Then there are the taxes, the attacks on the right to keep and bear arms, the escalation of the drug war, signing the law which gave Bush the authority for “regime change” in Iraq.  Bush is a prize fool, but Clinton was no slouch at foolery himself.

I’m actually just a freedom monomaniac, my love of the free market is just a subset.  A fractional mania, if you will.

I would say that one of the two ifs have to be true.

Or, you could look up “false dichotomy” in the class of logical errors. 

I would like to think that they are, but horrors of the Clinton and Bush administrations are beginning to convince me otherwise.

The fact that you can lump the two together as if they were in any way equivalent tells me you are a free-market monomaniac.  And, that you have no clue as to the meaning of “horrors”.

I would like to think that they are, but horrors of the Clinton and Bush administrations are beginning to convince me otherwise.

If most people have good judgment, it is redundant to force good judgment upon them, and big government is just a waste of money.

If most people have bad judgment, it is insane to allow them to force their bad judgment upon you, and big government is disaster.

Those are pretty big ifs, and only make sense when the individual is assumed to be atomic and self-dependent.

I like to think of social regulations as institutional knowledge that’s being passed down so that we each don’t need to make the same mistakes, because that doesn’t get us very far forward. Therefore, I deny individual atomicity and self-dependence.

Or think of it as organic knowledge. As in organism. To deny the nature of human organic knowledge, is to assume the burden of full and complete knowledge on an individual level, which if you’ll excuse me, is just ridiculous because it disregards the structure and accumulated knowledge that precedes, and assumes responsibility for future unknowables. You could have great judgment, but if a flood/drought (outside your scope of influence) destroys your crops, your bloodline terminates because of external variables. Not good.

In other words, you’re as (irr)rational as any True Believer, only your god is the Free Market.

Maybe the word is dogmatic. But I think the view stems from a very incomplete philosophy that engages the two “if” conditions above, to the exclusion of all other ifs.

And within a given sphere, this is true; unfortunately that sphere does not include the biosphere where everyone lives.  It is not necessarily even big enough to encompass the self-actualized individual envisioned by those who read Atlas Shrugged in high school and never got over it.  It is an abstract sphere that only encompasses the transactions specifically named, and damn the external effects.

In other words, you’re as (irr)rational as any True Believer, only your god is the Free Market.

And of course, it is also important to recognize that different people have different values, and thus what may be a mistake for me might not be a mistake for you.  A free market serves all, a socialist dictatorship serves only those whose values agree with those of the masters.

As an agnostic, my faith in god and Rev. Moon are somewhat limited, as a Libertarian, my faith in the State is non-existent.  I have faith in the market for the same reason that I have faith in open-source software:  When lots of people are trying to solve a problem, and each is free to choose their own solution, independent of what others choose, solutions are bound to be forthcoming, and nobody’s mistakes will be imposed on others.

Either way, the free market is a better arrangement.

Ahh, the search for a simple heuristic that will relieve us of the burden of drawing lines, making distinctions, and deciding what to do.  Just have faith in God, the state, the free market, Rev. Moon, or the Magic 8-Ball™, and we won’t have to think.

I can’t understand this notion that lack of building codes is good particularly if you consider the availability of trailers and mobile/modular homes in the US. They obviously don’t have the same quality or safety standards that McMansions have and are geared toward those that can afford them allowing the dream of “home ownership” to extend to lotto buyers. Wouldn’t that equal your desire for a bloody log cabin, or are you looking for an actual lack of safety oversight and governance?

Mobile homes are still far more expensive than safer dwellings which could be built more cheaply in a free market.  The point is that if I am building my own home, or paying for somebody else to build it, I am going to include those features which actually make it safer or more comfortable out of simple self interest.  There is no need to force me.

What you have to force me to do is to build a home which meets some arbitrary bureaucratic definition of safety.  These arbitrary definitions also tend to be more expensive than actual safety, because they include those elements which were added only because some union wanted to protect it’s turf or some company wanted to sell a product that nobody needed.

<blockquote>
If there was a lack of governance and oversight, would we expect each person to build their own lean-to from mud and sticks, and scavenging for cardboard or would we tend toward having someone in the market serve the need for cardboard boxes coated with date-rape fire retardant chemicals at reduced rates?
<blockquote>
I suppose you would be free to make that sort of decision if you so desired, but I would recommend using good judgment.  If you have no faith in people to make good decisions on how to run their own lives, how can you have faith in them to choose masters who make good decisions for them?  How can they recognize judgment if they have none.

If most people have good judgment, it is redundant to force good judgment upon them, and big government is just a waste of money.

If most people have bad judgment, it is insane to allow them to force their bad judgment upon you, and big government is disaster.

Either way, the free market is a better arrangement.

I sure hope to see a free market before I die.

You won’t see a free market as long as I live, if I have anything to do with it. I’m a fan of statism, big government and 50+% taxes. Ayn Rand = abysmally bad.

I can’t understand this notion that lack of building codes is good particularly if you consider the availability of trailers and mobile/modular homes in the US. They obviously don’t have the same quality or safety standards that McMansions have and are geared toward those that can afford them allowing the dream of “home ownership” to extend to lotto buyers. Wouldn’t that equal your desire for a bloody log cabin, or are you looking for an actual lack of safety oversight and governance?

If there was a lack of governance and oversight, would we expect each person to build their own lean-to from mud and sticks, and scavenging for cardboard or would we tend toward having someone in the market serve the need for cardboard boxes coated with date-rape fire retardant chemicals at reduced rates?

Ergo, modular homes.