sebb@pyuxss.UUCP (S Badian) (08/02/84)
I find all this talk about libertarianism very interesting. I, personally, am a libertarian. Unfortunately, as a political and ecomonic system it just doesn't work in the big wide world. Yes, it works in protecting personal liberties. But in order to protect your liberties you have to depend on an efficient legal system. Before you can advocate a libertarian society, you have to figure out how to maintain an efficient legal system(as in courts, prisons) and you have to address questions of punishnent (as in capital). If you want to ignore the legal system and mete out justice the way they used to(you killed my kid; now I'm going to kill you!) then you are not advocating libertarianism; you are advocating anarchy(and certainly taking a giant step backwards as far as human rights go). Libertarianism is based on personal responsibility. In that way it is very existential. Most people cannot understand personal responsibility and certainly do not live by it. Greed and money are the motivating force today. I want to make that buck and I don't care what happens to you. This kind of logic is not a corporate problem, but an individual problem. People make decisions, not corporations. Take Hooker Chemical, for instance. Hooker is responsible for Love Canal in Western NY. As far as I'm concerned the people who made the decision to dump the chemicals there are at fault. We cannot blame 'big business' for it. Hang the creeps who decided to dump those chemicals there!(Better yet, make THEM live there!) I'd like to know how the libertarians deal with issues like national defense(certainly not a personal problem in today's world) and public lands(national parks, preserving the wilderness). If the government doesn't take care of these things, who does? sharon badian
mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) (08/04/84)
*******
Libertarianism is based on personal responsibility. In
that way it is very existential. Most people cannot understand
personal responsibility and certainly do not live by it. Greed
and money are the motivating force today. I want to make that
buck and I don't care what happens to you. This kind of logic
is not a corporate problem, but an individual problem. People
make decisions, not corporations. Take Hooker Chemical, for
instance. Hooker is responsible for Love Canal in Western NY.
As far as I'm concerned the people who made the decision to
dump the chemicals there are at fault. We cannot blame 'big
business' for it. Hang the creeps who decided to dump those
chemicals there!(Better yet, make THEM live there!)
sharon badian
*********
Sometimes (often) corporations will do things deliberately and knowingly
that hurt innocent people. But not all damaging behaviours are done
deliberately. I thought that Hooker originally dumped stuff in the Love
Canal because it was thought to be a safe method of disposal. They made
a serious mistake, if so, but does that make them creeps who should be
punished?
As for blaming individuals rather than corporate entities, there is
a conundrum involving the actual individuality of persons involved in
common activities (such as corporate decision making). To what degree
is an individual ABLE to make a personal decision on a corporate matter,
where that decision goes counter to the general advice and wisdom in
the community? I don't mean that the individual may not think differently
from the others, or even that there may not be argument. But the prevailing
climate of thought tends to bias individual ideas. Also, there may not
be A decision, but an action that depends on a multitude of decisions
both technical and policy, made by different individuals. No one
individual has made any choice that by itself leads to the bad result.
For both these reasons, there is some sense in which the corporation
itself is the individual that made the decision and acted, rather than
any human individual. How do the libertarians handle that problem?
--
Martin Taylor
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