From: mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: Labelling laws.
Date: 14 Dec 1992 19:55:02 GMT
Organization: CenterLine Software, Inc.
NNTP-Posting-Host: 140.239.2.36

In article <1992Dec13.110648.7970@genie.slhs.udel.edu> starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Tim Starr) writes:
>}>Right.  6 libertarian Nobel economists in the past 18 years, but Huben, in
>}>his omniscience, can wipe out their existence with the stroke of a key.
>}
>}Somehow I doubt that any of those six won their prizes for repeating
>}Spooner's philosophical arguments which you are still repeating.
>
>Everyone, read the Huben quote above: "libertarians... have nothing but old,
>discredited arguments made more than a hundred years ago by cranks and
>laughed at even then."

Right.  And to date you have not defended ONE of Spooner's libertarian
arguments.  Or explicitly named one new argument used by libertarians.

>Mike, if you maintain that my citation of evidence which directly refutes
>this absurd claim constitutes some sort of fallacy or argument from authority,
>then you're either incompetent or dishonest.  Frankly, I'm losing patience
>with you either way.

Your "evidence" is merely an appeal to authority at best.  What else does
name-dropping of Nobel Prizewinners constitute?  And how do you explain the
Nobel Prizewinners who don't accept libertarianism?  At worst, it's a
deliberate confusion of capitalist economics with libertarianism.

>}Unless you can show that their prize-winning researches could not have
>}occurred without their understanding of libertarianism, your argument is
>}merely argument by authority.  As such it is no more valid than Linus
>}Pauling's endorsement of vitamin C for preventing colds and Shockley's
>}racist viewpoint.  I'll bet they haven't donated to the Nobel Prizewinners'
>}sperm bank because they wouldn't be paid for their semen.  :-)
>
>Why don't you ask those that remain alive?  Friedrich Hayek was the first,
>Nobel, economics, 1974, business cycle theory; without his reading of von
>Mises' "Socialism," and their subsequent collaboration on the theory of
>business cycles for which he won the prize, it wouldn't have happened.  So,
>even the tenuous claim that I prove that any of their prize-winning research
>depend on their understanding of libertarianism is one that I can meet.

You are only meeting it by means of several fallacies.  First, that the way
it happened was the only way it could have happened.  Study of capitalism
doesn't require libertarianism, as various other Nobel prizes in economics
attest.  Second, you haven't shown that this claim is exclusively libertarian
as opposed to capitalist.  Otherwise you might just as well claim that
libertarianism is the same as capitalism.

>As for the others, I think it's more likely that their prize-winning research
>was a major factor in leading them to conclude that libertarianism is the
>correct political philosophy.  But then, you tell me: Stigler got one for
>his work on regulatory theory (as I recall), Buchanan for his contributions
>to the foundations of public choice theory, Coase for his concept of transac-
>tion costs, Becker for his concept of human capital, Friedman for his work
>in monetary theory...
>
>And recall that this is constrained to those libertarians who've won
>Nobels in economics; one out of all Nobel economists for the past 18 years
>have been libertarians.  Shall we venture outside the field of Nobel
>economists for pioneering and award-winning thinkers in other areas?  How
>much evidence do you want me to refute your silly claim with before you
>really look bad?

Once again, you are merely appealing to authority and not describing a
single new uniquely libertarian claim or combination of claims.  There are
lots of important creationists, probably some of them Nobel Prize winners.
So what?  Likewise, you remind me of Christians who try to convert the
natives by providing them with medicines.  Christianity riding on the
coattails of Western science is closely analogous to libertarianism riding
on the coattails of free-market economics.

>I merely note that while you have made two evaluatory claims like this
>in the absence of any evidence, I've been citing evidence which refutes
>your claims.  I leave it to you and our readers to judge which is truly
>fallacious.

I merely note that I provided one example (which you characterize as
"absence": a clear cut "error" on your part), and all your responses have
consisted of grossly fallacious appeals to authority and miscategorizations
of economics as libertarianism.

>"True greatness consists in the use of a powerful understanding to enlighten
>oneself and others." - Voltaire

Voltaire would be disgusted with you.  I believe it was Voltaire who wrote:
"How noble the Law, in its majestic equality, that both rich and poor are
equally prohibited from peeing in the streets, sleeping under bridges, and
stealing bread!"  I suspect that listening to libertarians, he would have
extended the same thought:

(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!

Mike Huben
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian