Non-Libertarian FAQ: Strategies For Argument

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This article is from the Libertarian FAQ, by Joe Dehn jwd3@dehnbase.fidonet.org, Robert Bickford rab.AT.daft.com, Mike Huben mhuben@world.std.com and Advocates for Self-Government http://www.self-gov.org/ with numerous contributions by others.

37 Non-Libertarian FAQ: Strategies For Argument

Many libertarian arguments are like fundamentalist arguments: they depend
upon restricting your attention to a very narrow field so that you will not
notice that they fail outside of that field. For example, fundamentalists
like to restrict the argument to the bible. Libertarians like to restrict
the argument to their notions of economics, justice, history, and rights and
their misrepresentations of government and contracts. Widen the scope, and
their questionable assumptions leap into view. Why should I accept that
"right" as a given? Is that a fact around the world, not just in the US? Are
there counter examples for that idea? Are libertarians serving their own
class interest only? Is that economic argument complete, or are there other
critical factors or strategies which have been omitted? When they make a
historical argument, can we find current real-world counterexamples? If we
adopt this libertarian policy, there will be benefits: but what will the
disadvantages be? Are libertarians reinventing what we already have, only
without safeguards?

There are some common counterarguments for which libertarians have excellent
rebuttals. Arguments that government is the best or only way to do something
may fail: there are many examples of many government functions being
performed privately. Some of them are quite surprising. Arguments based on
getting any services free from government will fail: all government services
cost money that comes from somewhere. Arguments that we have a free market
are patently untrue: there are many ways the market is modified.

There are a number of scientific, economic, political, and philosophical
concepts which you may need to understand to debate some particular point.
These include free market, public goods, externalities, tragedy of the
commons, prisoner's dilemma, adverse selection, market failure, mixed
economy, evolution, catastrophe theory, game theory, etc. Please feel free
to suggest other concepts for this list.

One way to bring about a large volume of argument is to cross-post to
another political group with opposing ideas, such as
alt.politics.radical-left. The results are quite amusing, though there is a
lot more heat than light. Let's not do this more often than is necessary to
keep us aware that libertarianism is not universally accepted.