I said this in my last comment, this is only a discussion about whether people in the United States live in third world conditions. They do. Addressing what yo

I said this in my last comment, this is only a discussion about whether people in the United States live in third world conditions. They do. Addressing what you consider equivalent examples, there is a fundamental difference between choosing to live "off the grid", and having no choice economically. The development of colonias is deeply tied to the industrialization of the border, predatory developer practices, and physical isolation, which makes escaping the economic bubble of colonias even harder (something that public services are specially meant to address). When you grow up in what is essentially a third world country, with a third world public education, can you not see how escaping that environment would be incredibly difficult? The idea that everyone in a "free society" is inherently equally free is, to be perfectly honest, absurd. It takes a lot of work from society to make this true. To expand a bit on my anecdote, having to dig a well and put in a septic tank didn't affect my neighbors that much... Because their home is a multimillion dollar custom built home. They chose to build their house where they did, but that took certain financial freedoms that not everyone in the United States has, which is exactly the point. Also, just to expand on your last paragraph, we as a society already enforce many requirements on land developers. Colonias developed in areas specifically where enforcement of a lot of these regulations was weak (or at a time prior to regulation), in many cases the was done purposefully by developers and not by the people that went on to live there. To be clear, I'm not proposing a clear alternative here. I am however asking that you acknowledge the fact that your libertarian approach is equivalent to accepting millions of people living in slums in the United States, and living in economic conditions that severely limits their ability to escape. This is exactly the state that many in third world countries find themselves in.