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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Grainne who wrote (99580)	3/26/2005 4:23:21 PM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

I find this kind of discussion very annoying. First, there will be a statement about how more industrial countries shouldn't have national health insurance or how great it is that exploitive child labor satisfies a societal need for employment. This is all viewed through a very narrow lens and accepted as though such a thing is intrinsically good. We are then asked to watch a development of the proposition that minimal government is good without any conjecture about the consequences of overturning the basic human rights assured by government or recognition that government is always expensive but provides great benefit. For instance, in the Utopian libertarian universe, where would the uninsured get treatment or where would retarded or mentally ill fit into the picture? I end up feeling dissatisfied because I see that, in the proponent's eyes, arguing the correctness of the philosophy is more important than considering any negative consequences of implementing it. What would prohibit individual actions that have no immediate harm but produced emergent systems that had considerable long-term social or financial harm? Years ago I became a Libertarian because I was disgusted by government. It is a young man's vision: to be without external constraints or obligations! However, as we age and have families, we start to realize that there are people without families or, worse, abusive families, and that where an utter lack of safety nets exist, there is no pit too deep into which people can fall. The libertarian offers voluntary charity and market forces as the fix - I just don't see that. Freedom of interaction is elevated above any social responsibility for a greater good. Libertarian philosophy suffers the same limitations as any other Utopian philosophy in that it is divorced from true human nature and is just as impractical as a Marxist communist's world view. I'm left completely unwilling to entertain it for this reason.

To: Grainne who wrote (99580)	3/27/2005 1:40:32 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

It would be helpful to arrive at agreement about core libertarian beliefs, because we are really discussing something that is very formless if we don't, and I don't think that is a satisfying debate. General political philosophies tend to be vague. "Libertarianism" is probably less so then "conservatism" or "liberalism" but it is still vauge. That is why people make up sub groups within the broad general categories, like "social democrat", "socialist" and "centre-left"; like "cultural conservative" "fiscal conservative", and "constitutionalist"; and for libertarians you have groups like "minarchist", "anarcho capitalist", "objectivists", "classical liberal", "left-libertarians". You have libertarians for pragmatic reasons (those that believe that less state intervention is good for the country and the world as a whole), and for natural law reasons (those who believe that it is wrong for the government to initate force against those who harm others, or who otherwise think that extensive government intervention in people's lives is wrong). I believe that eliminating public education and Social Security are basic tenets of libertarianism Social Security doesn't fit well with libertarian thought IMO. Public Education is probably something that libertarians have a lot of different opinions about. The most extreme would want no government involvement in education at all. Others might allow for some involvement but would see no reason that it had to be in a government system. They would support government assistance to pay for education at least for the poor but they would give such assistance in other forms that in a government run school. Others probably see no way to avoid a public/socialist school system and even if it doesn't perfectly fit with the idealized notion of their ideology they would not fight against such school systems, and instead might seek to maximize local, or parental, or student, control at the expense of an activist school burocracy. Tim