My friend Walter Block, whom I took to task for his argument against Sheldon Richman's Libertarians Against Capitalism Facebook group, issued another rejoinder to Sheldon's blog post criticizing his commentary.
Knowing how ridiculous Block's argument is getting, there's nothing else to be said.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Walter Block Responds to Sheldon Richman Once Again
Posted by Todd Andrew Barnett at 1:01 PM
Labels: capitalism, free market, freed market, Sheldon Richman, Walter Block
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1 comments:
If the argument against "capitalism" is purely due to popular or historical semantics then his point should be well taken that all the words/phrases used more often then not are not understood the way a free market advocate would intend. "socialism", "libertarian", "anarchy", "market", etc. all have tainted (from our perspective)uses in most circles.
I'm of the opinion that all this arguing over semantics is a huge waste of otherwise intelligent individuals mental capacity. I can't say I've ever witnessed someone truly change their usage after one of these arguments. I think a far better approach to the problem is to educate people on the semantics generally. Use any words you like but do so in a context that the other party understands. Better to be long winded on semantics and have everyone on the same page than people using words that each have clearly differing definitions and therefore creating a failure to transmit ideas. Biases will always get in the way but so long as it is clear that we know which version of the word we are using I find conversations go *much* smoother even when the other party doesn't like that particular definition. It doesn't matter the historical or current general usages of a word. It matters only that the other people who you speak to know what you mean by X, Y and Z.
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