X-Message-Number: 23139
Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 22:19:17 -0700
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #23131 (Jerry Searcy)

Jerry and I have thrashed out a lot of issues lately, and I am going to lay 
off commenting on most of them here (enough has been said!) but I just had 
to say something about this:

>I don't think we need an "experiment" in the results of self responsibility
>and the right to determine how much of our property we keep. It speaks for
>itself. A government that is focused on preventing the initiation of force,
>fraud and enforcing contracts...and nothing else, would be vastly superior to
>the nanny state we now suffer under. How a rational person can argue against
>that baffles me! That doesn't sound "radical" to me...only very moral!

This seems to miss the point I was trying to make. I did call for an 
"experiment" to see how well a libertarian government would work. The main 
thought I had in mind, however, was not to judge whether the system, 
assuming it worked as intended, was really good for us, but whether in fact 
it _would_ work as intended. An alternative possibility is that it would 
not last long in the pristine form in which it started, but quickly change 
into something decidedly less than libertarian, and in fact not even as 
good as what had preceded it. Human nature being what it is, I don't think 
it a sure thing at all that this would _not_ happen. We at least need the 
limited-scale experiment, and the system needs to demonstrate workability 
and efficacy at this level, before it becomes reasonable to advocate a more 
sweeping (revolutionary) change. Such is my view anyway. And I will add 
that the fact that no such experiment has yet succeeded should be a tipoff 
to possibly "expect the unexpected" by way of difficulties. Most 
libertarians, who strike me as particularly rational, thinking people, 
focused on individual values and survival, still are not scientific 
immortalists, suggesting that even for them a surprising amount of "the 
unexpected" might occur.

Mike Perry

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