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From: bdp@ptsfa.UUCP (Barbara Petersen)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Libertarianism: Anarchism, Schools, Defense, Society
Message-ID: <399@ptsfa.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 19-Dec-84 18:43:30 EST
Article-I.D.: ptsfa.399
Posted: Wed Dec 19 18:43:30 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 23-Dec-84 00:21:22 EST
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From: ..!ucbvax!bashinsk%ucbcory  (J. Bashinski)

> From: faustus@ucbcad.UUCP
> 
> What is good for society as a whole is what is good for most of the members.
> I guess that this isn't always a useful definition, but I am not trying
> to claim that society has any sort of existence apart from its members.
> You could say that society is a set of epiphenomena of social interactions,
> properties that cannot be said to belong to any of the members but belong
> to the whole. It is pretty easy, in theory, to decide what is good for
> society -- whatever leads to the greatest good, in the long run, for
> the most individuals.
> 

     The problem with talking about "the greatest good of the greatest number"
is that it involves maximizing two dependent variables at once. If you want
to maximize something like a product "GOOD * NUMBER", you'll have to come up
with a way to quantify "GOOD". Have fun.

     Even if you could come up with some expression for "the good of society"
in quantitative terms, it might not be right to maximize it. Suppose you
have incontrovertible proof that sacrificing unwilling virgins to the great
lizard-god is the only way to preserve the lives of others. Do you have a right
to perform the sacrifice? Moral philosophies differ here, but I think not.

> 
> > I can't think of a single example of something that would be good for
> > EVERYBODY, at least not if each person were permitted to decide for
> > him/herself what's good for her/him.
> 
> Well, neither can I, but just because people don't always know what's good
> for them doesn't mean that they are right.
> 

     If they're not right, then who is?  And who's to decide who is?

> > National defense:
> > 
> >      I can think of at least three private solutions to the problem of
> > national defense. The first is to ignore it entirely. A nation without
> > armed forces would present no threat to other nations. It would therefore
> > be a less tempting target for attack. If the citizens of that nation
> > were known to be well-armed as individuals, an attack would still threaten
> > heavy losses for the attacking force. Since traditional techniques of
> > military conquest involve taking over the government apparatus already
> > in place, a libertarian nation would be difficult to take and still more
> > difficult to hold.
> 
> A nation with a large military is a temping target for attack? I don't
> understand that one. A threat, maybe, but I think that a rich economy
> is a much better motivation to try to take over a country than a big
> army.
> 

     A big army is a much better motivation to try to *destroy a country
outright* than is a rich economy. The idea is to "get them before they
get us". Another good reason to try to take over a country is the existence
of a robust government apparatus that can be used to keep it subjugated.
After all, people who are already oppressed probably won't care about a
change of oppressors.

     When you invade a country successfully, you usually destroy its
economy. While it's true that those who plan invasions may not understand
this too clearly, I hardly think that this makes a rich economy an
incentive for a takeover. This is especially true if there are no barriers
keeping you (as a government) or your citizens from trading in that
economy.

> >      The private alternative to publically supported education already
> > exists; it's called the private school. Under a libertarian system, all
> > schools would be private schools. Parents would be free to send their
> > children to the school of their choice. The children of the poor would go
> > to schools operated by private charities, or would be taught by their
> > parents.
> 
> Parents would also be free no completely neglect their children's
> educations, which I think would be more common. Do you think that a
> poor unmaried mother would have the time and motivation (not to
> mention education) to teach her children herself? You have to consider
> the rights of the children to an education also, not only the rights
> of the parents to do whatever they want with their children.

     Frankly, I doubt that complete neglect for children's education
would be terribly common. If the poor unmarried mother didn't have time
or knowledge to educate her child, the child could go to a charity school.
Who would operate charity schools? Churches and other private organizations
have been operating schools and other youth programs for years. Furthermore,
as proponents of public education are so quick to point out, a modern
industrialized economy can't operate with an uneducated work force. It
would therefore benefit firms who need educated workers to support schools.

     It would be difficult to imagine such a system working much worse than
the present one. I went to the best public schools in the local district
(Oakland, California). Many of my fellow graduates were, in my opinion,
functionally illiterate. Once having learned to read, I learned essentially
nothing in classes, since they were paced for the least motivated students.
A few "special" classes were still incredibly boring. I don't ascribe much
validity to IQ tests, but it's interesting to note that my measured IQ
*dropped* by thirty points between first grade and high-school graduation.

     Parents don't have a right to "do what they want with their children".
*My* opinion is that parents hold their children's rights to property in
their own bodies in trust, and that it should be fairly easy to arrange
reversion of that trust. If a child's parents are not educating him/her
properly, I feel that the child has a right to seek education elsewhere.
The child does NOT, however, have a RIGHT to education itself, however
likely that child is to find it in a libertarian society.

> 
> I think that most of the people who have been defending libertarianism
> are really defending anarchism, including Mr. Bashinsk. As I understand
> it, libertarians (real Libertarians, that is) don't believe in a society
> with no government at all, but rather one with a minimal government. If
> people want to argue that all government is evil, they should identify
> themselves as anarchists, not libertarians.
> 
> 	Wayne
> 

    A libertarian (my personal definition, which seems to be fairly well
accepted) is a person who believes:

	1) That individuals heve the right to control their own bodies
	  and the products of their labor, and therefore in private property.

	2) That the initiation of force or fraud is wrong, but that force
	  may legitimately be used to counteract force initiated by others.

These are the essentials. There are other propositions, but I think that
these two are sufficient for as good an axiomatic development of libertarianism
as can be had for any political philosophy.

     An anarchist is a person who believes that government should be
abolished (more on the definition of government later).

     Libertarianism and anarchism are related, but independent. It is
possible to be a libertarian with or without being an anarchist. This
month's newsletter from my local Libertarian party organization indicates
that there are both anarchist and "minarchist" factions within the party.

     It is possible also to be an anarchist without being a libertarian;
many anarchists reject the concept of private property.

     I consider myself a libertarian. I remain undecided on the anarchist/
minarchist question, though I lean philosophically toward anarchy. I
apologize to minarchist libertarians if I have defended any intrinsically
anarchistic ideas as simply libertarian.

     I think that a possible source of confusion, at least in my own
postings, has been the use of the word "government" without definition
and in possibly inconsistent ways. In many places I have used "government"
to mean "nonlibertarian government" or "government as it is presently
practiced". To avoid future confusion, I propose the following definitions,
which I'll use myself from now on:

	A GOVERNMENT is an entity which reserves all use of force to itself,
	    and which uses force to prevent others from using force without
	    its authorization.

	A LIBERTARIAN GOVERNMENT is a government which uses force only in
	    response to the use of force or fraud by others, and which
	    recognizes that it draws its right to use force from the
	    right of the victim of the original force or fraud to redress.

     If anyone can show me something substantially wrong with these
definitions, I'll willingly change them.

				J. Bashinsk>i<
				...!ucbvax!bashinsk%ucbcory
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