Re: A prediction about the Presidential campaign

Justin Fang <justinf@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Yes. Keith thinks that the last step (the government abolishes it
for the rest, i.e. "coercive large-scale cooperation") was unnecessary.

It was. All they had to do was cease enforcing the fugitive slave
laws. In other words, without continuing active government help,
slavery couldn't have gotten started, nor could it have lasted a
week if it had somehow gotten started.

I was mentioning slavery mainly as an example of something that had,
like government, always been around, and that nearly everyone believed
was a necessary evil. They also believed that it even if it were
desirable to abolish it, and that society wouldn't promptly collapse
in its absence, that it couldn't be abolished without changing human
nature.

It's worth reading contemporary defenses of slavery and other ancient
evils. For one thing, it's more constructive than thinking that our
ancestors were all insane psychopaths. For another, the parallels
with present-day arguments for keeping government are striking.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.
.

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