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DOOM_CONTRA_TARIAN

                                           Tuesday April 10, 2001


   Some day I'm going to sit down and write a persuasive
   anti-libertarian argument, but when I do I'm going to
   try to talk about things the way libertarians do.

   If I were going to take a stab at it, I would cover
   the ground a little differently. The point would be
   that while an institution like "private property" is
   clearly very useful in many ways, the details of what
   that really means aren't engraved in stone
   anywhere. Libertarians like very simple statements of
   principle, perhaps something like "you're free to do
   what you like with your property, as long as you don't
   infringe on other's freedom", but the exact boundaries
   of where the infringement begins aren't exactly
   clear. (It would seem, for example, that you guys
   driving around in your cars really shouldn't be
   allowed to poison me with your exhaust, but for some
   reason libertarians really like "private" cars --
   despite the heavy government subsidies running all
   through the auto transit system).

   And once you recognize that there isn't any obvious
   one correct way that "capitalism" has to be set-up,
   there are a lot of things that are open to
   question. You do not, for example have to be a
   communist to wonder if the limited liability
   corporation is really that great an idea (if it's so
   useful for corporations to have limits put on their
   liability to protect them from frivolous law suits,
   why not grant the same liability limits to
   individuals?).

   Nor do you need to be a communist to wonder if
   "intellectual property" is exactly the same beast as
   physical property (you steal my bike, I can't ride
   anywhere, you steal a song I wrote, I can still sing
   it...  but on the other hand I *might* lose income
   because of that "theft".  I might quit writing
   songs. Should the legal system be set up to protect
   *my* interest in this case, or in yours? How original
   was the material in those songs I wrote, anyway? Maybe
   I used a standard chord progression, lifted a riff
   here and there... how do we decide who wrote what?)

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