Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site bmcg.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!ihnp4!zehntel!hplabs!sdcrdcf!sdcsvax!bmcg!bprice From: bprice@bmcg.UUCP Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: Ethics and others in libertarianism - (nf) Message-ID: <1164@bmcg.UUCP> Date: Thu, 2-Aug-84 20:17:02 EDT Article-I.D.: bmcg.1164 Posted: Thu Aug 2 20:17:02 1984 Date-Received: Sun, 5-Aug-84 01:07:46 EDT References: <2501@mit-vax.UUCP>, <10100067@ea.UUCP>, <912@pyuxa.UUCP> Organization: Burroughs Corporation, San Diego Lines: 42 > The myth of safer driving in West >Germany is just that, a myth. > The drivers over there may well take a libertarian view >of their driving, but it doesn't last long as they are being >scrapped off a bridge abuttment. If that's the attitude the >libertarians take, then I say they are wrong. To say you have the >'right' to kill yourself is infringing on my liberty in that >I have to pay my hard earned cash to send out the rescue squad, >repair crews, and police to pull your body out of the mangled >wreckage which just happened to take out 60 feet of guardrail >and a lampost before bending the hell out of two signs. > Libertarian arguments about driving fast are >when they want to are stupid. >T. C. Wheeler Those of us who are libertarian would have just cause to take anger at Wheeler's blatant misrepresentation of libertarianism. TCW does blunt that anger a little by "If that's the attitude the libertarians take...". If that were the attitude that libertarians take, most of us who are now libertarians wouldn't be--the libertarian attitude also says that TCW's postulated infringement is very wrong. The essence (meaning 'ultimate nature' rather 'smell') of libertarianism is simply personal responsibility. This includes the responsibility not to try to make you pay for the rescue squad, etcetera. Instead, the libertarian view requires that I may some arrangement to scrape my own body off the abutment, if I'm going to put it there. Failing to do so would give the cleaneruppers a cause of action against my estate--it would still be my posthumous responsibility. To the libertarian, the evil in TCW's hypothetical lies in his assumption that it is somehow right that I be deprived of my responsibility--any responsibility. To steal my responsibility is to steal much of the essence of my life--and that, my friend, is unarguably evil. There is another discussion going on about biased reporting. Is TCW's lack of understanding a result of the misrepresentations that we have all seen, misleading many about the nature of libertarianism in particular and politics in general? -- --Bill Price uucp: {decvax!ucbvax philabs}!sdcsvax!bmcg!bprice arpa:? sdcsvax!bmcg!bprice@nosc