June4th2013
‘The Question Libertarians Just
Can’t Answer’
Tom Woods
For some reason, the finger-waggers at Salon think they’ve got us stumped
with
this one: “If your approach is so great, why hasn’t any country in
the world ever tried it?”
So this is the unanswerable question? What’s supposed to be so
hard about it? Ninety percent of what libertarians write about answers it
at least implicitly.
Let’s reword the question slightly, in order to draw out the answer.
You’ll note that when stated correctly, the question contains an implicit
non sequitur.
(1) “If your approach is so great, why doesn’t local law enforcement want
to give up the money, supplies, and authority that come from the drug
war?”
(2) “If your approach is so great, why don’t big financial firms prefer
to stand or fall on their merits, and prefer bailouts instead?”
(3) “If your approach is so great, why do people prefer to earn a living
by means of special privilege instead of by honest production?”
(4) “If your approach is so great, why does the military-industrial
complex prefer its revolving-door arrangement and its present strategy of
fleecing the taxpayers via its dual strategy of
front-loading and political engineering?”
(5) “If your approach is so great, why do businessmen often prefer
subsidies and special privileges?”
(6) “If your approach is so great, why do some people prefer to achieve
their ends through war instead?”
(7) “If your approach is so great, why does the political class prefer to
live off the labor of others, and exercise vast power over everyone
else?”
(8) “Special interests win special benefits for themselves because those
benefits are concentrated and significant. The costs, dispersed among the
general public, are so insignificant to any particular person, that the
general public has no vested interest in organizing against it. An extra
25 cents per gallon of orange juice is hardly worth devoting one’s life
to opposing, but an extra $100 million per year in profits for the
companies involved sure is worth the time to lobby for.
“If your approach is so great, why does this happen?”
(9) “If your approach is so great, why don’t people want to try it out,
after having been
propagandized against it nonstop for 17 years?” (K-12, then four
years of college.)
http://www.tomwoods.com/blog/the-question-libertarians-just-cant-answer/
--
--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "PoliticalForum" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected].
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
