Re: What to call "Econ-Libertarians"?
Seth David Schoen (schoen@uclink4.Berkeley.EDU)
22 Oct 1997 15:36:05 GMT
From: "Daniel C. Burton" <dburton@.berkeley.edu>
>Strangely enough, I've noticed that, though it's almost impossible to
>prove natural rights arguments on positive grounds, if you turn things
>around and make argue negativel, moral arguments can be mildly effective.
>For example: Instead of "Income taxation is wrong because it violates
>individual liberty," try "It would be wrong if you came and took your
>neighbor's money personally, so why should it suddenly become right if
>it's done through the government? Why should government agents be judged
>on moral terms any differently from anyone else?"
The standard reply is "Social Contract!" (including the exclamation point).
In the essay "The Tragedy of the Commons", whose author I can't cite because
I've loaned the book containing it to someone else, there is the motto
"mutual coersion, mutually agreed upon", repeatedly suggested as the proper
means of solving the tragedy of the commons problem.
"Mutual coersion" and "social contracts" are the conventional view of
the source of government authority in the United States; we hear that
"governments are instituted among men, deriving their powers from the
consent of the governed". Since people around here mostly value
democracy, they think that the "consent of the governed" means the
"consent by majority of the governed".
Some relativists even claim that the only reason "it would be wrong if
you came and took your neighbor's money" is that the majority of people
think that private theft is not a desirable part of the society they'd
like to live in.
I don't agree with these claims, but when I've tried to make these
arguments, that's what I've heard. Many, many people believe in social
contracts.
--
Seth David Schoen L&S '01 (undeclared) / schoen@uclink4.berkeley.edu
Magna dis immortalibus habenda est atque huic ipsi Iovi Statori, antiquissimo
custodi huius urbis, gratia, quod hanc tam taetram, tam horribilem tamque
infestam rei publicae pestem totiens iam effugimus. -- Cicero, in Catilinam I