Difference between revisions of "No Libertarians in the Seventeenth-Century Highlands"
From Critiques Of Libertarianism
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John and Belle Waring have been driven insane by reading a debate in Reason where Richard A. Epstein takes the role of the voice of practical reason and experience: | John and Belle Waring have been driven insane by reading a debate in Reason where Richard A. Epstein takes the role of the voice of practical reason and experience: | ||
| − | [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!]: |
| + | <blockquote>...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.... | ||
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.] | 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.] | ||
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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. | 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. | ||
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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"). | ||
