POL: Re: [extropy-chat] libertarian fervor

Technotranscendence neptune at superlink.net
Thu Dec 4 11:50:08 UTC 2003


On Thursday, December 04, 2003 2:31 AM Don Dartfield twodeel at jornada.org
wrote:
> That was what got me started, at least, and
> motivated me to register as a Libertarian.
> Lately, though, I've drifted away somewhat,
> because I've realized that I'm not a complete
> libertarian like many of the other libertarians
> whose articles I read seem to be.  For
> instance, I have yet to be convinced that
> private ownership of roads would be better
> than our current system.

I have yet to be convinced the current system is worth keeping.:)  A
better approach to this, though, might not be the typical rationalistic
one of arguing from first principles.  Instead, look at the work Daniel
Klein has done on private roads and mixed systems.  See his papers at:

http://lsb.scu.edu/~dklein/papers/default.htm

> Somewhat similar to Larry Niven's whole "Why
> I Am Not a Libertarian" thing that he wrote a
> story about ... what was it ... oh yeah, "Cloak of
> Anarchy."  But in any case, I still consider
> myself to be more libertarian than anything else.

"Cloak of Anarchy" was a neat little tale, but there are three problems
with it.  One, not all libertarians are anarchists.  I am both, but many
libertarians are not.  Two, Niven really stacks cards in it.  All the
things that happen when the power goes out -- and I've been in a number
of such outages and not seen anything remotely like that:) -- still
exist under governments now and, no doubt, will still exist under
governments in the future.  (I'm not only talking about unorganized
crime, which will probably exist in any society, but also organized
crime -- some of which is the direct result of government intervention
(drug laws, gambling laws, etc.) and some of which is the government
(taxation, conscription, etc.).)  Three, the actual history of anarchic
societies -- such as those of Ancient Iceland, Medieval England, the Old
West in the US, etc. -- shows something quite different.

No on this list point, one might say that that's all ancient history and
it could never work in today's world.  That's a matter for debate, I
admit.  (My opinion is that terrestrial societies, as long as there's no
large frontier, will continue to be archic ones and that government
intervention will, from here on, oscillate inside the ambit of the
centralized welfare states.  There will be times of reform in the
direction of freedom, but there will also be periods of government
expansion.  If humans or posthumans, however, begin the settle space, I
believe the political, economic, and military conditions will spell the
end of centralized government -- at least on a civilization encompassing
scale as we see it now.  (I mean there will, undoubtedly, be localized
central governments, but the social forces will not allow for anything
much larger than loose confederations above that.))

Cheers!

Dan
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/




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