Re: . 2.7 Million Morons

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Edward Green) wrote:

>I'm beginning to think that what mean by "libertarian" and what you
>and Ken mean may be two different things ... 

Even if we take it as a very general slogan for minimal government,
the point is that the minimum is really very large. Reducing
government in a society with huge economic surplusses is fantasy. The
better strategy is to get people to direct their social energy toward
activities that match their interest, expertise, and ability (because,
they're going to direct it somewhere, so there need to be consequences
(political gain for doing well, punishment for doing poorly) to keep
their activity honest).

>For example, the thug/police issue.  Am I mistaken in believing that
>protection of individual rights is a legitimate function of the
>government in the eyes of most libertarians?  (It would help if we had
>a concrete version of a libertarian creed to refer to).  Now you and
>Ken seem to be considering that this is not the case, as you argue
>that in the absence of something under "libertarianism", we would
>either get criminal government or else government government, i.e.
>government.  

Our argument is not that this isn't part of the libertarian
philosophy, just that the size of "government" required to fulfil this
role is drastically underestimated. Minimal government turns out to be
a huge government, just like we have now.

> But maybe you
>argue that starting with a limited set of laws, extension into areas
>(preventing) goring the ox of major groupings is inevitable, so that
>the idealized minimal law set is naive and unstable?  And that
>conflict over what constitutes reasonable "protection of the law" will
>inevitably bring about political crystalization, which we sought to
>eliminate?

Yep.

>Speaking of parasitism ... I'm partially replying to Ken's rant here
>... I'm interested in his "law" that the fraction of some resource
>consumed by parasites is constant in steady-state ecosystems.  I
>wonder what this fraction is, and whether this has be demonstrated in
>some mathematical model or is so far just an empirical observation. 

It's an empirical "law" and it doesn't have a whole lot more content
beyond the observation that everywhere that you find an energy source
to support life, you find an ecosystem. It takes a large perturbation
to collapse an ecosystem but in the aftermath, a new ecosystem emerges
that has basically the same proportion of producers and parasites.

>This well illustrates the fatalism/realism thing though: Ken's arguing
>that under some broad so far undefined set of conditions that there is
>some physical law of systems operating, and a fixed percentage of
>parasitism will out. But, he also seems to be arguing, there may be a
>way to move the system out of the domain where this law is correct. 
>So he's being realistic but not fatalistic ... although it's often
>hard to tell the difference in general -- one could think from merely
>the "law" part of the argument that he was arguing that resistance is
>futile.

Resisting reality is futile but accepting a fixed percentage of
parasitism is not fatalistic. 

>In light of our present discussion, can now at least see this
>situation as an illustration of general principle, rather than a
>particular lameness.  Progress!

The general term for systems that exhibit these properties is "complex
adaptive systems". But since these systems are, as yet, but poorly
understood, we are still in the non-equilibrium stage where it can be
difficult to distinguish good work from poor work (i.e. there is a lot
of nonsense being written about complex adaptive systems). The most
popular approach seems to be through simulation but I think that
progress can also be made through analysis.

Ken Muldrew
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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