From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Jul 28 2003 - 11:53:50 MDT
--- Brett Paatsch <bpaatsch@bigpond.net.au> wrote:
> Mike Lorrey writes:
>
> > [A] ... duty of the federal government is the
> > 'general welfare' of the economy, i.e. its economic
> > vitality and long term stability (i.e. NOT nanny
> > statism).
> > If high paying skilled manufacturing jobs
> > are being shipped overseas or replaced by
> > automation, leaving just poorly paid burger
> > flipping jobs in their place, this is a constitutional
> > concern of the federal government because it
> > deals in not just the long term economic stability
> > of the nation, but its political stability as well.
> >
> > Even worse, a government that allows the export
> > of not just its high paying manufacturing jobs
> > overseas, but its higher paying knowledge
> > jobs overseas is asking for only one possible result:
> > the reinstitution of feudalism, because all that will be
> > left are wealthy stockholders and lots and lots of
> > burger flippers and blue jeans sales people, and
> > garbage collectors, etc etc etc. i.e. an aristocracy
> > of educated elites and a majority of uneducated
> > and unskilled wage slaves.
> >
> > This is not what libertarianism is about.
>
> I respect that you are active on the libertarian front
> Mike and know from the list your views on certain
> areas such as right to bear arms, gm labelling, the
> free state project etc.
>
> Can you briefly and positively describe what
> libertarianism *is* about in your view. How do you
> see libertarianism in relation to globalism and the
> global economy and law? The notion of a free state
> for instance can be looked at from two different
> standpoints. One could be that the personal liberties
> that one would like to be able to take for granted
> as a citizen as ones birthright are not being respected
> and that as a consequence the best practical way
> to get them respected is to come together with
> likeminded others and form a state. But is the aim
> of that state to keep the rest of the world out or is
> the aim of that state to create a building space
> in which to live free and demonstrate a principle
> so that that principles held by that state can be
> extended further?
The aim of the state is to create a protected space in which high trust
institutions can develop and where individuals can learn to live high
trust lifestyles and live with high trust attitudes toward their fellow
man. Only within such a plenum can a libertarian society develop and
remain stable. Free trade is a fine goal, as is free immigration, but
such policies should only be permitted between similarly high trust
societies.
Look, for example, at the European Union (no example of a libertarian
society, but far better than most of the world). Immigration between
member states is pretty wide open now, because all such member states
have attained some degree of high trust in their societies and can
therefore freely trade and immigrate between each other. The primary
immigration problems in the EU are from immigrants from non-member
states, particularly non-member states which sustain low trust
societies.
>
> I can envisage a free state as being potentially either
> defensive or offensive from a libertarian perspective
> depending on how wide a group of people one aims
> to extend liberties too. Would a free state be like the
> last enclave of the American dream or would you
> see it as a prototype to be copied and extended
> globally?
Copy it and extend it globally, but do not leave your original, or your
copies, wide open to dilution and dissolution by trade and immigration
from low trust societies...
THis is not to say that trade and immigration should be completely
prevented. Quite the contrary, but products produced in non-free
environments should be tariffed, and the tariff money used toward
efforts to increase freedom and trust in those environments, if not
liberating them entirely, as well as defending free and high trust
societies against the depredations of non-free and low trust societies.
Immigrants from such societies should be welcomed as refugees and
defectors, but should be required to go through far more rigorous
civics, poli-sci, and history training, as well as literacy proficiency
before becoming citizens.
Libertarianism will only be secure when the entire world is free.
=====
Mike Lorrey
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
- Gen. John Stark
Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com
Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/
Pro-tech freedom discussion:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom
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