hfavr@mtuxo.UUCP (a.reed) (12/09/85)
Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes writes: > Libertarians rightly believe that the liberty (= freedom) of East > Berliners is diminished by the fact that they are not permitted to > cross the Wall. So libertarians owe us an answer to the following > question: Why is it a restriction on liberty to wall people in, but > not a restriction on liberty to wall people out? (And how do you > tell the difference between walling in and walling out, on a round > planet?) The point of my island story is to show that if, as > libertarians believe, walling out does not diminish liberty, then > someone who would ordinarily be considered imprisoned has not had his > liberty diminished, and since this is absurd, libertarians misuse the > concept of liberty. > Lest anyone think I am setting up a straw man, let me quote the > distinguished libertarian philosopher Antony Flew, certainly not a > Brain-Damaged Libertarian, in the Fontana *Dictionary of Philosophy*. > He defines libertarianism as "wholehearted political and economic > liberalism, opposed to any social and legal constraints on individual > freedom." But if this is true, and if private property is a basic > principle of libertarianism, it follows that libertarians believe > that the existence of private property does not entail any social or > legal constraints on individual liberty. This is clearly absurd. I probably should start this by saying something like "The above non-sequitur is typical of the Brain-Damaged Socialists on the net". Having complied with the Richard Carnes protocol, let me discuss the issue. Yes, Libertarians are opposed to any social and legal constraints on individual freedom. However, being opposed to something does not imply the belief that what one opposes may be completely dispensed with without other, unacceptable consequences. Without the constraint against doing things that unacceptably constrain the freedom of others, no one's freedom amounts to anything. Now if one is opposed to something that cannot be ABOLISHED without unacceptable consequences, one can still attempt to MINIMIZE what one opposes, subject to recognized conditions. Thus, it does not follow from Flew's statement that "libertarians believe that the existence of private property does not entail any social or legal constraints on individual liberty", but rather that the constraints it does entail are in the minimal set (that is, in the set of social and legal constraints that keep the total impact of remaining constraints to the bare minimum). Next, about walling in and walling out. Under a Libertarian definition of rights, such as the one I proposed in an earlier article [A RIGHT to do something is the condition of not being subject to (morally or politically) legitimate coercion in consequence of having done it.]; there is nothing to keep a Libertarian in Libertaria from performing an action he or she has no right to perform, if the prospective penalty is preferred to the consequences of not performing it. In no Libertarian legal system I can think of, is a first offense of simple trespass, with no violence or threat of violence, punished by anything beyond a small fine. Given the fact that armed VoPos shooting to kill are not enough to keep East Germans from trying to escape, it is exceedingly unlikely that the prospect of paying a small fine (for crossing a private Wall without the owner's permission) would be enough to keep people imprisoned. And, in the unlikely case that anything like Carnes' example ever happened in Libertaria, the local chapter of the equivalent of the ACLU would probably set up a private charitable fund to pay fines on behalf of any refugees who could not pay them. Now, can we go back to discussing something real? Adam Reed (ihnp4!mtuxo!hfavr)