To follow the logic of this argument, would it be unethical to continue to use sidewalks, streets, or freeways? To watch TV from FCC controlled airwaves? To teach or attend at public universities, like UNLV (both Rothbard and Hoppe taught here)?
No, because you could walk down the street, teach at university, etc… in a free society. What you couldn’t do is kidnap, murder, and defraud (cop, soldier, senator).
Thanks for your perspective, Merlin. I’ll be entering the workforce soon and will be faced with the tough choices you are describing.
Practically every job is connected to the government. You’d be hard pressed to find a job that didn’t. Though, I would avoid being employed directly under government.
I go through this everyday. I am a libertarian I work on the ambulance as a paramedic, our funding is actually private though, (well private as it can be we get money from insurance and medicare / medicaid) but there are lots of government intervention in my job (most are for the worse). I also started back to college and needed student loans; well the way you go about getting student loans is filling out a FAFSA and then applying for “subsidized” loans. While I would prefer to get loans I pay for myself with out subsidy its hard to do so; so you must go through the system.
The reason you can’t afford to pay the loan is because of government’s inflation of education prices. Government saves the day by offering grants and subsidized loans.
- AndrewR: “…one might argue that accepting the current state of affairs is an admission that your principles are impractical; so why hold them at all?”
One might argue anything. Making sense in another matter…
- LeeO: “How will we ever achieve a free society if libertarians and anarchists don’t enter the power centers controlled by collectivists (governments, schools, media, labor unions) and generate change from within? Those without power cannot defend freedom.”
It sounds that you - like many other “libertarians” - believe deep in your heart that socialismism is sustainable, that it would retain or even grow in power unless smashed by a greater power. You should examine that premise…
I understand that socialism or any other form of collectivism is not sustainable, economically or otherwise. But I also understand the nature of power. Totalitarianism is on the rise right now because collectivists are in positions of power across the globe. They will not give up this power. It must be taken somehow through the employment of equal or greater power.
For the past 100 years, socialism in America and across the world has grown in power, and continues to grow today. We are headed for economic collapse, but it is a controlled demolition engineered by those in power. The power elite are ready for it. They have a plan to keep us enslaved.
Maybe our only option is to wait until the majority of the population wakes up and will no longer serve the state. Then, as in the collapse of the Soviet Union, the power of millions of people refusing to follow orders will overthrow the tyrants. I think this will take a long long time, so I am interested in exploring other ways to fight the rise of socialism.
Walter Block’s position is that ONLY a “libertarian” or non-statist can morally accept what the state has stolen from others. One summation of this position is here http://www.lewrockwell.com/block/block86.html where he states, “Better that any non statist posses this wealth than the thieving state.”
Neo fought directly against the system, or ran - he didn’t become a junior agent and bide his time waiting until there was a better opportunity to strike. Not advocating violence, just saying that Neo didn’t exactly do what you are advocating =0
You’re right - maybe not a good analogy. I’m just saying that libertarians should consider fighting more directly (and nonviolently) against the system in some way. And this would include working for the government. I know there is a good argument that political action is useless right now, and that the intellectual battle at the Mises Institute is the best we can do. But it seems to me that somewhere down the line, our current collectivist political leaders will lose popular support. It would be to the advantage of libertarians if we had political leaders of our own to step up and point the world toward freedom and away from coercive government.
Didn’t Mises and Hayek both work in the government themselves?
As a graduate student, I’ve worked already in two government agencies as part of my educational endeavors. As a new found libertarian all I can only say one word… Frustration. I’ve had the unfortunate event of seeing the government in its full inefficient glory. I will give just one example:
Our research leader has to publish scientific papers outside of the USDA because he publishes more papers than what is required by the agency. Or in other words, he makes everyone else look bad. It’s a shame because these government scientist understand that the greatest path to advancement and understanding, in science, is research.
^I’m considering graduate school in engineering. I know about half of our department’s grants come from the government. Does government fund them to buy off the intellectual class or is there an intersection of state interest and science interest?
I believe it’s more to influence what the graduate school focuses on. My college focused on fuel cells and as a result got mega bucks.
Then, I see the school using money to buy HDTVs to use as display devices in the hallway that loop the same material over and over again.
In my current job, I worked with a guy who’s been in the company for 30 years. So he tells me stories about company mis-management. He tells me about how the company lost a government contract. He goes on to say that it was incredibly stupid of them to loose the contract. Because the government will pay VERY generously as long as the product works.
This for me is a real-life example of government mis-spending tax dollars. Which makes reports of government spending $100 for a simple hammer all the more believable.
Both. Our research group designs drugs and works on the application of theoretical modeling in chemical dynamics. Even thou, I’ve helped design and synthesized anti cancer drugs, I don’t receive any recognition other than my name on scientific papers. However, my major professor (theoretical) and adjunct professor (experimental) due hold rights. Since our grant is supported by the private sector, they hold a majority of any patents. However, most grants through governments are the property of the agencies themselves. One interesting factor about research in government is that it’s up to the discretion of the lead scientist to freely release any information or products to any other research teams.
If you have the opportunity to work in other fields related to your studies and research-do so. As a chemical physicist, I’ve learned a plethora of how other disciplines conduct research. I primarily interested in the theoretical/physical sciences, but I must admit observing geneticist, molecular biologist, biochemist, chemical engineers, biomolecular engineers, and plant physiologist do research has opened my eyes tremendously to how various disciplines attack problems in research.
I worked in an election a few years ago. The guy the Conservative Party sent to observe the count went to a bar and got hammered and then got kicked out for drunken idiocy during the counting. There was a discrepancy in the count check at the end and nobody felt like spending all night there. So, we just packed up and left.