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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (7689)	12/20/2005 8:41:53 PM
From: neolib	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 542004

Marketplaces are not just economic constructs. We have a marketplace of ideas, a marketplace of interests, a marketplace of values, a marketplace of styles, etc. In the marketplace, what gains supporters survives; what doesn't becomes either niche or extinct. Lots of individuals making their own choices drive the outcome, not central planning. That is a well known libertarian metaphor. I dislike it for two reasons: 1) Markets imply monetary systems IMO, which is not applicable in most of those examples, and 2) It can imply (although not everyone would agree) that a dominant player or idea, etc emerges. Of course, much of the free market libertarian metaphor is actually borrowed from evolution, just recast in economic language. The problem is that it was borrowed during a time when biologist thought mostly in terms of survival of the fittest. Biology has moved on since then and understand that things are more complex. If you replaced the word marketplace with ecosystem, I'd agree with you. Similar in many ways, but rather more complex. I don't think so. I think they work better where there are lots of people just as surveys don't work well without enough people to get a proper curve. In small populations, direction can go askew if there is a concentration of oddballs. Large populations head for the mean. I disagree for the following reasons based on what I know of the USA, other countries might be different: 1) Rural areas are well known to be less tolerant of governmental regulation. Urban areas are much more tolerant. This is so well known that I'm surprised you would suggest otherwise. Do you actually think rural America is more accepting of restrictions on their freedoms than urban areas? I lived in both the Bay Area and S. Cal, and now eastern Oregon. It is night and day on that issue. Even in rural Oregon, the towns are more tolerant than the outlying areas. Think about planning/building regulations, noise regulations, animal laws, environmental restrictions, even the appearance of ones property, gun laws, etc. Urban restrictions are more intrusive in such matter. 2) Look at the Red/Blue divide in the USA in general and how that correlates to population density. You are correct in one sense, which is cities are more tolerant of diverse interests and lifestyles. So high density areas are idea libertarians, but not property rights libertarians. The rural areas are strong property rights libertarians, while being less tolerant of diverse lifestyles and beliefs. I tend to associate libertarians with the right wing property rights variants, not the left leaning free speech types. I could call myself a free speech libertarian.