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From: cdshaw@watmath.UUCP (Chris Shaw)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Re: Comments on Libertarianism
Message-ID: <9926@watmath.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 20-Nov-84 22:04:46 EST
Article-I.D.: watmath.9926
Posted: Tue Nov 20 22:04:46 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 21-Nov-84 01:12:46 EST
References: <47@cbsck.UUCP> <2773@ucbcad.UUCP> <2597@ihldt.UUCP> <272@pyuxd.UUCP>, <110@talcott.UUCP>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 41

The main thing which bugs me about libertarianism (aside from the smugness
evidenced by some of its adherents) is the incredible frequency with which
it is used as an excuse to avoid payment of taxes & levies in general.

Is libertarianism a dogma of monetary expediency or what ???
I seem to remember from John Stuart Mill's  "On Liberty" that he stated 
that laws for the common good are legitimate, but laws regulating individual
welfare are not.  Laws are supposed to prevent you from hurting me, not you
from hurting you. 

Given this kind of line, objections to medicare because "medicare pays for
pacemakers and pacemakers are against my beliefs/morals/desire to pay" seem
irrelevant to libertarianism.

The wrong lib. argument is : "I'm free to participate as fully as I wish
in society... I don't like X in program/tax regime Y, so I don't want to pay
for that portion of Y which goes to finance X". In other words, society should
operate contrary to IBM :  everything should be unbundled & I'll pay for what
I want.

Unfortunately, society doesn't come unbundled (at least not the version I got
(V7 release 3.233) (-:).. so making arguments of the above type is a waste of
time. This is especially true of universal-pay-for-it schemes such as medicare,
since opting out would be hard to manage on a subprogram-by-subprogram basis.
This is par for the course, in fact, in all insurance-like programs: everyone 
must pay, or the system won't work. If you enjoy some of the benefits, you
must pay for the entire package, no matter what.

The babble that "I am free, so I have property, so I can do what I
like with it, therefore, I won't pay taxes for a particular set of things"
is vacuous, pure & simple, since if the argument were followed through, then
society would no longer exist due to people refusing to pay for the services
we all know & love.

Arguments of this kind are a gross misapplication of the classic 
libertarian line, and should no longer be labelled "libertarian".

			yours 'til the baloney melts
				I remain
				  CD Shaw