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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!harvard!think!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh
From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Newsflash! [JoSH on Socialis
Message-ID: <795@cybvax0.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 23-Oct-85 13:51:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: cybvax0.795
Posted: Wed Oct 23 13:51:46 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 25-Oct-85 07:24:53 EDT
References: <876@water.UUCP> <28200183@inmet.UUCP>
Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 62
Summary: 

In article <28200183@inmet.UUCP> nrh@inmet.UUCP writes:
> >/* Written  6:07 pm  Oct 17, 1985 by mrh@cybvax0 in inmet:net.politics.t */
> >Instead, your forces of freedom from government is proposing to
> >throw away our current system of keeping people from breaking down our
> >doors for an untried and probably impractical one.  The systems can't
> >coexist: the current one depends on being the only one.
> 
> It's odd to hear Mike Huybensz toeing the conservative line, but I find
> it encouraging (in an odd way).

Arguments on the net don't present a good picture of the eclecticism of
our thoughts: instead they tend to highlight the controversial.

> Mike: the notion that the "current system of keeping people from breaking
> down our doors" depends on being the only one is unsupported, irrelevant,
> muddleheaded, and wrong.
> 
> Unsupported: (so far, anyhow).  Simply saying: "it's there, it works",
> says nothing about the validity of other systems, particularly (as
> Jan points out) when the first steps towards libertarian society are so
> simple and incremental.

Other systems certainly might be valid: but you have not made an argument
addressing my claim that our system depends on being the only one.  In other
words, you're yelling "unsupported" and following with a non-sequiteur.

> Irrelevant: if it DOES depend on being the only method, it doesn't follow
> that a new method cannot replace it cleanly.

Not irrelevant.  It means that because they cannot coexist, the replacement
process must be abrupt, not gradual.  It is difficult to perform "clean"
abrupt replacements of social mechanisms.

> Muddleheaded: it also doesn't follow that a conversion to yet another 
> method that was easy to convert to, but didn't depend upon being the
> only one, and was easy to convert FROM does not exist (for example,
> a voucher system like that proposed for "public" education).

Speak for yourself.  You've selected an example that NEVER depended on
being the only system.  Private education has always existed in the US,
that public education has partially supplanted.

Not to mention your sentence is atrocious.  You must have a secret
hankering to write undeciperable regulations for a government agency.  :-)

> Wrong: the FBI, the state cops, and the city police (not to mention a
> private guard service) might all fulfill this function, depending  on
> the criminal's motivation.  You wish to argue that they are all part of
> the same system?  Fine: I argue that they are all part of the laws of
> physics in operation; and I do not propose to step outside THAT system.

If they are part of the same enforcement system, then you haven't shown me
to be wrong.  Your final sentence is a classic fallacy: it's analogous to
the following example.

There is a siamese fighting fish in a sealed bowl which will not tolerate
any other in the bowl.  You claim that because they are all part of the
laws of physics (and you aren't going to go outside of those laws) that
when you put your libertarian fish in the bowl they won't fight?  Get real.
-- 

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