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From: cliff@unmvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Emigration vs. withdrawing from a group:Human Race
Message-ID: <676@unmvax.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 12-Feb-85 15:21:33 EST
Article-I.D.: unmvax.676
Posted: Tue Feb 12 15:21:33 1985
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Xref: watmath net.politics:7603 net.politics.theory:131

>>So far,
>>the Libertarian solution is the only one that has ever worked.
> 
> Bull.  The very fact that governments of a more organized form exist is
> a refutation of the empirical success of Libertarianism.

Righto! and the fact that people are starving to death in socialist African
nations is a refutation of the empirical success of  capitalism's ability
to keep enough food in a country to feed its citizens.  After all, if
capitalism really allowed such food, the countries that are all starving to
death would switch immediately to the better form of government, hence the
following theorem:

Any government at any time is the best government for that country at that
time.

> Government
> policies and governments change as a result of people being unhappy
> with the status quo.

Yes, that is true, it does happen, however it is not true that anytime people
are unhappy with the status quo that governments change, or that governments
change only as a result of people being unhappy with the status quo, nor is it
true that the changes that occur in governments (even when the changes are a
result of people being unhappy with the status quo) are in a direction that
would reverse the status that is making people unhappy.

> If Libertarianism really worked as well as some
> people think it would, if it had been tried, it would still exist
> (barring circumstances such as conquest, genocide, etc.).

As a government, libertarianism, the marketplace of societies, hasn't been
tried on a sufficiently large scale to yield valid results.  On the other hand
the marketplace of species, evolution, has been tried for millions of years;
it works.

> People who groan and moan about the "good old days" of a laissez-faire
> government don't seem to realize that the current governments evolved
> because there was a problem and no one was willing or able to step in and
> solve it except the government.

People who imply that the "good old days" of [any previous] government were
examples of libertarianism either don't known their history, don't know what
libertarianism is about or are deliberately making false implications.

> I point you to the situation involving
> the labor-reform laws in England in the 1830's

Sure, a monarchy makes a good substitute for a libertarian country...

> and the circumstances
> surrounding the Great Depression (U.S.) for some basic historical
> examples of governments being forced by popular pressure to intervene.

I think the depression has been mentioned quite a few times.  The bottom
line is that it was government interference that brought it about in the
first place.

> 	Ray Chen
> 	princeton!tilt!chenr

--Cliff