DC tries to cut down Uber ride service

Uber is a app service that helps customers connect to taxi or limo services in their area and make deals with them far more efficiently than most cities currently monopolised cab services do. Unfortunately, DC is already trying to cut them down as one could well have predicted. I think this is a marvelous example of how technology is slowly beating back the monopolists, or at least bringing them out in the open. Here's an article for "the Atlantic Cities" about DC's latest attempt to foil a legitimate service.
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2012/01/dc-taxi-industry-already-irritated-uber/926/

One Man Alone or Follow the Flock

Many an astute thinker has noticed that fourteen men in a room will come up with fourteen different solutions to any given problem and none will agree with another. Forgetting for a moment that fourteen men in a room will more likely come up with three solutions, four or five "big-men" and a couple of factions, lets assume for a minute they are right.

 Lets think that as K says in Men in Black that a person is smart but people are stupid and that one man is usually a better descision maker than a community. There is anthropological support for this idea, as even in  early egalitarian societies a "big-man" often was the final arbiter of all actions.

We also know that one man cannot possibly comprehend all that happens in a society or an economy, particularly in our modern age. The intricacies of human interaction defy the social sciences and laugh in the face of central planning, leaving mankind to wallow in his hubris and folly. One person cannot plan it all, and still less can a bureaucracy (The bureaucrat is always for sale, and never knows the full extent of his actions.)

Eliminateing the democracy, the autocratracy, and the bureauacracy for their ineffectiveness, we are left with the Smithian conclusion that every individual is most fit to run his or her own affairs, and perhaps have a say in the affairs of those closest to him (by voluntary choice such as friends and the family unit.)

If each individual is to run his or her own affairs in an economy that we do not wish to be stagnant, it would seem to me that stored capital, private property, and the profit motive are all necessisties.

Denying property would lead to stagnation and would deny Man's nature as a manipulative being that survives by hand and mind. Denying the accumulation of capital would impead progress and cause consumption to dominate production, which benefits industrial economies in the short term, but the whole of Mankind cannot survive as consumers only. To deny the profit motive would be to tell the individual that he has no buisness caring for himself and that someone else is better suited to it.

We must allow the individual to progress, in turn allowing society to progress. As a strictly utilitarian arguement, I cannot see any one man is fit to run society nor any society fit to run one man.

Free Trade? (Even with Dictators?)

Do I believe in free trade? In short, yes. A libertarian society must allow for trade with all people, all across the Earth, free of corrupt political considerations. However, when we step outside the window of National interest and into the window of individuals we have to ask the question "With whom is it moral/immoral to do buisness?"

I believe it is immoral to sell a gun to someone you know is a murderer. If you sell a gun to someone who is dangerous, or someone you should have know was dangerous, you should be held partially accountable for all immoral actions carried out by that dangerous person. Likewise, I believe it would be immoral to do be immoral to do buisness with a tyrant as you would be funding their tyranny.

(Many in the United States seek sanctions against Iran to portest the governments dispicable treatment of its Citizens.)

How does a libertarian society deal with this? Does the seller of the gun owe restitution to the victims or their families?

I would say yes, and, as far as gun control goes, this should help keep guns out of the hands of violent criminals. Gun salesmen would be extra careful with private backround checks and waiting periods if they knew they would be responsible for crimes commited by their customers.

But someone doing buisness with a tyrannt cannot pay restitution to the victims, it simply isn't feasible as they have no way of prosecuting the salesman.

 Perhaps private activists groups would seek arbitration on their behalf. For sake of arguement we could assume that in a libertarian-anarchist society there are international peace and charity groups that seek to fight injustice (Hopefully, a good and righteous people would flock to these organisations when free from the tax-burden).

These groups could seek out foriegn nations which abuse their people and set up a sort of private embargo on them, or a boycott. They could prosecute those who do buisness with the tyrannt-nation on behalf of its victims.

Some might argue that this idea puts too much faith in charity and the thrid sector and perhaps it does, but the long-term effects of governmental restrictions on trade or the idea of open trade with anyone, even a genocidier, are infinately worse.