Charles has a new post on W’a L’ma R’t. Stephan replies here, albeit to arguments different from those Charles actually gave. Also check out this long thread on Da Leftlib and related issues (wherein it transpires inter alia that William G. has doubts about “the Carson/Long project,” though I’m not entirely sure what that is).
About Roderick T. Long
The Empirical Me
I’m Roderick T. Long, Professor of Philosophy at Auburn University. I’m an Aristotelean/Wittgensteinian in philosophy and a left-libertarian market anarchist in social theory. (More about me here.) This blog, Austro-Athenian Empire, is a continuation of my earlier blog, archived here.
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I imagine he means either thick libertarianism of the sort you advocate, including opposition to sexism and hierarchy in the workplace, or the idea that big-box retailers would not persist in a free market.
Of course he could also mean your weird resolution of the theist/atheist debate. No idea honestly.
To clarfiy, my “doubts” regarding what’s often addressed (not entirely correctly, I agree) as the interrelating two-sided work of you and Kevin is really just my distaste for Localism and Rights-based ethics.
And I’m sorry you caught the backdraft of my annoyance with what is clearly primarily Kevin’s contribution re: Localism. (Note: I don’t mean local sufficiency or DIY tech, but the focus on stable regional communities, as opposed to a gleaming interconnected mass society on hoverbikes.)
You and I might have to fight it out some day in thunderdome to decide whether the soul of anarchism is utilitarian or deontological (note that I say anarchism rather than anarchy, since the endgame convergence between the two is trivial), but that day is not today.
I’m really palmfacing at some of the comments in the Walmart posts.
Dude, I love the Carson/Long Project! I saw them open for Bachmann-Turner Overdrive and they rocked!
Didn’t they do “Eye in the Sky”? I dig that song.
I had a big shiny fusion-powered Eye in the Sky, but Kevin had a smaller, manure-powered Eye on the Ground.
Manure-powered? How can they do that? What an age we live in…
Oh, that’s easy.
1. 90% of everything is crap. (Sturgeon’s Law)
2. Therefore, 90% of whatever it is that powers the Eye is crap.
Are you saying that Kevin’s mind is 90% powered by crap, or that his mind itself is 90% crap?
No, his mind is part of the 10% that’s not crap.
(Though if it were really true that 90% of everything is crap, then 90% of the 10% that’s not crap would also have be crap. Paradox!)
I don’t claim to be an expert on grammar and/or rhetoric (quite the contrary), but is it just me, or does this article not contain basic grammatical errs, and poor sentence structuring? For example, “First, I don’t think any of us normal libertarians disagrees with the left-libertarians that every one of the state interventions they criticize should be abolished.”
Which article is “this article”? Stephan’s?
Sorry, when I said this article, I meant this* article. I apologize for my blunder.
*http://blog.mises.org/archives/009846.asp
While I’d love to take another potshot at Stephan, no, the sentence you quote from him is perfectly grammatical.
I was under the impression that one should put quotations when one introduces a new, unfamiliar, term………..
What term are you referring to?
I thought you were going to criticize the conjugation of the verb “disagree”. It just doesn’t feel right having a 3rd person singular form when it looks like it should be a 1st person plural. [we disagree vs. she disagrees or "Do any of us disagree? vs. "He disagrees with us."]
The subject of “disagrees” is “any of us,” where “any” can be either singular (any one of us) or plural. Actually the singular usage is somewhat more correct, although the plural is more common. So “disagrees” is actually correct. (To take an even stronger example, “none” is actually singular, so that, e.g., “none of us is going” is more correct than “none of us are going.”)
The biased based term, “normal Libertarian.” And, yes, I noticed that awkward conjugation of the verb too, Mr.Bloke.
Leo the nym, you may be right, this blogpost–not “article”–was not as polished as, say, an article might be. Maybe the grammar is not perfect. Guilty.
“The biased based term, “normal Libertarian.” And, yes, I noticed that awkward conjugation of the verb too, Mr.Bloke.”
What term would you have me use instead? I won’t accept the pejorative paleo; or defining ourselves in reference to left-libs, “non-left-libertarians”. What else should we say. I’m at a loss. Plumbline? Centrist? Austro-?
William:”just my distaste for Localism and Rights-based ethics.”
Uhh this has me confused. Rights-based is good. Localism.. is overdone.
“Plumbline” is definitely wrong; it doesn’t mean neither left nor right (after all, it was coined by a left-libertarian, Benjamin Tucker, and then borrowed by Rothbard during his leftmost period), it means never deviating from the non-aggression principle. I’ve tried to get Walter to stop using it to mean neither left nor right, but I fear nothing will work short of … some violation of the non-aggression principle.
I am awfully tempted to suggest “modal libertarian” as the name for what you’re talking about.
Re your confusion on William’s comment — he’s a utilitarian, if that helps.
P.S. – One of my favourite headlines by B. Tucker — “Plumbline or Corkscrew, Which?”
Heh.
Hey, I have an idea: how about capitalist libertarians, or maybe, just “capitalists” for short. Has anyone thought of that?
“Rights-based is good. Localism.. is overdone.”
No, you have me confused for someone in your camp, Kinsella. I’m teh embodiment of the evil window smashing social anarchist scourge in the ALL you keep ranting about. I keep throwing out all these quotes about the possible necessity of slaughtering the bourgeoisie before enacting anarcho-capitalism for you to scaremonger and you’re just not taking the bait. It’s very annoying.
In all seriousness, “rights” fail a lot of the basic requirements I have for a functioning ethical system, particularly in their specificity to present day human context (where I think Roderick and I, at root, explicitly part ways). And further, no I don’t buy Rod’s argument around the congruence of rightsists and assumed good consequences. I’m more than willing to bite the bulllet on traditional consequentialist bugaboos like saving ten by sacrificing one. Although my branch of Utilitarianism is that of the Social Anarchist tradition. One that focuses heavily on the interrelation of ends and means, particularly when applied many times in a broader social context — see game theory. And further sees, in one phrasing, ‘capacity for choice’ to be the ultimate moral good, rather than pleasure or happiness and the like. –All of which is not even the beginnings of an argument, since I don’t want to spend the time here and now, but rather an overview.
I believe, “center-right libertarian,” is probably the correct term. Personally, I call myself a, “center-left libertarian.”
“Leo the nym,” is that a horrid example of you attempting to insult me, or was it a bad joke?
Please, the kids at the high school I go to are more experienced in the art of insulting people. I would suggest that you go take lessons from them, for they are wise in such ways.
I object to the idea that localists can’t produce gleaming hoverbikes. What was that quote Roderick gave (tongue-and-cheek I presume) about the speaker for a soviet saying “Give us but a day and we’ll produce twice as much!”?
I don’t remember that.
I was going to say, “OT,” but on second thought this is actually on-topic.
I disagree with only one sentence in Paul Krugman’s recent column, at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27krugman.html . Anyone here can probably guess which one. And yes, the subject is economics. Interesting from a left-libertarian perspective.
I’m sure you said something like that but I can’t google for it because I can’t remember the exact phrase. It was in a walmart debate and somebody suggested big business was more efficient than cooperatives and you said “Give us but a day and we shall produce twice as much as them!”, apparently mocking some slogan or book I guessed.
Oh, now it sounds vaguely familiar.
Roderick, minor point, but here: “William G. has doubts about “the Carson/Long project,” though I’m not entirely sure what that is” — shouldn’t “entirely” be italicized? I mean, for just the right touch?