Why are there so many statists and communists here on this list now?

[Matt Beland]

On Friday 02 May 2003 03:17 pm, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> There is also an unspoken assumption that folks who hope to be
> interesting list posters will share a common vocabulary and
> literature. Books that seem to influence cpunks include Applied
> Crypto, Heinlein's earlier stuff, Vinge, Ender's Game, Stephenson's
> Cryptonomicon (a little recent, but still), Road to Serfdom, David
> Friedman, some of Murray Rothbard and von Mises' work. Lately I've
> been rereading some of the original public choice theory work out of
> George Mason (and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy," a great
> read).

All good choices. Add "Ender's Shadow" for an interesting twist on the 
original story. Terry Pratchett's stuff for a lighter satirical look, 
although he tends to be cynical about all sides of the debate rather than 
just one side.

And, of course, the classics as well - Gibbon, for example. 

> I'd guess that except in die-hard lefty cases, it's somewhat difficult
> to read those kind of volumes and still remain enthusiastic about tax
> rates that exceed, say, 50 percent and the accompanying regulatory
> structure. Perhaps more to the point, this list has always been about
> (at least I discovered it in late 1994) the social and political
> impacts of crypto and related technologies, and those are probably not
> incredibly friendly to a hyper-regulatory state.
>
> So, yes, the "Klansmen, feminists, nazis, Libertarians of any sort,
> Democrats, Greens, Republicans" are welcome. But may we ask in turn
> that they appreciate the vocabulary and literature?

Interesting question. Are they permitted to ask that we appreciate their 
vocabulary and literature? In reality, I suspect most people here have 
already read "their" literature, and rejected it as not logical or otherwise 
flawed. I did. And that makes it harder to respect the majority of them, 
because it's not really about their disagreement but simply that they're 
*wrong*.

The challenge is to prove this and convince them, not to drive them away with 
the metaphorical equivalent of sticks.

-- 
Matt Beland
matt at rearviewmirror.org
http://www.rearviewmirror.org