Re: A New Work By Tony Bertram -- LIFEBOAT

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Date Posted: 12:26:34 07/28/00 Fri
Author: Tony Bertram
Subject: Re: A New Work By Tony Bertram
In reply to: SwimmingUpstream 's message, "A New Work By Tony Bertram" on 12:33:34 07/21/00 Fri

Thanks for posting my article. During a web search, I found an article by the same title by Jonathan Wallace in the August 1997 issue of The Ethical Spectacle, an online journal.
http://www.spectacle.org/897/

That particularly issue is devoted to a discussion of Libertarianism.

The author Jonathan Wallace sympathizes with libertarianism but argues (as I do in my essay) that the "free market" leaves many unaddressed issues and problems. But he offers a different critique than I do.

He writes:

"I thought about entitling this essay 'Two Cheers For Libertarianism.' On civil liberties matters, I am perfectly libertarian; in fact, I have just delivered a briefing paper on the pervasiveness doctrine to the Cato Institute, and hope to write more for them on topics such as anonymity and mandatory ratings systems.

"But there are other libertarian positions, such as that against anti-discrimination laws, which shock the conscience; like Hayek, I believe that there are things worth doing that the free market cannot do. Here then, is an attempt to outline what is good about libertarianism, and then contrast what doesn't make sense. The conclusion I draw is that like most human belief systems, libertarianism mixes practicality with some idealism unrelated to human nature. Therefore, as much as I sympathize with most of the diagnoses and some of the prescriptions, I am not a libertarian."

...

"I think the true test of the libertarian scheme is whether an impoverished but talented individual from a disfavored group could get a start in it. If the rest of the individuals could legally band together to starve him to death, as they could do under the libertarian theory of property rights, we have gone far beyond Mill's theory of liberty, to a monstrous selfishness, a tyranny of the individual over society."

from "Why I Am Not a Libertarian"
by Jonathan Wallace

The entire essay is available at
http://www.spectacle.org/897/trust.html

[---Tony Bertram]

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Replies:

Re: A New Work By Tony Bertram -- SwimmingUpstream, 09:14:12 07/29/00 Sat
- Re: A New Work By Tony Bertram -- Tony Bertram, 15:11:34 07/29/00 Sat