Subject:
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Re: Why the founding fathers limited government scope (was Re: Rolling Blackouts
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Mon, 14 May 2001 15:01:28 GMT
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Viewed:
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1036 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler writes:
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Christopher L. Weeks writes:
> > In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Scott Arthur writes:
> > > If you read around a bit. You'll find that libertarians did try to set up
> > > their own nation (in the 70's I think). I think it was called the Minerva
> > > Project(?).
I don't have the details on this. But I will say this (despite what Dave!
says below...) if it involved the initiation of the use of force against
people who were already in lawful possession of the territory, it doesn't
sound very libertarian to me either.
> > Minerva is but one of many failed attempts. They go to prove Larry's claim
> > that there is an impermiable barrier to entry. Unfortunate.
>
> I know that this isn't what you or Larry meant,
While I do agree with where you're going, once you get there (see below, I
don't just start at the beginning of a post and insert bon mots without
going back and seeing if they make sense or not in the context of the whole
post) why bring it up, though? Isn't it a bit of a straw dog argument? I'm
trying hard not to do these things, anyway...
> but the statement above is
> indicative of another thing many people see as a problematic quirk of
> Libertarian philosophy. That is, if a system didn't work, it didn't work:
>
> a) because of an impermiable barrier (ie: "it would have worked, but people
> didn't let it work")
> b) because of improper implementation (ie: "it would have worked, but it
> wasn't executed correctly)
> c) because of some flaw in the existing system, but certainly not because of
> a flaw in the proposed system (ie: "it would have worked, but something
> in the existing system interfered with it")
> To claim that the failure of a system is proof that the system works is like
> the famous experiments intended to detect psychic phenomena. None were
> detected, of course, so the proponents of psychic phenomena declared that
> the results were muddied by the presence of "negative psychic energy." That
> is, byt failing to prove the existence of psychic phenomena, the experiment
> proved the existence of psychic phenomena.
> Other claims follow the route that failed attempts at Libertopian
> structures failed because they weren't real Libertarian structures. This,
> too, is problematic, since it's non-falsifiable
Good point.
Which is why I tend to say things like Libertopia is an idealized system not
a real proposal. And why I tend to say things like, despite that, I do see
the world moving in the direction of more open markets and more freedom (and
yes, Scott, there is a correlation there... you can't have one without the
other, at least not in a steady state system)
Nevertheless I do think it would be interesting to conduct an experiment and
try to identify all the "why it failed" excuses in advance and eliminate all
of them in advance if we can. Interesting, probably not practical.
++Lar
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