From: Russell Blackford (rblackford@hotmail.com)
Date: Thu Jul 19 2001 - 04:07:17 MDT
Daniel Ust wrote:
>You need to study the work of, among others, Daniel Klein. See: <snipped>
>
Okay, okay, cool. Thanks. I'll have a look when there's a moment. I'm always
prepared to learn something.
>What is the difference between classical liberalism and libertarianism? I
>think the two share a lot of common ground.
No doubt. Of course, it depends on which version of classical liberalism you
adopt and which version of libertarianism. I especially have in mind John
Stuart Mill, on one hand, and Robert Nozick on the other, perhaps just
because these are the thinkers I happen to have studied with some intensity.
However, I really mean by "classical liberal" little more than the tradition
of Enlightenment liberal thought, as opposed to "liberal" in the American
sense, which seems to mean something very like "socialist" or at least
"philosophical egalitarian". Of course, the American "liberals" doubtless
claim to be the true heirs and successors of the Enlightenment.
Nor do I mean the Australian sense of "Liberal", which is damn close to
"social conservative".
I'd say that people from the classical liberal tradition come in all shapes
and sizes in their preparedness to raise and spend taxes. When I think of
"libertarians" I have in mind positions which effectively state that
taxation is theft. I don't rule out that idea but I want to bracket it off
from most of what I'm doing.
I'm happy to talk about this a bit further but I really don't want to spend
a lot of time on this thread. However much I might be interested in
designing a libertarian utopia, my much higher priority at the moment is
working out how to disseminate the longevity meme and win the campaign
against the luddites.
Russell
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