Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: Notesfiles $Revision: 1.6.2.17 $; site ea.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!inuxc!pur-ee!uiucdcs!ea!mwm From: mwm@ea.UUCP Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: Re: Re: Comments on Libertarianism Message-ID: <22400046@ea.UUCP> Date: Fri, 23-Nov-84 16:42:00 EST Article-I.D.: ea.22400046 Posted: Fri Nov 23 16:42:00 1984 Date-Received: Mon, 26-Nov-84 08:03:23 EST References: <110@talcott.UUCP> Lines: 59 Nf-ID: #R:talcott:-11000:ea:22400046:000:2943 Nf-From: ea!mwm Nov 23 15:42:00 1984 /***** ea:net.politics / watmath!cdshaw / 4:35 pm Nov 21, 1984 */ > 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. Used as an excuse to avoid payment of taxes? I don't use it as an excuse not to pay taxes - I don't even use it as an excuse not to provide slave labor in figuring out how much Uncle Sugar is going to take from me at gunpoint (people object if I say "steal", so ... :-). I don't do so for the same reason that I wouldn't argue with anyone else who pointed a gun at me and said "Your money or your life": the cost/benefit ratio is wrong. > 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. Ah, yes, but who decides what "the common good" is? Better yet, who decides how much it is moral to take from someone at gunpoint (and from whom) for "the common good?" > 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. I take it that "medicare pays for pacemakers and pacemakers are not for the common good" would be a line you wouldn't object to? > 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. Gee, but IBM was forced to unbundle their software from their hardware by a federal court. So, I guess that argument would be "society should operate like IBM : ... ." Now, *that* scares me. > 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. If we all "know & love" them, then they would pay for them. If people refused to pay for them, then they must not "know & love" them. There would probably be a short period of confusion while people sorted out which of the government functions they actually were willing to pay for, but society wouldn't disappear. > Arguments of this kind are a gross misapplication of the classic > libertarian line, and should no longer be labelled "libertarian". More importantly, they should not be taken for all, or even an important part, of libertarianism.