On 27-Jun-06, at 12:41 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote:
I'm intimately familiar with libertarianism. I will not argue with
you, but
simply stating that you're wearing rose-colored glasses. People can
do get hurt by big faceless governments, and big corporations alike.
Big corporations as they exist today are to a large extent fostered
by big
government in a symbiotic relationship, very often through violation of
individual liberties, so holding up "big corporations" as poster-boys
for
capitalism is very misleading and plain wrong.
As an anarchist
There are many flavors of anarchism, some of which are diametrically
opposed, from anarchist-socialism, to individual anarchism and
anarcho-capitalism. Which do you mean?
I assume by this you mean democracy. However democracy not limited
by absolute respect for individual rights is nothing more than
disguised
dictatorship (and not of any enlightened person, but simply of a mob,
whose decisions asymptotically approach total mindlessness as the
numbers of its members increase).
You should tell that to the Swiss, they won't be too amused.
Ah, but the Swiss have a very "undemocratic" means of allowing a
minority
to overrule a "majority" decision. The referendum, which is actually
a tool
to help individual rights prevail over mob decisions. Such a tool can
defang
democracy enough to make it practicable. The US had a similar mechanism
(all but abandoned now) in jury nullification.
Which is inherently contradictory, non-adaptive and will inevitably
collapse, as
No, with enough surveillance and enforcement by automation you
can reach long-term stability, until...
Funny you reference Vinge below, but forget the bit (from the same
book) about the Larson localizers leading to ubiquitous law enforcement,
and a "quick end to civilization".
human beings are NOT ants, no matter how desperately tyrants would
want
...they can be reengineered into human equivalents of mole-rats,
a burrow of castes where each human animal has its specialist niches.
And all wider range abstractions are in the hands of the bureaucracy?
Every
tyrant's wet dream, but that's all it is. Just can't work in
practice. It's not
adaptable, resilient, or distributed. It would stifle innovation and
doom
society to stasis, leading to collapse.
We're no longer in the 21st century. You should check out Vernor
Vinge's
(a libertarian) vision of the Emergents culture.
I have, and it is great and dramatic fiction, but fiction it is. A
collectivist culture
cannot sustain high technology for long. It made for an interesting
fantasy, but the
idea of technologically advanced mind-controlled "emergents" is as
fundamentally
absurd as the old fears/propaganda about the Soviet Union's "great
technological
advancement".
This is one of alternative
branches of our future. A future that will never happen, I hope,
despite the trends. Because, unlike the book, we wouldn't be saved
by an advanced-technology hero.
I don't think it will happen. That future has already been out-competed.
And in any case, collectivist patterns spiral into full-blown
socialism, as
von Mises has explained very well. A controlled level of fascism is
never
possible.
I agree it sucks. But it works better than a hypothetical
private-ownership of infrastructure would work.
Really? What is your evidence for this? Have you ever lived in a
socialist
country? Do you really think the state is better able to deliver such
things
as water, electricity, telecommunications and education better than the
market? Or anything, for that matter?
You know, libertarianism
is a really good idea, especially if automating the market part, if
the
libertarians themselves wouldn't give it such a bad name.
"Libertarianism" also means a lot of different things. A lot of
people who
are complete statists call themselves libertarian. Some of these do
give it
a bad name, I suppose.
But I don't know what you mean.
I really do not. Nor do I understand your assertion that it's a
"silly question".
You're trapped in a very boolean view of the world, with caricatures
of how things should work. The reality is both more nuanced, and full
of compromises.
By "nuanced" do you mean murder and theft do become OK if $pretext
(which very often will be a lie)? Or that might makes right?
#!
