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: Re: Re: Re: 'Majority' rule - (nf) Message-ID: <1790@inmet.UUCP> Date: Tue, 6-Nov-84 01:39:20 EST Article-I.D.: inmet.1790 Posted: Tue Nov 6 01:39:20 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 8-Nov-84 02:47:06 EST Lines: 100 #R:ucbcad:-276100:inmet:7800158:000:5154 inmet!nrh Nov 4 15:52:00 1984 >***** inmet:net.politics / ucbcad!faustus / 7:40 am Nov 3, 1984 >> >The whole problem, though, is that libertarians think that individual >> >liberty is the highest good, and I think that a better society is the >> >highest good. (Although certainly not in the manner of Ellsworth Toohey.) >> >You can take your pick -- all I want to argue is that if you accept that >> >society is more important than absolute liberty for the individual, the >> >sort of government I am advocating is the best. >> >> You seem to be ignoring the possibility that we believe that society >> would be better off if its members were free. Remember -- >> libertarians in general believe that almost everyone in a free >> society would be better off than if the society were not free. > >I remember a posting a while ago that said "Even if a worse society would >result, libertarians still believe that absolute freedom is the most >important thing". Obviously you aren't this sort of libertarian. If you >can argue in a rational manner that complete freedom would work for the >benefit of society, I'd like to see your arguments, because I haven't >seen many arguments like this on the net. Almost everybody who has been >arguing for libertarianism has been taking absolute freedom as an end >in itself, which is an assumption that I can't accept. > > Wayne >---------- > Actually, I AM that sort of libertarian -- I think the right of everyone to go to hell in their own way is one of the fundemental human rights. On the other hand, I happen to believe that society as a whole would work out better (more people would be happier) given a policiy of maximum human liberty. Why? That's a topic for several books. My favorite, which I've quoted a lot is "The Machinery of Freedom", by David Friedman. One which addresses the subject more directly, but which I've never read all the way through is "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" by (I think) Robert Van Nozick. As for the basis of my own feelings on the subject, it falls out of a few sub-beliefs: 1. Utopia is NOT an option. 2. There Aint No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. 3. People know what they want better than any group of planners. 4. Power corrupts, either by attrition (the people with power become corrupt) or by attraction (corrupt people attempt to gain that power). 5. Good intentions have no more impact on the wisdom of a particular (legislative) law than they do on the formulation of a law of physics. Put another way, it is VERY easy (given coercive power) to do evil while trying to do good. 6. In a free market, only transactions desired by both parties to the transaction will take place. (This is a surprisingly deep concept, consider that it means that the whole structure of a free market will be determined, not by ideals, or designs of what people should be like, but what people ARE like -- what they desire and what they produce). 7. Private property is a moral concept. This list is certainly not exhaustive, but it helps to make the underpinnings clear. I do not know what would happen if we had "complete freedom." I'm not even sure the concept is meaningful. I believe (as my ethics instructor in high school put it) that "my freedom stops at your nose". As to why we'd be better off, consider number 6, above. A market represents the needs and the productivity of its participants. Not what someone thinks they should be like, but what they think they are like. Governments in general are at least one layer removed from this, and generally several - they act on models of what they think people will want. Because of this, governments reflect only imperfectly the desires of their constituents. Given that a government does exist, if it wields power it will become corrupt. Unlike (say) a corrupt insurance corporation, it will not be destroyed by market competition with its (presumably less corrupt) competitors. Once corrupt, it will grow, if it can, in order to extend its power. There are equilibrium forces, in a republic -- the government dare not offend enough to lose the popular vote. In a totalitarian society, it must avoid revolution. These strictures are so much less rigorous than the market forces that dictate moral behavior there that they allow for free play by the power-hungry, compared to what their scope would be in a private firm. Governments will claim to be doing what they do for the good of the people. The problem is that governments understand that good less well than the people involved. A truly beneficent government would be economically redundant (the market already assures that mutually agreeable trades will happen) and depending on what power the government owned, it would become a festering roost for the power-hungry (those who could not become powerful in a market because they don't serve human desires could become powerful in a government because they may oppress). I suspect this is what has happened to the relatively small government in the US. I'm a little pushed for time, so I'll leave you with that, and the suggestion that you try getting hold of "The Machinery of Freedom".