wjr@x.UUCP (Bill Richard) (10/24/85)
This is STella, no matter what it says in the header! In article <793@cybvax0.UUCP> mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) writes: >In article <790@x.UUCP> wjr@x.UUCP (STella Calvert) writes: >>If most of the people in libertaria do not share my attitude toward coercion >>then I will be living in the United Statists of America. >With that sort of attitude, what's to prevent libertaria from being overrun >by coercive interlopers who transform it into yet another coercive state? >Most libertarians try to show how their society would be stable, rather than >show how they would abandon it at the first sign of strain. Wait a minute! I said nothing about abandoning libertaria at the first sign of strain. I've said (repeatedly) that if libertarians form a society, we will do it by agreeing that coercion must be stopped. (Among other things.) To bring about and then live in a society free of coercion, I must be willing to risk my life to negatively reinforce coercion. If I and likeminded individuals make this contract, our mutual commitment will pledge our lives, fortunes, etc, to stop the coercers. And if I fail in convincing people to form this society with me, then a libertaria will not _come into being_, and should not, since it would be unable to protect itself from outside boogypersons. >After coercion, it is too late. You've been nuked. Unless you have left >behind some furies or organized system of vendetta that can identify and >counter-coerce, your interests are lost. That's what our current system >does right now. OK, suppose I'm nuked, a vortex of libertarian plasma. What do the other libertarians, who likewise pledged themselves to non-coercion, do? An attack on my right to live uncoerced is an attack on each member of the libertaria. And if it were some other libertarian plasma, so that I'm alive to make this decision, I would resist that attacker until I too was dead. Force may occasionally work on an individual, but the threat of force will not intimidate the group. >> Of course, there is still the problem of the anonymous terrorist, but statists >> don't seem to have a solution either. Any ideas on that one? We need it >> before we build libertaria or anarchia. > >Statists do have a solution: massive espionage organizations like the FBI, >CIA, NSC, state and local police (in our government alone) that help unveil >the anonymous. These could be performed by independent private agencies, >but that libertarian scheme has a major drawback. Current government agencies >are (at least titularly) answerable to and assigned responsibilities and goals >by higher levels of government, rather than by themselves. Like J. Edgar, with his file on everybody? Government agencies are supposedly answerable to higher levels of government, which they sometimes provide with disinformation -- on the grounds that our elected representatives cannot be trusted with sensitive security information. Is this responsibility under constitutional control? The secret police then act as an invisible government superimposed upon, and sometimes thwarting, the visible system. > Under a libertarian >system, what would prevent the positive feedback of such an organization >attaining power and information by coercion, and thus re-establishing >coercive rule? Individuals, refusing to be coerced, passing their individual viewpoints among themselves. The reason the "security" agencies can presently misinform the public and other agencies of the government is that they have a monopoly on some methods of collecting information (satellite photos, codebreaking technology, etc.). If the secret police are solving the problem, who bombed the US embassy in Lebanon? Who put the plutonium in New York's water supply? Who was Deep Throat? I feel like this whole discussion is falling into a "would/wouldn't" loop -- can we break out? One or both of us are missing the other's fundamental assumptions, and sailing our best arguments past the other without any contact. Does it seem that way to you, Mike? Anyone else? STella Calvert Every man and every woman is a star. Guest on: ...!decvax!frog!wjr Life: Baltimore!AnnArbor!Smyrna!<LotsOfHitchhikingAndShortVisits> !SantaCruz!Berkeley!AnnArbor!Taxachussetts Future: ... (!L5!TheBelt!InterstellarSpace)