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From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: (Re:**N) Affirmative Action
Message-ID: <620@cybvax0.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 16-Jul-85 10:35:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: cybvax0.620
Posted: Tue Jul 16 10:35:50 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 20-Jul-85 09:49:01 EDT
References: <259@kontron.UUCP> <1340299@acf4.UUCP>
Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 56

In article <1340299@acf4.UUCP> mms1646@acf4.UUCP (Michael M. Sykora) writes:
> >/* mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) /  3:41 pm  Jul 12, 1985 */
> 
> >If the closest you can come to a libertarian society (to serve as an example
> >on which you base predictions for remodeling our present society) is
> >ancient and medieval Ireland, I'd say that your ideas are not ignorant
> >nor ivory tower, but stupid and inapplicable.
> 
> It would seem that you are illiterate rather, since Nat wrote ancient
> Iceland, not Ireland.

It would seem that you'd rather try a cheap debating trick, quibbling over one
letter, than actually trying to formulate a valid rebuttal.  Allow me to accept
your correction: now answer my point.

> >Of course markets initiate force.  Not immediate, physical force
> >but force none the less.  The penalties for ignoring that force can be
> >life-threatening.  Such as the threat of starvation if you don't jump the
> >way the market dictates.
> 
> Nonsense.  It is not the market that "forces" here, but the reality of
> the scarcity of many resources.

Nonsense yourself.  Supply of resources can be artificially controlled.
Thus, scarity can be artificial rather than "real".  Look at the oil
shortage a few years ago and the oil glut today.

> >No, the market essentially can rob you by devaluing your property.
> 
> This devaluation entails a drop in the level of demand for (your) property of
> and/or an increase in the supply.  How is this robbery?

Say I have 1000 units of a perishable commodity that I intend to sell.
The market price drops a dollar, and I am out $1000 dollars as surely as if
a robber entered my house and snuck off with $1000 in cash or durable goods.

> >I'm all for experimenting and giving it a chance:
> >but on a small scale, without coercing me into it through our current
> >political system.
> 
> This statement would appear to betray a profound ignorance of libertarianism,
> as a transformation to a libertarian society from the present one would
> involve the elimination of coercion.

And how would you accomplish this transformation then without the use of our
current political system?

There are some things I'm proud to have a "profound ignorance" of, because I'd
suspect my intellect was disintegrating if I "understood" them.  Such as
Reagan's voodoo economics and libertarianism.  But go ahead, Sykora, explain
it.  I don't think you can do much more than wave your hands, hop up and
down, and try to distract us from the fact that you seldom address the
questions; and instead prefer cheap rhetorical tricks.
-- 

Mike Huybensz		...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh