On 29/09/18 19:23, juan wrote:
OK Peter. Now if you don't mind tell me (or 'us') about your views on liberal anarchy?
Not relevant here, but fundamentally - old hippy, still. Not an anarchist, there are obvious individual and collective benefits to having some sort of state. Used to be a libertarian minimalist (that probably means something completely different to US persons; I mean wanting a minimal state, but neither US style left-wing nor right-wing libertarianism). Communism fails because it has no place for value; right-wing strong property anarchocapitalism fails because it has no heart. After that the main problem seems to be that a state is run by people, and power corrupts - or maybe they were corrupt anyway. I don't necessarily mean greed-led corruption, it takes many forms. Like Mother Theresa - a stone bitch. You have to suffer to get to heaven - not for me, or my God if I had one. Another problem is pigeon-holing - the state categorises people and treats everyone in those categories as the same, when they aren't the same. So we have to balance the benefits of having a state with the disbenefits of corruption, pigeon-holing, etc. In general it seems better to have a state, especially if it's the right state, or not too wrong - those benefits are powerful things. So nowadays I'd go with liberal, in the sense that the state should not stop people from doing things unless there is a very good reason to. But note, these categorising words mean very different things to US and UK people. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness - Jefferson got that much right. A bit like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Sadly, the pursuit of happiness doesn't seem to be an inalienable right any more. "Democracy is the worst type of state, apart from everything else we have tried." On one hand, Trump and Brexit - on the other, ?hope. On the gripping hand ... And I haven't touched on what to do when people's rights conflict with other people's rights .. or with the "rights" of the state, only properly there ain't no such thing; the state has no rights, only people can have rights. The people of a state can en masse have rights, but not the state itself - something which is too often forgotten by employees of the state. -- Peter Fairbrother