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

To: neolib who wrote (7814)	12/21/2005 4:02:15 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541957

The phenomena of coalescing is so ubiquitous in nature that I find it hard not to accept in social settings. It is, indeed, natural for us to group with those like ourselves but "like ourselves" doesn't have to be the classic identity groups. Computer game players find each other as do introverts and co-religionists. They do so fluidly and promiscuously. They don't start fixating on one aspect of their identities building walls around their enclaves, though, unless they feel threatened. I'm more used to the Ayn Rand style, which is protection of life and property, but the poor should starve with integrity. I'm a big Ayn Rand fan. It was she who introduced me to these notions forty years ago. I think your statement is something of a caricature, although I agree she was stern and dogmatic in her beliefs and writings. You can subscribe to those basic ideas, though, and be more mellow about it. Perhaps if you were more receptive you would recognize friendly libertarians. Also, a lot of people look at the Libertarian Party and think that's what it's all about when actually they are a separate party because they are so extreme that they can't get along with anyone else. The public face of libertarianism isn't always a pretty one. by and large we place a collective floor under economic risk People want safety. That's more apparent than ever in these times. People also want collectivism. Life is scary, after all and people gravitate to parent figures in times of stress. I don't think that's healthy but it's natural and perhaps inevitable. A heavily progressive tax rate would be a mitigating opposite to bankruptcy The connection you're making there is not apparent to me. It is nice that if I know how to live legally in Oregon, I can most likely get along fine in New York as well. I can relate to that. I've lived lots of places. I was relocating a lot during that time period when right-on-red was beginning to take hold. It was confusing going from state to state. That was during my command-and-control period. I couldn't understand why we just didn't have one set of rules. Clearly it was more efficient to just write one set of laws rather than fifty. Over the years I changed my mind. I spent enough time developing policy from headquarters and enough time managing and in management consulting to come to the conclusion that decentralized is better, as a general rule. Delegate and empower, that's the way. The apparent efficiency of command-and-control is a figment. Command-and-control is ponderous and not at all agile. We need the creativity of localized test beds or we end up like the Soviet Union. Over they years I have become persuaded that struggling to remember if one is in a right-on-red state is a small price to pay. Not that there aren't exceptions, but a bias toward the libertarian is a healthy bias.