NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/talk/environm/5612

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-21 | 3.7 KB

From: [e-mail] (Alan McGowen)
Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1993 22:08:27 GMT
Subject: Property is *never* "unalienable"
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/ hpindda:ca.environment / [e-mail] (Brian K. Yoder) /  2:31 am  Jan 19, 1993 /
>In message <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Alan McGow
>en) writes:
>
>>Issues about the long-range health of ecosystems and the biosphere *must*
>>be handled by a political process, and cannot be left up to market processes.
>
>Why?  Because you don't believe that property rights are unalienable?

Property rights are not, never have been, and never will be "unalienable".
No society that ever has or ever will exist will completely detach property
rights -- or *any* rights -- from all consequences.

Libertarians/Randoids are fond of claiming that their system "has never been
tried".

It never will be either, if it is founded (as it seems to be) on the principle
that principle ought to override reality come hell or high water. That would
be suicidal, and wise -- or even middling muddle-through -- societies are
not suicidal.

When you strip away the moral absolutism from the basis of Libertarianism,
and allow enough compromise to make it even slightly viable, what you get
is Reaganism. We tried that, it created a disaster, and now we are paying
for it. To the extent that Libertarianism were "really" tried, it would
create an even bigger disaster.

But its chance is over now. It will fade out and be forgotten with time,
like other ideological extremisms of the cold war era.

        *    *    *    *    *    *

Yoder also spreads the usual right wing extremist, anti-democracy lie that
market values are the totality of all values, and that there are no societal
political or legal values which may be adopted by due process:

>Markets for
>resources do a pretty good job of evaluating the real values people place on
>the things and processes in question and motivate other choices accordingly.
>Now, if you think that sum of economic values ought not to be followed, you
>can hardly claim to be in any worthwhile sense in favor of "democracy"...what
>you favor is a system where your clique rules over everyone else.

What I think is that anyone who denies the right of representative government
to determine societal values and actions that go beyond the "sum of (market)
economic values" is denying the legitimate government of the United States
of America, and is an enemy of the Constitution. Your own freedom to speak
this infamy is a *nonmarket* political value which is protected by the very
Constitution and political process which you seek to undermine with your
vicious doctrine that only markets and private wealth should determine all
that is valuable, and should govern every aspect of our lives.

*Citizens* of a *democracy* will not be subjugated by such a pernicious
lie -- such a latter-day Circe's spell -- which attempts to reduce us
to nothing more than *appetites* at a *supermarket*. *Citizens* recognize
that beyond market values and "economic sums" there are values of public
interest, social justice, and moral responsibility -- and that among these
is the responsibility not to bequeath future generations a biosphere that
is irreversibly worse for our having existed.

You, sir, are a true enemy of Democracy and of your Country. Fortunately,
you and your faction are quite powerless to do really significant harm for
the foreseeable future, though you will undoubtedly make what mischief you
can at every opportunity.

------------
Alan McGowen