Freethought & Rationalism Archive

veblen · 01-02-2006, 07:44 PM

well if we were to have a libertarian gov. it'd be great that gays could marry . too bad they wouldn't have the right to clean water , clean air , monopoly regulation , public education , public works , consumer protection , toll free roads , infrastructure , public universities , fanny mae , ( would there be an internet without cold war subsidies to the military ? ), and so forth and so on ...

i agree that gov.s do alot of injustice but there not the only ones , how sad that hayek ( the father of the neo-cons ) is the fountainhead of liberal ideas .

peace

Bomb#20 · 01-02-2006, 09:02 PM

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Originally Posted by Jinksy

Perhaps, but that would be privy to exactly the same criticisms; he's assuming the validity of the libertarian 'freedom from' natural rights system over the more stringent ones. Left-leaning natural rights advocates would see 'the protected sphere' as including welfare programs.

Sure -- I'm not arguing that his analysis is tenable; just that he's not trying to deceive anyone. To me he seems as earnest as the newly converted.

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Then Hayek presumably hasn't heard of the 'socialist' tenet of 'freedom of speech'.

That's not a tenet of socialism per se -- it's just something some socialists favor and others don't. Judging from pornography and hate speech legislation, a lot of socialists' commitment to free speech is paper thin. You know Belgium outlawed its biggest opposition party?

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But in assuming the validity of his version of natural rights, he fails to acknowledge that in competing ethical systems (including alternative natural rights systems), the suggestions of his second stratum are given the same or equivalent weight as he gives the dictates of his first. And some of the dictates of his first are relegated to the equivalent of his second... or not considered important at all.

Right. I suspect Hayek's view of socialism was overly constrained by what he saw in the USSR, where there were no "socialist suggestions" that were off-limits to enforcement.

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But he's happy to coerce people himself, he just skirts around ever actually saying as much. He says,

I do not regard majority rule as an end but merely as a means... I do not see why the people should not learn to limit the scope of majority rule as well as that of any other form of government... It is not who governs but what government is entitled to do that seems to me the essential problem.

Well, that sounds like he's upfront about being willing to coerce -- he's not saying the majority shouldn't rule or that government isn't entitled to do anything at all.

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But oddly enough, he never addresses how such limitation will be/should be enforced if the 'democratic' government decides to exceed the limits Hayek wants it to have.

This is a problem I have with all variations on libertarianism I've encountered. It's an ideology that comes off to me as congenitally blind to practical politics.

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Doesn't sound like we have any substantial disagreement about him, then

Have you read the book, out of curiousity?

No, just the essay you linked, but I've read one of his other books. He had some interesting ideas, but as you noted, he oversimplifies up the wazoo.

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01-02-2006, 07:44 PM	#31
veblen Junior Member Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: decatur ga Posts: 47	well if we were to have a libertarian gov. it'd be great that gays could marry . too bad they wouldn't have the right to clean water , clean air , monopoly regulation , public education , public works , consumer protection , toll free roads , infrastructure , public universities , fanny mae , ( would there be an internet without cold war subsidies to the military ? ), and so forth and so on ... i agree that gov.s do alot of injustice but there not the only ones , how sad that hayek ( the father of the neo-cons ) is the fountainhead of liberal ideas . peace

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