Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: $Revision: 1.6.2.16 $; site inmet.UUCP
Path: utzoo!lsuc!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!zehntel!vlsvax1!qantel!lll-crg!ucdavis!ucbvax!decvax!yale!inmet!nrh
From: nrh@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Re: Strange Bedfellows: and shoes
Message-ID: <28200372@inmet.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 8-Dec-85 01:17:00 EST
Article-I.D.: inmet.28200372
Posted: Sun Dec  8 01:17:00 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 13-Dec-85 06:26:30 EST
References: <591@calgary.UUCP>
Lines: 28
Nf-ID: #R:calgary:-59100:inmet:28200372:000:1635
Nf-From: inmet!nrh    Dec  8 01:17:00 1985


>/* Written  7:33 pm  Nov 30, 1985 by carnes@gargoyle in inmet:net.politics.t */
>...
>["Brain Damage" Libertarians are] those who have
>heard tell that the free market is the most efficient economic system
>but do not ask what "efficient" means and do not notice that the
>system which has been shown to be efficient is a highly abstract
>model which no economist claims is an accurate representation of the
>real world; who advocate a society in which coercion is "minimized"
>without asking what that could possibly mean; who forbid the
>"initiation of coercion" on basic principle and in the next breath
>say they have a right to initiate coercion against someone who
>trespasses on their property or tries to steal it; who assume without
>question that individuals have a moral right to own privately the
>means of production, apparently on the grounds that they have been
>owned privately in the past; who claim to be defenders of "liberty"
>but in fact defend only the liberty of private property-owners to do
>as they wish with their own property; who declare that "taxation is
>theft" as if this were self-evident; and who, in short, do not
>understand what it is to think philosophically (which means
>*rigorously*) about political and social questions.

Say!  Are you the same Richard Carnes who postulated a bunch of
libertarians who would simply sit in the middle of an island without
attempting to establish property rights to paths to the ocean and thus
be trapped within during a rescue attempt?  I suspect that *THAT*
Richard Carnes would have to be pretty careful about what he claimed
"rigorous thinking" meant.