By Paul Weiser
Anyone who's followed the history of zoning and land use regulation - whether for nuclear power plants or homeless shelters - is familiar with the acronym "NIMBY." It stands for Not in My Back Yard and constitutes corrupt special pleading. Even more so, as we shall see, its converse.
NIMBY denotes that many who like a particular facility in general fight tooth and nail against having one nearby. Many conservatives favor nuclear power, but use every dishonest means to prevent nuclear facilities (especially waste storage) anywhere near them. Liberals advocate deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill and a societal responsibility to tend the homeless, but react hysterically to a proposed group home or shelter on their block (or near their schools). This is hypocrisy plain and simple.
A closely related hypocrisy may be termed "OIYBY" - Only in Your Back Yard. This is the practice of high-mindedly accepting the benefits of a particular crime or evil... so long as someone else suffers its externalities (its costs and undesirable consequences). Two examples spring to mind.
One is liberals high-mindedly protecting vile black "ghetto" behavior and music on "free expression" grounds so long as white liberals get to buy the music, thrill to the gunplay and consume the drugs - and only underclass blacks suffer the rapes, murders, and social decay. Similarly, white liberals and libertarians favor Mexican illegal immigrants for cheap, disposable labor (using high-sounding "open borders" rationalizations) so long as the costs in crime, reduced earnings, unemployment and social Balkanization fall on poorer whites than they (and blacks) who don't need hotel maids and cut their own grass.
Of the two, OIYBY is probably the more reprehensible because it imposes real harm rather than merely precluding potential benefits. It withholds not cheap electricity or flophouses, but the rule of law.
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