From: dasher@well.sf.ca.us (D Anton Sherwood)
Newsgroups: alt.callahans
Subject: Re: libertarianism
Date: 7 Sep 92 22:53:27 GMT
Distribution: alt
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link

In article <1992Sep7.1202.14332@dosgate> "dalton spence" <dalton.spence@canrem.com> writes:
>
>It would mean that the only people who would avail themselves of the
>court system would be those who could afford to lose, and those who
>have nothing left to lose.  It would discourage the little guy from
>ever going to court, unless the outcome was so certain that the
>opponent would settle out-of-court anyway.  The big guys would use
>the court (or the threat of it) as a weapon against smaller opponents
>if it was cost effective to do so.  There goes "fair and equitable
>access".

A little guy can sell the right to sue to someone with more resources.  That
way the little guy gets some compensation, and the bad guy gets punished.

>You don't have to, if the civil court system can be accessed fairly
>and equitably.  An impartial and accessable method of mediating
>disputes is essential for Libertarian policies to work."

Green Lion tries to avoid getting bogged down in procedural details.  "We
have historical examples of non-statist `court' institutions, and they exist
today in limited application.  But this is not the place to discuss them.
Check out Bruce Benson's recent book THE ENTERPRISE OF LAW."

>S-N-M pauses for a moment, considering his next statments.
>
>"I am not a political scientist, or an economist, or even a
>Libertarian.  In fact, I was raised in a socialist household,
>although I've drifted much farther to the right than my family
>approves of.  But the one thing I have noticed about Libertarian
>philosophy is a consistent lack of compassion for those who couldn't
>measure up under their system.  It has been my perception (which I
>freely admit may be biased) that Libertarianism is almost Darwinian
>in nature, saying if you can't survive, you aren't fit to.  I find
>the very essence of that appalling."

Green Lion drains his cider and gets another.  "This is what gets my goat.
Yes, there are libertarians - particularly those who came to the movement
through Ayn Rand's works - who maintain that charity is evil.  But that is
not what libertarianism is about.

"There's a confusion of means with ends.  If helping the poor is good, then
naive people think a Federal Bureau of Helping the Poor must be good,
and anyone who advocates abolishing it is a Scrooge.  And Scrooge's
protestations that the Bureau is actually _harming_ the poor are dismissed
as self-serving lies.

"In fact, private charities do a much better job.  If the United Way, say,
paid as much of its budget to its own employees as the various Bureaux of
Demonstrating Concern for the Problem pay to theirs, it would be prosecuted
for fraud.  While the Federal Emergency Management Agency is `assessing the
situation', the Red Cross and a rainbow of ad-hoc committees are saying
`Will FEMA please get out of the way so I can pass out these blankets?'.

"Here's what croggles me.  It is widely believed that most people are no
damn good.  Yet the no-goods, in the privacy of a voting booth, are somehow
trusted to do good.  Similarly, we are not competent to run our own lives,
yet we are competent to choose representatives to run our neighbors' lives.
Meanwhile, most people seem to agree that politicians rank somewhere near
shell-game hustlers on the ethical scale.  Yet they keep urging that these
paragons of something which is not necessarily virtue take more power to
control the activities of others.  I don't get it.

"But let's assume that voters and legislators are honest and disinterested,
and that legislation really does represent some kind of average of the
will of the people.  Then why do we need it?  The money budgeted for any
particular purpose will be roughly equal to what people would voluntarily
contribute.

"Libertarianism is about options.  A socialist state says, `This is what's
important, and this is how to approach it.  We'll just take all your loose
change and deal with it in our way, and you won't have to worry about what
you can do about the problem, because you don't have any resources to do it
with anyway.'  In fact, I hear that Social Democrats in Europe are attacking
private charities for invading the state's prerogatives!

"The libertarian says, `I am not arrogant enough to presume that I know the
single best way to help the poor [or anything else].  I'll spend my money in
the way that looks best to me, and you spend yours in the way that looks
best to you, and we'll see what works.'"
-- 
Anton Sherwood *\\* dasher@well.sf.ca.us *\\* +1 415 664 2229
Libertarian candidate for California Assembly, 12th district
Opinions mine, but available for lease at easy terms.
Newsgroups: alt.callahans