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Subject: 
Re: Goodness of Man? (was: Re: Merry Christmas from the Libertarian Party
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.off-topic.debate
Date: 
Thu, 6 Jan 2000 14:41:07 GMT
Reply-To: 
MATTDM@MATTDM.antispamORG
Viewed: 
3662 times
  
Larry Pieniazek <lar@voyager.net> wrote:
> Yes. Unless you're a big fan of "the ends justify the means". Good
> outcomes do not justify pernicious mechanisms for achieving them.

I'm not saying anything about justifying anything. "Ends justify the means"
implies some sort of need for justificiation, and as I said, I'm assuming
neither a totally evil government nor totally evil capitalists.

> But from a utilitarian argument, government programs just don't work,

Not true. They may not work as well as some other system might, but they
certainly work to some degree. Otherwise, our country -- certainly currently
involving a lot of government programs, like it or not -- would have
collapsed a long time ago, yeah? Government food programs _do_ feed some
starving people. Government highways do get some people from place to place.
Government policing force does something to help maintain order. They
_work_, even if there is an ideal situation which may be better.


> and from a rights based argument, they are evil usurpations of private
> property.

From _some_ rights based arguments. I'll get into this in a seperate post.

--
Matthew Miller                      --->                  mattdm@mattdm.org
Quotes 'R' Us                       --->             http://quotes-r-us.org/



Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Goodness of Man? (was: Re: Merry Christmas from the Libertarian Party
 
<38741B0A.4F62FC4B@c...anweb.net> <slrn879752.341.matt...ia.bu.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit (...) Yes. Unless you're a big fan of "the ends justify the means". Good outcomes do not justify (...) (27 years ago, 6-Jan-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)

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