Posted on 08/24/2010 6:31:10 AM PDT by AccuracyAcademia
When garden variety academics leave their ivory cocoons, they are really at a loss. Recently, Notre Dame University philosophy professor James P. Sterba tried to sell the libertarian Cato Institute on the “right” to welfare. “You’re not at the ABA anymore Jim,” his co-panelist Jan Narveson, chided him.
Narveson is a professor emeritus at the University of Waterloo. Indeed, Sterba’s understanding of liberty might be more at home at the American Bar Association. “I submit that the liberty of the poor, which is the liberty not to be interfered with in taking from the surplus resources of others what is required to meet one’s basic needs, is morally enforceable over the liberty of the rich, which is the liberty not to be interfered with in using one’s surplus resources for luxury purposes,” Sterba wrote in Are Liberty and Equality Compatible?
Narveson was more comfortable at Cato. “I have no sympathy for welfarism as a cure for poverty,” he said. “It is not a cure.”
“It perpetuates it.” To be fair, Sterba was more than a good sport in coming to Cato to begin with, though he did betray a bit of culture shock.
“I’m listening,” he said. “I’m trying to listen.”
Then he mumbled, “Maybe I’m biased.” It should be noted that bias does not come up in his singular, albeit negative, ratemyprofessors.com review.
(Excerpt) Read more at academia.org ...
The philosophy of the looter.
Notre Dame, a Catholic communist school. Who on earth is wasting $35,000 a year sending their kids to be indoctrinated with this rubbish ?
“I submit that the liberty of the poor, which is the liberty not to be interfered with in taking from the surplus resources of others what is required to meet one’s basic needs, is morally enforceable over the liberty of the rich, which is the liberty not to be interfered with in using one’s surplus resources for luxury purposes,” Sterba wrote in Are Liberty and Equality Compatible?
There in lies the answer for those trying to thwart the ‘progressive’ agenda. If you are in ‘production’, the key is not to produce excess or ‘surplus’.
Who gets to say?
Who gets to say what a ‘surplus’ is?
Who gets to say what is ‘poor’and what is ‘rich’?
Who gets to say what are ‘basic needs’?
The ruling class, that’s who.
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