There Must Be A Pony In Here Somewhere!

It's been blogged all over the place by now - I got it from Julia -but I just can't resist linking to this masterful deconstruction of libertarian philosophy, from John & Belle Have a Blog.

Reason recently published a debate held at its 35th anniversary banquet. The flavor of this discussion is indescribable. In its total estrangement from our political and social life today, its wilfull disregard of all known facts about human nature, it resembles nothing so much as a debate over some fine procedural point of end-stage communism, after the state has withered away. [...]

Just wish that we might all live in a state of perfect liberty, free of taxation and intrusive government, and that we should all be wealthier as well as freer. Now wish that people should, despite that lack of any restraint on their actions such as might be formed by policemen, functioning law courts, the SEC, and so on, not spend all their time screwing each other in predictable ways ranging from ordinary rape, through the selling of fraudulent stocks in non-existent ventures, up to the wholesale dumping of mercury in the public water supplies. (I mean, the general stock of water from which people privately draw.) Awesome huh? But it gets better. Now wish that everyone had a pony.

Go read the whole thing, and then follow it up with Brad DeLong's invitation of a few more people - Adam Smith, Thomas Hobbes, David Hume - to the Reason dinner-debate.