From: berenson@cookie.enet.dec.com (Hal Berenson)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.elections,misc.taxes,alt.society.civil-liberty
Subject: Re: What keeps me from being Lib. (was Re: FW: news release: abolish IRS)
Date: 7 Apr 92 22:59:48 GMT
Followup-To: talk.politics.misc
Distribution: usa
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation


In article <1992Apr7.193628.24602@cs.ucla.edu>, frazier@oahu.cs.ucla.edu (Greg Frazier) writes...
> 
>Not that anybody cares why I'm not libertarian, but...
> 
>I agree with almost everything up above, with a major exception
>being "vaccination... [is] the responsibility of the parents."
>We all suffer if people don't vaccinate there kids.  In a "perfect"

First, how are all kids vaccinated today?  Well, the parents pay for it
or it is payed for via government-funded clinics.  What would the libertarian
equivalent be?  Parents pay, or voluntary (charity) funded clinics.

Second, what is the enforcement mechanism?  Well, today its the you can't
enter kindergarten in a government school unless you can show proof of
vaccination.  The libertarian equivalent is very similar, private schools
would require vaccinations for entrance.  This would not be government
mandated.  You don't need a government mandate!  Would YOU enroll your
kids in a school that didn't have such a requirement?  From your posting,
obviously not!  The "market" forces the solution.

We even have an example of a solution in today's private sector.  The
vast majority of kennels require that you show proof of current
vaccination before they will board your dog or cat.  This isn't just for
legally mandated vaccinations like rabies (which are mandated because of
the risk to human public health).  Most require proof for other serious
canine ailements.  The best even require proof of vaccination for some
less serious conditions such as "kennel cough", and some will do the
vaccination for you should you show up without proof.

>Another example is pollution legislation.  Ron, in the message from
>which I quoted an extract above, went on to suggest that pollution
>legislation was useless and currently ignored, and that major corp'ns

I continue to believe the libertarian position on pollution is not well
explained.  The key problem with current environmental legislation is
that it allows the government to set standards for various pollutants.
If a company meets the standard, but that standard is incorrect (ie, not
rigid enough) and you get cancer, have brain damage, have kids with birth
defects, etc. YOU ARE SCREWED TWICE.  Once because the pollution caused
harm to you and once because YOU CAN'T GO AFTER THE COMPANY FOR DAMAGES.
The company was simply following government guidelines.  On the other
side of the coin, if the government sets the standards too rigidly (ie,
beyond what is necessary to prevent physical harm) then you tend to raise
consumer prices and put people out of jobs, with no corresponding benefit
to society.

What the libertarian solution would be is to eliminate government
regulation in the sense of setting and enforcing (the frequently
arbitrary) standards.  The government's role would change to helping an
individual who believes they are being harmed by pollution to: (1)
Identify the source of the pollutants, (2) Gather evidence against the
polluter, (3) Insure that court judgements against the polluter (as
obtained via a suit by the injured party or parties) are collected on.
Industry groups would likely set guidelines similar to the standards
currently imposed by the EPA, but those guidelines would NOT serve as a
defense against a damage suit.

>If there was a little less "purity" in libertarianism and a little
>more interest in taking the current system and, by small modifications,
>gradually make it more libertarian, I'd be into it.  Trying to
>re-structure society in one fell swoop just doesn't cut it for me
>(call me chicken).

You seem to be confusing discussions about overall philosophy and what
someone would hope to accomplish in the short term.  Unlike Republicans
and Democrats, Libertarians let you know what the long term vision is.
Republicans and Democrats HAVE NO LONG TERM VISION that they can or will
state coherently.  Their idea of a platform is that you choose a
Presidential nominee and a platform that matches the nominees positions
on immediate issues.  If the next election you have a different
presidential nominee, you have a completely new platform that can
actually violently contradict the previous platform.  Libertarians are
willing to state their long term direction, and it changes only slightly
(often only in cleaning up some wording) from convention to convention.

Libertarian candidates, Andre Marrou amongst them, usually have a set of
very specific things they would work on that are far from the concept of
restructuring society "in one fell swoop".  Libertarians are, for
example, pretty much against all taxation.  But Andre doesn't propose
eliminating all taxes, he proposes eliminating the PERSONAL Income Tax.
He points out that doing so would reduce federal government income to the
same level it was at during the later years of the Reagan Administration.
It doesn't seem like cutting government income back to 1988 levels would
lead to all that dramatic a social restructuring, though you can look at
your paycheck and know how much it would do for you personally!

If you'd really like Libertarians to stop talking about the long term, to
conceal our views of how government should really be restructured, to
only tell people what we'd like to do in the next few years, we can
probably do that.  We can probably become evasive about a long term
vision.  We can probably stick to the 3-4 topics of major concern for
"the moment".  We can probably become as unreliable and unprincipled as
the Democrats and Republicans.  Unfortunately, before long we'd be
no different then they are and we'd present no serious alternative to
their positions.  That would be pretty silly, wouldn't it?

.............................................................................

Hal Berenson	

Home: 71640.3535@compuserve.com
Work: berenson@cookie.enet.dec.com

-- Disclaimer: Opinions expressed here are my own, not my employer's! If
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