Does that heading sound suitably ominous to you? Yes? Then let's begin.

Libertarianism seems to have become the topic du jour recently among
Australian bloggers. Ken Parish started getting stuck into it by noting the persuasiveness of libertarian arguments in moral and interpersonal terms and the inadequacy of same in economic terms. Here's how it's developed since then.

John Quiggin offered his own critique of Robert Nozick.

Brian Weatherson observed that Prof. Q. may have an argument against Nozick, just not the one he intended. Immediately after, Chris Bertram thought Nozick shouldn't be dismissed that lightly.

Gummo Trotsky offered his own critique of Nozick and Ayn Rand.

John Quiggin offered "more serious objections to libertarianism".

Jason Soon belatedly joined in the conversation with a lengthy critique of John's second post.

John McVey insisted that he is an Objectivist, not a libertarian, and explained why at length.

John Quiggin responded to Jason's post.

No doubt the discussion will go on. Most of these posts have been attended by lengthy comments threads furthering the discussion. I find it interesting that although people from Samizdata and the ALS have joined in the comments threads, there haven't been any posts that I could see on those sites themselves linking to the discussion in our corner of the blogosphere.

I don't intend to add to the discussion myself, as a lot of it gets bogged in economics which is something I know virtually nothing about. I'm just interested in the way the discussion has become so extensive in such a short amount of time. Ken's initial post appeared on the 7th of July. John Quiggin's last post appeared on the 14th. If this conversation were carried on in professional journals it would take months to play out. Imagine it, Ken would post his piece in the July issue of The Monthly Armadillo, John Quiggin would present his follow-up in the August issue of The Dismal Science Journal, Brian and Chris then respond in the September issue of Crooked Dead Tree Media, and so on... and imagine how long it would take for all the additional commentary to ensue.

In professional journals, then, you'd be looking at about four to six months for this discussion to fully play itself out (remember, the discussion is probably not entirely over yet). In weblogs, it's reached the point it has within a week. Which I suppose only goes to show that if blogging has done anything, it's done the following two things: 1) facilitated an unusually rapid turnover of ideas so that lengthy discussions of weighty matters can be carried out in fairly short order, and 2) completely fucked up one's perception of the passage of time. In a month's time, we'll all be onto something new and this discussion of libertarianism will feel like it took place a year ago, not a month ago...