From: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
Date: Mon, 8 Jan 1996 13:36:17 +0800
To: dnowch2@teleport.com
Subject: Re: Hammill 1987 speech
Message-ID: <m0tZ9iS-000906C@pacifier.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


This is a response to feedback on my original post that was originally posted to Cypherpunks@toad.com, newlibertarians@teleport.com, and dnowch2@teleport.com.  The respondor ("Vladimir Z. Nuri",  widely suspected of being an L. Detweiler 'tentacle,') put his response into Cypherpunks alone. 

At 12:43 PM 1/4/96 -0800, you   <vznuri@netcom.com>      wrote:
>
>the Hammill 1987 speech is interesting and prescient but also contains
>some of the subtle mind-biases and prejudices of rabid libertarians
>that are easy for outsiders to spot.

Gee, YOUR biases seem AT LEAST as easy to spot too, huh?!?

> some day I might write a more
>ambitious essay on this, but for now I'll list a few items and suggest some
>counterclaims that will fry any libertarians brain.

Don't flatter yourself.

> all these ideas
>have analogues to cryptography which I'll elucidate as best I can.
>
>1. weaponry is good in the hands of individuals, tyrannical in the hands
>of the state.
>
>the analogy is with the crossbow and other weapons. as a logical
>consequence of these ideas, it seems libertarians
>think that utopia could be achieved if everyone could build their own
>backyard nukes. they are obsessed with the idea of "deterrence" which
>is a fancy word for MAD feer, mutual assured destruction fear.

Not, at least, for me.  The "backyard nukes" analogy is the one typically grabbed by the anti-gunners when they're trying to justify limiting the 2nd amendment.  One problem that I see with this "reasoning" is that they never analogize by trying to limit the power of THE STATE to own weapons, despite the fact that maximum-bang weaponry increased by over a factor of 1,000,000 between about 1935 and 1955 or so.  And not to mention that military weaponry deadliness increased by probably a factor of at least 100 between 1790 and 1935.  
Since (I assume you understand the argument, here) the US Constitution is supposed to be the complete statement of the legal powers of the Federal government, what's missing is a justification for even ALLOWING the government to engage in the kinds of weapons developments that it did post 1935 on constitutional/legal grounds.  The significance of this argument is this:  If you argue that "things have changed" and indiiduals should not be able to make/own nukes, that opens the door to similar claims that "things have changed" and the US Government should not be allowed to maintain the current military that it does.

Don't just come back and say the Constitution provides for open-ended "defense":  Nobody today would argue that the writers of the Constitution could have anticipated the development of the H-bomb or the F-15 or AWACS, but I see nobody using that argument to de-empower the government, while I FREQUENTLY see people trying to justify  restrictions on guns based on the kinds of developments in guns that have happened since the muzzle-loader was king.

>the analogy to cryptography is: cryptography is good in the hands 
>of individuals, tyrannical in the hands of the state.

Sometimes, it is indeed.  Especially since "the state" SHOULD serve at the pleasure of the individuals, not hte other way around.  You may disagree...

>again the idea is that the stronger the cryptography available to the
>individual, the better. however I don't want to get into any of the 
>guns == crypto arguments..
>
>2. the world is screwed up because governments have made it that way.
>
>this is such a silly premise 

It's also your "straw-man argument."

>but vast masses have subscribed to it 
>since the beginning of time. it's easy to say that any problem you have
>with your finances or your pet poodle is the fault of the Government,
>Big Business, or whatever.

While it's true that "the world is screwed  up" and it's also true that "governments have made it screwed up," libertarians don't usually (?) try to claim that governments bear _full_ responsibility.  Just most of it.

> libertarians are especially clever in 
>constantly inventing new terms, synonymous with "enemy" but not quite
>so coarse and vulgar ("statist" is the current favorite epithet), 

Actually, the term "statist" is a particularly useful and interesting term.  Against the backdrop of people stuck in their traditional left/right, liberal/conservative, Democrat/Republican ruts, libertarians remindthe world that politics can be viewed even better in two dimensions, for example the "Nolan Chart," otherwise known as "the world's smallest political quiz."  The thing I've always found fascinating about that representation is that it contains, embedded within it, the left/right spectrum, but perpendical to this is the libertarian/authoritarian (statist) axis.  In other words, it showed that some people seem to be just naturally control-freaks, whether they come from the left or the right.

Now,  language is IMPORTANT.  If you can control the language, you can control the debate.  Historically, there was no easy way to describe people now well-described by the term "statist", because they could be either of the "liberal" or "conservative" bent, the "Republican" or "Democratic" bent, etc.

>to name their endless list of bogeymen who prevent them from 
>supposedly achieving their full potential in life.
>
>why is it that libertarians have not created their own state long ago,
>but continue to stay in countries that they claim oppress them? I have
>never heard a satisfactory response to this. 

[note:  already in the Cypherpunks area he has been given a number of reasons for this; primarily based on attack by non-libertarian states]  These examples are presumably true;  governments fear competition that may later eliminate them.  Companies do too, but they're generally limited in their ability to fight back.

> the real answer of course
>is that the rabid libertarians will never find a system they like,

A misleading statement.  They may never "like" any system forced on them, and by saying they "find" it implies that it is made by (and, presumably, ENFORCED BY) somebody else!

> they
>will criticize anything that exists, and never work to find a better
>alternative through constructive, positive means, but are happy to try
>to sabotage whatever has been built by others in the name of some
>noble and holy guerrilla war.

What's wrong with sabotaging the work of flaming statists?!?

>the analogy to crypto: any technology such as crypto that helps people avoid 
>governments, and hide their dealings, promotes utopia. governments
>are the root of all evil, and anything that destroys them destroys 
>evil.

Sounds logical to me...


>3. the government vs. the people dichotomy
>
>endlessly, even in a system that is expressly designed to present this
>polarization,

Maybe you meant, "prevent."  But even expressed this way, that was wrong.

> libertarians subscribe to the idea of "us vs. them" in
>every avenue of reality.

So what else is new for nearly all political philosophy?  If anything, I've heard more "us vs. them" from NON-libertarians than from libertarians.

> this thinking is entirely the same as that
>held by the NSA and cold war defense contractors. what's the difference?

Maybe this portion of the philosophy ISN'T the difference, and something else IS...

>none.  we have a system in which the designers said it was "of, by, and
>for the people", but a libertarian cannot handle this unity, 

The variability is the entent to which "this system" controls society.  Even if we assume that "a government" is necessary, there is still an enormous variability as to HOW MUCH that government controls. 200 years of change has produced an enormous differnece.  There is NO REASON TO BELIEVE that libertarians should have to "handle" the 1996 version of reality that was only originally intended in 1790 to control a tiny fraction of one's life.  Your argument seems to be a paean to an open-ended approval of government.

>nor can
>apparently any other citizen in the US that criticizes their government
>as if it is something apart from themselves.

The answer to that is simple.  "Their ('our') government" is INDEED "something apart from themselves"!  For just one example, those military contractors pay their bribes to POLITICIANS, not randomly selected citizens, for a GOOD REASON. Governments of all kinds are INDEED, "apart" from their citizenry!!! 


>cryptography helps people preserve these illusions of separation.
>there are people who are "in" and "out" and those "out" cannot read
>your messages. what prevents leaks from "in" to "out"? libertarians
>would like to have you believe they have solved this problem with 
>technology. but it is not a technological problem. it is an issue
>of trust, something that cannot be formalized or preserved by any
>invention. but don't tell this to a libertarian, who has dedicated
>his entire ideology to attempting to prove that one can actually
>achieve human integrity & utopia through technology alone and
>insisting that anything else is wholly superfluous.

Detweiler is beginning to lose touch with reality with this previous sentence.

>
>4. egalitarianism: libertarians are always saying that we don't
>have it and ranting about this injustice. 

Odd that you would claim this.  If anything, the libertarians I've met are about as "anti-egalitarian" as they come, as long as you're talking about GOVERNMENT ENFORCED ACCESS TO WEALTH AND POWER.  


>but in their arguments, such as Hammill's, you will always find subtle 
>arguments that they don't really want egalitarianism: some individuals should
>have an "edge" with their technology over those who seek to oppress them.

Subtle?  SUBTLE????  I have, in fact, heard more RABIDLY ANTI-EGALITARIAN (again:  Where egalitarianism is defined as government-enforced equal-treatment by private individuals of private individuals.) arguments by libertarians, who object (for just one example) to the ADA (Americans with a Disability Act) because it requires private organizations (corporations, for instance) to build buildings to be "accessible" to everyone.  If anything, libertarians are the most PROUDLY anti-egalitarian people around, in that they don't want the heavy hand of government to try to equalize society by the barrel of the gun.

In other words, Detweiler...er...Nuri  has totally dissociated himself from reality.  He clearly doesn't understand the first thing about libertarianism.

>they would be all for it if individuals had the capability to create
>atom bombs but somehow governments did not. the philosophy is inherently
>desiring inequality at its root.  the implication with crypto is that
>governments should have to reveal everything but individuals can have 
>total secrecy.

Actually, since "governments" are merely the agents and employees of the citizenry (or they should be!!!) this is a valid argument.  Since the government is the "employee" and the citizenry pays it, the citizenry gets to call the shots.


>beware of someone who tells you that utopia cannot currently be realized
>because
>
>1. governments ("they") do not allow it for "us".
>2. there are a lot of people preventing it from being realized, and we
>have to *get*rid* of them first.
>3. the correct technology does not yet exist. once it is invented, however,
>all problems will be solved.

Actually, my "Assassination Politics" idea stands an excellent chance of achieving exactly these breakthroughs.  You don't like it, however.


>I'm not actually going to rebut any of these outright other than to
>the degree I have,

In other words, you can't think of any better arguments...

> and point out that history is ample evidence they are all false.

Which history?  What history?  Whose version of history?

>  of course I don't expect any of the libertarians to understand
>my points, but frankly I think I am going to enjoy watching obtuse and
>angry flames for pushing the hot buttons.

In other words, you've given up now.  Thank you for your flames.  They'll probably convince something new that I'm right...