Comments on: Miscellaneous Observations

By: Alex J.

Alex J. — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 20:13:20 +0000

I share Johnson’s belief that the government’s ability to accomplish anything worthwhile is shrinking. However, I fear it will remain cheap and easy for the government to disrupt other people’s plans and efforts

By: Mill Gets it Right | Anything Peaceful

Mill Gets it Right | Anything Peaceful — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 15:03:18 +0000

[...] I came across this wonderful John Stewart Mill quote by in a comment by Ray Mangum at Roderick Long’s great blog, The Austro-Athenian Empire: [...]

By: Bob Kaercher

Bob Kaercher — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 04:46:22 +0000

Hasnas and Johnson somewhat correspond with Rothbard’s short-term pessimism and long term optimism, respectively.

By: Roderick

Roderick — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 02:14:52 +0000

That’s a great quote.

By: Ray Mangum

Ray Mangum — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 01:29:22 +0000

The two perspectives you’ve presented here represent the two major stumbling blocks to popular acceptance of libertarian/anarchist ideas, which are the perceptions of pessimism on the one hand for rejecting the current system in toto and declaring it doomed to failure, and utopianism on the other, for wanting something different, something better. We are dismissed as either Cassandras or Pollyannas, and are all too often vulnerable to the charge.

I have often been charged with cynicism for my dim views on government and politicians. But a libertarian defines “government” with what is accomplished by force, and the “market” as what is accomplished peacefully. Isn’t the truly cynical position the one which posits force as the source of improvement, and voluntary action as unworkable?

It doesn’t help either that most people who want to better the world in some way are encouraged to go into government or become active in politics, while everybody who wants to better themselves is encouraged to go into business.

A quote from John Stuart Mill is relevant here:

“The spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of liberty, for it may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling people; and the spirit of liberty, in so far as it resists such attempts, may ally itself locally and temporarily with the opponents of improvement; but the only unfailing and permanent source of improvement is liberty, since by it there are as many possible independent centres of improvement as there are individuals.”

By: Sheldon Richman

Sheldon Richman — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 13:04:15 +0000

Re Maddow, her recent segment “Laissez Faire, Laissez Dead” (huh?) blamed the SEC’s failure to investigate fraud allegations against Bernard Madoff as evidence that the Bush administration favored deregulation and free markets. As though fraud were part of the free market, as though Wall Street would want $50 billion Ponzi schemes overlooked, as though free-market economists haven’t long warned that regulatory agencies would be captured by the regulatees.

By: Roderick

Roderick — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 20:06:49 +0000

I think you meant “La enchilada entera”

No, alas, I meant “El enchilada entero.” But I should have meant “La enchilada entera,” and now I do.

(Despite its feminine ending, I had thought “enchilada” was masculine because Babelfish said so. Folly!)

By: Brad Spangler

Brad Spangler — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 19:29:13 +0000

@Sergio

There are two different socio-political qualities under discussion that you refer to with the same word (“statism”). One is the scope of state policy. The other is the grip of statist false consciousness on the subject populace (and corresponding degree of freedom of action or lack of same), which is approximately what Rand referred to as “the sanction of the victim” as I understand it — even if that equivalency might not have been completely apparent to Rand as a minarchist.

By: Sergio Méndez

Sergio Méndez — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 17:26:03 +0000

Profesor:

I see that both are right. At the same time people find ways to resist statism in all levels, yet statism itself seems to grow unrestricted in our societies. I wonder if a final balance can be made between the positive optimistic side and the nagativem pessimist observations….

P.D: I think you meant “La enchilada entera”