Originally Posted by
Beady 
My problem with it is that the abolition of marriage (as we know it) simply isn't going to happen; it's one of the bedrock institutions of pretty much every society. So why base your actions on an impossibility?
Well, perhaps because they believe that if they decide to compromise, then there's absolutely no chance of the changes they want getting made.
But that's my point. Compromise or not, the abolition of the civil recognition of marriage (ie marriage licenses) and all that goes with it *is* an impossibility. Not only are Libertarians blind to the fact that they are wasting their energy on such an issue, they also don't seem to appreciate the damage they are doing to their credibility.
I don’t think he was for the abolition of marriage. Rather he most likely thought that it’s a social institution that government shouldn’t be involved in.
Yes, but tell me: *How* do you seperate government from marriage? If you reduce marriage to nothing more than a social contract, how do you impose, say, survivor rights? What about family housing for the military? What about divorces, if married couples are denied access to the courts?
That last is another issue: to grant the court's authority over divorce is to inherently admit that government can regulate marriage to an arguable degree. To deny the courts that authority is to deny an entire class of citizens access to legal redress. Again, it seems to me that the Libertarans are engaged in another lose-lose situation.
To me, the fundamental flaw in viewing the marketplace as self-regulating (as if it were somehow subject to the scientific method) is the refusal to acknowledge that it is designed and operated by human beings, who are fundamentally flawed. Humans almost always seek self-serving short-term answers to long-term problems. To paraphrase Barbara Tuchman, corporations always work against their own interests. General Motors, et al, almost went under because they refused to acknowledge the changing world; IBM had problems in the home computer market because they figured they could tell the public what the public wanted; need I mention Enron, the banks, etc?
If we could plug the marketplace into computers and let it run on cold logic, it might work, but it won't work as long as human intervention is possible. I don't see much chance of that happening as long as human nature is a factor.
