From: Petro <petro@playboy.com>
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1998 04:07:20 +0800
To: "William H. Geiger III" <whgiii@invweb.net>
Subject: Re: Another potential flaw in current economic theory... (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <v04011701b2404f900352@[206.189.103.244]>
Message-ID: <v04011707b242c1993405@[206.189.103.230]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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At 6:19 PM -0500 10/6/98, William H. Geiger III wrote:
>>At 2:35 PM -0500 10/6/98, Steve Mynott wrote:
>>>any true cypherpunk must be a libertarian..
>>	Libertarians are just cowardly anarchists, they lack the courage of
>>their convictions to take the last step and eliminate government
>>altogether.
>Libertarians are well aware of the need for government, they are also

	Libertarians are afraid of getting rid of their saftey nets.

>aware of the dangers to personal freedom that governments represent. The
>goal of the Libertarians is to provide a system that minimizes government
>and maximizes personal freedom. In the US this system takes the form of a

	The creation of government is incompatible with concept of freedom,
it is like a doctor saying that he/she will introduce "a little cancer" to
help cure you of something.

	Like radiation or chemotherapy it works for a short time, but
causes the very problems it set out to solve in the long run.

	As our current state would show, freedoms are not always lost in
one big election, nor in one gigantic battle, but like a mountain is
reduced to a plain, one drop of water, one soft gust of wind at a time.

>Constitutionally limited government (ie: the US Constitution interpreted
>as a limiting document not an enabling one).

	What prevents it from changing contexts?

	Nothing.

	The current constitution was voided by the Civil War/War of
Northern Aggression, and we haven't had a government that was willing to
restrict it's activities to its prescribed borders since then (if we even
did before then, I seem to remember A. Jackson explicitly ignoring a
supreme court ruling that lead to thousands of deaths).

	Your system depends on strong minded, enlightened people willing to
work together and not look to someone else to solve their problems.

	With those kind of people any system will work, and so would anarchy.

	Without those kind of people, no system will work for long
(especially without degenerating into a tyranny of some kind).

>Anarchism does not work. It is a pipe dream much like Communism that only
>leads to Totalitarianism.

	It works every day anywhere anyone has the capability to make a
choice, and does so without consulting their local branch of the Mob.
--
"To sum up: The entire structure of antitrust statutes in this country is a
jumble of economic irrationality and ignorance. It is a product: (a) of a
gross misinterpretation of history, and (b) of rather nave, and certainly
unrealistic, economic theories." Alan Greenspan, "Anti-trust"
http://www.ecosystems.net/mgering/antitrust.html

Petro::E-Commerce Adminstrator::Playboy Ent.
Inc.::petro@playboy.com::petro@bounty.org