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To: annalex
I am not sure your sheep and wolf analysis is correct. The calculation is more apt to be investing $500 dollars in a rifle to dispatch the wolf verses $1,000 for the fence. To the price of the rifle you must add the anticipated cost of angering your neighbor and the possibility of retaliation. Then after considering the likelihood and potential value of your losses you decide on a course of action.

The point of my original reply concerning pre-emptive strikes was to assist me in a theoretical argument with Libertarian Party members. When the idea of a pre-emptive strike is introduced it leaves areas of gray; most Libertarians like everything in black and white. Those that adhere to a basic libertarian ideology are generally open to pre-emptive strikes but Libertarians that have taken the party pledge generally reject the idea. Maybe the only way to deal with Libertarians is to get them out of a theoretical world and into a real world, where decisions are not as simple and clear as the difference between black and white.

40 posted on 12/03/2001 7:14:01 PM PST by Free the USA
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To: Free the USA
The calculation is more apt to be investing $500 dollars in a rifle to dispatch the wolf verses $1,000 for the fence.

Why? That would be a cost and benefit analysis, not rights analysis. Besides my actions of shooting the wolf would be rightful or unrightful regardless of whether I have to buy a rifle. The proper rights analysis is to compare the costs of the two violations of rights. The wolf owner violates my rights at the price of the fence. I violate his rights at the price of the wolf. Of course, there are intangibles that I purposely excluded, reducing pet ownership to mere money, etc.

Libertarianism is a theory more than it is a casuistry. In theory we deal with hundred dollar wolves. In casuistry we deal with the recent helicopter attack on Arafat's headquarters. One can't understand the latter without the former.

44 posted on 12/03/2001 8:10:23 PM PST by annalex
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