Letting the other shoe fall
I had reason to run past the National Libertarian Party's web site today. After reading their platform, I wound up with a few questions.
No conflict exists between civil order and individual rights. Both concepts are based on the same fundamental principle: that no individual, group, or government may initiate force against any other individual, group, or government.
Is this limited to physical force? Would psychological or economic coercion count? Would this include not forcing anyone to accept the fundamental principle? If so, how can one enforce this without initiating force?
We believe that each person has the right to offer goods and services to others on the free market. Therefore we oppose all intervention by government into the area of economics. The only proper role of existing governments in the economic realm is to protect property rights, adjudicate disputes, and provide a legal framework in which voluntary trade is protected.
What about involuntary trade? To participate in society, one must have hot water, electricity…food. Anyone who calls the acquisition of these things voluntary is simply too silly to talk to. So, are these things outside the purview of government?
Current problems in such areas as energy, pollution, health care delivery, decaying cities, and poverty are not solved, but are primarily caused, by government. The welfare state, supposedly designed to aid the poor, is in reality a growing and parasitic burden on all productive people, and injures, rather than benefits, the poor themselves.
Taxes supported the building of energy generation facilities, oil pipelines, etc. Pollution is created by inefficient combustion of fuel and careless dumping of garbage (which government authorities haul away from your house) and inductrial wastes (which corporations uniformly deny until confronted with evidence beyond the ability of individuals to procure). Health care for the masses are delivered through government owned hospitals. Decaying cities actually were largely caused by government intervention in the for of GI loans. And poverty just is. The great increase in poverty we're seeing now is the result of people being laid off.
In other words, I'm not seeing the causation.
