From: Guru George (gurugeorge@sugarland.idiscover.co.uk)
Date: Mon Mar 10 1997 - 14:04:15 MST
> >simply killing other companies with force is much cheaper
>
>
>Ridiculous, violence is always expensive. If necessary I would spend every
>cent I have to protect myself, some people don't like me but I don't think
>anybody hates me enough to impoverish themselves to see to my destruction.
>
And it ought to be remembered that even if you interpret 'killing' in a
milder sense, as in 'doing dirty deeds on the market', that too, is
expensive (e.g. collusive monopoly is almost always too expensive to
maintain, and can only be guaranteed by force, by government).
Some thoughts:-
It is usually far less costly to deal straight, especially in a society
that is ruled (i.e. ordered) by the principles people live by (embodied
in law) and not by people.
And even in a society that is ruled by people, a pool of people who rule
themselves by principle form a strong attractor for society as a whole,
and may in the end inspire society as a whole to do the same.
The political stance of libertarianism is to live and exemplary life, to
embody one's principles in one's activity. Organisation is always a
secondary consideration, creating and maintaining institutions is always
a secondary consideration. First consideration is always: "Am I living
by my own principles".
If this isn't sorted out first, one's organisation of others, and one's
ideas for the organisation of others, is poisoned by hypocrisy.
Freedom is a state that must be won first of all from *within* - this is
the lesson of the Sixties, in both the success and the failure of the
politics of the Sixties.
This is the real reason for the resurgence of classical liberalism, in
its dual 'entryism' as libertarianism in the Right, and the gradual
ditching of 'top-down' solutions in the Left.
Guru George
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