Article by Colonel Nogov on Mar. 26, 2015
I was riding in a car with a statist. We passed by a familiar road sign in Oregon.
$6,250 fine for something as trivial as littering. That’s a pretty extreme penalty, yet there’s lot of litter still. Why don’t laws and punishments stop people from littering?
I said to my statist passenger, “When do you think the punishment will be the death penalty?”
He said something to the affect that the fine should be even more. That a larger fine will stop people from littering.
I was attempting to highlight the absurdity of the government in this trivial matter and it was completely lost on him. The only thing I can hope for is that the next time he sees this sign, he’ll remember my comment.
When I see a sign like this, I think one of two things. The government is just revenue generating or it’s clueless on how to deal with an annoying but trivial problem. My guess is the latter. How does a problem like this get solved on private property?
Let’s take a look at Disneyland. Everybody’s been to Disneyland. Millions of people visit every year. The park is always clean though I know people drop their litter there. I’ve never seen a sign like the one on the side of the road in Oregon in the park. How do they do it?
They pick up after people. It’s part of the price of admission. They’ve anticipated this problem and added a small amount (probably a few pennies) to the price of each entry ticket to pay employees to pick up.
Imagine if they tried the government solution. I can see the headlines now, “Disneyland Security hand cuffs, detains, and ejects 10 year old boy from park for dropping ice cream wrapper on the ground. Parent look on horrified as they are powerless to stop the assault and cry and beg for mercy for their son.”
Private property owners don’t try to fine you, they just pick up and include it in the price of their services. Movie theaters. Store parking lots. They want your business. Government cares not at all about people.
Government takes our money through coercive taxes(extortion). It provides the bare minimum of service. It makes and enforces a bunch of rules and steals more from you if you break them. It also then picks up the litter anyway using slave labor. Prisoners. What a great thing this government is. Not. The funny thing is that most people want more government services. Because the government claims to own everything and uses violence to enforce its will, it doesn’t have to provide good service. Government steals as much as it can and then spends the least amount possible to provide the alleged essential services. The money lines people’s pockets. If you don’t like it, tough shit.
The private sector, for the most part, provides excellent service and doesn’t harass you over trivial things, while the government provides horrible service and harasses you too. In the private sector, every transaction is voluntary, while the government takes your money by force whether you use the service or not and then finds ways of taking more money from you if you do use their service. With government, every minor offense is punished. And those punishments escalate. fines, then jail time, then mandatory minimums, then longer sentences. I’ve never seen the death penalty for a trivial item like this, but just give them enough time; they’ll get there.