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 THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE Number 770, May 11, 2014 What's my fair share of it all?
Send Letters to editor@ncc-1776.org
Re: "The Future of the Printed Book" by Sean Gabb Being a fan of A Canticle for Leibowitz and other literature in which the rebuilding of civilization was accelerated by access to old print books I hope the printed book survives. Printed books are also useful during a time of armed struggle. One can read them without creating any kind of electromagnetic signature for the enemy to detect and track down. Hopefully we will never test out either of these scenarios. However it seems the people who are committed to protecting civilization, peace, and liberty are all bibliophiles anyhow. Let the presses roll. A.X. Perez
Re: "The Future of the Printed Book" by Sean Gabb As long as the electronic counterparts to books are not self-reading—that is, they require a device on which to read them and probably electrical power for the device—printed books will have an honored and important place in our civilization. But watch out for something like those spinning rings in George Pal's 1950s movie version of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. They're coming, sooner or later. Meanwhile, I love the feel of my Kindle in my hand, and even the way it smells ... L. Neil Smith
Re: "The Future of the Printed Book" by Sean Gabb Until its bulk became too great, I used to keep hard copies of everything I wrote. I've had to give up on that. But I don't plan to get rid of my core library. I agree that the printed book will not go away soon. Sean Gabb
Re: "Thick As A Brick" by L. Neil Smith "Bob LeFevre horrified middle class housewives in his audience by saying that if a five-year-old came scratching at your door during a blizzard, you have no moral obligation to take it in." Which is part of the whole problem. Mr LeFevre may have no moral obligation to do so. You may not have one either. I do. But none of us should have a legal obligation to do so. Libertarianism, outside of the zero aggression principle, has no morality. Anyone who attempts to assign morality to it misses the point. Using it to address issues of morality, aside from initiation of force, is like using a hammer to turn a screw—you may be able to get it to work, but it's not the right tool and the results will not be pretty. Morality should be left to religions, philosophers, belief systems or a person's own thoughts. So long as their actions don't violate the zero aggression principle, I don't give a fig. Feeding or sheltering the poor, whether its proper have multiple sexual partners or to be monogamous, whether your cow is a sacred animal or lunch, whether or not to try and find the owner of the $100 bill you just found on the ground—those are moral issues that libertarianism has nothing to do with. Whether you can force me to conform to your beliefs on any of them is the only morality libertarianism addresses. Best regards,
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