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: libertarianism VS economic reality Message-ID: <22400047@ea.UUCP> Date: Fri, 23-Nov-84 17:12:00 EST Article-I.D.: ea.22400047 Posted: Fri Nov 23 17:12:00 1984 Date-Received: Mon, 26-Nov-84 08:03:38 EST References: <495@wucs.UUCP> Lines: 66 Nf-ID: #R:wucs:-49500:ea:22400047:000:3634 Nf-From: ea!mwm Nov 23 16:12:00 1984 > Let me remind the net exactly what consequence the libertarians are > willing to accept: that there could be a situation in which a coercive > action could make everyone better off, and they would still oppose it. > For all we know this may be the situation for some coercive actions > that are occurring right now. There is a word for accepting bad > consequences when nobody gets any net benefit in return: IRRATIONAL. Everybody would be better off? Then why do you have to coerce them? Maybe they think they wouldn't be better off after all, or maybe they are irrational? And of course, after you coerce people into the situation, they have *all* lost something - part of their freedom. If nothing else, their freedom to act irrationally. > Wrong! It will be some personS' opinionS of the value of the public good. > If people can be made to reveal their preferences for a public good > honestly (and Clarke explains how this can be done), the government (or > anyone) can determine what level of provision of the public good will be > Pareto-optimal. Unfortunately for libertarians, the mechanism by which > this is achieved involves a tax, so the free market can't do it. The > free market is LESS EFFICIENT than one with certain kinds of govt. inter- > ference. Yes, it would make the free market less efficient. So? Should efficiency be the be-all and end-all of society? On top of which, are you sure that letting the public decide what level of provision a good should be supplied at is correct? For instance, what would the pareto-optimal level of slaves in the south have been in the 1840s? > This is worth elaborating on, for here we have a CLASSICAL libertarian > FALLACY. Libertarians see political philosophy as a ONE-DIMENSIONAL > spectrum: someone is either for "less" government or "more". This is just flatly false, and is followed by an ad-hominom attack. I, as a libertarian, see *many* kinds of people. They have been characterized as "statist-on-the-left", "statist-on-the-right", and libertarian. This characterization is broken, of course. You can't put a political stance into one dimension, and I seriously doubt that you can fit it in two or three. (It will fit in something less than a hilbert space, though. :-) Almost everybody (libertarians and anarchists are the obvious exceptions) wants more of some government functions, and less of others. You, as a moderate, are the rule, not the exception (as you seem to believe). > Your "breaking up with your girlfriend" example is a bad one because it > is totally beyond me how anyone could *force* me to do that unless they > did something drastic, in which case I would not be better off. Let's > take a better example: suicide. Now, if by forcing me not to kill myself > you would make me grateful afterwards, do you have a right to do it? I > say you do. Yes, but if I'm not grateful afterwards, did you have the right to do it? I claim the answer is no. Now, if you can show me a working time machine, I'll gladly not object to your interfering with other peoples attempts at suicide. > better. It could easily fulfill my "modified golden rule" criterion > that says that society is best which one would choose if one didn't know > which member of that society one was to be. Interesting concept. I would still choose a society with minimal government interference, because I feel that that would give me the best chance of improving my lot if I wound up on the bottom. I suspect you would choose something different - which just shows that "best society" varies from individual to individual under your criterion.