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Politics : Libertarian Discussion Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MeDroogies who wrote (2883)	5/27/1999 6:31:00 PM
From: Richard Babusek	Respond to of 13056

MeDroogies, Thanks for your comments. < I don't believe in civil rights, per se. I believe rights are a hierarchy which flow up from the individual. Civil rights are created as an aggregate of individual rights, so creating "civil rights" naturally denies many people of individual rights. That, to me, is inadequate. > The hierarchy is the vessel that contains and dispenses the civil rights. We volunteer (more or less) the resources that create the hierarchy. The courts that implement our ability to enforce contracts are not human rights, nor are they property rights. Aliens can't vote, but they have not been denied any rights as I see it. < What I do like is looking at other cultures and recognizing where they have maximized individual liberties without hurting the general population. > I'm curious about which cultures these might be. < In this respect, the US is really in decline. We continually think of ourselves as a people within a nation rather than a nation of various peoples. > I agree about the US decline, for many of the reasons we are discussing here. I believe ideas have consequences. I think for example that if you hold the view that “people are basically good” that leads to certain outlooks on other issues. For example you can envision a world with “good” people but not with “evil” ones. It follows then that those who are not good must be sick. That may be true in some cases, but to confront evil with therapy is what that idea leads to. I'm not sure what a nation of various peoples is. If they are people with ethnic variety, OK. But to deny that America has a unique culture of it's own, or to imply culture is culture, and ours is a conjoining of a bunch of others I reject strongly. I have a problem with the current idea of multi-culturalism as a not so subtle means of denigrating US culture. Ricardo

To: MeDroogies who wrote (2883)	6/2/1999 5:42:00 AM
From: Richard Babusek	Respond to of 13056

MeDroogies, Your statement; < I pointed out in other posts that the invisible hand wasn't even in "The Wealth of Nations", but in the "Theory of Moral Sentiments", which was not about economics. Many of the concepts spilled over, and the name stuck to economics. It is best applied to society in general. > ... got me wondering (it's been a long time) if I was confused about what I read in “The Wealth of Nations” about the “invisible hand”. My copy is the Modern Library Edition, 1937. It was good to thumb through this great book again, I haven't picked it up in years. In Book IV Chapter II “Restraints of Particular Imports” in my printing it's on page 423 is this snippet - < As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worst for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it. > My intentions are not to show you wrong, “The Theory of Moral Sentiments” may be where the term was developed. I'm more interested in sharing what I remembered as a beautifully and succinctly articulated truth; one that I recognized with that “Aha” feeling forty some years ago, when I first stumbled through “The Wealth of Nations”. The meaning implied here is the one I have always attached to the term and the inference I intend when I use it. Ricardo