Defending against a meteor

[liberty_student]

I’m still scratching my head as to why they’re a problem in the first place. No one’s bothered to try and explain.

You’re on the right track filc. I don’t think anyone has ever made a successful defense of externalities on this forum. The notion is ridiculous on its face.

[Micah71381]

I only scanned the previous responses in this thread. It appears that it has turned into a bit of a fight rather than a debate so I lost interest but I thought I would still offer my suggestion on the matter, even though it has probably already been offered.

@Eugene

In an anarchical society, why should people devise ways to defend against a meteor hit?

Because most people have a desire to live. If there is an immediate threat they are going to do whatever they can do end that threat.

@Eugene

There are huge positive externalities in this case. If you developed a nuclear bomb that will strike a meteor and divert it from its orbit, everyone on earth will benefit. So there are extremely weak incentives to do this without taxes.

I disagree on this point. I think that there are very strong incentives to participate in the creation of something that will stop the meteor, primarily certain death if nothing is done. While I can not speak for all of society, I know I generally am against most kinds of charity, donations, etc. but if a meteor was heading at earth that would destroy it I would suddenly have a lot of money and time available to donate to stopping it.

@Eugene

It might cost 1 billion to develop such weapon. Why would anyone want to be the sucker who does it for the sake of everyone else?

While I can fully appreciate the desire to ride on everyone else’s hard work. If it’s a matter of life and death I (and I am guessing others) are not interested in trusting the rest of society to save me. In most cases when I get a free ride on the hard work of others it’s because there is no significant risk to me in the case of ‘the others’ not doing it good enough. A good example is in a class where a group project is due and my grade depends on it, while I would love to just let other people do it I don’t trust other people enough to risk anything on them. Welfare on the other hand is a no brainer. I can accept it without hesitation and at no risk to myself.

@Eugene

Libertariranism relies on of selfishness (See Ayn Rand: The virtue of selfishness*)*. So if we assume selfishness, how can we assume people will be charitable enough to raise the huge funds needed to divert meteors?

Because people are selfish. Selfish people want to stay alive (generally). Selfish people also tend (not always) to not be very trusting of ‘everyone else’ so they won’t trust the rest of the world to save them from impending doom.

TL;DR;

I think there are enough untrusting selfish people out there to get the job done. For your scenario to play out you need a lot of trusting selfish people.