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RELUCTANT


                                           Additions: December 2, 2000

Most people believe in freedom
in some form or another...
Many people share libertarian
attitudes to some extent.
But very few people are willing
to work as hard as the libertarians
do at consistency...

A positive thing about libertarians:
they make an effort to work out a
system based on some simple principles,
rather than decide everything
"pragmatically", on the the fly.

The down side of this is that you'll
often find libertarians arguing about
the fine points of doctrine in ways
that look insane to someone on the                 12/02/00: Actually,     |
outside.                                           there's another problem
                                                   with libs that has been
     Is it okay for private citizen's to           bothering me more
     own nuclear weapons?                          lately: a tendency to
                                                   ignore the inconvenient.
     Do we need the government for national
     defense?  Couldn't that be handled by         A counter-argument will
     private armies?                               never be discussed in a
                                                   libertarian work unless
     Isn't it better for parents to have           the author already has
     absolute control over children, rather        a good refutation in
     than state agencies?                          mind.

     Should you be allowed to sell yourself
     into indentured servitude?                         Further (possibly
                                                        related): most
But there are smaller issues that                       libs claim that
bother me as much or more:                              they are not some
                                                        sort of extreme
                                                        conservative, but
   Libertarians are                                     rather some third
   opposed to the idea                                  thing which is poorly
   of public parks.  So                                 represented by the
   in a libertarian                                     cons and socs of the
   utopia, Central Park                                 day.
   would not exist.                     By socs,
   The land would be                    I mean              In some cases,
   sold off to private                  socialists          this is justified
   interests, and if                    aka                 but many a "lib"
   people really want a                 modern              seems culturally
   park that bad,                       liberals            extremely
   they'd be willing to                                     conservative,
   pay for admission.                   As opposed to
   If not, let them put                 the "classical         e.g. in their
   up office buildings.                 liberals", or          love of cars.
                                        libertarians.

Libertarians would oppose
laws requiring food                     I'd like
ingredient listings on                  to use
labels.                                 jargon
                                        like this
    But this is a very                  more for
    convenient thing!                   brevity,
    And it doesn't seem                 but it's      Cons vs Socs
    like it intrudes                    too           vs Libs (not
    that much on the                    confusing.    'brals, but
    businesses around...                              'tarians).


            On the other hand...
            A hard core lib
            would probably argue
            that the law is
            unnecessary: if you
            want to know what's
            in a product, you
            could subscribe to a
            consumer reports
            type of publication
            put out by
            organizations that
            can hire a lab to
            analyze the
            products.  You would
            get *more*
            information this
            way, because they
            could tell you the
            exact percentages of
            each component.





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