NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #19/NN_1992_19.iso/spool/sci/econ/7246

Internet Message Format | 1992-08-30 | 2.7 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!ulowell!cis.umassd.edu!nic.umass.edu!dime!chelm.cs.umass.edu!yodaiken
From: [e-mail] (victor yodaiken)
Newsgroups: sci.econ
Subject: Re: Outgrowing Libertarianism...
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 29 Aug 92 23:27:45 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Lines: 46

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (jimmy donal wales) writes:
>Victor Yodaiken writes:
>>And there is no claim that the mean-spiritedness and
>>intellectual poverty of "libertarianism" implies in any way that it is
>>a "false" theory, merely that it is a repugnant one.

>Once one takes claims of intellectual richness and disconnects them
>from truth and falsehood... then where does one stand?
>
>Victor's statement can be translated as follows: "I don't care if
>everything that the libertarians say is true.  I don't care if individual
>rights give us the best possible mechanism for assuring peace and prosperity.
>I don't care if socialism and interventionism simply don't work.  Who
>cares which theory is true?  Libertarianism is repugnant."

Translation is usually associated with some sort of meaning preservation.
To illustrate the point which you have so deeply misunderstood, let's
examine the "libertarian" position that one has the "right" to refuse
service in a public place of business on the basis of racial bigotry.
The "libertarians" argue that it is moral to impose taxes for the
purpose of paying for a police force which will enforce the racial
prejudices of property owners by forcibly ejecting blacks, jews, or
whatever from hotels, restaurants, banks, or any other "privately owned"
place of business. Thus, the "libertarians" find it perfectly moral
to forcibly extract taxes from minority groups in order to violently
oppress them. I find this repugnant and  intellectually dishonest, but
not "wrong", since it is a moral position, not a falsifiable one. On the
other hand, the "Libertarian" claim, which has been oft repeated in this
forum, that under a free-market system such discrimination would be
unprofitable and would render the racist business vulnerable to competition
*is* wrong as anyone familiar with the history of race relations in the
United States can confirm. That is, we see from US history that
discrimination on the basis of race, religion, gender, or whatever,
 has been quite compatible with profitability,
and that widespread racial or religious prejudice has
worked to deprive certain segments of the population of a meaningful chance
to compete on equal terms with the majority.




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