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From: jack@vu44.UUCP (Jack Jansen)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Libertarianism: Anarchism, Schools, Defense, Society
Message-ID: <542@vu44.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 28-Dec-84 16:12:19 EST
Article-I.D.: vu44.542
Posted: Fri Dec 28 16:12:19 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 30-Dec-84 00:12:13 EST
References: <399@ptsfa.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: The Retarded Programmers Home, VU, Amsterdam
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> From: bdp@ptsfa.UUCP (Barbara Petersen)
>     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.
						^
						*THIS* is where
libertarians go wrong. They pretend to be a kind of anarchists who
believe in private property, but the whole reasoning they use to defend
the right to private property is *WRONG*!

I (being an anarchist, by the way) agree with everything before the
comma, but the rest of the sentence is wrong.
Libertarianism allows you to do anything you like with your own
property, for instance, give it away to your kids. While I can, to
some extent, see that the founder of a big company could be
granted some privileges (although
I think these should be given to him by the companies employees,
and should not be enforced by a government, or by the man himself),
I think his heirs have *no right whatsoever* to these privileges.

The problem with libertarianism is that it accounts for the fact that
a goverment should allow a greater amount of freedom for the individual
when the individuals are getting better educated, but, on the other
hand, they want to make one exception, PROPERTY.
Thus, while anarchy is a simple and beautiful theory (although
unattainable in the near future), libertarianism is a complicated
(and, in my opinion, rather messy) theory, because they have to
make numerous exceptions to the overall phylosophy to make sure
that the notion of 'private property' is retained.
-- 
	Jack Jansen, {seismo|philabs|decvax}!mcvax!vu44!jack
	or				       ...!vu44!htsa!jack
If *this* is my opinion, I wasn't sober at the time.