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An Anonymous Coward writes:
Found this interesting bit of history at the NY Times
George H. W. Bush: Hello, Mikhail.
Mikhail S. Gorbachev: George, my dear friend. It is good to hear your voice.
G.B.: I greet you on this momentous day, this historic day. I appreciate your calling me.
M.G.: Let me begin by saying something pleasant to you: Merry Christmas to you, Barbara and your family. I had been thinking about when to make my statement, Tuesday or today. I finally decided to do it today, at the end of the day. So let me say first Merry Christmas and very best wishes.
Well, let me say that in about two hours I will speak on Moscow TV and will make a short statement about my decision. I have sent a letter to you, George. I hope you will receive it shortly. I said in the letter a most important thing. And I would like to reaffirm to you that I greatly value what we did working together with you, first as vice president and then as president of the United States. I hope that all leaders of the commonwealth and, above all, Russia understand what kind of assets we have accrued between the leaders of our two countries. I hope they understand their responsibility to preserve and expand this important source of capital.
Gorbachev goes on to say that he is handing off control of the USSR's nukes to Russia in an organized fashion. Bush thanks him for that and then recalls the fun they had tossing horseshoes at Camp David.
With all the talk of Trump and Putin being business buddies, it looks like there is at least some precedent of the two cold war country leaders carrying on a civil conversation.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Wednesday January 04 2017, @01:30AM
Well I've got lots, but what would be useful for you would probably depend on what areas of concern you have with ancap thinking (and possibly on what you've already read). A very good recommendation, I think, is Murray Rothbard's book about money [mises.org]. It was an utter shock to me to learn that monetary systems could work with zero government involvement, and it was probably a big part of what made me finally conclude that everything could work without government involvement. If that subject interests you, there are other books about times private systems of money have arisen and worked well that I haven't gone on to read.
Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson [fee.org] isn't exactly anarcho-capitalist, but it's regarded as a classic, and it's hard to read the recurring pattern of "this would be better if the government wouldn't intervene" so often without tending towards concluding that it would always be better if there were no government intervening.
The Philosophy of Liberty [youtube.com] is an animated presentation that I think is very persuasive for the moral case for anarcho-capitalist thinking, that whatever it is we think we can't get without government force, it still doesn't become moral to get what we want at the expense of the freedom of others instead of by their voluntary participation.
None of these areas may interest you or have anything to do with your objections to ancap thinking, so these may not be useful, but maybe some of them will be.
For what it's worth I have never read any Ayn Rand. Everyone seems to regard her as indispensible or intolerable, but I've just simply never read her stuff. Apparently it's not indispensible, at least.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 04 2017, @12:56PM
Thanks!