Information Landmine

"The Americans keep telling us how successful their system is. Then they remind us not to stray too far from our hotel at night." - An un-named EU trade representative quoted during international trade talks in Denver, Colorado, 1997.

Sunday, June 03, 2007

Libertarian Double Standards

I've long been a fan of the basic tenets of libertarianism - a strong emphasis on voluntary agreement and freedom from coercion, deep-held suspicion of centralised power, etc. - while being essentially turned off by the policy arguments of most self-described "libertarians", who seem to me to have one set of rules about state intervention for huge corporations, and one set of rules for everyone else. Was thus thrilled to find this blog. This article on Latin American land reform was particularly good.

2 Comments:

Blogger Steve said...

Brilliant stuff! Cheers!

03 June, 2007 22:18  
Blogger Kevin Carson said...

Thanks for the link.

You're right, there is a double standard in mainstream libertarianism. Welfare for the rich is kinda sorta bad, maybe, I guess, but welfare for the poor is flaming red ruin on wheels. "I tip my hat to the idea that corporate welfare is bad, in principle, and maybe we should eventually get around to doing something about it someday, and blah blah blah, and... OH MY GOD! Did you see that?! That woman just used food stamps to buy a candy bar! Aaaaauuuuughhhh!"

05 June, 2007 21:51  

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