A Libertarian's Thoughts on Whatever

Monday, March 03, 2003

 
I've been saying for awhile that recycling isn't really helping the environment in most cases. The apparent benefits are easily seen, but the costs are not so easily seen. Reusing papers and such can be a good thing, but driving a pollution machine around to collect them only substitutes one kind of environment effect for another one, for example. And even the Swedes now agree.
I had a long back and forth email argument over this site about the Israeli attack on the Osirak nuclear power plant. Nothing really constructive came out of it. Basically, the site puts forth the argument that if Israel hadn't done that that Iraq would have nuclear weapons and we'd be in a much worse situation. I think the point of sending it to me was to show that Israel isn't all bad, which I never alleged anyway. My reaction to it is that Iraq didn't have a nuclear weapons program until after the attack, that they started it in response to this act of terrorism. I'm not saying they should have done so or were justified or anything like that, just that the attack had negative repercussions.
I sent back this link about the USS Liberty being attacked. I don't know what the truth is in this situation, but this is a big deal. That there hasn't been a thorough investigation as to what happened is embarassing. There could very well be a good explanation as to what happened that day. If so, there's no need to cover it up. If not, we definitely need to know. Sign the petition to have the incident investigated.
I'm not sure what we should do with our public education system, but it sure does suck. Here's Murray Rothbard on why vouchers are a bad idea.
Maestro 9:14 PM