Re: LP Press Release: Jerry Springer (fwd)
Kevin Dempsey Peterson (peterson@ocf.Berkeley.EDU)
Wed, 25 Mar 1998 23:18:45 -0800
On 25 Mar 1998, Daniel C. Burton wrote:
>The Libertarian Party Platform is the only thing that represents the
>positions of the grassroots members of the Libertarian Party. The
>individual officers may come and go, but the platform is an accurate
>representation of the long-term pulse of the party. When the country was
>As far as that platform section, I don't know what you're talking about.
>The platform says "Individuals engaged in voluntary exchange should be free
>to use as money any mutually agreeable commodity or item." How much
>clearer can you get than that? Sure it mentions gold, but only because
>that's from an economic standpoint what people probably would use (though
>probably through paper bank notes), and because there were once specific
>laws against ownership and use of gold in the United States.
You're quite right -- the platform doesn't say anything about what
people should use for money, except that they should decide for
themselves. When you have heard various Libertarians (maybe not a
majority, but more than a few) get apoplectic at the idea that people
may use something other than gold, it's easy to read it into the
platform.
>Fiat money doesn't mean unbacked paper money. It means money ordered into
>existence by the government. Anything people use for money that isn't
>issued by the government can't be fiat money by definition.
Most of what I've heard about "fiat money" is about it being valuless.
Fiat means that it has no inherent value; it has value because people
say it does. Legal tender is government ordered money. When dollars
were backed by gold, they were legal tender (official, required money),
but they weren't fiat. In a well developed anarchy, we may see fiat
money that isn't legal tender (more CitiBux being issued than the
deposits at CitiBank). These would be money because someone says they
are, and people agree to use them ("fiat moneta", "let's call this
money")
>Exactly what is wrong with condemning federal funds being used for some
>specific purpose? Since this is an actual issue going through congress, I
>would expect the Libertarian Party to make some comment on it.
If someone who wasn't familiar with libertarianism read that press
release, they would come away with the idea that Libertarians oppose
broadcasting smut. If they read carefully enough, they might get the
idea that Libertarians oppose using federal funds to subsidise smut, but
respect people's rights to watch smut if they want. If they were
familiar with libertarianism, they might get the idea that Libertarians
oppose using federal funds to subsidise anything, and Jerry Springer is
a good way to bring over some people from the Right.
The point is that they didn't have to pick Jerry Springer (unless I
don't pay enough attention to news, and Jerry Springer was already
involved in the issue). They picked Jerry Springer because they can use
the "do we have the right to spend your money how you don't want" to
certain groups of people. No doubt we could find an evil corporation
exploiting workers with the help of the government if we looked through
enough LP press releases too.
Of course, I condemn using federal funds to subtitle Jerry Springer. I
don't even like the Jerry Springer show. But I don't like making it
sound like what's wrong with the subsidies is where they go; what's
wrong with subsidies is that they exist.
>With all due respect, I don't think you're seeing what the people were
>thinking accurately. All the platform points flow pretty directly from the
>principles of private property and self-ownership.
I think you're right -- I read something into it that wasn't really
there.