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Jens 'n' Frens
Idle thoughts of a relatively libertarian Republican in Cambridge, MA, and whomever he invites. Mostly political.
"A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures."
-- Daniel Webster
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Monday, June 16, 2003 :::
I'm at the BU School of Management library, largely to avoid the distractions of my room, but I'm realizing again that that's only going to work if I leave the Ethernet cable at home.
In today's G-File (which is less weird than the author seems to think), Jonah Goldberg talks -- eventually -- about spam.
It seems to me that a conservative — as opposed to a libertarian or a liberal — should not have an inordinate fear of the state or an inordinate love of the unregulated free market. This requires conservatives to prefer nuance and balance over On-Off-switch arguments.
This is generally true, but I think all but the most hard-core ideologues would agree with it. I'm willing to see some government involvement in handling the externalities uncovered by making it easy to bother large groups of people. I have more love of the free market, and more fear of the state, than Jonah, let alone Caldwell. I think most pragmatic libertarians will agree that the free market is good for those circumstances where people incur the costs and benefits of their decisions, and while there are some costs at the receiving end of junk mail or door-to-door salesmen, the costs on the selling end are significant enough to keep things from getting out of hand. With email (in its current form), this isn't the case.
It should be remembered, though, that unintended consequences of legislative action tend to be more permanent than "mistakes" in the market. So I'd like to err on the side of looking for more techincal solutions. I anticipate adding to this entry later -- I'm going to undistract myself a little.
::: posted by Steven at 4:12 PM
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