Over the past several years I have gone from being sympathetic to the ideals of Libertarians because of their opposition to the Iraq War and their support for drug decriminalization, to being highly skeptical of some of their claims and dogmas because of practical experience. But now, I am ready to publicly declare that Libertarianism as a political force has been completely debunked and should be abandoned as unworkable. It should not be contained in either a political party called the Libertarian Party, nor in the Republican Party. And here is why: http://www.viralnova.com/walmart-turned-library/
What One Town Did With This Abandoned Walmart Building Will Make Your Jaw Drop.
You’ll find a Walmart store in most American towns and cities. These stores are almost always giant, taking up an average 2.5 football fields worth of space. So what happens when one of them closes? It’s an awful lot of space to just let sit there. Officials in McAllen, Texas, were faced with this problem when their local Walmart shut down. Instead of letting the giant store sit vacant, they did something amazing. They transformed it into the largest single-floor public library in America.
Now this is the library of my dreams.
After stripping out the old walls and ceiling, the developers opted for a very modern feel for the space.
The library now boasts 16 public meeting spaces, 14 public study rooms, 64 computer labs, 10 children’s computer labs, and 2 genealogy computer labs.
Of course there is also a cafe, a used book store, an auditorium, and self check-out stations.
Even the grounds look amazing. This has to be the coolest public library ever.
H/T: Weburbanist I guess it’s true what they say: everything is bigger in Texas. Even the public libraries. I think it’s time for me to start packing my bags (and my library card).
That Wal-Mart was a product of free-market capitalism and it failed. Then the city government took it over and changed it, resulting in something that libertarian dogmas said was impossible, because private industries were by nature better than public agencies. When something has been proven to be a lie, it should be abandoned, period.
Dale Husband's Intellectual Rants 
I wasn’t aware Libertarians believed it’s impossible for government to create something beautiful from the ashes of private industry. I don’t know the details of whether Walmart had abandoned the building, still own the land, or sold it back to the town of McAllen. But it seems to me that the government had basically received a vacant building with some infrastructure already paid for by a corporation (eg. utilities, structure). Will businesses fail? Of course. Are you suggesting the litmus test for Libertarian philosophy is whether one store location succeeded?
My point is that government created that incredible library, Wal-Mart did not. Why did that Wal-Mart location fail? Because it was not profitable enough. That failure no doubt threw many people out of work. But local, state, and federal governments create jobs just as much as private industry does, and they do NOT need to make a profit to function. As a result, they can accomplish more than private industry can with the same financial and material resources. The city of Allen did not just sit by and wait for another private company to buy that former Wal-Mart property and use it, but took taxpayers’ money and did something extremely useful with the place. So next time some Libertarian extremist claims that “taxation is theft”, I will just tell that idiot to fuk off!
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(Dale Husband: Rational?! If that smart aleck remark you just made is any indication, you are a hypocrite if you claim to be “rational”. I am done forever respecting blind, deaf, and dumb people like you who have a one track attitude. Get real and deal with reality alone, not your extremist ideology!)
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