RE: Replies to Ron h and John Clark regarding the nature of socialism,capita...

From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Mon Nov 18 2002 - 09:15:46 MST


Max M writes

> What if a libertarian society turns out not to be good enough to create
> a stable and humane system? How do we opt out in case of failure?

What will happen (not that "we" will decide anything or opt out)
is that an organized group or warlord will take over, just as
has happened every other time in history when liberty fails.

I think that you are right to suppose that it's *possible* that
a libertarian society might not create a stable and humane
future. We should avoid being so dogmatic that we deny this
possibility. I just think that at present, all the signs are
that we should nurture libertarianism or liberty wherever
possible, or at least in those cultures where freedom has
shown itself to result in greater prosperity and fewer atrocities.

> My problem is that I don't trust the mechanism in a Libertarian society,
> which should keep the system stable, to be strong enough.

I cannot imagine any "mechanism" that you should trust, since
society isn't any kind of clockwork mechanism that we can
really understand. The mechanism of a Libertarian society
seems to me to be maximally impressionable by an individual,
in contrast to imposed or orchestrated mechanisms which history,
I believe, has always shown oppressive (though I would like to
hear any counter-examples).

Lee



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jan 15 2003 - 17:58:12 MST