The social contract didn't come in being, replacing some idyllic or nasty state of individualism.

It's in the Bible! There was a garden, then there was a snake... and voila! Libertarianism!

"There may be two libertarians somewhere who agree with each other about everything, but I am not one of them."

--David Friedman

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/

Most of the anarcho-capitalists are cartoonish, Mona. It's

been called "vulgar libertarianism" by both liberals and conservatives.

And raise you a Baba Olatunji and a Kwaku Daddy.

http://www.olatunjimusic.com/

Kwaku Daddy is a neighbor. I used to see him down at the local watering hole all the time when he wasn't on tour or in the studio.

http://www.skwaku.com/

"You could not be more mistaken -- but then, most that you write about libertarians is utter horseshit."

But Mona, there is no agreement even among self-described libertarians what libertarianism is. Take it up with Friedman.

Michael Cloud once said, "Some libertarians succeed by re-inventing the wheel. Most libertarians fail by re-inventing the flat tire."

To which Mike Huben responded, "Most libertarians fail by re-inventing the flat tire. Michael Cloud profits by using Libertarian Persuasion to convince people that driving on the rims is a good thing."

Somehow this exchange reminds me of you.

"IMHO, drug use wouldn’t be a public health issue if it were legal in a licensed parlor, where the person who would be using the drug is placed alone in a padded room."

They are called bars. The bar stools are usually padded. I've even been in one bar that had seat belts on the bar stools. Crash helmets are not a bad idea over at the pool table. The pool cues and all... I'm sure it would be much worse if people were smoking pot, hash and opium. Seriously... not!

Did you catch this, Paul?

Collapse of center makes for a different political animal

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/bal-op.schaller02may02,0,7506945.column

Krugman's piece on him in the NYReview of books is good.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19857

Or he might have been blind, or dishonest? Friedman managed to overlook the subsidized housing, free medical care, free education in Hong Kong.

Milton Friedman’s Hong Kong Misconceptions

The late economist saw what he wanted to see and ignored some fundamental accommodations in Hong Kong’s laisser-faire economy

Milton Friedman was without doubt a great economist and, more important, one who, for good or ill, influenced politicians including Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Augusto Pinochet. But his much quoted praise for Hong Kong was based on brief visits and a tendency, the norm among economists as most other humans, to see only what he wanted to see.

So Friedman saw low taxes, private ownership of most utilities, no tariffs, no foreign exchange controls, no government intervention in industry. The low ratio of government spending to GDP in Hong Kong contrasted with that of its then-sovereign power, Britain, and explained much about the divergent economic performances of “socialist” Britain and “free” Hong Kong.

So determined was Friedman to defend his rosy version of Hong Kong’s economy, which he attributed to its 1960s Financial Secretary John Cowperthwaite, that just weeks before his death he claimed to be seeing state intervention that it “would no longer be such a shining example of economic freedom”.

What Friedman cared not to notice about the Hong Kong of the era of Cowperthwaite and later was that in three key areas of policy affecting the people the government was more socialist than its UK counterpart.

At one time 60 percent of the people lived in subsidized housing, mostly rented cheaply from the government, and some in Home Ownership Scheme flats, provided with cheap land and sold to lower-middle-income households. Even now that public housing has low priority and the home ownership scheme has ended, some 50 percent of the people still benefit from this massive intervention in the marketplace.

The intervention also partly accounts for the low apparent ratio of spending to gross domestic product. If the cost of the subsidized housing land were accounted for at market prices in the government budget, the ratio would be significantly higher.

Hong Kong people have also enjoyed almost free medical treatment at government clinics and hospitals. Friedman was against “free” medicine elsewhere but failed to notice it in Hong Kong. Likewise, education, at least up to the secondary level has long been almost entirely funded by the government.

In the days when Friedman was writing his praises for Hong Kong, the territory also had a relatively youthful workforce compared with western countries and thus less need for spending on pensions and help for the aged. Nor did Hong Kong have to spend anything significant on external security, the responsibility of London and now Beijing.

Friedman could actually have helped Hong Kong if he had criticized rather than ignored the excesses of these interventions in the marketplace. They had originally been spurred by fears of social unrest as the then-colony attempted to absorb waves of migrants from the mainland with nowhere but squatter huts to live.

It was necessary intervention in the marketplace. The government’s lack of ideological commitment to laisser faire was summed up by Cowperthaite’s successor, Philip Haddon-Cave, as “positive non-interventionism.” This bit of semantic gobbledegook essentially meant that it preferred not to intervene but had a paternal duty to do so on occasion...

http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=284&Itemid=34%20

Ideologues see what they want to see.