From: tmhoff@oogoody.Corp.Sun.COM (Todd Hoff)
Newsgroups: sci.econ
Subject: Re: Outgrowing Libertarianism...
Date: 8 Sep 1992 19:06:39 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Distribution: world
Reply-To: tmhoff@oogoody.Corp.Sun.COM
NNTP-Posting-Host: oogoody.corp.sun.com

In article 11075@panix.com, jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes:
>No.  Libertarianism ("the government does a few things, those necessary
>to qualify it as a government") can be viewed as a mean between
>socialism ("everything is under social a.k.a. government control, so
>the government does lots of things") and anarchism ("the government
>does nothing whatever").  So a three-way negotiation with lots of
>difference-splitting could end with libertarianism. 
>

No chance. Libertarianism is in no way a mean between socialism and
anarchy. Libertarianism completely fails to address any of the concerns
a socialist might have.

>In the United States today, a lot of issues are decided by the Supreme
>Court ignoring vote-counting and basing their decisions on principles
>that the justices and the people they look to for approval think are
>the right ones.  How does that situation fit into your scheme of
>things?
>

I'm not quite sure what the problem is.

>I have no special theory about disaster relief.  It seems to me rather
>different from your previous example (family of 5 with no money) and
>less troublesome from the point of view of someone who wants to limit
>the responsibilities of government because it relates to situations
>that don't arise in day-to-day social life. 

There's only a difference in scale not effect. And if you summed all the
the families who needed help throught the us they would equal or surpass the 
problem in Florida. 
It's only because the problem is so diffuse in relation to individuals that
you perceive a difference. To a family it hardly matters if their lives
were destroyed by a hurricane or a terminal illness. 

>Having said that, it seems to me that a lot of disaster relief is
>extended because politicians like to appear to be doing something about
>things that are in the news and a lot of it relates to things that
>people should insure or otherwise provide against.  

This is a bit cynical for me. One of the purposes behind goverment is to distribute
risk. Florida will have a hurricane one year, California will have an earthquake
another year, the farm belt will have drought another year , the Pacific
northwest may have a volcano or floods, or one region can enter economic
decline. Individually no one region has the resources nor does the insurance 
industry to the damage, but as a country we can. To me this is perfectly 
rational and correct. For me the issue is how the government provides these
services, not that it should. I would agree that currently the scope of government
provided services is too broad. And there is little doubt the goverment is 
quite inneficient both in the mechanisms and management of the services is 
does provide. This can be fixed.

>Why can't people deal with
>the world in an organized way other than through the government?  Why
>is the agency that possesses a near monopoly of force also necessarily
>the agency that is responsible for all final substantive decisions?

Decisions don't mean much if they can't be enforced. Since the ultimate
power of enforcement is the government they are the only ones who can
provide certain services. 

>The idea of private property is the idea that some final substantive
>decisions are left to agents other than the government, and that the
>role of the government is the limited one of protecting the right to
>make such decisions.  What's wrong with that?
>

If that's what you believed then you would also believe the government
has no business collecting taxes for defense, courts, and police. But
you believe more than that. You believe the goverment should help
protect the rights of property owners. That's fine. But I also believe
the government should do a little more than that, not much more, but
little more. What's wrong with that?

>You seem to view the government as society in action, so that anything
>that we all have some sort of obligation to see to is an appropriate
>(or rather necessary) subject for government action.  A libertarian
>might view the government as a specialized agency that is responsible
>for situations in which the use of force is necessary, but is no more a
>stand-in for society in general than the director of the FBI or the
>Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  Why is the libertarian
>obviously wrong?
>

I'll refute this in general against any system X that asserts they have the
right to determine the rules for any other system. Arguing about specific beliefs
is to completely miss the point. Libertarians want government actions confined 
to actions they deem appopriate. I'll go back to my orginal point that goverment
is created by negotiation informed by a base set of playing rules where
those rules are continually in contention. Libertarians want to say their rules
are the only rules. As a general proposition this is BS. The reality is that
society is populated with a set of players operating from different premises.
Every child playing king wants to say their rules are the rules for all time
and no king after them can change the rules. The next king of course says no fare 
and changes the rules. Adults recognize no king can say these are the rules forever
and expect other adults to take them seriously.