[extropy-chat] The Hidden Luddite was Re: peak oil debate

[Brett Paatsch]

Samantha Atkins wrote:

> Excuse me but libertarianism is compatible with various answers to  how 
> much government is useful.  It is not a position of "no  government" 
> although one faction of libertarian thought does have  that answer for the 
> question.   Please use labels responsibly or not  at all.

I don't know *how* :-)

How, that is, to have a discussion about labels like libertarian and to
be sure that I am doing so responsibly by all the possible meanings
of the word others may have put on it.

When I think of libertarian thought I think of the ideas of Bentham and
James and John Stuart Mills (who wrote _On Liberty_) and a bunch
of others that followed afterward. I think I could do a reasonable job of
placing the idea (meme) into some sort of historical context and follow its
development but I don't know that I can do much of a job at all of using
the word responsibly when the point is really to find out what the word
means to other people that identify with it.

Its helpful for me to know what libertarianism means to individual
people who identify with the term. Its also interesting to see why
people identify with the Principles of Extropy.

Wouldn't you be interested in hearing how people who do or do not
identify with the term libertarian identify with the principles of extropy?

Seems to me that there is unlikely to be a single correct answer but
there might be a number of *interesting* answers.

Brett Paatsch