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The usual massive and capricious snippage.
In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Scott Arthur writes:
> Which came 1st, the egg or the chicken? One way to view Libertarianism, is
> that it is a good idea taken to its illogical extreme. Saying the world is
> moving towards libertainaism is, in my view, like saying a stone I through
> at the moon may reach it.
I'm not sure I'd agree that the degree of change (since the enlightenment,
or more specifically, in the last 20 years) is that small. Certainly it's
not as large as I'd wish it but it's a lot more than the .0001% or so that
your analogy suggests it to be. Governments in some cases pay lip service
(Bill Clinton *said* "the era of big government is over", but I doubt he
actually MEANT it, he was just trying to tap into popular sentiment), and
sometimes take half measures. And when goverments implement libertarian
principles imperfectly (consider RailTrack, for example) the outcome is
often way less than optimal, and tends to give free markets a bad name.
But I'm going to stand by my assertion of direction of movement and disagree
with yours of the degree.
> The "illogical extreme" argument is why I asked the yes/no questions
> yesterday. However, I think libertarianism is moving towards trying to
> answering these:
>
> Read Chapter 41 David D. Friedman's "The Machinery of Freedom: A Guide to
> Radical Capitalism"
> http://www.best.com/~ddfr/Libertarian/Machinery_of_Freedom/MofF_Contents.html
Thank you for bringing this to my attention.
I had heard of Friedman, but not read any of his work. That appears to be an
oversight. One cannot read every text extant, of course but I regret missing
this one. This book looks to be fascinating reading and I've ordered a copy
from Amazon.
Based on just chapters 41-43, I may have to reexamine my conviction that a
purely rights based analysis always gives correct answers. But I am no
stranger to utilitarian arguments, and have made them in the past in this
newsgroup, so I'm certainly not uncomfortable with them.
Friedman's outcome in chapter 43 isn't that different from Libertarian
policy and desired outcomes for societal organization, (if at all, other
than introducing damages, which are not a completely foreign concept to
libertarians, relying as we do on tort) although he arrives there using a
different path that strict rights based calculus (as shown by his "you have
to steal a rifle in order to stop a madman" example in which the rifle
owners rights have to be violated in order to save the crowd) and different
than strict utilitarian (as shown by his "it's not *just* to frame someone
for murder even if it will stop 5 lynchings" example in which the
utilitarian increase in amount of happiness (four more people live than when
5 people are lynched) is insufficient to justify framing an innocent person).
That is to say, he uses a mechanism called "economic analysis of law", and
that's a fascinating idea, with interesting outcomes, conclusions and
implications.
I'll confess that in the past I have tried to explain these sorts of
examples away by showing that they are unlikely. I still think that's the
case, but I'm willing to adopt a better mechanism for determining proper and
just laws than pure property rights calculus if it produces as good or
better results in all (or the vast majority of) cases.
Economic analysis strikes me as likely to often be more work than rights
based calculus (in itself non trivial if the number of parties is large) so
I would argue that using property rights is a good starting point, even if I
(which I am not sure about) were to accept economic analysis of law as superior.
It's premature to change my mind based on reading 4 chapters of one author's
work after all.
I'll say that I am not an anarcho-capitalist and I am not prepared to cede
the governmental function, itself, to private entities, although Friedman's
discussion, in chapter 33, of reputation based enforcement of contract
requirements is fascinating and seems eminently workable.
I acknowledge that since I don't have the text I can only judge based on the
portions that were webified (that he chose to webify ??).
Did you raise this cite merely because it in vacuo provides a refutation of
property rights calculus as always arriving at optimal outcomes, or because
you agree with larger swaths of it?
++Lar
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: LP POINT 1
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| (...) You are, off course, assuming a linear scale. I'd view it as logarithmic. (...) One of the big criticisms of the LP argument is that they harp on too much about the evils of "Big Government", without tempering that sentiment with a reflection (...) (24 years ago, 29-Nov-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: LP POINT 1
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| (...) What is Gafla anyway... it is not in my dictionary. (...) Which came 1st, the egg or the chicken? One way to view Libertarianism, is that it is a good idea taken to its illogical extreme. Saying the world is moving towards libertainaism is, in (...) (24 years ago, 28-Nov-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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