The following image was captured at the bottom of Francois Tremblay’s article, Disengage!“, which appeared today at LewRockwell.com

Happy birthday to me. I’m no longer in my “mid-twenties,” having turned 27. w00t!

In other news, the poll question at Strike-the-Root today is interesting:

Jun 4, 2007
The government builds a “self-destruct” button that costs taxpayers $1 trillion. Do you push it?

1. yes
2. no, you can’t get good ends from bad means
3. no, without massive education, we’d just end up with Leviathan again
4. no, there should be some government
5. I’m not sure

The $1T is a sunk cost. It’s already spent. I suppose my answer might be different if the question were: The gov proposes to build a self-destruct button that will cost $1T. Do you want it built so that you can push it?

I think the rationale behind numbers 2 and 3 is alright, but neither rationale leads necessarily to an answer of “no.” I’d argue that the button should be pushed anyways. The $1T is a sunk cost – it’s money that’s already spent, it can never be given back, and the pain & suffering it’s extraction has caused can not be undone. Furthermore, I doubt that the self-destruct button can be put to some other valuable use.