From: mjones@bk-kgnaix11.aix.kingston.ibm.com (Mike Jones)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: taxes, theft, police, etc.
Date: 9 Sep 92 16:39:03 GMT
Reply-To: mjones@donald.aix.kingston.ibm.com
Organization: IBM, Kingston NY


In article <1992Sep7.151610.11902@tijc02.uucp>, pjs269@tijc02.uucp (Paul Schmidt) writes:
> mjones@fenway.aix.kingston.ibm.com (Mike Jones) writes:
> : Read your history. This is one of the major reasons why money was
> : established. Governments were established, in part, to give legitimacy to
> : the money (i.e., some expectation that if you took the money in exchange for
> : goods, you would in turn be able to exchange it for other goods).
> I want to be able to trust the money that I use to have value.
> Governments have generally taken over the money supply with the
> rationalization of making money more legitimate.  In many countries the
> opposite has happened.  One temptation is for a government to print fiat
> money to cover their debts.  This has resulted in hyper-inflation.  The
> great depression of the 1930s happened after the U.S. government removed
> the dollar from the gold standard.  This depression was about twice as
> deep and twice as long than any previous depression.  Government control
> of the monetary system will not lead to more security, but less
> security.

You say this, of course, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the
contrary. What does hyper-inflation have to do with the great depression?
There was no hyper-inflation before it. Besides, in the vast majority of
cases, where governments are operating reasonably normally, government does
in fact give legitimacy to money. Were it not so, the entire modern economy
as we know it would be impossible. Certainly there are pathological cases,
but holding up, say Germany c. 1944, to prove that governments can cause
hyperinflation is the purest sort of strawman.
I claimed that one reason governments were established was to give
legitimacy to money. It did this primarily not be establishing a gold
standard, but by establishing a form of exchange and ensuring that everyone
in the society would accept it. This type of action is independent of
inflation.
  
> : Yeah, so what's your point? The US government isn't perfect. In some cases,
> : like the War on Drugs, it's bordering on dangerous. In libertopia, of
> : course, there would never be any crime, no injustice, no pollution. Right,
> : and the Queen of England is a drug dealer.
> From "Libertarianism in One Lesson," by David Bergland:
	[very sound quote deleted, noting the logical fallacy of making a
	strawman argument against Utopia]
>    It is true:  no advocate of freedom can guarantee Utopia.
>    So what?
>    No advocate of any political view can guarantee Utopia.
>    UTOPIA IS NOT ONE OF THE OPTIONS.  It is simply not available.  Let's
>    be practical, examine what's available and choose the best.

OK. I'll go along with this. On the other hand, the typical net.libertarian
argument runs along the lines you yourself present above concerning money.
Hyperinflation is not the rule. Bad money is not the rule. By and large,
governments do guarantee money, and by and large, people do accept it (and,
it may be argued, benefit from it). Your argument is basically that since
governments can, and in some cases have, caused hyperinflation, then we
should not trust them with money. You provide no evidence that a
non-governmental money system would be immune to the same problems or would
not have other problems that would be at least as bad. When the basic
libertarian position is "governments do X. X is bad. Therefore we should
have Libertarianism instead", it seems clear that the implication is that
embracing Libertarianism will solve all our problems. That's exactly the
sort of argument, in various forms, that can be seen here, in sci.econ, in
several of the alt.politics groups, and periodically in other places on the
net. Governments don't provide Utopia. That's not, ipso facto, a reason to
think we should get rid of them.
  
> : > > GW: elect someone who'll vote the way you want. 
> : >We can't; you won't let us put him on the ballot! 
> : Is this the hysterical you or the ideological you? Last I saw, Marrou was on
> : the ballot in a bunch of states. Besides, what is it about so many
> : Libertarians that seems to make them unable to field candidates for
> : positions other than President? If Libertarianism is such a good deal, why
> : can't we have a demonstration of it in a couple of cities, or a state?
> This is happening in New Hampshire.  [...stuff deleted]
> ....Libertarianism has been demonstrated in the 
> city - Dixville Notch - and the growing numbers and strength of the
> Libertarian Party in NH. This demonstrates that people are starting to
> believe that libertarianism is a "good deal."

Hey, I think this is great. Unfortunately, this is the first time I've heard
of it. How many elected officials do the Libertarians have in, say, the NH
state legislature? What parts of their platform have they implemented? What
are the results, so far? I'm really interested in knowing this, and I hope
to hear more about it as an update after the November elections. Note that
I'm not interested - I really don't care - about the numbers or strength of
the Libertarian Party, or whether people are starting to believe. I want to
know whether the Libertarians are putting people in office, and what they're
doing once they get there.

   Mike Jones  |  AIX/ESA Development  |  mjones@donald.aix.kingston.ibm.com

In the good old days physicists repeated each other's experiments, just to be
sure. Today, they stick to FORTRAN, so that they can share each other's
programs, bugs included.
	- Edsger Dijkstra, "Selected Writings on Computing"
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