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Cyberselfish: Technolibertarianism
This month I garnered a copy of Cyberselfish, and I'm still appalled with the title (which comes from an eponymous essay for Mother Jones she wrote in July 1996, when such cyberlanguage wasn't so cybertrite). Cyberselfish is a book-length essay, in fact a somewhat thinly edited series of linked essays. There's a rush of immediacy and wit; for a random example, "Polyamory is the preferred term of art; it's gender-neutral, where polygamy and polyandry are not, and allows for all persuasions of partner choice (gay/straight/bi/it depends)." With the freshness and informality comes flaws. There is too much repeated material in the book. It's clear that essays written at different times have been cobbled together. Reading the book straight through is like reading some multi-volume series straight through, in which the characters and history are rehashed at the beginning of each book.
Cyberselfish looks at a few specific examples of technolibertarianism in depth: Bionomics, cypherpunks, Wired magazine, and Silicon Valley's impressive lack of philanthropy. Each time Borsook exposes the compassionless, fearful, posturing, politically myopic core, without dismissing the good aspects of the high-tech culture and individuals. For example, she thinks fighting for privacy rights is good, but obsessing about it and descending into rabid, paranoid ranting on alt.cypherpunks is scary. She moves smoothly from the historical to the academic to the personal, deliberately exposing her own frailities and biases while she examines those of others.
To give a deeper example of the content of Cyberselfish, Bionomics is the use of biological (and particularly Darwinian) metaphors to describe economic processes, as popularized by Michael Rothschild (Bionomics: Economy as Ecosystem) and then the The Bionomics Institute (TBI). Borsook convincingly points out through both empirical observation and reasoned analysis that Bionomics boils down to economic libertarianism, where government involvement is wrong and the most cut-throat, efficient and entrepeneurial businesses are the best. Ecological metaphors are used in Bionomics only when they're useful and sexy: The ecosystem of Hawaii was used as a metaphor for the fragility of protected industries. Under Bionomics logic, Hawaii's beautiful, lush, peaceful ecosystem is to be derided. Bionomics uses metaphors to draw syllogistic conclusions. Doing that can be powerfully convincing but amounts to hand-waving and emotional appeals. Borsook cuts through the smoke and mirrors.
After a few years, the Bionomics Institute conferences were (literally) taken over by the Cato Institute, the premier libertarian think tank in the nation. The annual Bionomics conterences began in 1993. The 1997 conference was the Cato/Bionomics Conference; 1998, the "Annual Cato Institute/Forbes ASAP Conference on Technology and Society." TBI morphed into software-startup Maxager, which intends to offer Bionomical tools to companies. Borsook wonders what meaning can be ascribed to the success or the failure of the company. If Maxager fails, is it because it wasn't Bionomically good enough, or just because of the many uncontrollable factors that cause the vast majority of startups to fail? If it succeeds, does it validate Bionomics, or just the good connections the founder has with Silicon Valley venture capitalists?
The other chapters are just as interesting. Cyberselfish sharply describes all the archetypes of the technolibertarians, from the neo-hippie polyandric Burning Man attendee to the Lexus-driving, 100-hour-a-week, plugged-in entrepeneur with a sprawling bungalow in Santa Clara county.
One of the most crystalline passages in the book describes Eric Raymond's leaking of the Halloween Document, written by Microsoft program manager Vinod Valloppillil. The two clearly have vast ideological differences, the open-source cowboy and the Evil Empire functionary, but they're both hard-core libertarians, an entirely unreported fact. In Borsook's words, "It was rather like discovering that both a liberal and a conservative senator had both acquired their law degrees from Yale: no news here."
As I said before, the book is somewhat haphazardly put together, and nearly every sentence is to some degree contentious; even someone who agrees with her basic position will find reason to quibble. Cyberselfish doesn't come near to answering all the questions it raises. Borsook doesn't really tackle the paradox that "libertarians celebrate the cult of the individual" but Open Source celebrates the collective. What does it mean to be an Open Source libertarian?
I personally think it's somewhat unfair to attack those flaws, as they're inexorably part of Cyberselfish's loose, immediate, opinionated, and conversational style. It's kind of like how Slashdot's open forums allow for a review like this and the inevitable "hot grits" responses.
Purchase this book at fatbrain.
Perhaps someone will find this interesting, and comment on it.
Although I often find myself with strong libertarian leanings, especially towards issues like abortion, legal drug use, and seatbelt laws (even though I personally never plan on using drugs, and I always wear my seatbelt) I still think there's a real need for strong government.
The crux, at least as I see it, is that while individual freedoms should be held as uninfringed as possible, groups should be closely regulated, and the larger the group, the more closely it should be regulated.
The idea here is that the destructive power of a lone individual acting is fairly limited - not only in terms of raw ability, but in terms of the tendancy of functioning as part of a group to dissociate an individual from the group's actions. For example, your average German circa 1941 was as decent a human being as any other, but grouped together as "Nazi Germany" they did a lot of horrible things.
It's not ESR that worries me; it's the NRA. It's not Lars (from Metallica); it's the RIAA. It's not the employees; it's Disney/Sony/Union Carbide/etc.
It seems a simple concept: The larger the group, the more the regulation, the smaller the group, the smaller the regulation. Free the individual, restrain the collective.
I think a large share of the blame falls on Western law that treats a "corporation" as a "legal person", so that a corporation is treated the same way before the law as a private citizen. That's crazy! Microsoft Corporation (for example) is capable of far, far more damage to society than any individual. That Microsoft and myself should be considered equal before the law is outrageous.
Equally outrageous is that most individuals are, for all intents and purposes, enslaved by corporations. They own us! Isn't that supposed to be the other way around?
I'm not sure what label to hang on this political philosophy, but whatever it is, I'm for it.
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
The depression was directly caused by governments meddling in the economy to keep interest rates artificially low to promote growth by guaranteeing otherwise unsecured loans. Too much cheap money, in essence. The system would have been self-regulating otherwise, for example as capital reserves were depleted, interest rates would have risen until the reserves were replenished.
So you see, the great depression, and inflation in modern times are a direct result of government borrowing, which is "secured" on future taxation. It dilutes the money supply because there are no underlying assets.
I am a proud libertarian, but if you think that implies that I worship the market, and that I'm going to vote (how do you eliminate government by encouraging it?) for the Libertarian Party, you're sorely mistaken.
Years ago, there were anarchists. They were a lot like socialists, except for one major difference: They didn't see the point (some even accurately predicted the brutality of Marxism) of taking over government to achieve socialism. Government, they felt, was the enemy of common people, and it was instituted by the powerful in order to protect their interests. In other words, government acts as a buffer between capitalism and people in order to prevent or squash revolution.
Then, at some point in Europe, it became illegal to call yourself an anarchist. So, people started calling themselves libertarians. Same concept, different name.
How did "libertarian" in the US end up being a fiscal conservative/social liberal mix? I don't know. But I wish it meant the revolutionary definition it was meant to. I wish I could call myself a libertarian without people automatically assuming that I'm in favor of privatizing the police and military.
I'm a libertarian (aka, anarchist), because I want to get rid of government, not transfer it's powers over to corporations.
Within Slashdot I see a lot of strange juxtopositions. We're rabidly anti-government, which is good. We're also rabidly opposed to certain corporations, which is also good. But a lot of us are still fixated on this ridiculous notion of "the market", as though human happiness could be measured by stock values.
I don't worship the market. I hate the market. I despise the idea that human worth is measured, packaged, and profited from. I don't want to accept a world where currency is backed up by military force, and where the only means of survival is working for the profit of others.
In short, I hate capitalism, and almost everything that it implies. Now, don't get me wrong, I hate Communism more. The way it looks, Communism has a lifespan of about 80 years, tops. Capitalism has a much longer lifespan, that is kept alive only by constant technological advancements that keep it going. But I have a feeling that it's at the end of it's rope. Maybe it's time to check out alternatives?
So, yes, I am a libertarian, but not in the legacy of Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, or others who worshipped capitalism as the means and the goal. I am a libertarian in the legacy of P.J. Proudhon, Emma Goldman, Mikhail Bakunin, and Petr Kropotkin, who believed in revolution as the means, and freedom as the goal.
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
OK all of you libertarians - come on out of the works now.
Are most/some of libertarians also objectivists? (As in the philosophy put forward by Ayn Rand?) It seems that all of the libertarians that I know are also objectivists. While I myself tend to lean left (and way left) I'm interested in why these two things seem to be connected. They have some obvious parallels, but it's not necessarily intuitive that somebody who buys a certain political philosophy would also buy a certain more general philosophy.
So what's up with "you people"? (That last phrase added to stir a few people to respond, because I'm honestly interested)
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Because, despite there being a tremendous number of silly people associated with the stated goals of the Libertarian Party, I happen to agree with the overall goals anyway.
To oversimplify the decision-making process for me:
The Republicans want to let my company do whatever it wants, and tell me what to do in the privacy of my own home. They assume that I'm Christian, and generally don't support not being one. And they want to take a lot of my money and waste it on dumb stuff like shooting down missiles.
The Democrats want to tell my company what to do, and let me do whatever I want, but only if I'm a minority or gay. They want to take even more of my money, and instead of wasting it on shooting down missiles, they want to waste it on a big bureaucracy of people who will, in turn, give a little bit of that money to poor people.
The Libertarians want government to stay the heck out of people's lives, let them make their own business and moral choices, and use as little money as possible doing so. Other parties have made big splashes - the radical left has turned to the Green Party, and the Reform Party sprung into being on the whims and bankroll of one man (let's see how they do with Perot off the ballot before we call them a real third party). Neither of them appeal to me. Were he running for President under any banner, Jesse Ventura is ironically the politician whose views agree most closely with mine on most issues.
That's why I'm a Libertarian. It's the closest party to my views. Perhaps I'm an idealist, but the Republicrats do nothing for me, Nader is pathetic, Perot is nuts, and Buchanan is possibly the most frightening man in mainstream politics.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
And Cyberselfish is proof.
Yes, libertarian thought puts the individual first. But generally, that comes from a belief that the individual is capable of making their own informed decisions about what's best for them - not from a "me first" attitude.
Where that coincides with Objectivism is the raising up of the individual. But Objectivism leans more to the "me first" than does libertarianism. However, despite the reasons, since the two do converge on the individual, a lot of libertarians are Objectivists, and virtually all Objectivists are libertarian.
However, that leaves a lot of us who wouldn't touch Objectivism with a ten-foot pole, but are libertarian in belief and practice, and Libertarian (with a capital letter this time) in political affiliation.
The difference to me is that libertarianism is fundamentally optimistic about human nature. We assume that people may be mildly selfish, but are willing to make some sacrifice on behalf of the common good if they are not coerced to do so. I may not be as wealthy as a dot-com millionaire (or Rob and Jeff), but I give money to charitable causes on a regular basis, donate pretty nice stuff to the Salvation Army, Goodwill, and the like, bring canned food to my town's homeless shelter, and my used newspapers and other stuff to the pet shelter, and also vociferously support the Libertarian Party, of which I am a member. No, I'm not a saint, but there's no conflict involved there, folks. And I'm not the only one who behaves this way.
The people who don't Get It generally confuse libertarianism with Objectivism. Don't paint us all with that brush - it's far too wide and the Objectivist paint is far too thick. A reasonable amount of altruism is not incompatible with being a Libertarian.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Even Joshua ben Joseph gave notice that there's more than one way to do things.... Remember the Good Samaritan? Samaritans, lest you forget, were good, old-fashioned, bull-sacrificing, Baal-worshipping PAGANS... y'all are smart, go figure. Love your neighbors. Love your enemies, and drive'em nuts!
Oh, and one more thing. Objectivists have morals, sure. Rules somebody wrote down in some book somewhere, to be followed slavishly and at the expense of everything else. Gimme a fscking break. Libertarians have ethics: Guidelines(*) to be used within a situation to effect a desired set of consequences. In this case the consequences are to maximize freedom, in general by preventing others from imposing force or fraud on the individual in question.
One more thing I want to question here, and that is the giving to charity. Now, I don't give to too many folks. But I have enough enlightened self-interest to see that there are a number of charities that I, myself, do or might benefit from. EFF. GNU. Various medical research organizations. etc. etc. ad infinitum nauseumque. What goes around comes around... what those Silicon Valley hotshots haven't figured out is that you get out of life what you put into it, same as a computer. Those dudes down there may die with the most toys, but they're still dead. Game over, man! I say live a little, give a little, and be much happier for it.
Free-lovin', drug-legalizin', non-judgemental hippie heatherns, you betcha.... and a lot happier for it than anybody who says There Ain't But One Way To Do It. (cf. Larry Wall, eh?)
(*)Guidelines: remember them, Usenetters? rules made to be bent or even broken with just cause.
--
"I tried. I tried to warn them. But it all happened, just the way I remembered it." -- Jeffrey David Sinclair, "War Without End II" (B5)
Sorry if the shouting offends, but too may people don't get that concept. No, healthcare is not a federal right. Basic education should be, but only because we've let the universal sufferage cat out of the bag... too late to make sure that only those smart enough to understand got to vote, so we have to do it the other way 'round now. *shrug* gives us a few more people maybe brave enough to speak up when the emperor goes nekkid....
What really bugs me is these sheeple enslaved to the congressman they think will vote them the most largesse from the federal treasury.... but I digress. By getting the hell out the way, and in so doing not stealing so bloody much from your paycheck, the Libertarian government allows you to take care of yourself, invest for your retirement, contribute to private charity for people's welfare, and basically do all those things people get uptight about, without anyone telling them how they HAVE to do it. Yes, I suppose your basic county health department is a good thing; it keeps otherwise-sick folk from spreading things... but this is run at a very local level; it's not a federal mandate. Other than that, IMHO things are far better run by someone not drawing a government paycheck.
As for Cliff's Silicon Snake Oil: There is a difference in using the computer as a mechanism for escaping the real world, and using it as a tool to build communities that would not otherwise exist (and eventually getting parts of them to meet in realspace). Poor Cliff got burned by the former. I quickly learned to do the latter. My first trip to California, several love affairs, my first meeting with the lady who is now my wife, and this job, 3000 miles from home, are all consequences of encounters on various networks. Sure, the box doesn't love you. But it doesn't make those little riffs from sweetie@myhome.com any less special... or the fact that it says "pick up some milk on the way home" any less useful. It's a tool, like a machete. You can hack your way thru all these trees, and find yourself lost in the forest.... or you can cut sugar cane, and make RUM! :) (Or Krispy Kreme donuts, for those of us less inclined to imbibe :)
Your choice. That's what it's all about.
--
I am Homer of Borg. You will be assim... Oooh! Donuts!
My answer is that I don't like people telling me what to do. I don't like the government taking my money and telling me how I'm going to spend it. I don't like policeman that give you a ticket for speeding, and then raise or lower the ticket depending on how polite you are to them. I don't like pornography, but I don't like the government telling me what I can read even more. This is why I am a libertarian.
I also wouldn't like someone telling me I had to write software for free. But I do it because I want to. The free software movement is about the good parts of collectivism but not the bad. People can spontaneously work together for a common good, and no-one has to be forced to do anything. There really isn't a conflict with being an Open Source Libertarian. People are free to leave or join any project they want; you can't give much more power to the individual than that.
As I, being something of a Libertarian, understand it: there are a few *big* differences between Objectivists and Libertarians. Although the two groups agree on laissez-faire capitalism as the best economic/political system, Objectivists (among whom I do not include myself) have some strong additional beliefs.
... just kidding, sort of). Libertarians make no judgement on these things, and Objectivists typically use this fact to portray them as a bunch of free-lovin', drug-legalizin', non-judgemental hippie anarchists.
Objectivists have a rigid moral system, based around self-interest (or "selfishness"), which states that an individual's highest moral interest is improving his own life (without harming others, of course). While Libertarians believe that a person has a right to such a life, they do not attach any moral weight to it. So Libertarians would oppose government welfare, but allow people to give voluntarily to charities. Objectivists, however, denounce charitable giving as immoral.
Furthermore, Objectivism has a strict system of epistemology (reason), metaphysics (objective reality), and aesthetics (strongly resembling the works of Ayn Rand
In short: Libertarians believe that people should be free because intelligent people can differ. Objectivists believe that people should be free -- but that there is still only one "true way."
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Libertarians support charities and charity in general. It's one of the things which supports their point that people need not be forced to be kind. Libertarianism is not `P*ss off and die'; rather, it is `Don't steal from me; ask nicely.'
There really are no compelling arguments against libertarianism that I''ve seen. Every argument against it boils down to paternalism and authoritarianism. It's damned difficult to say that sort of thing with a straight face--what right do I have to determine how other people live? I may disagree vehemently with them, but I am no greater than they. That's the humility of libertarianism which the authoritarians--right and left--will never have. They want to control; the libertarian wants to live.
On the other hand, detailed, comprehensive, and well-thought-out arguments against the arguments on that Web site can be found on this Web site or perhaps this other one.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
I think all of us on the net have a libertarian streak running through us. I do. However, I think that pure libertarianism (like that proposed by the Libertarian party) is just plain irresponsible. Take to an extreme it is just an anarchy (every individual is entirely self-sovereign). I think there is a clear mandate in the Constitution for the government to provide a specific set of services. I interpret "provide for the general welfare" as standardized education and some form of really basic universally accessible health care. You might throw Social Security in there too (funny how conservatives and Republicans are so frothingly anti-socialist, refusing to support universal health care, yet supporting one of the most socialized of programs: Social Security).
I also have to say that I'm rather disgusted with the gold rush mentality of Silicon valley and the high tech sector in general. More than any previous time we have intelligent, educated people, coming out of colleges and being immediately consumed in a blind haste to ammass and burn vast amounts of fortune in a vaporous economy. Shame on us. While Clifford Stoll is just a little too eccentric for main-stream, he has a damn good point. Wake yourself out of your cyber-stupor. Look at the world around you. Do something *real*. It is all too easy these days to be captivated by glitz and by enraptured by the goal of 15 seconds of fame.
Your computer doesn't love you. Make a difference.
I'm sure by now I don't have to explain my sig.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Libertarian.org is the best place to start for an introduction to libertarianism... which is not exactly the same thing as the 'technolibertarianism' the Ms. Borsook describes, as far as I can tell. Here is a a snippet from the opening page of libertarian.org:
WHAT IS LIBERTARIANISM?
Libertarians and their ideas are often misunderstood. Libertarian.Org is here to offer an overview of the libertarian philosophy and the libertarian movement. It is designed to be an introduction to the breadth and depth of libertarianism, for the long-time libertarian and the curious newcomer.
While libertarians are a diverse group of people with many philosophical starting points, they share a defining belief: that everyone should be free to do as they choose, so long as they don't infringe upon the equal freedom of others.
Human interaction should be peaceful, voluntary, and honest. It is never acceptable to use physical force to achieve your goals. The only time force is acceptable is when you are defending against force.
This might not seem very radical. After all, your parents probably taught you not to cheat, steal or pick fights -- in other words, not to use force against others. What sets libertarians apart is that they don't make any exceptions to this principle -- not even for governments.
In the libertarian view, governments should be held to the same standards of right and wrong as individuals. As a result, libertarians believe that governments should not interfere with the interactions and exchanges of peaceful people.
At this point, a few questions might come to mind. For example, why do libertarians believe so strongly in individual rights? What about other social values, such as equality and security? Or you may be wondering about the historical origins of the libertarian philosophy and movement -- where does libertarianism come from? Who are its leading thinkers? And how do libertarians apply their principles to contemporary public policy issues?
Libertarian.Org is here to help answer all those questions, so read on.
Some other good links:
Libertarian Party
Harry Browne for President
Liberzine
Counterprotest.net
Libertyboard.org
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This was already posted on slashdot once. Seems even Hemos likes to have Katz on ignore ... ;P
Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
So what is Borsook's case beyond pique, beyond finding Bionomics conferences to be "little shops of horror," beyond lamenting that technolibs prefer Edge Cities to "real" urban centers, beyond finding libertarians "psychically exhausting"? Boiled down, she makes two arguments: First, high-tech people have no right to attack government since their industry would not have existed without government funding. Second, successful businesses are successful because they operate in a world where governments keep schools going, food and drugs pure, banks honest, and the like.
The first argument is simply a non sequitur. Government is involved with just about any commercial transaction or field imaginable, if only because it builds roads. But the fact that the government paves streets hardly makes it responsible for all the businesses that spring up alongside them. (There is, moreover, ample evidence that road building would continue even if government disappeared.) ...
One of the key insights of libertarianism revolves around the notion of the "spontaneous order," the idea that social orders and markets can, do, and will develop to meet human needs without central direction or control. For instance, just because government has taken it upon itself to finance and run schools does not mean that no one would be educated if it didn't. Nor would restaurants start poisoning their customers if municipal food inspectors disappeared overnight.
But Borsook doesn't understand what libertarians mean when they talk about spontaneous order. Thus she asserts that such a theory of "self-organization" appeals to "engineers' physics envy" and that "the reason for the rise in technolibertarianism is that engineers are practical and like to fix things and get things right, so of course only the sensible political choice of libertarianism would fit."
In fact, the engineering mentality, which presumes a single best way of doing things in accordance with unchanging "natural" laws, is the exact opposite of the spontaneous order mentality that pervades libertarian thinking. That's why Hayek specifically identified the engineering mentality as the mind-set from "which all modern socialism, planning and totalitarianism derives."
The whole review is available here. It contains not just an interesting critique of the book but a sampling of many of the book's factual errors.
-BBB
Roosevelt created the New Deal precisely because the already present economic system was NOT able to handle the mass of unemployed and hungry people who lost their jobs, often as a result of unrestricted and unregulated capitalism. There are plenty of economists and historians who credit the introduction of a social security system with breaking the usual cycle of a depression every few decades.
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Because we (geeks, engineers, developers, whatever) work with computers, we are creative, we understand the value of independent knowledge and thinking, we value skills and innovation, and we have (mostly) explicit standards of judgment. Thus we (often) do not belong to the crowd who deny the correlation between freedom, innovation, productivity, integrity, rational self-interest, and independence (basically what so-called "libertarianism" is about).
Please do read a very cogent review of cybersilliness at Reason -- starting thus: "This is a bad book, unlearned in its titular subject, petulant, and poorly argued. It is tempting simply to dismiss it and move on. Despite its shoddy quality, [it] is not irrelevant. Far from it. The book is fascinating as a case study in the reasoning and psychology behind opposition to the mix of individualism and anti-statism that characterizes contemporary libertarian thought."
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." -- Tennyson
Most critics of free market economics miss the point. I'm not "libertarian" because I'm selfish and don't care about others. Rather, it's that I want them to have the same opportunities as I.
Give money to a poor person, and you ease they're pain some. And if they're down on their luck, that can be worthwhile. But you shouldn't lose sight of the fact that after you give them a buck, they'll still be on the bottom rung of the economic ladder.
Indeed, all forms of economic redistribution, while they might make poverty more bearable, serve to keep those who are wealthy on top. Income tax, for example, is not a tax on wealth, but a tax on getting wealthy. And a progressive income tax makes it very difficult for those on the bottom to accumulate wealth. A person who has one or two years of good income is taxed as if they were a billionaire (or higher, if any of that income is subject to payroll tax).
There are zillions of examples, but I find nothing so despicable as the person who has made their own fortune off of movie rights or record royalties or stock options, and thinks that those less fortunate should be happy with whatever crumbs they can spare. What they (we, actually) really want is the opportunity to accumulate some wealth of our own, and to keep most of it, and to pass it along to those we love when we pass. Is that selfish?
Analysts of society love to label people and put in them in neat little categories and pigenholes like "libertarian", "progressive", "conservative", "right-wing extremist" and so forth. I guess it makes it easier for them to quickly label others as to put forth their theories.
But how many of us can be described so simply?
For instance, I like some of the Libertarian ideas such as the problems with the war against drugs or free market economics. But at the same time, I like a few things about the Green Party and their complaints about corporate welfare.
I believe in free markets, welfare reform, keeping as much of my earned wages as possible and responsibility for my actions and those of my country.
However, I also wish to protect the environment (don't use toxic chemicals at home) and endangered species (don't want a world without whales, elephants, etc. and know that human encroachment is the single biggest problem) and want my children to grow up breathing clean air.
But, I don't care for a government "forcing" me to be compassionate or snooping on my privacy or confiscating my personal property for redistribution.
See? There is no one party or group which meets my needs. So these sociologists and writers who analyze people and trends could never pigeonhole me into some neat little category.
Anyone else agree?
Barry Goldwater probably said it best: "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."
Sorry, but this review did nothing to persuade me to buy or even borrow the book... although it has made me consider joining the Cato Institute.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.