Re: [OT] More libertarian news...

On Tue, 22 Sep 2009 08:11:30 -0700, Miss Elaine Eos wrote:

In article <p68rltc66zy4.1pk72ut0xwnc9.dlg@xxxxxxxxxx>,
"Alex W." <ingilt@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In a small nomadic band or village, people understand the
need to share what they have, to pitch in, to support the
weaker and less lucky/successful for the benefit and the
very survival of all.

Romaticism. In a small nomadic band or village, the weaker and less
lucky/successful are sent into the woods alone at night, or onto an ice
floe. In this way, the band/village becomes stronger.

That's rubbish, Ted. This sort of thing happens, of course,
but it happens to those who are an active burden on the
community -- cripples, babies with birth defects etc. It
does not happen to the farmer who happens to have a bad
patch of land, or the hunter who hasn't brought down a
buffalo lately. It does not happen to the crofter who loses
a season's work because he broke his leg, or the nomad whose
wife died in childbirth.



You may be the only bloke in the
village to own a plough-horse, but you certainly won't last
long if you don't let the other farmers use it to plough
their fields: to deny them the horse's labour would be
unacceptable greed and selfishness.

Fantasy. Also the kind of thinking that is the root of all
leftist-generated evil (which is NOT to say "all evil", just that
particular kind ;)

Not fantasy at all -- this is how things work at a certain
level and size of social development. There are (barely)
enough such communities in the world to prove the point.
Bushmen in Africa don't even own their own tools or weapons;
they are held in communal ownership, and considerable
efforts are made to prevent people from laying particular
claim on specific items.

In fact, this can even go further: at the next stage of
social organisation, so-called "Big Man" societies are
pretty common. Here, status depends on your ability to give
away stuff: it's not whether you have the prettiest wife,
the most cows or the biggest house but how generous you are
to your fellow villagers.



When villages grow into
towns and societies, this system based on personal
connections no longer works: the numbers are too large.

False. Bigger towns allow MORE connections, for those who want them.

Theoretically true, but it doesn't work like that in
practice. Our brains are hardwired for a maximum useful
number of personal connections; go beyond that, and you lose
the web of personal relations and loyalties that make small
communities work without formal hierarchies (aka
"government").

http://radio.weblogs.com/0107127/stories/2003/01/01/robinDunbarAndTheMagicNumberOf150.html



There have to be mechanisms to take over the same function.

No, there don't. All there needs to be is someone to protect the
society from invasion, and to keep the peace ("no hitting, no
stealing.") Beyond that, everything is a governmental power-grab.

OK, now specify "keeping the peace". That really does
encompass absolutely every possible conflict between
individuals or groups in every area of life.



This, we call "government". The need is still there, but we
tend to lose sight and even awareness of it.

The need never existed, but we tend to manufacture dreams in our heads
and hope for a "big daddy" to give us the things we want but cannot get
for ourselves. You're talking more religion, Alex!

Those who believe they can do it all on their own end up in
a cabin in the woods following the survivalist dream. And
even they usually rely on the products of a complex society
and economy to supply them with such survivalist essentials
as drugs, canned food, ammunition etc ....



granted. We fail to appreciate that without everybody
working together, none of us would have anything.

False.

Everybody DOESN'T work together, and those who do choose to work create
things to have. Sometimes they trade those things for other things that
others have, sometimes the government steals it from them and
redistributes it.

The way to strengthen a society is to educate it about individual
self-sufficiency, not to coddle its less-ambitious members with shiny
objects stolen from those who created them.

You're thinking of another level entirely (and I appreciate
the way you tried hard to keep the word "welfare" out of
your post :-). At its most fundamental, you *cannot* create
things to have without the cooperation and support of the
other members of your society. It is this cooperation which
allowed the infrastructure to be built which you and I
utterly depend on to pursue our dreams of 2.4 plasma
screens, 3 cars and boob jobs for the wife. It is the
systems of laws and even taxation which allow us regulate
formal relationships and to seek redress when wronged.
Without government to organise, fund and manage it, nothing
would work in this or any other country, not least because
our society is too complex and too numerous for us to do it
any other way. Capitalism is certainly the answer for a lot
of things but it doesn't work for everything, not least
because there are too many people who cannot or will not see
how we all interconnect, how we all depend on each other
utterly for our own personal success and survival.
.

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