Difference between revisions of "No Libertarians in the Seventeenth-Century Highlands"
From Critiques Of Libertarianism
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[[Category:David Friedman]] | [[Category:David Friedman]] | ||
[[Category:Reason Magazine]] | [[Category:Reason Magazine]] | ||
| − | [[Category:Anarcho- | + | [[Category:Anarcho-capitalism]] |
| − | {{DES | des = Brad DeLong | + | [[Category:Organized Crime]] |
| + | [[Category:Pre-Modern Scotland]] | ||
| + | {{URL | url = http://engforum.pravda.ru/showthread.php?64977-No-Libertarians-in-the-Seventeenth-Century-Highlands}} | ||
| + | {{DES | des = [[Brad DeLong]] ridicules a debate held at the Reason magazine 35th anniversary banquet, skewering the wishful thinking of [[David Friedman]]. Private coercive enforcement, warlords, organized crime: they are all the same thing.}} | ||
| + | {{Old URL | url = http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2004_archives/000423.html}} | ||
[This is a copy of a posting from Brad DeLong.] | [This is a copy of a posting from Brad DeLong.] | ||
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[http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/2004/03/if_wishes_were_.html John & Belle Have A Blog: If Wishes Were Horses, Beggars Would Ride -- A Pony!]: | [http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/2004/03/if_wishes_were_.html John & Belle Have A Blog: If Wishes Were Horses, Beggars Would Ride -- A Pony!]: | ||
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| + | <p>...Reason recently published a debate held at its 35th anniversary banquet. The flavor of this discussion is indescribable. In its total estrangement from our political and social life today, its wilfull disregard of all known facts about human nature, it resembles nothing so much as a debate over some fine procedural point of end-stage communism, after the state has withered away....</p> | ||
| − | + | <p>Richard A. Epstein: even in the libertarian utopia, some forms of state coercion will be required. If we must assemble 100 plots of land to build a railway which will benefit all, and only 99 owners will sell, then we may need to force a lone holdout to accept a fair price for his land. Similarly, the public enforcement of private rights and the creation of infrastructure will require money, so there will have to be some taxes. [Note to self: no shit, Sherlock.] </p> | |
| − | + | <p>Randy Barnett: Not so fast! Let's cross that bridge when we come to it rather than restricting liberty in advance. We'll know a lot more about human liberty in the libertarian utopia, and private entrepreneurs will solve these problems somehow without our needing to grant to governments the dangerous ability to confiscate our property in the name of some nebulous "public good." And as for rights enforcement -- look it's Halley's Comet! </p? | |
| − | + | <p>David Friedman: Epstein places too much confidence in his proposed restrictions on government power. Rights could be enforced privately, and imperfect but workable solutions to the holdouts in the railway case could also be found. "To justify taxation we need the additional assumption that rights enforcement cannot be done by the state at a profit, despite historical examples of societies where the right to enforce the law and collect the resulting fines was a marketable asset." </p> | |
| − | + | <p>Now, everyone close your eyes and try to imagine a private, profit-making rights-enforcement organization which does not resemble the mafia, a street gang, those pesky fire-fighters/arsonists/looters who used to provide such "services" in old New York and Tokyo, medieval tax-farmers, or a Lendu militia. (In general, if thoughts of the Eastern Congo intrude, I suggest waving them away with the invisible hand and repeating "that's anarcho-capitalism" several times.) Nothing's happening but a buzzing noise, right? </p> | |
| − | + | <p>Now try it the wishful thinking way. Just wish that we might all live in a state of perfect liberty, free of taxation and intrusive government, and that we should all be wealthier as well as freer. Now wish that people should, despite that lack of any restraint... not... rape... sell fraudulent stocks in non-existent ventures... dump of mercury in the... general stock of water from which people privately draw.) Awesome huh? But it gets better. Now wish that everyone had a pony.</p> | |
| + | </blockquote> | ||
It is an interesting fact that there are no libertarians--nobody calling for the withering-away of the state--nobody calling for competition between private, profit-making, rights-enforcement organizations until the nineteenth century. Libertarianism as we know it today shows up first in the anarchist-socialists of the late nineteenth century (left libertarians who think we can eliminate not only the state but also property) and then later on shows up in the right-libertarians who currently populate Reason (who for some reason break the dream of perfect human freedom and communal solidarity by creating "ownership"). | It is an interesting fact that there are no libertarians--nobody calling for the withering-away of the state--nobody calling for competition between private, profit-making, rights-enforcement organizations until the nineteenth century. Libertarianism as we know it today shows up first in the anarchist-socialists of the late nineteenth century (left libertarians who think we can eliminate not only the state but also property) and then later on shows up in the right-libertarians who currently populate Reason (who for some reason break the dream of perfect human freedom and communal solidarity by creating "ownership"). | ||
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Davey Hume: And it is only after the state has enabled commerce, and only after commerce has sweetened human nature, that one can even begin to entertain the anarchist-libertarian fantasies of the withering away of the state... | Davey Hume: And it is only after the state has enabled commerce, and only after commerce has sweetened human nature, that one can even begin to entertain the anarchist-libertarian fantasies of the withering away of the state... | ||
| − | Joseph de Maistre: What my good friend Davey Hume is saying, although he is too polite to put it this way, is that behind everything good, peaceful, and prosperous in human society is the shadow of the Public Executioner... | + | Joseph de Maistre: What my good friend Davey Hume is saying, although he is too polite to put it this way, is that behind everything good, peaceful, and prosperous in human society is the shadow of the Public Executioner... |
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