Re: Public School was a waste of my time (Re: When even a Republican can see it....)

In article <VL-dnfXBuN2tvzPbnZ2dnUVZ8t6pnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Dave O'Neill" <daveon@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[Apologies if this ends up going out twice]

What astounds me about this thread and the discussions which keep cropping
up is not the discussions themselves, but the invective that is hurled at
people who are basically arguing for the status quo and the systems which
currently work in the real world versus systems which have never actually
been tried out.


Most of what libertarians advocate has been tried out. England had free
trade and a pretty laissez-faire system for about two thirds of the 19th
century, a period during which the conditions of life of the average
person in England improved strikingly. England had a system of private
law enforcement (but public courts, with government authority backing
their verdicts) through the 18th and early 19th century; the first
English police force in the modern sense of the term was instituted by
Peel well into the 19th century, as you probably know. Scotland had a
well functioning system of private banks and private money for about a
century and a half. Iceland had a system of private law enforcement with
no executive arm of government to enforce court verdicts (but public
courts) for about a third of a millenium. The U.S. had a system of open
immigration, with some exceptions for orientals, for most of its history

The ideas of political theorists are rarely implemented in full, at
least for very long, in the real world. But most of the things
libertarians advocate have happened, in the real world, in one form or
another. Reasonable people can and do differ about the conclusions to be
drawn from those experiences--the pop history version of 19th century
laissez-faire focusses on how much worse off people were then than now
and ignores the fact that it was that period of economic improvement
that got us from then to now. Some scholars view the creation of the
British police as a reaction to high crime rates under the previous
system--determining whether they are right, and whether the new system
worked better than the old, is made difficult by the shortage of decent
crime statistics from the earlier period. Similarly for the other
examples.

And the same issue arises for the present system. Does one observe the
present condition of American inner city poor as evidence of how well
the welfare state works, or does one observe that the poverty rate was
falling rapidly until about the point when the War on Poverty got
seriouly underway and has been roughly stable since then and conclude
that the welfare state is the reason there are so many poor people? How
does one evaluate the effects of the War on Drugs, public schooling,
professional licensing, macro policy, and lots of other things?
Reasonable people can and do differ in each of those cases as to[A
whether observation of what we have provides evidence for or against it.

Or in other words "currently work in the real world" is an ambiguous
claim. "Currently exist in the real world" is true--but then, lots of
things you would disapprove of have existed in the real world at various
times. To what degree the features of modern societies that libertarians
disapprove of work is an open question.

Going to your more general claim, it seems to be that conservatives
ought to be less subject to criticism by radicals than radicals by
conservatives--that invective is not only generally inappropriate to
argument (a claim I would agree with) but especially inappropriate
against defenders of the status quo. I can't see why. The status quo
involves some terrible things as well as some good things, so just as
much a legitimate target for criticism as proposed alternatives.

--
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Author of _Harald_, a fantasy without magic.
Published by Baen, in bookstores now
.

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