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From: gabor@qantel.UUCP (Gabor Fencsik@ex2642)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Logic, fact, preference [Part 1]
Message-ID: <545@qantel.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 1-Nov-85 14:16:20 EST
Article-I.D.: qantel.545
Posted: Fri Nov  1 14:16:20 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 2-Nov-85 12:45:09 EST
References: <306@umich.UUCP> <28200185@inmet.UUCP> <617@spar.UUCP>
Reply-To: gabor@qantel.UUCP (Gabor Fencsik@ex2642)
Distribution: net
Organization: MDS Qantel, Hayward, CA
Lines: 45

In article <617@spar.UUCP> Baba offers us the following riddle:

> If you are in a free-rider situation with other individuals to whom
> the discomfort of coercion is less significant than the benefits
> accrued, a failure to coerce the lot of you is an injustice to those
> others in exactly the same way as coercion is an injustice to you.
> Is there a solution to this dilemma, or is libertarianism a system 
> that can only be practiced in a closed religious community?

Baba's move is to take a meta-rule in the game for trading preferences
(the non-coercion principle) and turn it into just another chip in the
game, arriving at a standard self-reference paradox.

I thought our libertarian friends would smother this one with their usual
alacrity but all I have seen so far is a pathetic 'socialism is no better,
so there'. So as a non-libertarian puzzle addict I can offer the following
countermoves:

1) Attack the static character of the free-rider paradigm and counter with
   the principle of unconstrained secession. In most instantiations of
   this paradigm one can escape the free-rider problem by changing the
   rules of the game or opting out. If, by voluntary agreement, everyone
   on my street is obligated to sweep the whole street once a year (there
   are 365 of us) then a few free-riders can't ruin the scheme. Better,
   abolish the arrangement altogether: let everyone sweep in front of their
   own house (the technological solution).

2) Your paradox only shows that the failure to coerce leads to a result that
   is suboptimal and unjust but I (with my libertarian hat on) refuse to be 
   impressed. In order to cause my edifice to cave in you have to show 
   that my refusal to be coerced can itself be coercive. This is the case
   if our pig-headed free-rider has actual veto power over everyone else,
   i.e., nothing can happen if he opts out. It is now Baba's turn to 
   construct such a free-rider veto paradigm and make it stick.

3) The last refuge is to challenge your original move of turning a meta-rule
   into a chip in the trading game. The assertion is that the non-coercion
   principle itself is not subject to trade-offs. You have already shown
   that this is essentially a religious argument. I think a libertarian
   in possession of his critical faculties will have to accept the revelatory
   nature of the core of his beliefs but first you have to cut off escape
   routes 1) and 2). Your move.

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Gabor Fencsik               {ihnp4,dual,hplabs,intelca}!qantel!gabor