From: dasher@well.sf.ca.us (D Anton Sherwood)
Subject: Re: Libertarianism
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 04:50:45 GMT

In article <tljn#bq.aahz@netcom.com> aahz@netcom.com (Aahzmandius) writes:
>In article <BttMAr.F7@well.sf.ca.us> dasher@well.sf.ca.us (D Anton Sherwood) writes:
>>....  What the market economy has to do with taxes and
>>regulations on vitamins, I don't know.
>
>This last statement of yours, particularly taken out of context, is one
>of the main reasons I don't care much for the Libertarian party.  I've
>got some questions for you, let's see if we can get a meaningful
>dialogue going without too much rhetoric (anyone else familiar with
>Libertarian philosophy is also free to answer):
>
>As I understand it, Libertarians believe that less government is better.
>However, there are some services that need to be provided by a
>centralized resource (aka "government).  {If you feel the need to argue
>this point, we can handle it separately.}
>
>What I have yet to see is a good model for determining when government
>intervention is required, without allowing the feeping creaturism in all
>current forms of government.  Let's take your statement about taxes and 
>vitamins as an example:
>
>Vitamin A can be toxic in large doses, but the company selling vitamins
>fails to disclose this information to you.  How to redress the problem?
>If you have a government-run court system, then that requires taxes if
>you select "fair and equitable access to courts" as a criterion.  If you
>attempt to regulate the vitamin industry, that too requires taxes.
>
>What's the solution?

Green Lion's face ripples as several answers wrestle for the privilege of
going first.  An invisible virtual gavel restores order.

"How do you know vitamin A is toxic in large doses?  Did the government tell
you?  I heard it by word of mouth from my peers.  I don't know where they
got it, but it doesn't much matter; someone did the research, and in this
garrulous age, news travels.

"As someone remarked recently in The Connection, if you sold a bottle of
Vitamin C with a label saying `PREVENTS SCURVY!', the FDA would prosecute
you for `fraud'.  They've gone positively nuts about vitamins and the like
lately.  The FDA banned tryptophan (it was tryptophan, wasn't it?) because
one company sold a contaminated batch and people died.

"For every thalidomide baby - and surely we don't now need the FDA to tell us
that pregnant women shouldn't take thalidomide! - thousands have died
waiting for drugs that might save them to be declared safe enough to risk
giving to a terminal patient."

Green Lion splashes Worcestershire on his frenchfries and takes a swallow of
cider.

"As for courts -- non-state law has a long history; Renaissance merchants
had their own system of courts (the `Law Merchant') to resolve international
disputes, whose decisions were enforced only by ostracism.  A population of
millions of strangers can't really ostracize, so the enforcement mechanism
would have to be more sophisticated.  But that's not what you asked.  Somone
else answered the question of paying for the courts; I'm just pointing out
that enforcement and funding are separate questions."

Green Lion leans back and chews thoughtfully.

"Not all the questions about stateless order have been answered, even to my
satisfaction, but I think they will be.  The Extropians mailing list has
been discussing private law lately; ask me privately if you're interested.

"Feature creep is, I think, an insoluble problem as long as there are
monopoly states.  I meet a lot of minarchists - people who say, `Anarchy is
an appealing ideal, but we need a government for X.'  
`X' might be defense, money, education ... I met someone at a flea market
who said, `I'm an anarchist, but a practical anarchist: I want fire
protection to be provided by the state.'  If you took all the minarchists
and `practical anarchists' and put them in a room to draft a constitution
incorporating all their Xs, I doubt you'd know the difference.

"One man's rhetoric is another's reasoned argument.  I really should put in
my Scrapbook what the scientist said in A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ, but here
is the gist from memory:  `Much of natural philosophy consists of inventing
languages in which it is possible to say, in half a page of jargon and
equations, what cannot be said in less than a thousand pages of so-called
simple language.'  It's the same with politics; in debating the
ramifications of our doctrine, members of the movement have developed
certain terms of art (to borrow a lawyer's term of art) - words like
`statism', which sound to outsiders like empty terms of abuse, and
`socialism', to which we give somewhat different meanings from those in the
common language; these may sound like gibberish to the uninitiated, and if I
use such words, I hope someone will ask me to explain them.

"I leave you with one glib libertarian catch-phrase:  `Utopia is not an
option.'  By this we mean:  Certainly you can think of abuses that might
happen in a libertarian universe.  We don't deny their theoretical
possibility.  But we maintain they can't be absolutely prevented short of
totalitarianism, and anyway they are small compared to the abuses of the
state that don't need to be theorized, because we see them today."

Green Lion goes to collect another pint of cider to fortify himself for
possible flames.

"I talk too much," he mutters.

-- 
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.