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Through a complicated chain of links (beginning with an egoscan at this site, which is deceptively simple), I found myself at a blog post of esr's, because this passage was quoted:
"The free market is a wonderful thing. I was going to call it the most marvellous instrument ever devised for making people wealthy and free, but that would be wrong — the free market isn’t a ‘device’ any more than love or gravity or sunshine are devices, it’s what you have naturally when nobody is using force to fuck things up."
Short response: Oy. Longer response... well, we'll get there.
Through coincidence, I was later reading the new issue of Foreign Affairs, which has this quote by Isaiah Berlin:
"Liberty for wolves is death to the lambs."
Which captures exactly the problem with the "all government is coercive" sort of small-l libertarian. Free markets aren't natural (or else they would spontaneously appear a lot more frequently). They're highly artificial social constructs which require policing. Otherwise the wolves get a tasty lamb stew. And, of course, any form of policing that will deter the wolves necessarily involves "coercion".
Now, your typical teenager-of-all-ages small-l libertarian tends to think he's a bad ass wolf. But he also likes to think that he has some virtue in him, and would be easily persuaded to do "good". So he just doesn't think "coercion" is necessary.
But that, to paraphrase the character Jules from Pulp Fiction, ain't the truth. The truth is, your average small-l libertarian is a lamb. Who wouldn't last more than five minutes without protection from the tyranny of wolves, but refuses to admit it. Or, in an extreme case, really is a wolf, and refuses to see why the concerns of lambs matter.
A free market allows a wolf and a lamb to have a transaction with neither party feeling overly powerful, or overly weak. This is a great thing. And it wouldn't be possible if not for the hunter with the rifle watching over them both.
It's precisely because wolves are, well, wolves that they keep asking the hunter to bugger off, reduce "stifling regulation", and allow the wolves to get to the task of{denuding the environment} {ripping off the investors of every dime they have} {reneging on pension or other contractual committments} {pay sweatshop wages} eating a tasty lamb stew.
Me, I just want an honest and effective hunter. Because, yeah, even if I'm a wolf, he might constrain me from what I really want to do sometimes... But he also stops the lambs from forming a mob.
There's that darned Golden Rule again.
"The free market is a wonderful thing. I was going to call it the most marvellous instrument ever devised for making people wealthy and free, but that would be wrong — the free market isn’t a ‘device’ any more than love or gravity or sunshine are devices, it’s what you have naturally when nobody is using force to fuck things up."
Short response: Oy. Longer response... well, we'll get there.
Through coincidence, I was later reading the new issue of Foreign Affairs, which has this quote by Isaiah Berlin:
"Liberty for wolves is death to the lambs."
Which captures exactly the problem with the "all government is coercive" sort of small-l libertarian. Free markets aren't natural (or else they would spontaneously appear a lot more frequently). They're highly artificial social constructs which require policing. Otherwise the wolves get a tasty lamb stew. And, of course, any form of policing that will deter the wolves necessarily involves "coercion".
Now, your typical teenager-of-all-ages small-l libertarian tends to think he's a bad ass wolf. But he also likes to think that he has some virtue in him, and would be easily persuaded to do "good". So he just doesn't think "coercion" is necessary.
But that, to paraphrase the character Jules from Pulp Fiction, ain't the truth. The truth is, your average small-l libertarian is a lamb. Who wouldn't last more than five minutes without protection from the tyranny of wolves, but refuses to admit it. Or, in an extreme case, really is a wolf, and refuses to see why the concerns of lambs matter.
A free market allows a wolf and a lamb to have a transaction with neither party feeling overly powerful, or overly weak. This is a great thing. And it wouldn't be possible if not for the hunter with the rifle watching over them both.
It's precisely because wolves are, well, wolves that they keep asking the hunter to bugger off, reduce "stifling regulation", and allow the wolves to get to the task of
Me, I just want an honest and effective hunter. Because, yeah, even if I'm a wolf, he might constrain me from what I really want to do sometimes... But he also stops the lambs from forming a mob.
There's that darned Golden Rule again.
