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Re: [OT] Libertarians was: Liberals

From: Brian Burger <yh728@v...>
Date: Sat, 14 Sep 2002 13:56:52 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: [OT] Libertarians was: Liberals

On Sat, 14 Sep 2002, K.H.Ranitzsch wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "John Atkinson" <johnmatkinson@yahoo.com>
> > On the other hand, unlike your classical libertarian, I
> > believe in the interstate highway system, air traffic
> > controllers, ...
> 
> I have occasionally heard about the Libertarians, though their
political
> ideas are rather misterious to me. What do they stand for ?
> 
> I can see environmentalists being against highways, but why the
Libertarians
> ?
> And why are they against air traffic controllers ?

I think we have a couple of actual Libertarians on the list, but I'll
attempt an answer... I am *not* a Libertarian, however.

Basically, Libertarians believe in minimal government. This isn't
unusual
in various political ideologies, but libertarians take distaste for
government & regulation as far as, say, thinking that air traffic
control
is a bad idea. Likewise large publicly funded transport systems like
Interstates. (Just for two examples...)

Apparently private enterprise is supposed to do all this
stuff, in an ideal libertarian enviroment. Libertarian ideology holds
that
if the government is gotten rid of and people pay no taxes, this 'new
wealth' will cause wonderous things for society. It sounds rather like
the
traditional Marxist 'withering away of the state', actually, from a
different angle!

If the above made very little sense, my apologies. Most of the
libertarian
writings I've read didn't either!

And as a pilot, I think ATC is a damn good idea, but that's a detail...

Brian - yh728@victoria.tc.ca -
- http://wind.prohosting.com/~warbard/games.html -

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