Declan McCullagh on Tue, 3 Sep 96 12:12 METDST |
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Re: nettime: libertarians |
On Sat, 3 Aug 1996 pit@contrib.de wrote: > "Libertarians complain that the state is parasitic, an excrescence on > society. They think it's like a tumor you could cut out, leaving the patient > just as he was, only healthier. They've been mystified by their own > metaphors. Like the market, the state is an activity, not an entity. [...] [I forwarded this message to a friend, whose reply is attached. --Declan] Comment: Even if every single good thing in my life, including my own genetic makeup, was a direct result of government action, I would still be a libertarian. All that matters from the standpoint of making good public policy is the future. The past is only relevant if it teaches us lessons about what makes good policy generally. I think the most pro-government lesson that past govnt involvement with the internet teaches is that the govn't can *sometimes* do good things as a completely unintended consquence of their actions. This is not a complete surprise, nor does it require me to back off from the general observation that the unintended consequences of government action usually range from zero net gain to very, very bad. // declan@eff.org // I do not represent the EFF // declan@well.com // -- * distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission * <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, * collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets * more info: majordomo@is.in-berlin.de and "info nettime" in the msg body * URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@is.in-berlin.de