Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Walter Block Responds to Critics of His Call to Hold Your Nose and Support Union Thugs

The hate mail, fan mail and serious critiques of Walter Block's call to support union thugs in Wisconsin has come pouring in.

Professor Block has, as is his style, taken the time to carefully respond to the serious criticisms, including some of those made in the comment section here at EPJ. Professor Block's response is here.

7 comments:

  1. I'm the guy who mentioned "Alongside Night." In that book, which is available for free download, there is an effort to save the monetary system, and by extension, the government, by adopting a gold standard. The agorists, the heroes of the book, want no such thing. They don't want ANY government, even one radically scaled back. It was this particular plot element that I was thinking of when I read Walter's own reasoning on the Wisconsin situation.

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  2. Maybe it's our sports culture that one has to root for someone in a dispute. I just don't look at it like that. I just want to advance liberty. Mr. Block now explains that he wants to prolong the conflict in the process weakening both sides. I was thinking if we strip the unions of some of their booty, they would try to take some of the infamous Kochs' booty in response, that way weakening both parties and actually benefiting us. But we can also weaken both sides by teaching, pointing out the true nature of unions and and government. We have an opportunity to reach a huge audience. I have done my humble share, using Oppenheimer's distinctions and Dr. Block's writings on unions for example Let us not miss such an opportunity for education by engaging in fruitless side issues. I mean "who ya rooting for?, really? Also agree that kids missing school can only do them good, and the fact that Democratic senators refuse to conduct business does the whole state good.

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  3. If I may add, the campaign for liberty has taken this opportunity to bring up the issue of right to work laws.Which I found quite constructive.

    http://www.chooseliberty.org/wisconsin.aspx?pid=dnd1

    As for me I thought we could use this opportunity to push for separation of state and school. Though it seems too early to push this radical solution, when the situation worsens, we may have a better chance. I tried to contact the separation of school and state organization to take over the administer position of their dormant facebook page but have not heard back. I am developing my own page now.

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  4. Funny Prof Block quotes Hoppe, but yet advocates that the multi-headed hydra monster lives on.
    I think getting rid of the unions gives the people a much clearer target as to who the enemy is.
    All this "weakening" would be great if the people were getting "jacked & pumped", but they are being weakened too.

    Xe & all other NGO mercenary forces vs Pentagon in some type of dispute.
    If such a battle were to occur, I would favor the Pentagon knowing that once Xe and all the other mercenary NGOs are out of the way the Pentagon would have to shoulder the whole war effort and the people could focus on the Pentagon.

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  5. I still disagree with Professor Block. If he wants them both to be weakened, seems to me that the best thing to do is bust the union. Why stop at just weakening it, especially since in the case of public sector unions, they make up a part of the government. Perhaps he was just trying to increase web traffic... I'm still not following his logic, but then again I've never been the brightest.

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  6. Nobody is saying that Dr. Block doesn't want the union busted. He just wants the fight to go the distance.

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  7. I guess there is some value in seeing a battle between two evils persist, but then again the victor of the battle may become even stronger during the process (not a benefit to Blockian libertarians). Of course, this would be an adverse response to the desire for a prolonged battle.

    A similar position of the two-evils-battling-is-good argument would advocate applying for as much food stamps and welfare as possible in order to bring down the entitlement system. However, I feel the result would be government interpreting the benefit-spike as a justification for a prolonged dependency on entitlements.

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