (as opposed to Conservative ideas, which are completely different) are making a comeback as the dynamic counterpoint to "politics as usual," and so every hack you can imagine must be dragged out to refute them. Ergo: Mr. Eskrow's 11 questions, with answers: 1. Are unions, political parties, elections, and ...

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