Sergio Alejandro M?ndez - 10/25/2005

It is unbelievable that something in this world will make ME take sides with George Bush. The autor of this post cannot distinguish from an advise like "please, try to conserve gasoline", from coertion "You will conserve gasoline o we will force you to do it". What if the advise came from a non govermental entity? Isn´t part of the market the right to express your ideas even in the form of advise?

On the other side, I am not sure that the market logic concerning the use of gasoline really works. Have americans actually decided to consume less gasoline even if it is more expensive? Doesn´t seem so, but of course, the only way to know is to test it down, on the streets and highways. Finally I find a bit silly when the author says that Bush idea contributes to nothing good except "that it further accustoms people to the idea that one’s personal life is to some extent a public matter." Of course there are aspects of people lifes that are private, and only private. That hardly means there arent others (many) that have public consequences and require you to assume responsability. And that has little to do with a "collectivist" mentality (I wonder sometimes if "collectivist" actually means something on libertarian jargon). Human society is dependent on living colectively and you don´t have to be an statist to believe it.