Sensible Erection | Reason: Neal Stephenson

Adult Search - Want porn? Search for it.

Wednesday, 9 February 2005

quote [ Government acts almost as a recruiting station for libertarians. Anyone who pays taxes or has to fill out government paperwork develops libertarian impulses almost as a knee-jerk reaction. But terrorism acts as a recruiting station for statists. So it looks to me as though we are headed for a triangular system in which libertarians and statists and terrorists interact with each other in a way that I’m afraid might turn out to be quite stable. ]

So saith soothsayer Stephenson.

The bulk of the discussion concerns Stephenson's latest run of novels, The Baroque Cycle

[by anagramophone@4:10pmGMT] [+7 Interesting]

Comments

AngelHedgie said @ 4:40pm GMT on 9th Feb [Score:1 Underrated]
Government isn't a recruiting station for libertarians. Trust me, people's attitude toward government would be different if the positive aspects got 1/10th the press its fuckups get.

KingPellinore said @ 5:15pm GMT on 9th Feb
valid point, BUT, when so-called "fuckups" involve wars, death, and destruction (of which all governments are capable) particularly when one is a nuclear superpower, the fuckups deserve the treatment they get.

arrowhen said @ 5:57pm GMT on 9th Feb [Score:1 Funny]
Actually, we converted to a "nucular" superpower four years ago.

abkadefgee said @ 6:23pm GMT on 9th Feb
i don't think that these are the fuckups with which most libertarians are most concerned. if they were, they'd try to get involved in the government process rather than trying to outsource war to the private sector.

hellboy said @ 7:32pm GMT on 9th Feb
Most libertarians, in my experience, are astonishingly ignorant about the reality of war.

tbt10f said @ 8:23pm GMT on 9th Feb
We would rather not have war than to give it to the private sector.

shonmao said @ 6:52pm GMT on 9th Feb
Stephenson's point is that people think of the government (at least in the Libretarian point of view) as an entity that forcibly takes money, restricts people from doing any depravity they actually want to, and provides poor service.

These perceptions give people a reason to react by becoming Libretarian.

AngelHedgie said @ 7:09pm GMT on 9th Feb [Score:2 Insightful]
But the reason they think that is because you have people who want them to, and skew the argument. A good example is the US Postal Service - everyone bitches about the mail, but few people honestly realize that our system is cheaper than most of the world, pretty efficient (most mail is delivered within a week), and there really isn't a lot of error. So, why do we have such a negative image of the post office? Mainly because of popular culture.

tbt10f said @ 8:27pm GMT on 9th Feb [Score:1 Insightful]
If the government let other companies deliver mail like the USPS did (the USPS is a government chartered monopoly), I would stop complaining.

AngelHedgie said @ 10:50pm GMT on 9th Feb [Score:1 Insightful]
First off, what do you think FedEx, UPS, DHL, et al do?

Second, this is the sort of logic that results in troops having no water in the middle of the desert. Certain public goods (like the mail, utilities, etc) are better served by allowing one organization to deliver the service - and then watching them like a hawk, because replication of the underlying infrastructure is inefficient, and allowing other companies to freeload on maintaining the infrastructure is unfair and ultimately leads to the infrastructore degrading (see the deregulation of the telephone industry for a vivid example.) In other words, there are some things that it's better to leave in public or semi-public hands.

manoreason said @ 1:46am GMT on 10th Feb [Score:1 Interesting]
FedEx, DHL, and UPS do NOT deliver first class mail to mailboxes, because if they do, then they are taken to prison. That is the horrible infringment of rights.

As far as the 'public goods' argument, why don't we just let people freely choose whether or not it is indeed inefficient to "replicate" services, or if maybe, just maybe, the market's multitude of creative and talented individuals might find a way to accomplish things better than government bureaucrats can. At least ALLOW them to try however they see fit.

writerguy_iu said @ 2:39am GMT on 10th Feb [Score:2]
Because when we take one of these public goods and "at least ALLOW" people free reign to duplicate them, we often get a situation in which the public infrastructure has been destroyed, the private sector can't provide the service at a profit, and we either have to eliminate the service entirely or bail it out at more cost to the public than it ever paid in the first place. Free markets are great where they're appropriate as long as you keep in mind that every player in the game is trying to destroy the game itself.

v0idmagus said @ 5:26pm GMT on 9th Feb
+1 alliteration

hellboy said @ 7:31pm GMT on 9th Feb
To complete the triangle, absence of government is a recruiting station for terrorists. See Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq...

devilsad said @ 8:32pm GMT on 9th Feb
Oppressive government is the recruiting station for terrorists. It's pretty hard to kill yourself for a political statement when there's no politics going on.

Of course you have to include 'military occupation' as a form of government these days, since it became a fashion to start wars without intending to rule properly over the vanquished.

hellboy said @ 12:19am GMT on 10th Feb
Well, terrorism is more than just killing yourself to make a political statement, but you're right. I'm not saying I agree with his triangle; it's interesting that the interaction he doesn't describe is the one that leads from libertarianism to terrorism (otherwise the triangle isn't "stable", since eventually everyone would become a libertarian). Perhaps "injustice" is a better term than "absence of government"?

matt said @ 8:34pm GMT on 9th Feb
If your government drives you to Libertarianism thinking then your government isn't working properly, or more likely, you're ignorant of what it's really doing for you.

Libertarianism: Throwing the baby out with the bath water.

anagramophone said @ 9:40pm GMT on 9th Feb
I'd like to think he's talking about lower-case-'l' libertarianism (i.e. the opposite of populism), rather than the official Libertarian party line.

matt said @ 9:52pm GMT on 9th Feb
I'm not sure that libertarianism is an opposite to populism? Maybe authoritarianism, which is closer to statism?

anagramophone said @ 11:19pm GMT on 9th Feb [Score:1 Informative]
differences in semantics maybe?
to wit:
liberalism indicates a willingness to use state power to shape the economy
conservatism indicates a willingness to use state power to shape social norms
populism indicates a willingness to use state power to shape both the economy and society
libertarianism advocates limiting state power both in terms of the economy and society
None of these terms mean much without some real-world context (and you can call them what you like); using the above definitions, citizens who fly the flag of "liberalism" under a government already very much involved in economics aren't the same as the "liberals" operating in a laissez-faire economy.

matt said @ 11:27pm GMT on 9th Feb
That's a different definition for populism from the one I know.

anagramophone said @ 11:43pm GMT on 9th Feb
Wikipedia: teh ultimate authority! But seriously, I got my definitions from a Texas government textbook so, take the shit with a grain of salt, yo. I have no qualms substituting the term "authoritariansim" or "statism" for "populism" if that swizzles your stick (that political compass test uses different terms, to be sure). The important bit is the four quadrants delineated by economic and social spheres.

matt said @ 11:47pm GMT on 9th Feb
The other dictionaries I looked up agreed with the Wikipedia one. I picked that one because it was the most descriptive.

But sure, enough quibbling over semantics. Your distinction of four quadrants is a useful one.

I don't think that libertarianism is different from the variety I was attacking initially, though. The critique still stands for either.

erich wiess said @ 2:53am GMT on 10th Feb
Premise: It’s “more likely” that those who conclude that the state “isn’t working properly” are “ignorant”. I assume then that you aligning yourself with the “non–ignorant” in this instance? Correct me if I’m wrong.

“Those who disagree with me are stupid” lacks novelty. It’s bias masquerading as argument. It’s as boring as it is ubiquitous.

matt said @ 5:27am GMT on 10th Feb
I assume then that you aligning yourself with the “non–ignorant” in this instance? Correct me if I’m wrong.

My state is not broken, is not corrupt, and works well for the people. I believe that this is more or less the case with most democracies that lack corruption.

I am aligning myself with the belief that the model itself is not broken, and those who are striving towards small government/libertarian goals are fighting against a system that would work quite suitably if they'd better apply their attentions.

I can understand why libertarianism has such a strong hold in America; it's part of the culture. But I do not believe that it is a worthy or helpful goal for supporting and progressing the community, or even the individual.

There. Happy?

ediblehuman said @ 9:20pm GMT on 9th Feb
I just saw Stephenson in a panel discussion last night. The guy knows his shit.

sacrelicious said @ 12:23am GMT on 10th Feb
neal stephenson is perhaps the most important and most relevant author working today.

also, I sometimes mix up "most" and "only"

Spaceloaf said @ 12:48am GMT on 10th Feb
Hell, I like Stephenson. His Slashdot responses were quite entertaining and insightful as well.