From: starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Tim Starr)
Subject: Re: Labelling laws.
Organization: UDel, School of Life & Health Sciences
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 09:33:30 GMT

In article <1gioqmINNhlr@armory.centerline.com> mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben) writes:
}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.

You haven't bothered to specify what fault you find in any.  Besides, you
don't seem to care to learn anything anyways, so why should we waste our
time with fruitless argument with you?

As for new arguments, how about the market-process critique of the problem
of economic calculation in a socialist society?  How about the capture
theory of regulation?

}>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?

Direct refutation of the claim that libertarians include nothing more than
century-old cranks and arguments.

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.

I don't need to.  This would be irrelevant.  You claimed that we have
nothing but century-old cranks and arguments.  I refuted it.  Your further
responses are nothing more than attempts to evade this fact.

}>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.

All right, go ahead.  Explain how his business-cycle theory could have been
arrived at without basis in Misesian laissez-faire.

}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.

Actually, I would make this claim.  They're synonymous.

}Once again, you are merely appealing to authority and not describing a
}single new uniquely libertarian claim or combination of claims.

Note the introduction of a qualification on the claim: now for there to be
any libertarian arguments not made by century-old cranks, the arguments
must be "uniquely" libertarian.  This is nonsense, Mike, pure sophistry.

There are
}lots of important creationists, probably some of them Nobel Prize winners.

Irrelevant.

}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.

Wrong.  Libertarianism isn't mysticism, unlike your vaunted state socialism,
which ultimately is based in such.  Libertarianism is political philosophy,
based upon reason, as is 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.

What example?  I missed it.  You freely select authorities to quote as
implicit appeals, such as your Galileo quote a post back or so, yet hypo-
critically attack me merely for citing evidence which refutes your absurd
claims!

}>"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!"

Wrong.  That wasn't Voltaire.  I don't recall who it was at the moment,
but I do recall that it was a Naturalist novelist, not Voltaire.  (Balzac?)
Why don't you stick to the quotes in your .sig program - that way you don't
have to rely on your poor recollection.

Tim Starr - Renaissance Now! - Think Universally, Act Selfishly
starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu

"True greatness consists in the use of a powerful understanding to enlighten
oneself and others." - Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian