From: jcf@world.std.com (Joseph C Fineman)
Subject: A hedgehog in fox's clothing, among the hedgehogs
Summary: Garrulous critique of libertarianism
Keywords: libertarianism, government, piracy, business cycle, Diomedes
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 17:46:47 GMT

I applaud gratefully the appearance of this newsgroup, and I hope that
the discussions that have hitherto taken refuge in comp.org.eff.talk
will now find their home here.  Here is a my view of libertarianism,
as expressed a few years ago in an apa I used to belong to:

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  The Libertarians are what used to be called liberals until Roosevelt
I & II perverted that word.  They are keeping faith with John Stuart
Mill.  I agree with them on many issues, and might vote for a
Libertarian candidate if one ran for local office in this area.
However, I part company with them on one important issue: their
worship of the market system, their belief that it is the only morally
acceptable mechanism for combining individual into social goals.  This
faith goes with a simplistic, quasistatic model of markets that leaves
out most of their dynamics and all of their defects.

  A good example is a book that I read in 1983 at the house of some
Libertarian friends.  It was both intelligent and sensible on many
topics, but it had a chapter in which it was actually argued that the
business cycle, whose cruelties have been perhaps the main motive for
government intervention in the economy, was itself entirely due to
government intervention in the economy.  A control system contains
thousands of feedback loops with delays, but when it breaks into
oscillation, that is all the fault of wicked people monkeying with the
boundary conditions!  It would not be a long step from that to
believing that government interference is responsible for hurricanes.
I have no doubt that governments have often made things worse, just as
doctors have in their sphere; but that falls short of proving that
they are pernicious or useless in general.

  Here is part of a funny letter I wrote to the aforesaid friends
after I got home:

``

I was interested to see, in your tome on libertarianism (I forget the
author), a serious exposition of the historical & moral model of
governments as pirate gangs that have domesticated their prey.  This
seems to me a more convincing account (at least historically) than
contract theories.  There is an oblique, satirical passage on it in C.
M. Kornbluth's libertarian utopia _Syndic_....  But the comparison
turns out to be of some antiquity.  Cicero told a story about a
captured pirate named Diomedes who was brought before Alexander the
Great to be sentenced.  Alexander:  What made you want to be the
terror of the sea?  Diomedes:  Whatever made you want to be the terror
of the world!  I do it with one miserable ship, so they call me
pirate: you do it with a great fleet, so they call you emperor....
You steal more, and more ruthlessly, than I ever did; and I show more
respect for law & justice by running away from them than you do by
making war on them.  It is only bad luck in business that made me turn
pirate; with better luck I would have been respectable; but as for
you, the better luck you have, the worse you get.  Alexander:  I'll do
the experiment: I'll change your luck & we'll see if you really get
any better.  -- "So" says John of Salisbury (he is retelling Cicero's
story, A.D. 1159; most of the original has since been lost) "he had
him enrolled in his service, that he might thereafter lead a soldier's
life without transgressing the laws".  John cannot have supplied, or
even noticed, the irony of this last remark, since he thinks the moral
of the story is that a good king keeps his temper even when provoked.
I think he was a bishop.  Saint Augustine (ca. A.D. 420) at least got
the point of the story, tho he was at pains to blunt it: it is only
*unjust* kingdoms that are "gangs of criminals on a large scale",
which begs the question whether there ever have been any other kind.
Villon, in 1461, abridged the speech in a poem he wrote while he was
trying to get out of jail, soft-pedaling or removing the seditious
parts & turning it into a mere hard-luck story.  (Villon in fact had
better luck than most in those days; he got in trouble because he had
a hot temper & a taste for low company, and then consoled himself with
invective & self-pity.)  Diomedes' speech deserves a more sympathetic
audience, and to that end I have tried to improve the raciness of the
translation.

  My own opinion is that a little of that attitude toward government
is needed, but a little goes a long way, and a good deal of the social-
contract attitude (public spirit) is needed too.  I think the Anglo-
Saxon countries have about the right mixture.  Too much piety towards
the Law, & you're headed for Germany; too little, for Russia.  Except
in fantasies, I'm still a wimpy liberal.  There have to be markets,
there have to be command-&-control systems, there have to be informal
arrangements -- and there have to be messes at the interfaces.  After
all, the dirt in the cracks is where life goes on.

''

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As you can see, I am probably not a good enough libertarian to join
the party, but I think you are worth arguing with, and would be
flattered if you thought the same of me.

	Joe
	jcf@world.std.com

Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian