Prominent Libertarian Says Spending Tax Money to Protect Earth From Asteroid = Socialist Tyranny

As avid Daily Downers readers no doubt recall, there is a gigantic asteroid zooming in on us, scheduled to smash earth with the force of a thousand nuclear bombs in April of 2029.

Given the virtual certainty of this cataclysmic event, you'd think it would behoove the governments of the world to consider spending a few tax dollars to devise a plan to knock this mega-rock of death off course and send it careening toward one of our rival planets, right?

Well, of course you'd think that if you are a freedom-hating, immoral collectivist.

[A]t the risk of confirming Mark Kleiman in his belief that libertarians are loopy — I don’t speak for all libertarians, but I think there’s a good case to be made that taxing people to protect the Earth from an asteroid, while within Congress’s powers, is an illegitimate function of government from a moral perspective. I think it’s O.K. to violate people’s rights (e.g. through taxation) if the result is that you protect people’s rights to some greater extent (e.g. through police, courts, the military). But it’s not obvious to me that the Earth being hit by an asteroid ... violates anyone’s rights; if that’s so, then I’m not sure I can justify preventing it through taxation.

[The Volokh Conspiracy]