Susan Hogarth wrote: SH> Our platform should provide a bold vision for Americans desiring freedom to embrace, not a timid promise of 'less government' which they *already have* from at least one of the major parties. <SH
I have to call bullshit on this canard that radicals habitually trot out. The Republicans may claim that they want lower taxes, but they clearly do not advocate less government. The GOP supports maintaining or increasing the amount of government on issues like gambling, suicide, "assault weapons", substance use, the exclusionary rule, pornography, flag burning, prayer in school, religious displays on government property, gay marriage, sexual services, reproductive services, and cloning. The GOP does not advocate less government in areas like occupational licensure, zoning, building codes, federalization of education, prescription drug benefits, wages and hours rules, "occupational safety", content-copying technology, etc. The GOP failed to use its legislative majority to start privatizing any of our socialized systems of education, health care, health insurance, agriculture, and retirement savings. To say that the Republican positions constitute a stand for "less government" is to declare one's political ignorance. SH> I respect these words from Hayek: "The main lesson which the true liberal must learn from the success of the socialists is that it was their courage to be Utopian" <SH Hayek was a minarchist statist who accepted the need for coercive taxation, so his use of "utopian" is unlikely to refer to your anarchotopia. Has the LP's practice of Rothbardian anarchotopianism over the last three decades moved public policy in a libertarian direction? Or has it served more to indulge the desire of a tiny cadre of contrarians to practice simplistic moral exhibitionism? SH> I believe that if we could see the future, we would see that refraining from initiating force reduces the incidence of aggression. <SH Ah, so your crystal ball only shows you the future when it confirms your beliefs. That's pretty convenient. :-) SH> But even were this not so, I cannot see a reason to damage myself by becoming an aggressor because I thought it might be in someone else's best interests. <SH I told you the reason: "to minimize the net incidence of aggression". Do you see it now? Look again. Squint if necessary. :-) SH> I think this is also a nonsensical concept - that you can do some sort of 'net good' by aggressing against others. <SH My three-year-old similarly believes it's nonsensical that poking her with a needle can reduce the net amount of her pain. You apparently believe that the landscape of attainable levels of liberty has no local maxima, i.e. that an investment in force initiation could never lead to a net reduction in the overall incidence of force initiation. Do you have any actual arguments for this thesis, or are you just going to call the contrary thesis names? (And since you're the one who wants to the Platform to declare your side right, the burden is on you to defend your thesis instead of merely assert it.) BH> Do you therefore advocate removing from the Platform all of its current vouching that LP policies would actually solve the various "ills" for which it proposes solutions? <BH SH> I am of the happy philosophy that what is good and right is also what is best. <SH But how can you possibly know it's for the best, when you claim that the future is unknowable? SH> I am prepared to discuss 'projections about the impact of policy changes', and I believe that reason favors non-aggression, but I do not intend to let my guesses about the future be an excuse for advocating aggression against someone else. <SH So a projection becomes a "guess" when its points away from the policy you advocate? This sounds like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_pleading. BH> do you see that your "would be nice" comes close to conceding your whole case in the eyes of anyone who doesn't share your willingness to dismiss the future as unknowable? <BH SH> There is a danger in that, yes. Sometimes I do discount that there are people who are convinced that they hold the truth about what the future will bring. I am not sure that there is much hope in reasoning with such people, though <SH Is "reasoning" our new term for blatantly invoking a fallacy of the excluded middle to pretend that any discussion of policy impacts is a claim of supernatural prophecy? BH> I'm not going to concede that the Platform should endorse ZAPsolutism as optimally libertarian, and I'll continue to dispute assertions that it is. <BH SH> I see that you are prepared to reject Robert's call for 'harmony' as well. <SH No, I've done the opposite: I've endorsed his call that the Platform should describe our common ground, rather than endorse the principles of one faction over another. Where I disagree with him is his thesis that a near-term legislative agenda is where our common ground lies. SH> I am glad; people who disagree should not be shy about discussing their differences - *especially* if they are allies. <SH Does this mean you'll someday get around to offering feedback on the Greatest Hits draft <http://marketliberal.org/LP/Platforms/2007.html> platform? Or do you think it's a better use of this forum's bandwidth for you to continue your vain search for an anarchotopian bromide that I can't effortlessly diagnose and rebut? :-) BH> There's no guesswork in knowing that lives are saved every day by some of the institutions you want to abolish. <BH SH> Or that lives are lost every day by the same institutions. <SH Is this a consequentialist claim that under ZAPsolutist aggression abstinence there would be fewer lives lost than under minimal-taxation minarchism? Let me know when you make up your mind whether you're going to defend ZAPsolutism only on deontological grounds, or also try to defend it on consequentialist grounds. SH> The mail gets delivered: that is hardly a sufficient argument for a national post office system. Perhaps next will be 'The trains run on time'. <SH I made no argument that postal delivery or transit service should be government functions. If you're unfamiliar with how the concepts of rivalry and excludability provide the textbook economic analysis of the optimal scope of a minarchist state, then see http://marketliberal.org/GovtRole.html. BH> I could as glibly say that you're gambling lives on your anarchotopian "guesses" <BH SH> The difference is that I am not asking you to gamble yours. <SH Sure you are -- you're asking me to bet that I could protect myself and my children from human predators without state-financed police and courts. BH> the child and her doctor both oppose pain, but only one recognizes the necessity of needles. <BH SH> The crucial difference is this: Other people are not my children, and I am not their doctor. <SH BH> The analogy applies to any two people who have a shared opposition to pain but an asymmetry in their knowledge about whether a little intentional pain can prevent a lot of other pain. <BH SH> Ever hear of a quaint notion called 'informed consent'? <SH I already told you that we're not talking about making people do things for their own good, and so the child in the analogy of course represents more than one person. The point of the analogy is obviously that a little intentional infliction of a bad thing (like pain or coercion) can prevent a lot more of that bad thing. Are you willing to assert that a little intentional infliction of a bad thing (like pain or coercion) can never prevent a lot more of that bad thing?
