Re: The Education Function

Michael Lorrey (mike@lorrey.com)
Mon, 14 Dec 1998 10:58:21 -0500

Samael wrote:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Terry Donaghe <tdonaghe@yahoo.com>
> To: extropians@extropy.com <extropians@extropy.com>
> >---Samael <Samael@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Darin Sunley <umsunley@cc.umanitoba.ca>
> >> To: extropians@extropy.com <extropians@extropy.com>
> >> Date: 11 December 1998 13:15
> >> Subject: Re: Re: The Education Function
> >>
> >>
> >> >The only hole in this, of course, is the lack of ability in most
> >countries
> >> for a citizen to "opt out" of government services. My brother feels
> >that
> >> allowing opting out would be a bad idea. I think I agree, at least for
> >> certain category B services that are both very important and whose
> >utility
> >> decreases as the amount of buy-in decreases.
> >>
> >>
> >> For instance, the army. It's a tad hard to protect no 7 smith
> >street from
> >> nuclear weapons without protecting no 9 as well (even iof no 7 wants
> >to pay
> >> for it and no 9 doesn't).
> >>
> >If there are no governments then who is going to bomb who? The reason
> >we have wars in the first place is because one government has a beef
> >with another government. If there is no central authority to attack,
> >how does one wage war? If there's no government to surrender how does
> >the aggresor declare victory?

>

> Sorry, I thought we were talking about the real world. Any ideaology will
> have to spread from one place to another. It's going to be hard to set up
> the first libertarian country/area without everywhere else also being
> libertarian.
>

> It's like pacifism. Great idea, but everyone has to become a pacifist at
> once.
>

Libertarians are not pacifistic. They just view force as a normally inefficient option which is not cost effective under most circumstances. Now, if we were a libertarian society, then once somebody like Saddam, who is located outside an ungoverned area, bombed a building insured by a PPA, then that PPA would contract a mercenary organization to respond in kind to eliminate the threat.

Mike lorrey