...What y'all are saying is all well & good, but it's got one glaring problem: It WILL NOT and CANNOT work here in the real world. Driving isn't like sailing or riding a horse. You have hundreds or thousands of vehicles moving very quickly mere feet apart in a narrow corridor. And that's before one figures in pedestrians and intersections even. Most people can't properly negotiate a simple four-way stop sign. You want to turn them loose on the highways with no rules?
What you're telling me is akin to me going down to Westlake where that bunch of twits are "occupying" (there's not nearly as many as the news makes it out either), setting up a shooting target, and plinking away. It's OK as long as I'm a good shot today & don't miss right? Not actually harming anyone after all.
Hmmm...I fear we are going to have a hard time seeing eye to eye on this.
Really? It can't work? Any empirical proof? Also, to say that we'd turn them loose with no rules is a bit disingenuous. There are rules. You are bound by the equal rights of others. There are consequences to actions. You're second paragraph is way out there man and totally non-sequitur. Any sane person wouldn't try something that is likely to hurt people. Which is probably a great point in the larger discussion.
Let me say that I have seen the result of what I'm talking about; where the traffic rules are known but aren't enforced unless something happens (besides tickets via automatic cameras that everyone knows the location of). It isn't necessarily pretty or orderly but it works. If you want to see it yourself, all you have to do is drive from Pudong airport in Shanghai to Hangzhou or pretty much anywhere else in the area. You think L.A. is bad? Ha! Let me tell you, it's organized chaos. They drive in the emergency lane, nudge into a lane while staring down other drivers to see who gives first, park on the sidewalk, and speed like hell in between cameras. All this with 6 lanes worth of cars stuck into 4 lanes. The first time you are in a car over there you are genuinely afraid for your life.
I have never seen, in my year or so total time over there, anyone ever pulled over by the police. When someone has an accident, they move their cars out of the way if they can and they try to work out a deal. Either money/insurance changes hands and everyone drives away or if an agreement can't be made they call the police or drive to the nearest station. One day, we got in just such an accident where our "professional driver guy" got a little angry and cut off someone that was driving like a granny. They had it out on the side of the road and couldn't see eye to eye so we went to the police. We found out there that the other guy had just gotten his license. The officer listened to both sides of the story and then it turned into something right out of Mayberry (in a weird Asian sort of way). The translation was something like this:
To the other guy...."You have just received your license and are inexperienced and ignorant in the ways of the road. You are at some fault for impeding traffic by driving too slowly. You should get more practice on roads that aren't so busy. To our guy...."You are an experienced driver but have become arrogant and could have easily avoided this problem so you are also at fault." I believe in the end there was some kind of 70-30 or 60-40 split on fault.
On another occasion, a coworker and I were riding scooters around the local town where we were working. A taxi stopped quickly in front of him and he hit the throttle instead of the brake. He hit the taxi and broke out the tail light. Hilarity ensued. As a group of 100 people came to stare; here are two white guys standing at an intersection with a Chinese guy yelling at us in Chinese. I could speak enough to calm him down "no problem, I'll call my friend, here's the phone". Anyway, we ended up agreeing on a price of 400 RMB, shook hands, and no police ever came.
In the U.S. we actually have a leg up on China. We've been driving longer, are far more experienced on the road and have a culture more conducive to politeness on the road. There is also a lot less corruption here; believe it or not. I see no reason it wouldn't work 100 times better over here.
Now here's my point (yeah, took me long enough I know): You said something about a libertarian "utopia". Well, a libertarian "utopia" is a heck of a lot different than what others might describe as utopia because the benchmark is liberty and not "everything works right all the time and everybody is happy". In other words, a libertarian "utopia" is actually possible. It may not always be pretty and will have it's share of problems, but not for lack of liberty. What we are going over here is the old liberty vs. security argument. Some of us are willing to give up a little "feeling" safe and instead feel free to do as we wish as long as we don't hurt anyone or trample on anyone else's rights.
