From: "Tim Bomgardner" <bomgard@moose.cs.indiana.edu>
Subject: Libertarian and objectivist idiocy
Organization: Indiana University, Bloomington
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 18:29:43 -0500

Speaking of stupid:

Mike Huben writes:
}Arrgh!  I can't stand it any more!  I've barely read 50 messages in this
}newsgroup, and they are so blatantly STUPID that I can barely refrain from
}responding to each.

We admire your self-control.

}One twit declares that he can leave his job if his employer treats him
}unjustly, but he doesn't want to leave his country if his government does
}likewise.  Poor baby.  He should be glad his government can't fire him.

An employer creates jobs and offers them to you, and you can accept or
reject them.  A country is not a creation of the government, and the
government is not your employer (in most cases).  Rejection of the 
government does not imply rejection of the country.  Or to put it in
simpler terms that you might be able to understand: you can have a country
without a government, but you can't have a job without an employer (even
if that employer is yourself).  Who works for whom, Dudley?

}Another twit declares people should be able to opt out of the economic
}system and not have to pay property taxes.  Property IS part of the economic
}system, a non-monetary component.  But it's convenient to ignore the facts.
}Hey, if property isn't part of the economic system, I'm going to leave the
}economic system long enough to get me some property and then return.

It may be convenient to ignore the facts, but you demonstrate that it's even
more convenient to be utterly ignorant of them.  Property is part of the
economic system.  So what?  Nobody said it wasn't.  The question is, should
it be taxed?  You have money in the bank? (Not likely, given your IQ, but
possible.)  The interest is taxed (usually), but what about the principal?
Why shouldn't the government take 20 percent each year of everything you 
have saved?  Because you worked for it, paid taxes on it when you earned it,
and now it's yours? It's not a matter of what you can get outside the system,
but what you can keep once you've got it.

}Still another pulls out of thin air the divine right to be left alone (which
}has as much basis as the divine right of kings.)  He talks of legalizing

The Supreme Court has recognized a right to privacy as emanating from the
penumbra of other rights delineated in the amended Constitution.  Not divine,
but not thin air, either.  But it's not necessary to look that far.  My
right to be left alone is a simple corollary of your lack of a right to
molest me.

}drugs, but punishing harshly those who are caught driving under the influence.
}Where does the philosophical justification of this come from?  Driving
}under the influence causes no harm unless an accident occurs.  Thus, under
}libertarian thought, there should be no government interference unless an
}accident takes place.  If you make an explanation about it being statistically
}more probable, and thus justified, then you can punish anyone for being in a
}class that is statistically more likely to offend in some manner.  Such as
}being a young black male, and more statistically likely to commit a crime.
}Perhaps a real libertarian solution would be that the contract with the road
}owner would cover driving under drug use, but we don't need libertaria for
}that: we've already got that contract as law.

So we're back to your original question: where does the philosophical
justification for this come from?  It comes from the fact that reasonable
distinctions can be made concerning proximate causes.  Being a black youth
is not a proximate cause of any crime.  Drunk driving is.

}The worst thing about it all is the blatant class interest that most
}libertarians display.  "I'm in the upper middle class, or going to be, or
}already have a better education than most people, and I want to keep
}every penny I earn and the hell with everybody else, let them lie in
}the gutter, let children starve, etc."

What in the world does "class interest" have to do with it?  "I'm poor and
I want to keep my money.  I'm middle class and I want to keep my money.
I'm rich and I want to keep my money."  How bout this: "I'm (poor/middle
class/rich) and I want the government to take my money and spend it for me
because I don't know what's really important to spend money on and the 
bureaucrats are so much smarter than I am, anyway."  Right.  I leave it 
to someone else to answer your foolish implication that the government is 
spending any significant portion of our taxes to keep children from starving,
etc., and that those that do have money say "the hell with everybody else."

}Thank goodness people haven't started spouting about objectivism here yet.
}If there's one thing I hate more than the excesses of libertarianism,
}it's the idiocies of objectivism.

I've read a few of Rand's books, and I have a some problems with her
philosophy. (For instance, the basis is the nature of man and the values
he requires to live "qua man", but I think she misdiagnoses that nature.
Maslow and L. Ron Hubbard (no kidding) make some interesting points about
man's nature that I think should be considered.)  However, I'd be very
interested to hear what exactly constitutes an idiocy in objectivism.  
I expect, though, that your analysis goes no further than "Objectivists
are stoopid."

}Mike Huben

Writer of big words, thinker of little thoughts.

}(Paraphrase)  How noble libertarianism, in it's majestic equality, that
}both rich and poor are equally prohibited from peeing in the privately
}owned streets (without paying), sleeping under the privately owned
}bridges (without paying), and coercing bread from its rightful owners!

Spoken like a true statist.  I bet you'll raise your hand when they ask
for volunteers to coerce bread from its rightful owners for the downtrodden
and oppressed poor.

In thorough contempt and disgust,
Tim Bomgardner