This reminds me of the scene in Lamb where Joshua (Jesus) is saying all the parables and no one can figure out what the hell he's talking about.

Yep, throughout the gospels, the most common response from the disciples as a group went something like, "But, Lord, what do you mean?"

Subject to legally enforced property rights, yes of course!

Shrugging off libertarian political philosophy won't get you anywhere. It needs to be taken seriously.

No no, I agree. That's why I'd rather clumsy and overbearing attempts to evangically preach poor versions of libertarian political philosophy be put in their place. It's not worth taking seriously really bad expositions of libertarian political philosophy.

But that's what we've been getting here, courtesy of you-know-who.

The Chamberlain argument had me scratching my head for a while. Of course, Cohen made it seem silly, but I couldn't come up with such a great counter on my own.

[Edited on Aug 03, 2005 by prolegomenist]

Actually, you would think that libertarianism would be more popular here. FWIW, the main reason libertarianism is not a real force to reckon with in politics is the basic fact that libertarians don't play well with others, including other libertarians. I think there are something on the order of four or five political parties that basically claim to be The libertarian party, with the actual Libertarian Party merely being the largest and most visible. Which means that the others must be pretty much microscopic, with influence to match.

Holding a libertarian rally must be like herding cats.

Possibly while on acid.

how is it that monty python can make more meaningful points about life and society than any serious author?

I was thinking about that scene when I posted the above.

A generally libertarian attitude is not uncommon here -- a live-and-let-live, make-your-own-choices, decide-your-own-destiny kind of attitude. This is not an unusual attitude to find here.

But political movements have a lot in common with religions, not least a latent Utopianism, and a tendency to evangelise accordingly. ("Let me show you the way to political paradise!")

Which makes it unsurprising that libertarians fight with each other and set up separate parties. They're like sectos of a faith disputing who represents the most pure or accurate form of the belief system.

The practical problems libertarians face -- that then confuse their rhetoric and make them prone to fighting with one another, not to mention annoying everyone else -- involve the fact that their belief system depends entirely on well defined property rights solving 95% of all problems, and well defined social norms solving the other 5%.

The problem is that having well defined property rights requires a legal system of definition and enforcement, which requires coercion and compulsion (i.e. you break the law and steal my stuff, you go to jail) -- which is exactly the kind of coercion and compulsion they're against when it comes to taxation to fund the state that is going to enforce their property rights.

That's not to mention the great difficulties in enforcing property rights to clean air, or the eocnomies of scale that governments can achieve in providing roads compared to having private comtractors building competing private road networks or whatnot.

Even some of us bleeding heart liberals think that governments are a necessary evil, a tool for making stuff happen and achieving certain ends, rather than the source of all equality or whatever some weirdo conservatives think we believe (maybe some weirdo liberals do in fact believe it) -- but a die hard evangelical libertarian is never going to be able to get past shrieking "Taxation is theft!"

TAXATION IS TH-

No, wait. There's a reason why I'm not libertarian. Close, perhaps, but not quite. I also just cannot drink the "no industry should be regulated EVAR" Kool-Aid.

you know what is really funny, maybe its because I've got chinese relatives, and have been there, that I don't think that the chinese govenment (well at least in the last ten, fifteen years) has taken the idea of been communist very seriously, nor have they really cared about it. They make no denial about been totalarian and they are really too pragmatic to give a shit about been dogmatically communist. For crying out loud, the PRA has been investing the Hong-Kong Stock martket for god knows how many years. What would a serious believer in communism be doing in a pro-capitalist state such as Hong Kong engaging in such a capitalist action.

Remember, this is not a western country, so the view is quite different. I don't see them worrying so much about ethical morality, because that's not how they play their game. There is very little pretense in China. Its the west that is obssessed with seeing them as a Communist state. They couldn't care less. They don't see the need to constantly justify their actions to other countries (unlike certain states) and that's probably what makes them scarier to more people. They spend less time blustering, and much more time, doing nasty things to people who get in their way.

P.S. Damn, I lasted less than a week. I guess you were right, everyone elses lives are much more interesting...


Anyway what happened to the buddhist in China, did they all vanish???


Yes. They must have all achieved Nirvana

Kind of like me. I usually consider myself a libertarian, but I could never be a Libertarian.

That is, I am into protecting civil liberties, and keeping government off our backs for the most part. But the Libertarian Party? Those people are crazy!




[Edited on Aug 04, 2005 by skeptik]