Libertarians think Fiction is Reality.

[JoeyT]

85. Libertarian owned businesses are largely a disaster waiting to happen.

That shit in Texas wasn't a random or one-off thing, it's going to keep happening. I just got off a 16 hour shift (Temporary contract employee) in a GP mill. GP is Koch owned, if you didn't know. We* had several, I think five, (requiring immediate hospitalization) injuries in six days. At least 2-3 people die completely avoidable deaths there a year. Stand in the wrong place and you can be cooked by steam, covered in chemicals that will eat you to the bone, or just have the floor you're standing on drop out from under you, mostly because of pipes that haven't been replaced since before I was born or bolts that have long since rotted away. Chlorine Dioxide alarms scream all day long, so when one of the three chlorine leaks of the day hit, you barely have time to get an escape respirator in and GTFO. Both white and black liquor, and who knows what else, leak constantly into the water runoff channels that go straight into the river. The entire inside of the precipitator (The thing that collects pollution: Basically a four or five story electrostatic air filter) is rotten to the point of being useless. I'll be goddamned if I can figure out how anything is alive downriver of the place.

It'll erode your trust in government regulation and enforcement at the same rate it increases your distrust of the free market, though. I have no idea how OSHA and the EPA aren't elbow deep in Koch ass, other than they're just flat out bought off. Those ain't state laws they're breaking.

This mill has been like this for the last twenty years, by the way. So if you were wondering how stuff like the plant explosion in Texas happens: That's how. Everyone sees it coming and no one with the ability to stop it cares. Either because they're being paid not to or because they're lazy.

Libertarianism is pretty much the idea that you and everyone downriver of you has the right to pollute as much as you want. It doesn't do much more than make an unbelievable mess when put into practice. I dread the coming of the first libertarian owned nuke plant.

*We as in the company I'm working for, not my actual crew. We're not going to get hurt because we know and watch out for each other and we'll take our tools and quit the second it gets too iffy. A spirit not encouraged there as that kind of attitude is what leads to unions.