From: starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Tim Starr)
Subject: Re: Labelling laws.
Organization: UDel, School of Life & Health Sciences
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 09:53:43 GMT

In article <1gnl5rINNlop@armory.centerline.com> mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben) writes:
}In article <1992Dec15.093330.28514@genie.slhs.udel.edu> starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Tim Starr) writes:
}>In article <1gioqmINNhlr@armory.centerline.com> mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben) writes:
}>}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.
}
}I notice you change my claim to make it fit your argument better.  My claim
}was that "libertarians... have nothing but old, discredited arguments made
}more than a hundred years ago by cranks and laughed at even then."

So I paraphrased.  You feel free to do this to whole posts without bothering
to quote any part of them.  If you can show how there's any essential
difference between your exact claim and my rendering of it, then I'll
concede the point.  You've still been flat out refuted and you know it.

}>}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.
}
}Here lies the root of your misunderstanding.  Libertarianism is an extremely
}specialized restriction of capitalism.

"Specialized restriction"?  Please explain what you're talking about here.

}Likewise, real capitalism has always had coercion and fraud.  For example,
}the slave trade was a purely capitalist phenominon.  Slaves were not owned,
}captured, or sold by governments to any significant extent.  That was done
}by private enterprise.  Worldwide.  It is only due to the intercession of
}governments that it has been abated.

Wrong on two counts: if its not consensual, it's not capitalism, and as
a matter of fact most of the slaves were indeed captured by "governments,"
tribes of their fellow black Africans, then sold either to each other or
to European traders.



}>}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.
}
}You sound just like a Marxist proclaiming that all science is the product
}of the proletariat.  I'm sorry, but you simply cannot claim any parts of
}economic science you want are libertarian, just as creationists can't
}claim parts of geology are creationist.  If they claim theory of
}sedimentation under Biblical flood conditions: that's DISTINCTLY creationist.

Tsk-tsk.  Another paraphrase.  I didn't claim that any parts of economic
science I want are libertarian, but cited specific arguments which I claimed
were.  That you don't accept this is your problem, not mine.

}>What example?  I missed it.
}
}Here is the example Spooner argument I refuted.  (paraphrased) "Why should
}I be contractually bound by the consititution?  The people who wrote it and
}signed it are all dead".  My response was: "Do all the contracts signed by
}a corporate officer become unenforceable when that officer dies?  Hardly.
}The whole purpose of organizations is to allow contracts and other interaction
}independent of particular individuals."

Of course, you ignored Spooner's demonstration that the US Federal government
is in fact such a corporation.

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