"Corwyn J. Alambar" wrote:
>
> Mike S. Lorrey wrote:
>
> > One of the great things about libertarianism is consent. I don't care if YOU
> > want to live in a repressive communal society, so long as you don't force ME to
> > do the same, or if I want to try it out, you can't force me to stay if I change
> > my mind. The consent of the individual in all matters is its core ethic, and one
> > that I think that extropy shares. Any philosophy that shares that ethic as well
> > can peacefully co-exist and co-operate with libertarians and a libertarian
> > society. If you can accept that, then you really should not have any trouble
> > with extropy OR libertarianism.
> >
> > You talk of your problems with implementation of libertarianism, but you have
> > not stated what your problems are with such implementation. Do you think that
> > people should be allowed to force others to do what they do not wish to do? Do
> > you mistakenly think that libertarians would initiate force to make others live
> > as libertarians wish to? Please explain....
>
> My problems are really three-fold here as to specifics. #1: I'v ebrought
> up the environmental issue before. Group A may wish to simply be left alone,
> but they're deforesting a hillside above Group B's settlement, causing the
> water to be fouled and increasing the damage of floods in the springtime. To
> fix the flood problem, Group B builds a dam to moderate flooding - but now
> Group C isn't getting enough water. How do you resolve this in a libertarian
> fashion, if negotiation fails?
Under even a diverse PPL system, you are still dealing with simple issues of
externalities in a complex system. Negotiation should only fail when one group
refuses to to act in a Baysean manner. In such a case, it is those who fail to
negotiate that are already using force to steal or damage the property of
others, so using force to negate the previously initiated force is fully
justified.
>
> #2: Not everyone will play by the "non-coercive" rule. Simply look at how
> powerful a memetic structure religion is. I would love to be left alone - but
> a group of people reading one of a handful of passages from Leviticus suddenly
> gets this idea that I am less deserving to live than they are. One of the
> tradeoffs in modern western political systems is that this sort of activity is
> mostly curtailed.
Libertarianism only requires the non-initiation of force. If someone else has
initiated force, then either the individual, his agents, or the community he
belongs to is justified in responding with force that is appropriate to the
situation.
>
> #3: Markets are wonderful, btu I doubt withotu a regulatory regime that they
> would be as resistant to fraud and manipulation as they are now. Market-based
> systems work, but I don't know if I could trust a mechanism that operates
> on the honor system to play such a vital role in my life
This concern I think is based on history, such as 1929, etc. where significant
fraud took place. However, there were no oversight systems of any kind in place
then. Libertarians expect that given that mechanisms like those exercised by the
SEC have shown value, they stabilize markets AND increase confidence in values,
but there is no reason why those mechanisms cannot be run independent of
government, much like Consumers Union.
>
> The other issue here is the ability of a libertarian society or culture to
> resist the influence of a better organized, more coercive society. My concern
> is less the libertarian society acting in a physically coercive way (One could
> argue abot memetic coercion, such as a proselytizing meme, but I don't know
> how that fits into a libertarian view) but more a non-libertarian society
> acting in a coercive manne rtowards the libertarian one. The closest thing
> we have to a guattantor that this won't happen is the presence of nuclear
> devices, and to a lesser extent the ability to locate in a place beyond
> traditional borders and geographic pressures (i.e. space)
A libertarian society I think could resist a more coercive society very well.
What it could not do is act agressively toward a more coercive society. So long
as the libertarians keep on their own turf, they would typically have the
advantage, as any guerrilla would.
MAD would likely act as a good deterrent in a libertarian society against a more
coercive society. Keeping nukes out of the hands of nuts is still possible in
such a society through the PPL system, if you accept the proposition that one
person's ownership of a nuke involves them externalizing some sort of cost
(being a target risk, pollution, etc) on their neighbors, then any PPL insurer
would mandate that it retains those rights for all of its customers.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 17:39:12 MDT