Re: Information sheet thingie
Seth David Schoen (schoen@uclink4.Berkeley.EDU)
18 Dec 1997 06:16:40 GMT
Kevin Dempsey Peterson writes:
>This is a short information sheet about Cal Libertarians, the
>libertarian student group at UC Berkeley.
Not the only libertarian student group, though; there's also BLU. It
might be better (at least after the democracy protest) to say something
like "the libertarian student activist group".
> Basically, libertarianism is a philosophy/political position that
> says government does more harm than good.
Not necessarily; deontological libertarians like myself can believe that
government is very effective and beneficial (at least in some areas),
while still denying that government has the fundamental authority to
carry out these functions. And, in fact, I continue to advocate for
philosophical reasons policies which I believe are harmful, and to maintain
that they are harmful.
I'm not even persuaded that the number of areas in which government is
harmful is bigger than the number of areas in which it's helpful; I'm not
persuaded that government does more harm than good on balance. Of course,
I do think that great benefits could be had with a certain few libertarian
policies, especially the "social" policies. I think very few government
actions are unequivocally bad, with no redeeming qualities; in fact, even
the government act that bugs me the most, censorship, often has at least
short-term redeeming qualities.
I'd prefer something like "libertarianism is a political philosophy or
position that would prefer dramatically less government power" or
"that tends to oppose government power in general". It's not necessarily
because libertarians think in
> Libertarians are
> opposed to government taking money from the people in the form of
> taxes, because the people themselves can better decide how they
> want that money spent.
As nice as it sounds, it's not always true; it's frequently true, but not
a completely general rule.
How about "can most often better decide how they want that money spent,
and are, in any case, the only ones entitled to make the decision"?
> Libertarians are also opposed to
> government limitations of freedoms, thinking that there is no
> reason that government, a group of people, has any moral
> jurisdiction to tell people how to live their lives.
Hear! Hear!
See, the idea that taxes should be abolished seemed completely absurd to me,
until I was persuaded that it was another example of this moral jurisdiction
issue.
> Libertarians do not fit on the convential right/left political
> spectrum, but for issues, they will likely agree with the left on
> issues of personal freedom (abortion, free speech, legalization of
> drugs), and with the right on economic issues (taxes, welfare,
> regulation of corporations.)
How about "deregulation" (by analogy with "legalization")? Since it
seems to be an almost-trend now, maybe it would be good to mention what
we do want instead of what we don't want.
Some other issues from a perusal of the LP platform:
- Left
privacy, draft, religious freedom
- Right
free trade
> It would probably help to understand
> the libertarian position by thinking of them as both more extreme
> and more consistant than either the right or the left. For
consistent
> example, the right only want to end welfare to the poor;
> libertarians want to end welfare to corporations in the form of
> subsidies as well.
It might be nice to mention a rightist libertarian position which
leftists _wouldn't_ like, such as the end of all government attempts
at redistribution.
(Interestingly enough, the LP is more pro-Indian by far than either
Republicans or Democrats; one of the uses of the money to be obtained
by selling Federal lands is honoring the various broken treaties.)
> The left may want to allow doctors to
> prescribe marijuana for medicinal purposes; libertarians don't see
> where government gets the moral right to dictate what you are
> allowed to put in your body in the first place. I couldn't
> (personally), tell you that if you smoke pot I'm going to shoot
> you (at least not morally), but government does that every day.
Hmmm, shooting might be a bad example.
> The standard recommendations on where to learn more about
> libertarianism are _Libertarianism_in_One_Lesson_ by David
> Bergland and _Why_Government_Doesn't_Work_ by Harry Browne. You
> could also come to our meetings or ask questions on the newsgroup
> (see below)
Can we recommend a few more books?
>Activities
> Dates and times for meetings and such next semester are not yet
> set. This semester have had a table on Sproul two or three days a
> week, and meetings once a week. We had a "anti-authoritarian
> movie night", which was intended to be a monthly thing, but it got
> started too late in the semester. Hopefully for spring. The
> first thing to be done for next semester will be deciding on a
> good time for meetings and holding elections for officers.
>something to protest
Do you want to mention the antidemocracy protest?
>Bureaucratic Stuff
> Mako Shuttleworth is going to be acting president until we have a
> chance to do elections (probably at the second meeting). We will
> have to do another SAS (student activities services) form next
Student Activities & Services
> semester, but it looks as if we have signatories lined up. I'll
> add the officers here as soon as the elections are done.
>
> There is an announcement mailing list that currently runs of
off of
--
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