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To: Exnihilo
99% of this essay falls into the category of, "I know all these words, but I just can't parse this." I have commented on the few statements I could find that appear to have some sort of comprehensible meaning:

Most other definitions of libertarianism borrow from those self-definitions, so I have avoided them.

If you want to write your own defintions of words, you should have asked your hero to help you.

A short pro-libertarian essay by David Friedman is about "bad trucks" - trucks made in the Soviet Union. As Friedman says, "The capitalist truck was built under a system of institutions in which people who build bad trucks are likely to lose money". So in the end, no more "bad trucks" will be built. There is no evidence that Friedman sees anything wrong with this. For him, and many other libertarians, it is self-evident that certain things are "bad": they deserve no existence, and society should be designed to punish them out of existence.

It is self-evident to any sane person that trucks that break down frequently, accelerate slowly to a low top speed, carry smaller passenger and cargo loads than other equally expensive trucks, etc. are "bad" and that it is desirable that resources not be wasted on producing them.

Of course, this argument won't be convincing to people like exnihilo, who reject the notion that there is such a thing as objective truth.

The syncretism of libertarianism is also best visible among cyber-libertarians.

At this point, he reaches the level of obfuscation where even the individual words don't mean anything, or at least they don't mean what he thinks they mean. Thus, I am forced to throw up my hands and quit.

46 posted on 02/01/2002 10:52:29 AM PST by steve-b
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To: steve-b
The syncretism of libertarianism is also best visible among cyber-libertarians.

At this point, he reaches the level of obfuscation where even the individual words don't mean anything, or at least they don't mean what he thinks they mean. Thus, I am forced to throw up my hands and quit.

-------------------------------

Indeed, that line appears to have been lifted from 'Babblefish', or some other computer generated gibberish site.

187 posted on 02/01/2002 11:44:37 AM PST by tpaine
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