Everybody must get stoned

What’s a Libertarian?

In theory – it’s about individual freedoms, personal responsibility, weed and no war – sounds great. This assumes that all people are consistently good, giving, mature, thoughtful and kind towards their fellow humans and the environment. Utopian, no? Yeah, shit don’t quite work out like that.

In my experience, Libertarians are white men (and the occasional white woman) who want good roads, clean water and air, police, firemen, ambulances, garbage pick up and public schools (but only if they have children). They just don’t want to pay for any of it. Why? FreeDUMB! It’s all very Heinleinian. 

There’s a great piece up at Vox – an interview with the dude who wrote A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear – Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling.

A bunch of these Libertarian yahoos moved to a small town in the “Live Free or Die” state of New Hampshire and took over.

By pretty much any measure you can look at to gauge a town’s success, Grafton got worse. Recycling rates went down. Neighbor complaints went up. The town’s legal costs went up because they were constantly defending themselves from lawsuits from Free Towners. The number of sex offenders living in the town went up. The number of recorded crimes went up. The town had never had a murder in living memory, and it had its first two, a double homicide, over a roommate dispute. 

And then the bears moved in.

It turns out that if you have a bunch of people living in the woods in nontraditional living situations (i.e. tents, shipping containers, etc.), each of which is managing food in their own way and their waste streams in their own way, then you’re essentially teaching the bears in the region that every human habitation is like a puzzle that has to be solved in order to unlock its caloric payload. And so the bears in the area started to take notice of the fact that there were calories available in houses. (source)

Some people fed the bears, some shot and killed them. This being total murderous bullshittery since these Free Towners were the ones attracting them by leaving their garbage laying around like bait. Some of the bears got mean. OF COURSE. Poor bears.

Like religions, so many political philosophies sound wonderful IN THEORY. Humans aren’t static though. We’re not consistently intelligent or rational. AND we’re, often as not, selfish as fuck.

So then, Libertarianism? It’s not so much a workable social/political system as a case of profoundly arrested adolescence.

Also, New Hampshire? Despite the catch phrase (live free or die) it’s, over the 40 years I’ve lived in Boston, moved from being a solid Republican stronghold, to being way more of a Blue state. 

Why? Housing prices. Massachusetts is expensive as all fuck. The average cost of a Boston two bedroom is $585,100 – yeah, over half a mil. That’ll get you a condo or MAYBE a single family, total tear down in one of the far-from-downtown neighborhoods. Meanwhile, in Nashua, New Hampshire, a decent two bedroom, single family home with yard, will run you around 300Gs or less.

So, us famously liberal citizens of the ONLY state to NOT vote for a second go 'round of Tricky Dickness, moved North – infecting and effecting our neighbor’s political climate.

How’d we NOWHERE-near-wealthy Valhallans manage to score our digs? It was nearly 20 years ago that we bought, it’s a very small lot, we’re one town south of the city and on a bus versus trolly line. Trade-offs, life is all about the trade-offs.

Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 – Bob Dylan