Under the pure libertarian scenario, anyone with enough money would be able to purchase nuclear weapons on the open market. Perhaps responsible capitalists in the west would be careful about whom they sold what, but there are plenty of irresponsible capitalists world-wide that don't give a damn about the consequences of what they buy/sell.
That's essentially the same argument used against small arms: "Sure,
some people can own a gun responsibly, but others will start a bloodbath in the streets because you looked at them funny..."
On this forum you'll find plenty of examples of gun store owners refusing to sell, often because "something doesn't feel right." If you really think about it, you'll realize that it's improbable in the extreme that anyone would sell a nuke to a madman. For starters, he'd have good reason to fear that the madman would then kill the seller, and no capitalist is so greedy that he values money over his
own life.
But the "insurance" argument is more powerful than you realize. It took a while for the implications to sink in for me. Anyone who might sell a nuke to a nutball is himself a nutball, and he'll have a tough time getting into the "nuclear gunshop" business. Nobody will insure him. Reputable manufacturers won't deal with him. And so on. The "insurance" argument applies at every step of the manufacturing process.
If there was no effort to control nuclear weapons in the world...
My point is that there
would be an effort: the planet is populated by six billion creatures, none of which want to be nuked personally. Of
course there'd be an effort. The "insurance" argument is just a hint what that effort would look like--to fully describe it would take a book, and nobody knows the exact form it would take anyway.
The point is that government shouldn't have nukes either. When
government regulates nukes, they allow themselves to have all they want--that's sorta the
point of being a government. And we're supposed to take it on faith that they can be trusted with them? 100,000 dead Japanese say otherwise...
It's not the "big dumb government" that's holding that back so much as it's the very powerful, very well-funded green movement and their mouthpieces in Congress.
I think you just said, "It's not the government, it's the government."
It's not the lobbyists' fault: lobbyists would be powerless whiners if there weren't a government to lobby. Take away that frightful power over others' lives, and the lobbyists will have to share a sidewalk with the street preachers.
--Len.
