From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sat May 11 2002 - 17:51:38 MDT
Brian Phillips writes
> I would be interested in hearing what the list exo-libertarians think
> of career military service.
> How is this sort of federal government work ethically different than
> being a public works sponge (or is it basically the same?)?
I have no ethical problem with the provider of such services (i.e.,
the soldier who enlists). By the same token, however, I find little
fault with the enterprising ;-) man or woman who signs up for all
the welfare that he or she can get. What I blame is the use of
force by government to extort the funds and institute such programs
in the first place.
> For instance... I could get the service to pay for all my postgrad
> training, but the ethics are questionable.
Yes, because you are breaking a promise?
> Medicine, as a profession, may not be freely practiced in this country,
> lest you be fined (robbed) and imprisoned (kidnapped) for infringing
> on the legislatively condoned monopoly held by the Physician's Guild (AMA).
> It is essentially impossible to gain the license to practice unless you
> 1. Graduate from an accredited medical school (which gets lots of gov.
> money)
> 2. Serve post-grad training in a program funded by Medicare (gov money).
> 3. Pay The high cost of medical school (100K+ US$) which is a direct
> result of the AMA monopoly.
Yes, this is outrageous, and points to how far we've fallen from a
supposedly free society. And that goes for the U.S. as well as Britain
and other countries, except that many of them never claimed to be free
societies.
> Arguably serving in the armed forces does some good, in a libertarian
> sense, since it preserves a democracy which has a greater possibility
> of becoming a free-er society that a subject state of a foreign power.
To me, it's not the "possible good" that is relevant. Each person can
be the judge of that.
What may be germane is that societies do have to defend themselves.
But such cases should be viewed as emergencies, or at least real
necessities. In such cases where the survival of a freer nation
is at stake, like you say, I find quite a number of expediencies
warranted.
Lee Corbin
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