*wince*

Erik, I think you mean ‘rein’ above – although actually I would suggest that’s a poor word choice – something like ‘woo’ might be more appropriate. I do agree with the sentiment, and that is also the goal of tabling at AFN.

So I shouldn’t have gotten the breast reductions?

The point should be to

A) promote making government smaller on all issues as a unified whole – peace, civil liberty, and laissez faire – and to point out the connections between them, which make each necessary for the existence of the others

B)Within the realm of partisan politics, which allows libertarians to reach audiences which academic discussions never reach, and to exercise leverage by swinging races and opposing otherwise unopposed candidates.

The major parties don’t do A. Other parts of the libertarian movement don’t do B.

put them to better practical use supporting groups such as MoveOn, AntiWar, NORML, etc.

Moveon is only useful when Republicans are in office. Other single issue groups (Gun Owners of America, Marijuana Policy Project, Drug Policy Alliance, etc.), and other broader libertarian movement groups (Mises Institute, Reason Foundation, Downsize DC, Advocates for Self Government, Center for Small Government, International Society for Individual Liberty, and so on) can and should certainly be supported.

But they do not take the place of the LP.

Neither do libertarian caucuses in the major parties, although they have their place as well.

Be the change!

Good point.

It occurs to me that this analogy attempts to paint the economy as some sort of machine which requires central managers to operate. Of course, it isn’t: it’s more like a river which follows a natural course, which they have channeled and dammed (and damned). A big wave is here, and the dam is breaking. It will cause much more destruction than if the river had not been channeled and dammed.

On the contrary, the fed’s manipulation of the money supply caused the depression, and the big government programs of Roosevelt prolonged it by several years. Managerialist manipulation of the economy has held down much growth and innovation that would have otherwise taken place.

Deficit spending under Reagan, despite high interest rates, stimulated economic recovery and expansion in the 1980s.

It created a bubble which is now collapsing, along with the entire post WW2 bubble.

The trick this time around will be to stimulate the economy but knowing when to put on the brakes in time to avoid the “irrational exuberance” which led to the irrational expansion of credit preceding the current collapse.

There will be no more tricks. The managerialists trick bag is empty. The expansion of credit was pushed by the government. They are not smart enough to manage and manipulate the economy; all they can do is screw it up. It’s like a bunch of brain damaged monkeys doing surgery with carpenters tools.

When you’re in a plane and the engines fall off you don’t get into a debate over whether God intended man to fly. You use the tools you have available to deal with the emergency and save the philosophical arguments for the classroom.

When managerialists have manipulated the economy into a crisis, you don’t let them keep manipulating it; you get them the hell out of the way and let the market correct itself. The longer this is avoided, the bigger the correction when they are finally unable to manipulate it any longer.

I think we are at that point now, but even if we aren’t, allowing them to administer yet another shot of economic dope just causes an even bigger collapse later.

I prefer to work with UP&J and ANSWER on the left side of the antiwar issue – at least they still recognize the empire as their main issue. I agree with Steven @#84; I don’t see much that MoveOn would be good for.

MoveOn is not about to bite the hand that feeds them.

PEACE

My point is what is the point of the LP being the LP. I’ve maintained the statist LPers should find their home in one of the other statist parties, and the anarcho LPers should join forces with those activist organizations promoting peace and civil liberties.

Instead of wasting time and resources subsidizing the LP bureaucracy and appratchiks, put them to better practical use supporting groups such as MoveOn, AntiWar (kudos to Angela Keaton for seeing the light), NORML, etc.

Be the change!

Despite the occasional recessionary cycles, the Keyenesians haven’t done too badly the last few decades. From my own experience conditions were actually alot worse in the 70s and 80s with stagflation and the misery index. In 1982 the misery index was in the 20s. Assuming things today get worse before they get better I still don’t expect the misery index to get above 15.

Keynesian deficits to finance WWII ended the depression, and laid the basis for the postwar recovery and economic expansion of the 1950s and 1960s. Deficit spending under Reagan, despite high interest rates, stimulated economic recovery and expansion in the 1980s. Deficit spending also avoided what could have been a protracted recession after 9/11. The trick this time around will be to stimulate the economy but knowing when to put on the brakes in time to avoid the “irrational exuberance” which led to the irrational expansion of credit preceding the current collapse.

When you’re in a plane and the engines fall off you don’t get into a debate over whether God intended man to fly. You use the tools you have available to deal with the emergency and save the philosophical arguments for the classroom.

Force-based monopoly governments don’t just grow in the direction you want them to. They have to have strong military and police forces to enforce their economic (dis)order. They have to enter into foreign quarrels to exercise their troops and weapons, and bolster their weapon industries. They have to suspend civil liberties to deal with those who oppose their disastrous economic and military policies.

It all ties in together.

Of course, there are any number of leftist parties that claim to support peace and civil liberties.

So what would be the point of the LP becoming yet another one?

Any force-based alternative benefits the few far more so than a voluntarily-based approach.

The few being those who wield and enforce the power of the regime, and those with sufficient pull – whether that pull consists of money, as in the crony capitalism of the USA, or power through connections, as in the USSR – and the many being everyone else.

A voluntarily-based approach does not always produce equality, but it certainly produces greater prosperity than a force-based approach, since no committee can plan the economy better than it can plan itself.

Over time, although not always necessarily, this means that the poorest people under a voluntary-based approach are better off than they are under a force-based one.

Given the tendency of a force-based approach to squelch innovation, over even more time, it also means that the poorest people in a voluntary-based society are better off than the richest people in a force-based social, political or economic regime.

Your idea of a “fair shot” may be alot different from that of an unemployed factory worker with a high school education being thrown out of their house with a wife and kids to support. Equal opportunity means different things to different people, and those born into wealth with all the advantages that come with it have alot more fair shots and “equal opportunity” than those born into poverty. As George Orwell revealed in “Animal Farm” some people are more equal than others.

If the LP was smart they’d stick to civil liberties and pacifism. The rest is just another form of economic and social Darwinism, which benefits the few who are superior and talented and leaves the rest to exploitation and extinction.

I don’t tend to think of things like slavery and genocide of the native population as laissez faire.

You mean the same laissez faire policies put into place by the founding rich white guys who established a constitutional republic to protect the propertied interests of the greatest number of rich white guys?

I think the point was that we have been at CPAC and CLC a bunch of times, but not at equivalent progressive events.

Yeah, I just got back from SC yesterday and am catching up on my reading. This is the first time I have had a chance to read this thread, so I’m responding to everything at once. There are some other threads I haven’t gotten to yet.

Hey–do you want to post some stories?

I’ll try to get to some tonight or tomorrow. I have way many more that I want to post than I have time to get to.

BTW I added contact.ipr as a separate “page” (like “about”) but it did not show up. I think it needs approval from you to be linked from the front page.