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Little House on the Prairie
Jan. 8th, 2014 10:50 amOver on Obsidian Wings, Doctor Science has a post about how, despite claims to the contrary, the Little House on the Prairie books aren't libertarian. I practically memorized those books, and I remember the episode he's using - due to an especially bad winter, the town is running out of food, and Pa Ingalls forces a local merchant to sell wheat at cost and institutes a rationing scheme.
The commenters at Obsidian argue that "I'm not seeing a whole lot of state coercion in your little anecdote. I'm just seeing a bunch of people voluntarily associating with one another for purposes of shaming (and threatening) an outlier. That sounds about as libertarian as you can get."
This led to an insight - libertarians are perfectly okay with using force and coercion, as long as it's not government force. (This is why The Moon is a Harsh Mistress "counts" as libertarian) Now, personally I'm not real happy with any use of force and coercion. I'm especially unhappy with force and coercion imposed by a mob, or a self-selected group of people accountable to nobody. We call the later "vigilantes" and vigilantes have a nasty habit of turning into lynch mobs.
I also think that, in many of these arguments, the libertarian is incapable of seeing themselves as the victim of this force and coercion. They are good people, capable, yadda yadda yadda. So, in this example, they see themselves as Pa Ingalls, rationing the food, not the shopkeeper who walked through the snow to get it. It is, in short, a lack of compassion. The word "compassion" comes to us from the Latin "cum" or "with." It's literally "feeling something with another." But libertarians have a hard time feeling somebody else's pain.
The commenters at Obsidian argue that "I'm not seeing a whole lot of state coercion in your little anecdote. I'm just seeing a bunch of people voluntarily associating with one another for purposes of shaming (and threatening) an outlier. That sounds about as libertarian as you can get."
This led to an insight - libertarians are perfectly okay with using force and coercion, as long as it's not government force. (This is why The Moon is a Harsh Mistress "counts" as libertarian) Now, personally I'm not real happy with any use of force and coercion. I'm especially unhappy with force and coercion imposed by a mob, or a self-selected group of people accountable to nobody. We call the later "vigilantes" and vigilantes have a nasty habit of turning into lynch mobs.
I also think that, in many of these arguments, the libertarian is incapable of seeing themselves as the victim of this force and coercion. They are good people, capable, yadda yadda yadda. So, in this example, they see themselves as Pa Ingalls, rationing the food, not the shopkeeper who walked through the snow to get it. It is, in short, a lack of compassion. The word "compassion" comes to us from the Latin "cum" or "with." It's literally "feeling something with another." But libertarians have a hard time feeling somebody else's pain.
