[TriLUG] [WAY OT] security goons at TigerDirect in Raleigh: "No, thanks!"

[Andrew Perrin]

On Thu, 31 May 2007, Phillip Rhodes wrote:

> Andrew Perrin wrote:
>> I hesitate to get involved here, but I must point out that I find it 
>> amusing that libertarians are upset about private businesses' decisions as 
>> to how to carry out security on their grounds. I have no patience with 
>> libertarianism myself, as it seems absurdly simplistic to me. 
> Inalienable rights and personal liberty were good enough for the Founding 
> Fathers, but they
> strike you as "absurdly simplistic?"  Sorry, but I don't get that.

I knew I shouldn't get involved :)

Actually inalienable rights were good enough for the Founders.... for a 
few years, until the constitution and bill of rights set up a very 
intricate system designed to counterbalance inalienable rights with 
"general welfare." Even my Cato Institute copy of the Constitution has 
that in it....

But what's simplistic about libertarianism, again IMNSHO, is the idea that 
there is a political subject with rights and abilities separable from the 
collectivity within which it occurs.  That's why this situation is so 
bizarre -- why should citizens care more when the state starts digging 
through their person than when a private enterprise does so? There's no 
inherent reason -- it's just that libertarianism decides, a priori, that 
state power is worse than economc power and so opposes it more vigorously. 
Virtually any state action can be justified as a solution to some free 
rider problem or other -- which leaves strict libertarianism with no real 
policy position any more consistent than anybody else's. Which is fine by 
me -- I'm not arguing that you should abandon it, just why I think it's 
overly simplistic.

Cheers,
Andy


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew J Perrin - andrew_perrin (at) unc.edu - http://perrin.socsci.unc.edu
Assistant Professor of Sociology; Book Review Editor, _Social Forces_
University of North Carolina - CB#3210, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3210 USA
New Book: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/178592.ctl