The ride to D.C. was nice as we took back roads and county highways. At one point we made a wrong turn that brought us by some beautiful houses on an absolutely great driving road.

Nothing else of much excitement on this drive to write about, although I did see something in Baltimore that has had me thinking ever since.

Trash. As we drove through Baltimore, it was everywhere. When we were in NY, it was everywhere. It’s something that has bothered me because it seemed like people were just being lazy. As Brendan put it, every piece of trash you see represents another selfish asshole. It’s true. In Baltimore though, it was more than just discarded food containers and shopping waste. There was trash that was clearly household waste lying in the street. I don’t understand how local government, no matter how corrupt, can not come up with solutions to issues like this one.

Ron Paul brought up so many issues during the republican campaign that I agreed with in theory, but seemed destined to fail in the society that we have today. One of his positions that I think could have some traction is the strengthening of personal property rights and law. Increasing personal property rights could have a dramatic effect on the way that we treat each other and the space that we occupy. Strengthening private property law would create real deterrents to behaviors that we have already denounced as a society. Pollution would become a serious crime because there would be no way to pollute without infringing on someone else’s space and in so doing, their private property. This would be extended to the air we all breathe, the water that we drink and food we eat. Imagine a system of law that so seriously punished polluters that a coal powered plant in the midwest would sequester their carbon emissions and make sure that the exhaust from their plant was not going to harm their “neighbors” air? Can you imagine a system where no one would just toss their plastic bottle out of the car window for fear of the penalty. Public space could probably still exist, it would just have to be protected more vigilantly. The plastic bottle is a little over the top…because that’s a large part of what makes up the trash that I’ve seen…but I think that when partnered with more accessible opportunities to recycle and dispose of waste properly, this could be effective.

Side-note: while the inclusion of plastic bottles in “bottle-bills” across the country would have some negative effects financially for some businesses, it is something that I think should have been done as an amendment when plastic bottles gained prominence in their use for water and sports drinks. Just because it hasn’t been a part of our business models and ways of life, doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t have been and that we shouldn’t correct that mistake. We need to incentivize responsible environmental stewardship. A thought for cushioning business from the negative financial impacts of a new bottle bill…. How about forcing the bottling companies who reap huge profits in unreturned deposits to use that money to help offset the large amounts of money businesses spend on purchasing product deposits that they’ll never have the opportunity to return. (Think of who pays the deposit on a bottled beverage that you buy individually)

Enforcing a rigorous private property law could also have benefits in the more violent aspects of our society. Since the most private property that everyone owns their physical body, any assault on that body would be dealt with accordingly. There could still be an incremental system of punishment based on the severity of the assault but in large scope, if it were a big deal to infringe upon someone’s personal property, I don’t think it would happen as often. I think of how this thinking intersects with so many other issues like the domestic violence, war on drugs, plea bargaining, the burden of proof and it becomes less clear as to how it would work. It’s really intriguing though.