Blame that on my faulty mouse. I edited it. Check again.
-Jon
Freedom of markets is positively correlated with the degree of evolution in any society...
Jon Irenicus: Blame that on my faulty mouse. I edited it. Check again. -Jon
Don't lie. You were implying that he eats waste!
"I cannot prove, but am prepared to affirm, that if you take care of clarity in reasoning, most good causes will take care of themselves, while some bad ones are taken care of as a matter of course." -Anthony de Jasay
If you thought Mike Huben's Critiques Of Libertarianism is bad was bad then you should read Seth Finkelstein's Libertarianism makes you stupid found @
http://www.sethf.com/essays/major/libstupid.php
The following that he wrote will be the most asinine things you'll ever hear or read- and I quote:
"Libertarians are for "individual rights", and against "force" and "fraud" - just as THEY define it. Their use of these words, however, when examined in detail, is not likely to accord with the common meanings of these terms. What person would proclaim themselves in favor of "force and fraud"? One of the little tricks Libertarians use in debate is to confuse the ordinary sense of these words with the meaning as "terms of art" in Libertarian axioms. They try to set up a situation where if you say you're against "force and fraud", then obviously you must agree with Libertarian ideology, since those are the definitions. If you are in favor of "force and fraud", well, isn't that highly immoral? So you're either one of them, or some sort of degenerate (note the cultish aspect again), one who doesn't think "force and fraud must be banished from human relationships""
What? How else do you define force and fraud other than the common meaning? This guy misses the point by a long shot.
It amazes me how some people tells about themselves when they blabber on long enough. Twisting words around is an ancient political trick.
Michael S: What? How else do you define force and fraud other than the common meaning? This guy misses the point by a long shot.
The guy also misses another point: lots of people DO support force and fraud, albeit to a limited degree. That's the only explanation for the extensive government we have now. This is not a trick of semantics, just a lack of understanding of the nature of coercion. No one really wants a government that's out of control, but they DO want a government to control us in certain areas, failing to realize that it's very difficult or perhaps even impossible to limit government in those ways. It's like telling a thief it's okay to steal up to $20, but then being shocked when he steals hundreds or thousands of dollars, and not being able to stop him.
This Seth character is hilarious. Just have at look at his "irrefutable" refutation of Logic. (Just lookup the section "Libertarianism Makes You Stupid: from 2+2=5 to 1=2" here). Apparently he has found a "classic fallacy" in mathematics from University of Toronto, somehow disproving the logical use of axioms, not knowing that what is meant by classic must surely be classical in the sense that it has been a classic mistake made since time immemorial. So the argument goes:
Well how daft can you be? If a=b then: (you can always sustitute b for a)
"(a^2 - ab) = 0" no matter which way you cut it, as long as the "axiom" (a=b) is maintained. In a sense what he has written is:
(0 = 0) => (0 = 0) => (0 = 0) => (0 = 0) => (0 = 0) => (0 = 0) => (0 = 0) => (2 x 0 = 1 x 0).
This is obviously true! But why use seven operations to come to an nonsensical conclusion which he could have just postulated right away. The answer is of course one of two: He is daft og he is trying to obfuscate; either of which is far from original. In case anyone wonders, I stopped reading after stumbling upon this section of his.
Solid_Choke:What do you guys think of this website?
Thanks for the link!
corpus delicti:He is daft og he is trying to obfuscate; either of which is far from original. In case anyone wonders, I stopped reading after stumbling upon this section of his.
I think what he's complaining about is that he feels that libertarians are just mindlessly throwing implications at him from the "no force" axiom to get to a conclusion that he feels is wrong. In that example, he's arguing that just saying that 1 isn't 2 should be enough to disprove the all thing; he doesn't want to go through all the steps to find the incorrect one.
What he doesn't realize is that he dislikes not libertarianism, but phylosophy. There is plenty of libertarian work in pratical grounds, ever since Adam Smith, which I'm sure he would be more comfortable with.
Equality before the law and material equality are not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time. -- F. A. Hayek in The Constitution of Liberty
After a friend of mine got in an argument with him and had him cornered, he was banned.
http://www.2shared.com/document/45TBs2vK/MikeHubenFail.html
Can the truth be that offensive?
The funniest thing about Mike Huben's website is that he actually has some libertarians criticizing some ideas of other libertarians - there is still a division regarding certain topics.
For example: he has a link to Rothbard's article criticizing Robert Nozick,
Oh, and he actually has a part called 'libertarians criticizing each other'. Interesting!
The state is not the enemy. The idea of the state is.
About this Mike Huben fellow, there is an interesting reply by David Friedman to his "Non-Libertarian FAQ": http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/Libertarian.html
Mike responded to that with a post by some fellow called Jonathan Andras, to whom Friedman also responds.
Huben's website was the first stuff I've read critical of libertarianism when I was first finding about libertarianism. I think there is some good stuff in his website (say, Bryan Caplan's critique of Austrian econ), but mostly the good stuff is stuff not written by himself. ;-) He seems to jump at every opportunity to bash libertarians, and he does so in a forcefully contrarian manner. He used to make odd comments over David Friedman's blog.
Rodney wrote:
After a friend of mine got in an argument with him and had him cornered, he was banned. http://www.2shared.com/document/45TBs2vK/MikeHubenFail.html Can the truth be that offensive?
Yes it can to some people. If libertarianism was as stupid, illogical, and devoid of historical and theoretical coherency as he claims, then there would be no reason whatsoever to construct a website to tirelessly debunk a bunch of crazy flat-earthers. Obviously, he is frightened to death of something...
Ironically, his entire site is an example of what he accused your friend of (I am assuming that was Jeff Snipes). Perusing through his list of libertarian-debunking articles reveals that many of them are short blurbs on blogsite written by people with no relevant credentials.
Lewis S.: Rodney:Can the truth be that offensive? Yes it can to some people. If libertarianism was as stupid, illogical, and devoid of historical and theoretical coherency as he claims, then there would be no reason whatsoever to construct a website to tirelessly debunk a bunch of crazy flat-earthers. Obviously, he is frightened to death of something...
Rodney:Can the truth be that offensive?
Since this thread has already been necro'd, how about we engage in a little psychological deconstruction? What do you think Mike Huben is frightened to death of?
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
Voluntaryism Forum
Even on the face value of looking at the names of the links it appears to be a collection of strawmen, ad hominems, and other logical fallacies. Quick investigation into a couple of the links confirmed this. Given the seemingly limited intellectual quality and value of the site and the arguments within, I don't see where it warrants a longer reply than this.
Agree with Autolykos that enough has been said about Huben's style long before I defibrillated this thread; a lot needs to be said about what exactly is motivating him to think the way he does.
Honestly I think it's just a matter of having a bad first impression with a few nutty Libertarians on Usenet, and then deciding to treat the ideology in general as if everyone who follows it uses the same assertive tone as those impressions.
Or perhaps it goes beyond that. He might want to maintain something only he cares about just to feel original seeing that there are so few sites that have the same objective as his.
Maybe he wants to convince himself he is being generous with other people's money - who knows?
For those who are wondering, "Jeff Snipes" is the ally in question. I will agknowledge that's not his actual name, but he seems to think his economics professors would kill him if they ever found out his anti-statist sympathies.
To me, he seems like he's on the right path so far in his thinking over the last six months. He supported minimum wages when I first met him - that changed after a week or two of discussion, but he has yet to make the full transition to anarcho-capitalism.