Re: [pf] Cyberselfish Redux

by Molly Williams

05 December 2000 16:53 UTC

We had a libertarian candidate for state representative this year, and
listening to him debate a couple of times I came away with the message
that libertarians believe the federal government is good for a
militia/military, to protect the citizens, but not to intervene in
anyone else's wars. They believe the federal government should not be
part of health care, education, or Social Security. Basically, the fewer
laws, the better. 

The National Libertarian party's web site (which has an article on the
front page against seatbelt laws, on the basis that cops stopping cars
to check for compliance cause traffic jams) has a page outlining its
issues on various topics: http://www.lp.org/issues/  Issues discussed
are: Censorship, Corruption & Campaign Reform, Crime & Violence, Drug
Prohibition, Economy & Employment, Education, Environment, Family
Budgets [this section is about how negatively taxes impact the family
budget], Foreign Policy, Gun Laws ("equal rights for gun owners"),
Health Care, Internet, Immigration, National Defense, Poverty & Welfare,
Privacy, Social Security, Taxes, and Trade.

On Poverty and Welfare, for instance, the platform is to End Welfare,
Establish a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for contributions to private
charity, Tear down barriers to entrepreneurism and economic growth
(i.e., government agencies), Reform education (get the government out of
it). 

On Environment: the government (all levels) is the biggest polluter in
the U.S., so we need to get rid of their "sovereign immunity"; private
owners should own wild spaces and wild animals, not the government,
because "renters" don't have any incentive to take care of the land
("Obviously, owners make better environmental guardians than renters. If
the government sold its acreage to private ranchers, the new owners
would make sure that they grazed the land sustainably to maximize profit
and yield...The second step libertarians would take to protect the
environment and save endangered species would be to encourage private
ownership of both land and animals...Wouldn't we be better served if
naturalist organizations, such as the Audubon Society or Nature
Conservancy, took over the management of our precious parks?")
 
I did a search on Corporate Welfare on the national libertarian party's
web page, and all I could find was this "talking point": 

"Issue: Corporate welfare. In November 1994, Labor Secretary Robert
Reich suggested that the various proposals for welfare reform currently
being debated should include the elimination of what he calls "corporate
welfare." Reich apparently was not, however, referring simply to the
welfare-like practice of taking money from the taxpayers and giving it,
in one form or another, as a subsidy to politically well-connected
businesses. As Reich sees it, because any absence of taxation
constitutes a government expenditure, corporate welfare also includes
the practice of giving businesses tax breaks and thereby merely allowing
them to keep that which they have earned in the first place. Many
commentators were quick to point out the folly of this long-discredited
notion that the government can put money to better use than can the
private sector: "Nice try on the part of Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich
to counter the debate on proposed welfare reform with his own proposal
to choke off more than $100 billion in what he terms 'corporate
welfare.' 

"But to remove the discussion from the realm of pure economic theory,
one need only
look at the dismal record of decades-long government job training
programs compared
to the private sector's record of job creation when it is reasonably
free of government constraints and excessive taxation. 

"And at the heart of the debate is the question of whether the private
sector can best use its legitimately earned profits to fuel the nation's
economic engine, or whether the government, through confiscatory
taxation, is the better judge of how and on what to spend that money." 

Houston Chronicle, Nov. 25, 1994.  

I'm also interested in Don's take on libertarianism. 

~ Molly Wms.

"Fitzsimmons, Diane" wrote:
> 
> Donald and/or any other Libertarian on the list:
> 
> I would be interested in hearing more of your political beliefs.  Every
> Libertarian I;ve ever heard seems to act as if there is *no* problem that
> the government can fix, indeed that government *is* the problem.
> 
> Diane
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Donald Merkes [mailto:merkes@juno.com]
> > Sent: Monday, December 04, 2000 12:41 PM
> > To: positive-futures@igc.topica.com
> > Subject: Re: [pf] Cyberselfish Redux
> >
> >
> > >Meet Cisco Systems, the latest technogiant to illustrate the social
> > >hazards of the digital elite's hyper-libertarian ethos. Can
> > we sustain
> > >a society in which the wealthiest industries refuse to pay
> > taxes or to
> > >be regulated, but insist on government hand-outs?
> >
> > I don't know about Cisco, but True Libertarians hate
> > corporate welfare as
> > much as those following Nader in the Green Party.  I wish that people
> > would stop characterizing Libertarians as greedy pigs, when what
> > Libertarianism is really all about is the concept that
> > Government Can't
> > Fix Every Problem.
> >
> > Don
> > Doty Island