From: MW
Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2016 11:54 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Library fines.
Walter, You wiffed that one. If one considers the “library card” to be an agreement / contract between the borrower and the library, then one is obligated to honor the terms. It does not matter if said library is government owned or privately owned. There is an agreement in place with a penalty clause for late return of borrowed materials. The only morality involved is the honoring of the agreement. If you absolutely do not like (or hate) the library owner, then do not patronize said library. Regards, MW
Dear MW: Thanks for pointing out my “error.” However, we’ll have to agree to disagree. In my view, there are no valid contracts with robber gangs. It is entirely legitimate to sign a contract with one of them, and not honor it. You see governments as legitimate institutions. Here is what Murray Rothbard had to say about them:
“…there is no sign that David Friedman in any sense hates the existing American State or the State per se, hates it deep in his belly as a predatory gang of robbers, enslavers, and murderers. No, there is simply the cool conviction that anarchism would be the best of all possible worlds, but that our current set-up is pretty far up with it in desirability. For there is no sense in Friedman that the State – any State – is a predatory gang of criminals.”
“The radical cannot think in such terms, because the radical regards the State as our mortal enemy, which must be hacked away at wherever and whenever we can. To the radical libertarian, we must take any and every opportunity to chop away at the State, whether it’s to reduce or abolish a tax, a budget appropriation, or a regulatory power. And the radical libertarian is insatiable in this appetite until the State has been abolished, or – for minarchists – dwindled down to a tiny, laissez-faire role.”
12:03 pm on September 11, 2016
