Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!cca!ima!inmet!nrh From: nrh@inmet.UUCP Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: A Question for Libertarians - (nf) Message-ID: <1772@inmet.UUCP> Date: Wed, 31-Oct-84 00:48:55 EST Article-I.D.: inmet.1772 Posted: Wed Oct 31 00:48:55 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 2-Nov-84 03:09:55 EST Lines: 143 #R:hao:-122000:inmet:7800146:000:6877 inmet!nrh Oct 29 23:15:00 1984 CAUTION: Lots of sarcasm in my replies to Larry's argument. These are not individually "smilied" :-). >***** inmet:net.politics / mit-eddi!lkk / 12:11 pm Oct 25, 1984 >>From: nrh@inmet.UUCP: >>"To sum up: we ALL benefit from a free [libertarian] society, since almost all >>of us MUST trade the fruits of our labors (or the labors themselves) >>for food and necessities. Restrictions on freedom in order to prevent >>starvation provide a ready avenue for institutionalizing what could >>otherwise be transient dependencies." >>----- >I've never met a starving libertarian. That's nice. Look who else is hard to find: "There are no atheists in the foxholes" (William Cummings quoted in Carlos P. Romulo "I saw the Fall of the Philipines") Does this mean there ARE no atheists in foxholes, no starving libertarians? Not at all. It means that William Cummings never noticed the one, and Larry Kolodney never noticed the other. Of course, say what you will about starving people, but I find them absolute demons for political ideology. Many's the time you'll find them in the library paging through the library, or cornering you on the street to ask your opinion of Trotsky. This notion that "a philosophy has a strike against it unless starving people seen by Larry Kolodney believe in it" strikes me as a little odd. >In fact all the libertarians I've met >have been well educated (usually thru public education), well fed (as a >result of said education), and in general "have it made". I'll bet they've traveled on public roads, too! The Fiends! This certainly proves them self-serving, greedy types, even if they would MUCH have preferred a private road system, and even if they gladly would have traded access to public schools for a chance at the private ones that would have formed in the absence of government subsidized education. >Having found >themselves in such a situation, and seeing the dire poverty surrounding >them, (in the US and rest of world), they invented a philosophy which >justifies their priveleged status by idealizing relationships between >people as mutually informed rational transactions. Why bother? Why not just quietly make our megabucks and steal into the night? Why not just use those vast resources to corrupt politicians so that we can escape confiscatory taxation? Can it be that the libertarians are idealists? Can it be that their loud protests about the whittling away of freedom benefit others as well? Could it be that the reliance libertarians place on freedom is the surest way we know to attack poverty? Naaah! We aren't poor enough! At least, Larry doesn't know any poor libertarians, right? >They tend to be very >theoretical in their politics, using unrealistic analogies to make >questionable points. Yup. Theoretical, yes. Something wrong with that, bub? Unrealistic analogies? This from the man who wrote a note that said, in part: "GIVEN THAT NATURE ABHORS A POWER VACUUM...". Questionable points? Why yes, you've questioned them, although so far the basis for your question seems to be "why don't poor people I know believe in it, if it's such hot stuff?". Or, "You can't believe in that! There'd be a revolution!". Backing, please? >But, when you come right down to it, >libertarianism is simply a matter of greed. "I've got mine, and just >try to take it away from me." Okay, Larry, you got me! As I ride my bike home, I frequently yell out: "You just TRY to take it from me," or, as the guy who rode by on the previous bike said: The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not. and The power of a multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbor and perhaps my employer is very much less than that which the smallest fonctionnaire possesses who wields the coercive power of the state, and on whose discretion it depends whether I am to be allowed to live or to work [Both quotes from von Hayek, "The Road to Serfdom", Chapt 8] >Of course they will take it away from you. Either thru taxes, as in the >present case, or expropriation, after the inevitable revolution which >will take place if the mediating influence of social programs >dissapears. Well, golly! It seems as if we wealthy & powerful are just stuck. We've got all this wealth and privilege which cannot be defended without some slipshod philosophy or other, and which tend to bleed away if the poor are just free to form enterprises and compete with us..... wait! I know: let's tell the poor that we're helping them. Let's erect an enormous, screaming bloated government to run social programs which will also, because it has to, tax and regulate everybody, (but ESPECIALLY just the poor and middle class). The regulations can be made complex and burdensome, and they'll just about eliminate the major upward-mobile paths for the poor. Let's see, first a minimum wage (to make all labor less than $3.50/hr unsellable), then a complex net of business regulation (to prevent people from just setting up in business and selling their goods), rent control to destroy the neighborhoods of the poor, and finally a creaky, expensive, corruption-ridden welfare system, to make it unprofitable for people to learn how to work (they make so little more working than on welfare that it's not worth the time). Of course, the poor will love it! They're starving (they ARE poor) and the notion that we're "helping" them will keep them from revolting. A good thing, too. The only thing worse than the poor people rebelling would be the poor people ceasing to be poor. Best of all, how can they complain? We're GIVING them money, aren't we? We're KEEPING rents from going up, aren't we? And as a free bonus, we get to become fonctionnaires (see Hayek's quote above) as well as multi-millionaires and thus have considerably more power over the poor than we could if we were forced to treat them as free men in a free society. Of course, a few of the poor, a very few, will be mad because they realize that we're closing off their real chances at the future. But never mind that -- the starving ones will grab at whatever we give them, and if the soup is drugged, who can criticize? We're giving them soup, aren't we? Surely that's better than nothing..... I'll bet the socialists will go for it in a big way! Of course, the libertarians (who?) will yell about it, but who can argue with a free lunch? >Take your pick libertarians, but first wake up and smell >the coffee. Okay, Larry. Now, if you would be so kind, please reply to the point of mine you quoted at the beginning. Explain to me please why all these great-sounding laws and taxes to prevent starvation have NOT become an avenue for institutionalizing dependencies. Of course, if you think they have.....