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From: mjk@tty3b.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: How to Argue with Libertarians
Message-ID: <144@tty3b.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 28-Jun-83 13:27:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: tty3b.144
Posted: Tue Jun 28 13:27:04 1983
Date-Received: Thu, 30-Jun-83 03:14:41 EDT
References: <455@grkermit.UUCP>
Organization: Teletype Corp., Skokie, Ill
Lines: 41

grkermit!chris states that one must challenge libertarians on the basis of
their principles:
"The Libertarian argument for government begins with an argument for
individual rights.  These rights are [claimed to be] necessary in order for
an individual to be able to work productively and be able to count on being
able to enjoy the benefits of the labor.  That claim is what you need to
argue about in order to convince libertarians that their concept of a just
government is incomplete or bad in some other way."

Speaking from a few years of experience of arguing with Libertarians in
college, I don't think that's right.  You point out to Libertarians how
their system is totally unrealistic because it argues for a system
(laissez-faire capitalism) without devising a plan to avoid what seems
to be the inevitable result of capitalist development: monopolies and
oligopolies.  They are in a sense ahistorical because our own political
history is one of government being forced to assume a regulatory role
by the abuses of the free market.  If one looks at the history of the
development of organizations such as the ICC, one finds an essentially
free market which quickly developed into an oligopolistic market (the
Robber Barons et al) which then formed regulators to guard market share.
In other cases (labor), the abuses were so outrageous as to require
some form of intervention to preserve the system -- there was the 
possibility of a revolution over unionization.  In parts of West
Virginia and surrounding coal mining areas, there was open warfare
between the goons hired by the coal operators and the union organizers.

So this view that somehow "Big Government" just developed one day
because some people were "too lazy to make it in the private sector"
and decided they could do well in government is totally off base.  The
U.S. was once a free market economy and has come to be a mixed economy
(although it still is less regulated than almost any other industrialized
country in the world).  It became that way through natural historical
forces, and the basic drives of the capitalist system, not because some
evil men plotted to tyrannize the nation with Big Government.

Libertarians just pooh-pooh that and argue that all our problems would
be solved in a free market.  Just what are they going to do about Exxon,
ITT, AT&T, IBM, GE, ....

tty3b!mjk
the development of our own economy and government.  The government was