Starchild on the S.F. Examiner!

Hi All,

Starchild has never been one to preach to the converted; instead he has always been out there, convincing the big-government advocates with calm and intelligent reasoning. The San Francisco Examiner published Starchild's excellent letter opposing a San Francisco ban on plastic bottles.

http://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/letters-editor/2013/01/water-bottle-ban-wrong-approach

As an aside, the SF Examiner has an article on San Francisco City College wanting an extension of the deadline to clean up its act. I have posted on the article's comments, and encourage folks on this list to do the same.

Marcy

This is an excellent wonderful letter. I am very impressed.

Sam Sloan

Thanks, Sam and Marcy. I am glad they printed my letter. However it does appear in a somewhat abbreviated and slightly altered form. Here is the original version which I sent them, which I actually wrote to Joshua Sabatini, the author of the piece in the Local News section (I called it an "editorial" as a dig at the biased way in which the story and headline were written, and am amused to see they changed that term to "story", although they left my "in favor of" language alone) , but copied the Letters editor and let them know in a postscript that I was submitting as an LTE:

  I was disappointed by your editorial in favor of banning plastic water bottles in San Francisco ("S.F.'s effort to pitch out water bottles is lagging", 1/3/13, p. 8). Using the law to bully people into being more environmentally responsible is not the best approach. To begin with, have the various consequences of this policy really been examined? For instance, how people's behavior is likely to change if such a law is passed. Will people use more cardboard or glass or other materials that turn out to have more of a negative environmental impact? Will people drink less water, leading to more health problems and higher health care costs? Will people feel increasingly harassed and controlled by a busy-body nanny government, and express their frustration in other unpredictable ways? Will respect for the law decline, leading to more crimes, less voluntary environmentally responsible behavior, etc.? I don't think the politicians who may be contemplating yet another ban necessarily know the answer to these questions.

  But these are not the most serious problem with bans on consensual human behavior. The most horrible and least appreciated aspect of such bans are the nature of the law itself. Whenever something becomes THE LAW ™, what it means is that government agents are being authorized to use lethal force against people to make them obey. Of course with most laws, not that many people are usually shot and killed, because most people are bullied into submission.

  Say that plastic water bottles are banned. What will happen? Probably people who sell them anyway will be fined. If they refuse to pay the fines, the government will attempt to seize their assets. If this is unsuccessful, and the sales continue, at some point the business will be forcibly closed. If the sellers resist the closure of their business, they will be arrested and jailed. If they effectively resist arrest, they will ultimately be shot and killed if necessary.

  Is selling plastic water bottles so serious a crime that the city government should kill people over it? I don't think so. So let's not make it a law. Better to rely on the power of persuasion, or give people tax breaks for not selling them, or lower taxes on other types of beverages, etc. Something non-coercive. If we want to all get along, we have to stop turning so quickly to the threat of using lethal government force as a means of solving society's problems, real or otherwise.

Love & Liberty,
                                 ((( starchild )))
Outreach Director, Libertarian Party of San Francisco
                              (415) 625-FREE

P.S. - Please consider this a letter to the editor.

  Here by contrast is the letter as they printed it. Note that the headline they reference is also different from the more biased one which appeared in the print edition, "S.F.'s effort to pitch out water bottles is lagging". With any luck, perhaps my letter convinced them to change it on the website to something more neutral:

“Despite years of talk, San Francisco still mulling ban on plastic water bottles,” Local News, Thursday

Water bottle ban is wrong approach

I was disappointed by your story in favor of banning plastic water bottles in San Francisco. Using the law to bully people into being more environmentally responsible is not the best approach.

To begin with, have the various consequences of this policy really been examined? For instance, how people’s behavior is likely to change if such a law is passed. Will people use more cardboard, glass or other materials that turn out to have more of a negative environmental impact? Will people drink less water, leading to more health problems and higher health care costs? Will people feel increasingly harassed and controlled by a busy-body nanny government? I don’t think the politicians who may be contemplating yet another ban necessarily know the answer to these questions.

But these are not the most serious problems with bans on consensual human behavior. The most horrible and least appreciated aspect of such bans are the nature of the law itself. Whenever something becomes “The Law,” what it means is that government agents are authorized to use lethal force against people to make them obey. Is selling plastic water bottles so serious a crime that the city government should kill people over it? I don’t think so.

So let’s not make it a law. Better to rely on the power of persuasion, or give people tax breaks for not selling them, or lower taxes on other types of beverages, etc. Something noncoercive.

Starchild
Outreach director,
Libertarian Party of San Francisco
San Francisco

  The edits do preserve the overall spirit of what I wrote, so I don't mind too much, although I would've preferred they left in more of my explication of how the law works, as well as the part about people expressing their frustration in unpredictable ways (a veiled reference to the possibility of people's frustration at feeling increasingly powerless in society as a result of government controls being a contributing factor in things like random shootings).

Love & Liberty,
                                   ((( starchild )))

Beautiful, Starchild!

Warm regards, Michael

  Thanks, Sam and Marcy. I am glad they printed my letter. However it does appear in a somewhat abbreviated and slightly altered form. Here is the original version which I sent them, which I actually wrote to Joshua Sabatini, the author of the piece in the Local News section (I called it an "editorial" as a dig at the biased way in which the story and headline were written, and am amused to see they changed that term to "story", although they left my "in favor of" language alone) , but copied the Letters editor and let them know in a postscript that I was submitting as an LTE:

  I was disappointed by your editorial in favor of banning plastic water bottles in San Francisco ("S.F.'s effort to pitch out water bottles is lagging", 1/3/13, p. 8). Using the law to bully people into being more environmentally responsible is not the best approach. To begin with, have the various consequences of this policy really been examined? For instance, how people's behavior is likely to change if such a law is passed. Will people use more cardboard or glass or other materials that turn out to have more of a negative environmental impact? Will people drink less water, leading to more health problems and higher health care costs? Will people feel increasingly harassed and controlled by a busy-body nanny government, and express their frustration in other unpredictable ways? Will respect for the law decline, leading to more crimes, less voluntary environmentally responsible behavior, etc.? I don't think the politicians who may be contemplating yet another ban necessarily know the answer to these questions.

  But these are not the most serious problem with bans on consensual human behavior. The most horrible and least appreciated aspect of such bans are the nature of the law itself. Whenever something becomes THE LAW ™, what it means is that government agents are being authorized to use lethal force against people to make them obey. Of course with most laws, not that many people are usually shot and killed, because most people are bullied into submission.

  Say that plastic water bottles are banned. What will happen? Probably people who sell them anyway will be fined. If they refuse to pay the fines, the government will attempt to seize their assets. If this is unsuccessful, and the sales continue, at some point the business will be forcibly closed. If the sellers resist the closure of their business, they will be arrested and jailed. If they effectively resist arrest, they will ultimately be shot and killed if necessary.

  Is selling plastic water bottles so serious a crime that the city government should kill people over it? I don't think so. So let's not make it a law. Better to rely on the power of persuasion, or give people tax breaks for not selling them, or lower taxes on other types of beverages, etc. Something non-coercive. If we want to all get along, we have to stop turning so quickly to the threat of using lethal government force as a means of solving society's problems, real or otherwise.

Love & Liberty,
                                ((( starchild )))
Outreach Director, Libertarian Party of San Francisco
                             (415) 625-FREE

P.S. - Please consider this a letter to the editor.

  Here by contrast is the letter as they printed it. Note that the headline they reference is also different from the more biased one which appeared in the print edition, "S.F.'s effort to pitch out water bottles is lagging". With any luck, perhaps my letter convinced them to change it on the website to something more neutral:

“Despite years of talk, San Francisco still mulling ban on plastic water bottles,” Local News, Thursday

Water bottle ban is wrong approach

I was disappointed by your story in favor of banning plastic water bottles in San Francisco. Using the law to bully people into being more environmentally responsible is not the best approach.

To begin with, have the various consequences of this policy really been examined? For instance, how people’s behavior is likely to change if such a law is passed. Will people use more cardboard, glass or other materials that turn out to have more of a negative environmental impact? Will people drink less water, leading to more health problems and higher health care costs? Will people feel increasingly harassed and controlled by a busy-body nanny government? I don’t think the politicians who may be contemplating yet another ban necessarily know the answer to these questions.

But these are not the most serious problems with bans on consensual human behavior. The most horrible and least appreciated aspect of such bans are the nature of the law itself. Whenever something becomes “The Law,” what it means is that government agents are authorized to use lethal force against people to make them obey. Is selling plastic water bottles so serious a crime that the city government should kill people over it? I don’t think so.

So let’s not make it a law. Better to rely on the power of persuasion, or give people tax breaks for not selling them, or lower taxes on other types of beverages, etc. Something noncoercive.

Starchild
Outreach director,
Libertarian Party of San Francisco
San Francisco

  The edits do preserve the overall spirit of what I wrote, so I don't mind too much, although I would've preferred they left in more of my explication of how the law works, as well as the part about people expressing their frustration in unpredictable ways (a veiled reference to the possibility of people's frustration at feeling increasingly powerless in society as a result of government controls being a contributing factor in things like random shootings).

Love & Liberty,
                                  ((( starchild )))

Hi Starchild! Thanks for writing the letter and getting it in the paper. I like the longer version better because it does a better job of explaining "at the point of a gun" that Libertarians always talk about. Regardless, anyone reading the LTE should get the point.

Thanks!
Aubrey

P.S. I just posted a comment in the Examiner's article about CCSF per Marcy's suggestion.