-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 02:42 PM 12/5/97 GMT, Paul Spirito wrote:
Seriously, I've never lived in Sweden or Singapore -- if I do, I'll get back to the list on which I prefer -- but I'm troubled by the tendency of Libertarians to err on the side of big business fetishism rather than civil liberties. Both are part of the Doctrine, of course*, but I often hear them argue that wild-west capitalism inevitably leads to political freedom -- so, not to worry -- but rarely that political freedom invariably leads to laissez-faire capitalism (so, not to worry).
That's because it doesn't. And there is a difference between "political rights" and liberty. I care about the latter and not the former. Plenty of tyrannical democracies. I judge governments by how much they leave me alone not by their form.
You might say that the latter is NOT TRUE. Well, right-o, but neither is the former. Economic progress under a fascist regime leads inevitably to political freedom? You guys actually make this argument.
Certainly today's economic and technological freedom gives individuals vast money and vast power. This increases their ability to tell their governments to go fuck themselves. Whether they will choose to exercise this power, they certainly have it.
*Yes, Libertarians criticize corporate welfare, but just because it corrupts the notion that a person's entire worth can be summarized in a stock portfolio.
No they criticize it because they don't like to *pay* for it. They believe in lower taxes and smaller governments. DCF -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.0 Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBNIhjvIVO4r4sgSPhAQHEbQP+IlPZPSHqvPyEs4V4pETd4x3OnDjlH1bG WTI2hpmQYaQizMKgHIqjSkyEwB02uGouMeBmW6wxu+upVvwCVBLxY43h5UjkDKQa IqUFdYJt84kxGQzEDYX5KRSjN09fwUAxT4iG7rBxXwIzxPwdeVC0k3sdRnT7PE5X mQJ+M3h9iLM= =cdbj -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----