X-Message-Number: 23089 Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 22:22:00 -0700 From: Mike Perry <> Subject: Re: message #23084 (Jerry Searcy) (You had trouble posting to Cryonet? I use Eudora with Windows-XP and there's no problem--we can talk about it later.) >What is "radical Libertatianism"? To my way of thinking there is a gradation from totalitarianism to anarchy, and "radical Libertarianism" is rather close to anarchy. I'd go so far as to suggest that the U.S. today could be said to have a kind of soft-core (as opposed to radical) libertarianism, despite the many, many shortfalls certain libertarian radicals constantly remind us of. I think you have far more freedom today in the U.S., in absolute terms, than you did in the days of the much-revered Founding Fathers. (Some of them were slave-owners, by the way, including both Washington and Jefferson.) However, I must not stray too much from the topic of cryonics, which is one thing you have freedom to choose now that you didn't then. And I give some credit to the federal government for that, because, for example, it kept the likes of Josef Stalin from annexing our country when it's hard to imagine this not happening, if some organized resistance had not existed. Yes, another system too could have resisted a communist takeover, if it had been in power, but the one that actually was and did deserves some credit. One needs to give credit where it is due, which also extends to cryonics, since it's hard to imagine a cryonics movement such as has developed in the U.S. if we had been part of the Soviet empire. (Other examples of benefits from the government could be given too, but I'll stop here.) >You said some generations ago an opportunity existed to try this system >[libertarianism] instead a feudal system was created. The Libertarian >party was created in 1971 (I think), hardly several generations ago. So what? Did the LP have to exist for a libertarian system to be tried? Not if libertarianism was close to the natural way people, the vast majority, tend to think a government should operate. Instead, it would tend to arise spontaneously. It didn't, and to me it raises questions as to whether a libertarian system could work, human nature being what it is. (Libertarian ideas go way back before 1971, by the way.) Yes, you could endeavor to educate people so that they might then feel more inclined to accept and demand a libertarian system, but there's no guarantee things will work the way libertarians imagine. Socialists tried to educate people (and/or indoctrinate them). The Soviet Union actually had an excellent school system in many ways, I've heard. Yet they couldn't get people to behave as they would have to have for the system to work. It just didn't jibe with human nature. Does libertarianism have the same problem of not jibing with human nature? We need to find out. You characterize "what we now have under the RepubliCrats" as "absolute federal control over every aspect of our lives and almost total disregard for the Constitution." I don't see it that way. There are many things I could say to back this up, but consider this one, that we do in fact have cryonics, which the State permits but doesn't force us to choose. Also I can type this message and send it out, and no government intervention or censorship occurs. And I can go down to the grocery store and buy food, and I'm not watched or followed. And so on and on. If the "almost total disregard for the Constitution" was rampant as you say, then the LP and others ought to have ground to make many court cases, yet I don't seem to hear of them doing it. Why not? ><snip> Remember, a tax is the government saying "you don't own your money >even though you earned it. We, the state (the people...collectivism), own >it and we will tell you how much you may keep". Property tax eliminated >the fundamental right to own property. This is now the norm. It has been >tried and the result is the monster government we now slave under. I use >the word slave in its true definition. We are truly slaves of the state. ... Any government by its nature is coercive. I don't deny that. If you want to eliminate all coercion, the only system that achieves that is anarchy. I don't think total anarchy will work, and so the question becomes, more or less, how close to anarchy can you go with a system that will work? Merely pointing out the coercive elements of some particular non-anarchic system does not address that question. ><snip> You say the Libertarian system should be tried on a small scale. ><snip> Lets >elect Libertarians to all local and federal offices NOW Here we disagree. You want a libertarian revolution--do away with everything else on all levels, right now. I don't. I think a libertarian system should prove itself on a limited level before trying it on a grander level, or possibly you could make gradual, limited changes on different levels and see how they work. At present we don't know if the full libertarianism would work. And I think there is some evidence it could be problematic in ways not foreseen by its more radical advocates. We at least need reassurance that will not be so before totally committing ourselves. Mike Perry Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=23089