Also, my pitiful role in the humanities comes from my own time as I am not presently part of universities, albeit I would probably take future work should the opportunity arise. We all need to work.

While my efforts on OLO are rightfully criticised by different people at times, every one of the OLO articles was produced in my own time. In fact, various academics have told me they count for nothing, given their love affair with supposed excellent and superior academic articles.

Yes, it is good to hear you support the Humanities, although without govt funding. I already thought you held such a view.

I have no problem with that possibility, but it is a question for society and debate, a bit like funding for the ABC.

My own belief is that involvement and competition between all key societal players in terms of academic articles will lift the standard immensely.

I got published after 20 years experience as a labourer, so I assume there are much better educated and smarter people in society and business that could do a better job.

JKJ, the word “freedom” for you is an empty slogan. As if you understood it qualitatively, as if freedom might spontaneously emerge once government is abolished. You’re not an anarchist you say, on the other hand you, “don’t care who forcefully stops aggression or fraud”—as if a latter-day Robin Hood might save the day. Your vision is romantic and utopian, far more so than Marx, who apropos Feudalism acknowledged, “the fact that it is always the bad side that in the end triumphs over the good side”. Your neo-Feudalism would regress humanity to the viciousness that preceded the bourgeois era.
What you fail to mention is the rule of law (however compromised), which transcends “pre-existing monarchies” and “monopol[ies] of the use of force”. You would put Marx on his head by making private property the basis of civil society—as if man can own the reality which owns him, or secure this most prized illusion. Private property, beyond what is reasonable, in a world of finite resources, is a luxury as well as a conceit.
Yet Marx’s egalitarian vision is too fantastic from our present perspective—and our planet could never go the distance. My solution, in the interim, elegant in its simplicity, is a wealth and assets cap, imposed on every individual from the top down; enough private property to indulge a modest illusion and enough capital to maintain it; wages suspended upon reaching the limit, which can only be maintained. It would mean the end of most luxury goods and services, of entrepreneurship (and the birth of imagination, creativity and invention for their own sakes), and indeed the magic pudding (capitalism) which we delude ourselves can never run out. Surplus capital would be maintained as surplus, with no incentive to go on piling it up provisioning society and providing its security. Employment too would be plentiful as those who reach their limit drop out. While those going up are incentivised by equally modest welfare.
Maintenance and corruption prevention are as always the biggest problem.
But I won’t go on, as I’m doomed to be ridiculed anyway..

Jardine
Watching the 2012 US Republican Party Presidential Debates, the fear of and bias against Ron Paul by his opponents and both by CNN and FOXNews was palpable. I have no doubt had he received an even hand from the MSM he would have won the Republican pre selection, comfortably.

What is clear to me is that a libertarian Ron Paul presidency is anathema to the prevailing oligopolies. Had he somehow won pre selection, the resources of the mega rich US corporates would be thrown behind Obama. Had he overcome even that hurdle, he would be assassinated. Libertarian policies are not minor changes, they are disruptive and transformative. They are a set of beliefs which remain true to the ideals of free enterprise and whilst it directly threatens government jobs, it no less threatens oligopolies and their market dominance - not to mention the very special position currently enjoyed by Banks.

I see no possibility for libertarianism to gain power and implement its program. Rather, I see the current system merely cherry picking parts of the program to enable its own agenda and with the objective of inevitably discrediting libertarianism.

Sadly, barring some global catastrophe, we are stuck with big and probably even bigger oligopolies. And as I have said elsewhere, I see very little difference between the workings of a CBA, BHP, News limited or a Coles to that of a Government Department. One way of looking at it is that What a single politburo in the USSR failed to achieve, is now increasingly done by the boards of our Public Companies.

The humanities you rail against is not a humanities worthy of the name, as it has deliberately been eviscerated into its current ridiculous impotence. It fills me with the greatest sadness. Aside from the pure Sciences our universities are there now purely to indoctrinate and prepare graduates for corporate life. There is even no argument about this.

Jardine it appears you are the optimist, where as I see the options available to us as all dystopian varieties of Mega Business and Mega Government.

Yebiga, Chris, Squeers
The problem is that while you think you stand for enlightenment and humane values and human freedom, in reality, you keep advocating open-ended government attacks on people’s liberties and property based on mere power, without any principle to limit them, because that’s what the issue always is between us.

And the reason you’re doing that, is in turn because you have imbibed so much marxoid doctrine in the academy that you’re not even aware of it, or you think its nostrums are just part of the unquestionable fabric of reality, such as the marxoid belief that capitalism is intrinsically exploitative, or that “monopolisation” (no definition) is intrinsically bad, or the assumption (no explanation) that the state is some kind of benevolent institution with competence to allocate scarce resources to their most valued ends.

So you’re actually deep in Marxism and all its totalitarian tendencies without realising it, or erroneously thinking your theory is ethically and economically superior although based on Marxist premises that you yourself disclaim.

Yebiga
“naturally led me to read quite a bit about libertarianism: Hayek, Mises”

Did you read any original works by Mises or Hayek? Or did you read *about* them second-hand by non-libertarians?

“freedom of speech, protection of individual rights, separation of powers, individual liberty, freedom of religion, etc.”

These are libertarian values. The only reason we have them is because libertarians in times past opposed all the arguments you have been opposing to mine.

“the US has increasingly betrayed [those standards].”

Based on arguments in favour of arbitrary power that you have been advocating.

“But the times they are a changing.”

The times are always changing.

That fact doesn’t mean that the truths which are common ground between us, cease to be truths, and that all of a sudden coercive central planning is morally or pragmatically superior.

“Your looking for the enemy of libertarianism in the wrong place.”

No I’m not. Anyone advocating the violent overriding of liberty is an enemy of libertarianism, and the worst in our society are the self-preening self-called “progressives”, for the reason I gave in my first two paragraphs of this post.

“The over educated post modernist long ago gave up any agency.”

What do you mean by “agency”?

“The true enemy to libertarianism and even capitalism is neither the government, Marx, the humanities nor postmodernists –“

The true enemy to liberty is anyone advocating force or threats against consensual peaceable activities, of which by far the wost offenders are the government and the marxoid postmodernists and green Nazis.

“the enemy is the mega oligopoly. Your angst is directed at symptoms not causes.”

*Nothing* you have said has established either proposition; nor given any reason for state funding of the humanities; nor reflected how that’s causing the problems that you criticise in the humanities.

Notice you haven’t
a) defined “mega oligopoly”
b) explained why it’s bad
c) distinguished what’s bad about it, from things you concede good and necessary in social and economic life in general, and
d) given any reason why it’s “the enemy” of liberty, if it’s the outcome of voluntary transactions and mutual benefit, nor
e) given any reason why the mega monopoly of government would be any solution.

Again, without being aware of it, and thinking you stand for the opposite, you’re making Marxist doctrine the basis of your political philosophy.

But go back to the Greeks. If you do nothing more than apply the principles of logic to what you and others are saying, the very least benefit, is entitle you to conclude something’s wrong if an argument rests on self-contradiction. Okay? Fair enough?

We have seen here that none of those who claim the salvageability of Marx’s theory can defend it without relying on the parts of the Marx’s theory that they themselves concede to be erroneous http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16050&page=0

“Oligopoly” is just another marxoid bogeyman, as is “monopolisation”. Obviously if you can’t sustain your argument without falling back to Marxist premises that you concede are wrong, then you’re contradicting yourself in arguing that oligopoly is the enemy of liberty.

Tell you what. If you will start a thread explaining the case against “mega oligopoly”, taking care to answer my five questions a) to e) above, I’ll explain why it’s not a problem.

Or alternatively, please take the time to read Rothbard’s detailed exegesis here:
http://mises.org/books/mespm.pdf
Chapter 10 – Monopoly and Competition – page 629.

“I see no possibility for libertarianism to gain power and implement its program.”

Well there was a time when people could see no possibility for the abolition of slavery. Then within quite a short time – (thanks to those who never ceased arguing the case for liberty ahem!) - it was abolished throughout most of the world – except the socialists keep arguing it’s good to the extent labour is coerced by the state, which is what you’re defending here!

In practice, the possibilities for the progress of liberty depend on how many people *understand* that the arguments of the statists are false. So we can never advance that possibility by acquiescing in slavery or being silent.

But even if we knew definitely that murder or rape could never be gotten rid of, that would not excuse them, and so I choose to put forward the arguments for liberty regardless.

“Rather, I see the current system merely cherry picking parts of the program to enable its own agenda and with the objective of inevitably discrediting libertarianism.”

No doubt you are right, as concerns the non-libertarian parties. But again, that is no reason to acquiesce, still less to add one’s voice to theirs.

“The humanities you rail against is not a humanities worthy of the name, as it has deliberately been eviscerated into its current ridiculous impotence.”

Well that’s no reason to to argue in favour of state funding of the humanities, or ignore the state's role in prostituting them, is it?