At 12:57 PM -0400 10/19/00, Declan McCullagh wrote:
On Thu, Oct 19, 2000 at 07:53:19AM -0700, James A.. Donald wrote:
Without property rights to separate one man's plan from another man's plan, only one plan can be permitted, and any pursuit of alternate goals, or pursuit of the same goals through alternate methods is "wrecking", and must be crushed.
I might be tempted to agree with you, but I think David Friedman's Machinery of Freedom (which I was reading last night) might have something to say about the above.
It should be required reading for all cpunx anyway (not saying you haven't read it -- this is simply a general suggestion to the rest of the list).
Indeed. We used to have the reasonable expectation that nearly everyone on the list had some familiarity with the "classics." For example, Friedman's "Machinery of Freedom," Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson," Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom," Vinge's "True Names," Card's "Ender's Game," Rand's "Atlas Shrugged," Brunner's "Shockwave Rider," and maybe even some of the writings of Spooner, Benson, Von Mises, Tannehill, Hospers, and Rothbard. These works helped to establish a common vocabulary, a common set of core concepts. Not that everyone was a libertarian, let alone a Libertarian. But the core concepts were known, and those who didn't know about them were motivated to go off and look them up. We had fewer folks arguing for socialism in those days. Today, it's like, whoa, dude, like the insurance companies are, like, big meanies and they, like, have lots of money and so they should, like, be forced to help the little guys. And besides, like, socialism was never really given a good test. I mean, like, the stuff they're doing in Cuba is really rad. Like, they're _spanking_ private corporations! Of the half dozen or so clueless ranter who have appeared recently to argue that corporations are the real enemy, that government is just trying to do its job, that all crypto is broken anyway so why bother?, that free markets can't possibly work, and that crypto is for helping to force insurance companies to help the little guy, most of them are a waste of skin. --Tim May -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.