I, Too, Have Often Tried to Fuck Trees

I ran across this item at Addicting Info today:

A community made up of American ex-pats deep in the South American hills of Chile – far away from America’s annoying taxes, healthcare mandate, and legal abortions — was supposed to be a libertarian paradise of rugged individualism. Instead it cost many of the people who bought into it almost everything, and now is buried under lawsuits — a reminder that everything that glitters is not inflation-proof, Ron Paul-backed gold. 

It seems pretty obvious that basing one’s society on a single work of (poorly written) fiction is folly, but for many adherents of Ayn Rand and her seminal book of Objectivist allegorical grandstanding, Atlas Shrugged isn’t just any book. It’s about as close to the Bible that many libertarians have — apart from the Bible, of course. It’s influenced an astounding number of conservative public figures — from Ron Paul to Rand Paul to Ronald Reagan. Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney’s Rand-loving running mate and probable 2016 presidential contender, said it was his favorite book growing up.

I don't think I have to analyze the immediate idiocy involved, do I? You didn't build that means that, well, you couldn't build it.

But let me personalize the tale of woe for you:

GGC is an environmentally protected area and it would take the political movement of heaven and earth to allow a community based on small lots to be officially approved. I had the opportunity to ask a question of the salesman who showed my husband and me “our property.” I claimed it because I fell head over heels for the most beautiful tree I’ve ever seen. I felt an instant connection as though the two of us were old souls who had found each other. I could believe it, I could see it… waking up each morning and having coffee under that tree, telling it about my plans for the day.

Never mind the splinters implied, focus on that first sentence. Galt's Gulch Chile advertised lots as small as 1.5 acres (for $48,500. Remember, this is Chile, not California) but were prevented from selling them because...government regulation. In Chile.

And did that stop the shysters at GGC? Nope. They knowingly sold 1.5 acre lots on a piece of land zoned for nothing smaller than 10 acre subdivisions.

And now, your moment of Zen: