HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: mlinksva@nyx.cs.du.edu (Michael Linksvayer)
Subject: _Liberty_ poll (was National Committee endorses facelift for LP)
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	of Denver for the Denver community.  The University has neither
	control over nor responsibility for the opinions of users.
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix at U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 93 11:19:22 GMT

In article <DDFr-250193144500@law-mac-28.uchicago.edu> DDFr@Midway.UChicago.Edu (David Friedman) writes:
>2. A number of people have discussed whether there is objective evidence
>about how libertarians feel about the pledge. Liberty Magazine, some years
>back, published the results of an extensive poll of libertarians. While I
>do not think they asked people how the pledge affected their willingness to
>join the LP, they did ask questions related to whether people really
>believed in an absolute non-aggression principle. 

I've looked it up: July 1988 v1n6 pp. 37-53

There is no question that explicitly asks about belief in an absolute
non-agression principle. Several writers provide a few
paragraphs of analysis; I have typed in the one that seems most
relevant.

	Rights Issues Unresolved, by Ethan O. Waters
	
	    To me, the most salient finding of the Poll is that
	libertarian moral thinking is not very rigorous. How
	else can one understand the fact that 11% believe a
	parent should be allowed to starve his kid to death, but
	39% believe a parent should be allowed to kill his kid
	by malnutrition? Or explain why only 2% would face death
	by dropping from the 49th story of a building rather
	than violate property rights, but fully 22% would face
	freezing to death in a situation identical in other
	respects?
	    Although nearly all libertarians (89%) agree with
	the non-aggression axiom, a great many are willing to
	dispense with it when convenient: 47% will risk killing
	an innocent hostage to save a greater number of people
	in an emergency, and another 25% will kill the hostage
	outright if necessary; 89% will trespass to prevent a
	parent from starving his child for the fun of it; 98%
	would rather trespass than die in the flagpole question,
	including 14% who woudl restrict trespassing to his
	flagpole and 84% who would go so far as to enter
	another's residence; 78% would force their way into an
	occupide building rather than face freezing to death;
	73% would interfere with a neighbor's right to keep and
	bear arms if those arms were powerful enough.
	    It is apparent that many of those willing to
	dispense with the non-aggression axiom have no clear or
	consistent criterion for deciding when to dispense with
	it.

One can obtain this back issue from Liberty for $4.00 plus $1.00
s/h or just the poll complete with data for $4.00

	Liberty
	PO Box 1167
	Port Townsend, WA 98368

Or subscribe. Highly recommended!
--
Mike Linksvayer   mlinksva@nyx.cs.du.edu   "It serves you right"
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian
From: etbeteille@happy.colorado.edu
Subject: Re: Minimum wage and utopia
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Date: 28 Jan 93 11:39:12 MDT

 russ@alliant.com (Russell McFatter) writes:
> 
> [150 or so lines of extremely well-written and documented
>  evidence in favor of business de-regulation and de-taxation]
>
> What needs to be changed:
> 
> 1:	Eliminate taxation on non-income such as property, excise, and
> 	inheritance taxes.
> 2:	Eliminate meaningless "hidden" taxation, so individuals really
> 	know how much of their money is being taxed.
> 3:	Eliminate "secondary" taxes on necessities such as food,
> 	transportation, clothing, and shelter, in order to bring the
> 	prices down to an affordable level.
> 4:	Support advances in technology which brings down the cost of
> 	basic needs, rather than other technologies.

Perfect.  Especially if the support of technology isn't forced 
collective support, i.e. tax money.

> 5:	Support population control efforts.

Augh!  Russell, how can you support population control efforts when you
clearly are against controlling the population's economic efforts *after*
they're born?  Human beings are *still* one of our greatest economic
resources, even with great leaps in technology.  This population control
stuff was not well-covered earlier in your post, so why include it as a
main conclusion?  

Eric.
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian
From: mlinksva@nyx.cs.du.edu (Michael Linksvayer)
Subject: Re: Objections to the Pledge?  (was: NatCom Endorses Facelift...)
X-Disclaimer: Nyx is a public access Unix system run by the University
	of Denver for the Denver community.  The University has neither
	control over nor responsibility for the opinions of users.
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix at U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 93 10:03:55 GMT

In article <1993Jan25.073616.29180@genie.slhs.udel.edu> starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Tim Starr) writes:
>So we should make it so that such scum don't even have to lie?  Besides, it
>reduces misunderstanding to have libertarianism defined.

Defining libertarianism as support of the NCP to the media and
the general public reduces misunderstanding? Give me a break. It
makes us look like a bunch of kooky zealots. That is a
misunderstanding, I hope.

>Someone who doesn't
>oppose coercion isn't a libertarian.  There's no reason why we should allow
>such people to be LP members.

Someone who does not categorically oppose coercion and does
support both free enterprise and personal freedoms is a
libertarian. There's a damn good reason we should allow such
people to be LP members: without their support the LP has about
as much chance of influencing public policy in a libertarian
direction as alar has of giving you a tumor.

>}2.)  It scares away some people because of its resemblance to a loyalty
>}oath.  
>
>This resemblance is only superficial.  People wouldn't be scared away from it
>if people who wanted non-libertarians to be members didn't keep telling
>people it had this resemblance.

Please. Anyone with half a brain can see the resemblance. 

>}4.)  If taken literally (as it often is) it cannot be signed in good 
>}conscience by minarchists, since *any* gov't involves at least the 
>}possibility of the initiation of the use of force...for one thing, you have
>}to oppose all taxation, for any reason, in order to be true to the oath...
>}yet a person could be willing to accept limited taxation as a necessary
>}evil, still accept *every* other plank in the platform, and not be
>}able to sign the pledge.
>
>Merely because people are inperfectly faithful to a principle is no reason
>to abandon it.

Faith? For crying out loud!
--
Mike Linksvayer   mlinksva@nyx.cs.du.edu   "I let it go to work"
From: esr@snark.thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: Party line
Date: 24 Jan 93 18:27:19 GMT

In <1993Jan22.230029.11734@blaze.cs.jhu.edu> Ken Arromdee wrote:
> Suppose I believe that coercion is bad in a lot of cases.  Suppose even that
> it's a lot more cases than most Democrats or Republicans believe in.  But it's
> not everything.
> 
> Can I be a member of the Libertarian party?  Can I call myself a
> {L,l}ibertarian?

Maybe.  What cases of `coercion' do you sanction?  It may be that your
understanding of the concept is incomplete or incorrect; in particular,
you may regard some things as *initiation* of force some things which a
libertarian would regard as *return* of force, or vice-versa.  (This is common.)
 
> I suspect this situation is very common.  I'd be deciding "because it produces
> results that are good, I support the NCP", rather than "because I support the
> NCP, I automatically consider anything resulting from it to be good".

This is easy.  Your stance would be consequentialist or pragmatic
libertarianism, as opposed to the a-prioristic "natural law" libertarianism
of Randites and those like them.  You'd have plenty of company, including
Milton and David Friedman, me, and much of the "minarchist" wing of the LP.

(Actually, I'm not exactly a pragmatist on this issue, but explaining why I
think the consequentialist-vs.-natural-law dispute is a historical red herring
is beyond the scope of this reply.)

>                                                                      Even if
> I support everything libertarian now, there might be some situation I haven't
> yet thought of where I might conclude the NCP flunks.  What then?

Then you'd have to either change other parts of your belief system or stop
calling yourself a libertarian.  That isn't complicated, is it?

My previous dealings with you suggest that you are in the large category of
people who would be libertarians if they could unlearn a comparatively few
false assumptions.  That is, as opposed to people with fundamentally
authoritarian personalities, or those who have so much of their identity and
security vested in coercive institutions that they can't imagine a society
structured any other way.
-- 
					Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>
From: jfh@yacht.cis.ufl.edu (James F. Hranicky)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: The big difference
Date: 24 Jan 93 20:13:54 GMT
Organization: Univ. of Florida CIS Dept.

In article <1jklsnINN3rl@armory.centerline.com> mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben) writes:
>In article <1993Jan18.052324.10297@zip.eecs.umich.edu> positron@quip.eecs.umich.edu (Jonathan Haas) writes:
>>I want a world where I can rule over myself, and everyone else can mind
>>their own business.
>
>As soon as you declare something to be your property, you are denying others
>use of it.  Thus, you make it our business to regulate what is your property
>(at the very least, lest you or any group impoverish the rest.)
>
>Libertarians complain that they never have signed a contract for the current
>government.  Well, I don't know anybody who has signed an agreement for a
>system of property either.  Want to do away with both?  :-)

I want to do away with the first, and implement one which holds property
rights to be sacred.

When the government takes away ~40%-50% of your paycheck in taxes (as well
as taxes on property you already own), IT is denying you the use of that
portion of your property.

In a free society, you have to *earn* what you get, and then you get to 
keep it.

I know the idea that people have to work bothers you, but we do. And the
best way to ensure that people will work the hardest is to allow them 
to be rewared, not punished, for producitivity, since productivity is
the true source of wealth and a rising standard of living for everyone.

Jim Hranicky (jfh@reef.cis.ufl.edu)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian
From: chris@keris.demon.co.uk (Chris Croughton)
Subject: Re: Legal drugs? 
Distribution: world
Organization: Keristor Systems
X-Mailer: Simple NEWS 1.90 (ka9q DIS 1.19)
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 14:58:52 +0000


In article <s0499528.94.0@let.rug.nl> you write:

>Almost anyone who is someone in the Netherlands has tried cannabis, and
>inhaled, with the obvious exception of Christian Democrat politicians. Many
>Social Democrat politicians have publically admitted to occasional cannabis
>use. Overall, some 60% of Dutch citizens under 50 have tried it. The price
>of cannabis in "coffee shops", semi-legal points of sale, is between 3 and
>10 dollars a gramme.

Since I know virtually nothing about any 'recreational' drugs (apart
from alcohol, which I do use, and tobacco, which I don't), could you
enlighten me as to what that quantity means in terms of what is used?
For instance, is one gramme a normal amount for a 'session' (or
whatever it's called)?  How often would a 'regular' user use such
amount?

Oh, BTW, I do support the decriminalisation of drugs - it's just that I
have had neither the opportunity nor sufficient interest to try them.  I
get my 'highs' in other ways :-)

***********************************************************************
*  chris@keris.demon.co.uk	*				      *
*  chriscr@cix.compulink.co.uk	*  FIAWOL (Filking Is A Way Of Life)  *
*  100014.3217@compuserve.com	*				      *
***********************************************************************
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: You Can't Have it Both Ways
From: parvin1@husc11.harvard.edu (Douglas Parvin)
Date: 26 Jan 93 07:23:46 GMT

There seems to be a growing rift within the LP between those who categorically
renounce the initiation of force as a first principle (Supposedly, all members
who sign the loyalty oath) and those who do not.

Those who do not are a varied group.  Some are utilitarians; most belive in
rights to a lesser or greater degree, but are willing to at least consider
consequences when deciding policy.

All of these libertarians are breaking that oath, yet the Libertarian Party
nevertheless tries to recruit these heretics.  What kind of insanity is this?

How do they actively recruit oath-breakers?  Simple.  Check out the Program
they mail to all prospective members.  It's full of utilitarian tidbits on
how variables exogenous to the Oath will be made better.  Unemployment will
decrease; education will improve; political corruption will cease to matter;
health care will improve, and drug violence will diminish.

What type of person would be interested in such things, except one who finds
such things to be important in forming his or her political opinions?

Such a person, by definition, cannot hold to a categorical oath blind to
anything except the initiation of force.  Such a person, therefore, cannot
be an honest member of the Libertarian Party.  (Such a person, can, of course
be a libertarian in all but a few modern thought traditions).

When one signs the oath, one is effectively saying that the consequences
don't matter.  If the abolition of most of government created skyrocketing
unemployment, the end of virtually all education, and tremendous increases
in drug-crazed violence, an honest LP'er would still support the libertarian
position.

Well, the LP can require all its members be categorically motivated.  But, if
so, it has no business trying to recruit those who aren't - most libertarians.
I can understand such tactics trying to sway votes in an election, but it
seems almost criminal to use the ol' Bait and Switch on prospective members.

In short - Abolish the oath or remove all utilitarian references from your
recruiting materials. 
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Douglas Parvin
parvin1@husc.harvard.edu                  "Homercles cares not for beans"
From: starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Tim Starr)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: Objections to the Pledge? (was: NatCom Endorses Facelift...)
Date: 27 Jan 93 07:05:16 GMT
Organization: UDel, School of Life & Health Sciences

In article <1k14t4INN2ni@life.ai.mit.edu> olsen@HING.LCS.MIT.EDU (James Olsen) writes:
}In article <1993Jan25.073813.29279@genie.slhs.udel.edu> starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Tim Starr) writes:
}
}>In article <parvin1.727909950@husc.harvard.edu> parvin1@husc11.harvard.edu (Douglas Parvin) writes:
}
}>}  ... a large number of libertarians ... pragmatically support a
}>} libertarian agenda and feel alienated by the categorical universality
}>} of the pledge.  They do not hold to one shining guiding principle.
}
}>Such people simply aren't libertarians, but conservatives.  There's no reason
}>why we should make the LP a safe haven for conservatives.           ^^^^^^^^^
}
}I cannot understand how Tim could make such a statement.  To my mind, it
}is perfectly clear that including 'conservatives' would increase the
}political influence of the LP, and that increased political influence is
}a valid motivation for a political party to change its policies.

This isn't clear to me at all.  The factors that make parties influential
are demographic structure, ideology, personality, and institutions.  The
Democrats and Republicans have all the demographics, personality, and even
the Institutions that are libertarian like Cato and Reason.  All we have
is ideology.

We are in a state of ideological crisis, and libertarians have the only
correct solution.  Ideology is our product.  We need to maximize our sales,
product familiarity, distribution, production, marketing, etc.  We don't
need people who haven't bought our product.

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
From: mlinksva@nyx.cs.du.edu (Michael Linksvayer)
Subject: Re: National Committee endorses facelift for LP
X-Disclaimer: Nyx is a public access Unix system run by the University
	of Denver for the Denver community.  The University has neither
	control over nor responsibility for the opinions of users.
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix at U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 93 22:28:04 GMT

In article <C1Bu5y.F45@athena.cs.uga.edu> brown@pollux (Daniel Brown) writes:
>Here's one.  Actually, I wouldn't mind so much if they eliminated the pledge
>as a requirement for membership, but I believe that a candidate for office
>running as a Libertarian should be required to sign.  In fact, I would
>probably not renew my membership if that were not so.  I don't want to
>support someone who doesn't agree with the NCP.

The proposal is only for eliminating the pledge as a requirement
for membership. I don't know of anyone, including Steve Givot,
who appears to be the defacto leader of the reformers on the
LNC, who does not think that requiring the pledge of party officers
and candidates would be a good idea.
--
Mike Linksvayer   mlinksva@nyx.cs.du.edu   "Mothers are you trying"
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian
From: DDFr@Midway.UChicago.Edu (David Friedman)
Subject: Re: Public goods.
Followup-To: alt.politics.libertarian
Organization: University of Chicago Law School
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 00:19:45 GMT

In article <1k6r3eINN59l@armory.centerline.com>, mrh@centerline.com (Mike
Huben) wrote (about the public good problem):
> 
"This is a basic problem of libertarianism, that libertarian anarchists
"solve" by declaring that there is no such thing as a public good, and
libertarian minarchists try not to emphasize."

I am a libertarian anarchist, and I believe there are such things as public
goods. The existence of public goods implies that there are some things
that would be underproduced in a pure laissez-faire society--where
underproduced is defined relative to economic efficiency in its usual
(Pareto, or Hicks-Kaldor, or Marshallian) form.

In order to convert that fact into an argument for government, you need
some reason to believe that government will, on net, move you closer to the
optimum. It is not sufficient to point out that there is some policy
government could follow (producing, or subsidizing the production, of
public goods at an appropriate level) that would be an improvement; you
need some reason to believe that government would follow such a policy. But
the mechanisms by which we control government, and try to get it to act in
our interest, are themselves shot through with public good problems and
similar forms of market failure. 

To take the most obvious example, a "good citizen" who gathers information
on what policies are in the public interest, and gathers information on
which candidates favor which policies, and votes accordingly, is producing
a public good for a public of 200 and some million people. Rational
ignorance is the underproduction of that public good.

To put the same argument a little differently, the existence of market
failure is not much of an argument for substituting the political market
for the private market if, as seems to be the case, market failure is far
more common on the former than on the latter.


David Friedman
University of Chicago Law School
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian
From: slagle@lmsc.lockheed.com (Mark Slagle)
Subject: Re: Taxing & Spending
Reply-To: slagle@lmsc.lockheed.com
In-reply-to: mrh@centerline.com's message of 27 Jan 1993 19:31:14 GMT
Organization: You wouldn't ask this if you'd seen my desk.
	<SLAGLE.93Jan21170557@sgi417.msd.lmsc.lockheed.com>
	<1993Jan23.061426.3629@zip.eecs.umich.edu>
	<1k6nu2INN58f@armory.centerline.com>
Date: 27 Jan 93 15:47:11

In article <1k6nu2INN58f@armory.centerline.com>, mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben) writes:

> In article <1993Jan23.061426.3629@zip.eecs.umich.edu> positron@quip.eecs.umich.edu (Jonathan Haas) writes:

>>One of the BIG differences between the Libertarian party and the other
>>two major parties is that Libertarians are consistent... almost to a
>>fault. EVERY SINGLE ONE of the Libertarian party planks follows logically
>>from our one fundamental belief... that initiation of force, for whatever 
>>reason, is wrong. How can you get more consistant than that?

> Hahahaha!  That's why one Libertarian party plank was to hold a
> gun to taxpayers' heads to finance school vouchers, right?

Liar.  The LP Platform says no such thing.

> That's why recently in this newsgroup several people can't
> agree on whether or not the pledge should be taken, and whether
> or not the party would benefit from including people of various
> opinions.

Disagreement over trivial issues of organization and tactics is
hardly comparable to the profound level of disagreement between
the various factions scrapping for control of what's left of the
Republican party after they disagreed themselves right out of a
near sure thing in the recent Presidential election.  

> I don't think you could have said something that sounded more
> stupid if you had tried.

Probably not.  But you repeatedly demonstrate your own prodigious
ability to do so.

=Mark
--
----
Mark E. Slagle                                 PO Box 61059
slagle@lmsc.lockheed.com                       Sunnyvale, CA   94088
408-756-0895                                   USA
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian
From: sals@random.uchicago.edu (red-head fancier)
Subject: Re: child labor and minimum wage.
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 04:06:59 GMT

In article <1k7691INN5cn@armory.centerline.com> mrh@centerline.com (Mike  
Huben) writes:
>> >> 
> 
> Government NEVER forced anyone to be a slaveowner.
> Slave owners denied slaves their rights.
> Owners could and did free their slaves if they wanted to.
> The US government never created a slave out of anybody.
> The US government never took a pro-slavery position stronger than "if  
they
> are property, laws concerning property apply."
> If an owner freed a slave, he was a citizen and nobody could re-enslave  
him
> or his descendants.
> 
> >The simple truth is,  without the government enforcing laws which made  
people 
> >slaves in the first place,  any "slave" could simply walk off his  
"master's"
> >property and be a free man.  End of story.
> 
> Not true.  The US government never proclaimed anyone to be a slave:  
their
> owners did.  It wasn't government's job to keep slaves on the  
plantation: it
> was their owners' job, which they performed with harsh physical  
coercion,
> offering rewards for capture and return.  There were no laws making  
people
> slaves in the first place: that was done by the owner proclaiming it.
The government allowed the owners to make them slaves by refusing to  
recognize them as having rights. I the government had been a more  
libertarian government it would have recoginzed the slaves as having  
rights and the slaveowners as being kidnappers. Your claim that the  
government didn't keep the slaves on the plantation is flawed.  Ever heard  
of the Fugitive Slave acts or any of the other legislation passed to keep  
slaves in slavery. When slaves escaped slaveowners could appeal to the  
government to help. 
> 
> Very simply, the government was hands-off on the issue of slavery.  Any
> government involvement was limited to issues of property.  Any denial of
> rights was done by capitalist owners: the US simply didn't affirm the  
rights.
> 
The US refused to affirm the rights of slaves,  how is that different from  
denying rights? 
 
> Mike Huben
>