Being a libertarian makes it easy to avoid being a hypocrite: as long as you don’t advocate forcing someone else to live a certain way, you can choose to recycle or not recycle, to fly or not to fly, etc, and still be consistent. Statists – the liberal elite, the materialistic communist (a former neighbor of mine), the pro-war conservative – are constantly contradicting themselves.
A study out of the University of Exeter gets on the case of “eco-hypocrites” for taking some acceptable steps towards saving the environment (according to environmentalists), but not foregoing airplane travel. The conclusion appears to be that flying is too affordable, and therefore evil. It’s a wonder that we mere peons are able to fly at all; but even with absurdities like the TSA, regulations piled on regulations, subsidies for bad management, and the problems with other related industries due to government intervention (e.g., oil), there are enough market forces to allow us to go where we want, when we want.
3:50 pm on September 1, 2008
