Comments on: Eh?

By: mdc

mdc — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 19:41:23 +0000

A libertarian is just what Americans call liberals, because their socialists stole that name. The TUC probably prefers it in this case because “liberal” has lots of positive connotations, whereas “libertarian” is a pretty well unknown phrase in this country.

Anyway, I find all this “no, please dont cast me out of your socialist cool kids table, I want to repress people sometimes too!” pretty nauseating, so I’ll leave now.

By: Nigel Sedgwick

Nigel Sedgwick — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:08:20 +0000

Quoting directly from :

The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.

We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, 'Porcupines', Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.

You should, IMHO, be at home there to a similar extent to me. However, affiliation to any tribe is likely to be a compromise, and more so for anyone who carries the flag of personal freedom (no matter how one labels it). Thus I am delighted to have bookmarks to the blogs of Samizdata and of Tim Worstall, even thought many of my comments on those blogs are (again IMHO) a pull away from one extreme or another to my very personal view on where lies the better (if not middle) ground. Best regards

By: Dennis the Peasant

Dennis the Peasant — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 13:55:15 +0000

Well, Dickie and his pals have now shown their grasp of political science rivals their grasp of economics, finance and accounting. Quite well-rounded, don’t you think?

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 13:51:50 +0000

Somewhere something like this is well said: you’re not a libertarian unless you believe that 12-year old prostitutes should be allowed to use the profits from their heroin dealing to buy machine guns. I suspect that a lot of libertarians would nod approvingly, rather than recognising a reductio ad absurdum.

By: The Englishman

The Englishman — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 11:42:16 +0000

At least they didn’t call you a Librarian…

By: Kay Tie

Kay Tie — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 10:32:27 +0000

“conclude that the state needs to be involved if that is the case.”

Since when do libertarians not believe in the need for collective action, sometimes at the level of the state?

It’s a political philosophy, not a rule book. And the philosophy says that power should accrue to the state only when necessary (and “necessary” doesn’t mean “most people agree that it should”).

By: The Great Simpleton

The Great Simpleton — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 09:49:05 +0000

From my reading of your blog over the past few years I would say the difference is that you would have the state only do what it needs to do. You would start by first anlalysing the problem and then, somewhat relcutantly, conclude that the state needs to be involved if that is the case.

The TUC and its fellow travelers, on the other hand, start by having the state do everything, whether it is the best solution or not. For many, Polly springs to mind, there is no world in which the state staying out of the way can be the solution to anything.