From: yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken)
Newsgroups: sci.econ
Subject: Re: Libertarianism and Government
Date: 11 Apr 92 02:40:20 GMT
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst

In article <9204101732.AA00669@xuucp.ch.apollo.hp.com> nelson_p@APOLLO.HP.COM writes:
>
>From: yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken)
>
>>And what personal liberty actually means without private property
>>is left as an exercise for the reader.
>>
>>I don't want to offend anyone here, but rather than exercising one's
>>imagination, it is possible to go to a library and read a book or two.
>>Murray Bookchin has published quite a bit, "Remaking Society"
>>is a recent one, and "The Ecology of Freedom" is another interesting one. 
>>Peter Kropotkin's work can be found readily,  and ditto for Emma Goldman
>
>  Right.  So instead of exercising *our* imaginations we can indulge
>  the imagination of someone else.  But why should we place any faith

No. Instead of engaging in uninformed speculation about a political/economic
philosophy, we should actually read something by its advocates.

>  in *their* imagination?    Especially when they talk about "rights"
>  and "robbery", and "justice" and "good sense" and similar terms as
>  though these have any absolute meaning.   Indeed, why should I accept
>  imagination as a basis for any point of view?
>
>  Need I remind readers (and posters!) again?   This is "sci".econ.
>
>  Any social or economic system must function in the REAL WORLD.  
>  The real world includes physical realities, like the weather, 
>  minerals in the soil, tempurature and all that.  But it also
>  includes CULTURAL, SOCIAL, and POLITICAL circumstances and
>  various poorly understood features of human psychology and
>  social psychology.  Any alternative has to funtion within
>  that context.
>
>  Ideas for societies based on extreme individual liberty and
>  ideas for ones based on communalist principles, and ideas 
>  for societies based on anarchy have been around for centuries.
>  During that time *thousands* of governments have come and gone
>  hundreds (thousands) of nations and peoples have existed, and
>  easily thousands of small, intentional communities have been 
>  formed.  I'm not aware that any significantly successful systems
>  based on the above concepts have been produced.  (libertarians

The effect of utopian movements on current society should not be ignored.
The eight-hour day movement, for example, was once considered a utopian
dream. Ditto for abolition, civil rights or feminism. Martin Luther King
may have been  a visionary, but his work changed the world. Not as much as
he hoped, but some, nevertheless.


















>  sides of the spectrum is to point out the flaws in the current
>  system as though this somehow supports the alternatives.  (Mr.
>  Yodaiken warns of ecological disaster, Mr. Ipser warns of threats
>  to individual liberty, etc)  But this is the "cars -vs- magic
>  carpets" problem again.  I fully acknowledge the flaws in the
>  current systems just as I acknowledge the flaws in cars.  But
>  what evidence do I have that the proposed alternative would
>  correct them, would not replace them with other, equally grievous
>  ones, or would even FUNCTION in the real world?
>
>  
>---peter
>
>   
>
>  


-- 


yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu