As with many governmental philosophies, I think it's nice in theory and a bad idea in practice. A lot of libertarian ideas just seem naive when applied to the real world. To me, it's like trying to get as close to anarchy as possible without actually being anarchy.
I agree with Lithl. The principles are good, but in practice I don't trust society to be fair without a stronger form of centralized control that the people can decide through. Key point- I don't think the right to be selfish is a very important right.
The real problem is the market will never actually provide for some things. Its why we have (and need) public schools and its why we need some form of government provided health care. Also businesses need to be regulated. History has shown us time and time again that unregulated or poorly regulated markets and industries eventually lead to disaster.
The real problem is the market will never actually provide for some things. Its why we have (and need) public schools and its why we need some form of government provided health care. Also businesses need to be regulated. History has shown us time and time again that unregulated or poorly regulated markets and industries eventually lead to disaster.
That's basically the same notion I was getting at.
Perhaps the central, most irrevocable concern is that getting right of government control over people doesn't necessarily mean giving people freedom. Where one restriction of freedom falls, another rises to take it's place, most likely, business. Ultimately I believe Libertarianism just transfers power from government to businesses. Governments are supposed to represent the people, and businesses aren't, so really they should have that power- it's their role.
I think I'd be cooler with libertarianism if the world was fair and less complicated.
As it is, we've got millennia of messed up stuff to work through and a biosphere that needs management after several centuries of uncontrolled industry, so "no government, profits only, final destination" probably won't work.
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“Tell me who you walk with, and I'll tell you who you are.” Esmeralda Santiago Art is life itself.
As I see it, there are two kinda of libertarianism. There's one kind which I might call "Liberty is magic" and the other which I might call "Liberty above all". The followers of "Liberty above all" recognize that if we adopt a libertarian approach to government, the poor will suffer, the environment will suffer, discrimination will run rampant, etc. They are willing to pay those costs because they value liberty above all of that (and often because they belong to a social class, race, gender, etc. that make them unlikely to be the ones to feel those costs). The second type is the sort that believes everything will be magically fixed if only we got the government out of the way - they think that libertarianism and the free market would stamp out discrimination, would alleviate poverty, etc.
The "Liberty is magic" types are naive. The "Liberty above all" types are cruel.
I consider myself mostly a libertarian except I identify strongly with Teddy Roosevelt as far as protecting the environment and keeping businesses and the market actually open and fair. Having worked in the government I find it very hard to believe that government is the best at regulating anything.
I agree with Lithl. The principles are good, but in practice I don't trust society to be fair without a stronger form of centralized control that the people can decide through. Key point- I don't think the right to be selfish is a very important right.
Selfishness works both ways.
To pick on the poor, I encounter a depressing number of poor who willingly refuse to pick themselves up (theough work or some other means) because it's easier to be on welfare and it often pays better than a minimum wage job. The selfishness here is the unwillingness to get off of welfare.
Not to say all welfare recepients are strictly selfish in this manner. Some Wal*mart stores actually recommended their employees leverage welfare, foodbank and food donation programs last Thanksgiving because their employees weren't being paid enough. Is the selfishness here because the employees are "unwilling" to look for better work or Wal*Mart gouging employee pay because the employee can't work elsewhere? Hard to cast a net that wide.
Point is, there are selfish people on the receiving end as well.
I agree with Lithl. The principles are good, but in practice I don't trust society to be fair without a stronger form of centralized control that the people can decide through. Key point- I don't think the right to be selfish is a very important right.
Selfishness works both ways.
To pick on the poor, I encounter a depressing number of poor who willingly refuse to pick themselves up (theough work or some other means) because it's easier to be on welfare and it often pays better than a minimum wage job. The selfishness here is the unwillingness to get off of welfare.
Not to say all welfare recepients are strictly selfish in this manner. Some Wal*mart stores actually recommended their employees leverage welfare, foodbank and food donation programs last Thanksgiving because their employees weren't being paid enough. Is the selfishness here because the employees are "unwilling" to look for better work or Wal*Mart gouging employee pay because the employee can't work elsewhere? Hard to cast a net that wide.
Point is, there are selfish people on the receiving end as well.
Pretty much hit the nail on the head. The system we have in place takes the burden off of businesses and places it on the government. It is absurd that any full time employee needs to be on welfare while the business they work for is making ridiculous profits all while having their business plan subsidized. Now not that I think the country going libertarian is going to fix this issue overnight, but I don't see anything wrong with believing in an ideal form of human interaction and working toward that. When legislation controls how things are bought and sold, the first thing to be bought and sold are legislators.
Another thing to consider: A libertarian government doesn't exclude people from setting up their own communist or democratic socialist societies, but this doesn't work the other way around.
Imagine if someone proposed trying to build an upside-down pyramid in real life. Would an architect look at the blueprints and say, "Oh, well I really like how this idea works in theory, but I'm not sure it can work in real life?" Or should he instead maybe say, "No, this is dumb, this would never work in real life, the flaws with it are abundantly obvious, if you attempt to do this, you will get people killed, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?"
Obviously the second one, right?
With this in mind, allow me to point out a really simple fact: Governments aren't abstract, metaphysical things. They're real. They exist.
As such, to talk about ideas of government and say, "Oh, well I like this idea in principle, but it doesn't work in real life?" That means it doesn't work. Ideas that don't work in real life are ideas that don't work. You don't get points for your idea working in theory, every idea works in theory. That's how theories work. Anyone can theorize something will work, but that doesn't mean applying the idea will result in the theoretical outcome. This is Science 101.
So taking that into account, no, the Libertarians obviously don't have a leg to stand on. Yes, I admire Thomas Jefferson's ideals, and the idea of Jeffersonian Democracy has a nice charm to it. Doesn't change the fact that it was an idea that was even set aside by Jefferson himself back in 1803.
I understand the sentiment that we need more individual self-reliance and less emphasis on government. I believe this belief in the individual and this distrust of government is central to the ideals of our Founding Fathers and is what has historically made this nation great. However, I also acknowledge that we need government, and we need more government than just the bare minimum. The Industrial Revolution taught us that unchecked capitalism doesn't work. World War I and all that has come afterward has taught us that the Monroe Doctrine doesn't work. The current environmental crisis taught us that even with an EPA, our environmental protection laws as they stand do not work. The civil rights movement taught us that relying on the "invisible hand" to move the country towards equal rights does not work.
I understand why Libertarianism is compelling to true constitutional conservatives, particularly now that Trump has co-opted the Republican party. It is basically their economic philosophy of low government intervention (shared by the mainstream Republicans), only extended over social issues (which the R’s have given to the religious right) and foreign policy/immigration issues (which R’s have given over to White Nationalists). It is basically what the Republican party would be if it eliminated those other constituencies.
The thing is though, I find that lassiez-faire governing principle the most antiquated of all three (and that is saying something, xenophobic racism being what it is). At least religion and racism continued to hold a place in politics until the post war 20th century. It was at the late 19th century when it was directly disproved that billionaires would push working wages up if you just gave them more money, the mid to late 19th century when vaccinations, city sanitation and so on made organized medicine and health a government imperative, and the early 20th when an isolationist foreign policy showed itself to be dangerous.
If that timeline is any indication of practicality, there should be even more eyebrow-raising at the idea that government should leave these things up to private society as there have been at Trump’s suggestions to ban Mustlims, so on. It’s just an utterly disproven political idea.
So, at least the Republican policy as now constituted offers a contemporary position on social issues and foreign policy. Libertarianism is for 20 year old contrarians who really enjoyed their college course in 18th century economics.
I’ll also say that the idea isn’t very congruent with the idea of a democratic government that elicits the participation of its citizens. To have a government composed of representatives of the people, and then say that it doesn’t work, is saying that the people can’t or shouldn’t govern themselves to their own interests. If that’s so, then it seems like you’re really advocating for something like Monarchy, with an unaccountable, infallible ruler that has some sort of divine right as long as they don’t tax or jail his citizens. If you don’t like Democracy, that’s what you’d seem to be in support of. Some sort of rule similar to George III over the American Colonies, only without the taxation. Yeah, let me know how that works out.
I agree with Lithl. The principles are good, but in practice I don't trust society to be fair without a stronger form of centralized control that the people can decide through. Key point- I don't think the right to be selfish is a very important right.
Selfishness works both ways.
To pick on the poor, I encounter a depressing number of poor who willingly refuse to pick themselves up (theough work or some other means) because it's easier to be on welfare and it often pays better than a minimum wage job. The selfishness here is the unwillingness to get off of welfare.
Not to say all welfare recepients are strictly selfish in this manner. Some Wal*mart stores actually recommended their employees leverage welfare, foodbank and food donation programs last Thanksgiving because their employees weren't being paid enough. Is the selfishness here because the employees are "unwilling" to look for better work or Wal*Mart gouging employee pay because the employee can't work elsewhere? Hard to cast a net that wide.
Point is, there are selfish people on the receiving end as well.
Pretty much hit the nail on the head. The system we have in place takes the burden off of businesses and places it on the government. It is absurd that any full time employee needs to be on welfare while the business they work for is making ridiculous profits all while having their business plan subsidized. Now not that I think the country going libertarian is going to fix this issue overnight, but I don't see anything wrong with believing in an ideal form of human interaction and working toward that. When legislation controls how things are bought and sold, the first thing to be bought and sold are legislators.
Another thing to consider: A libertarian government doesn't exclude people from setting up their own communist or democratic socialist societies, but this doesn't work the other way around.
Right at the end there, you get at the problem with relinquishing power in order to produce freedom- others will take that power. A societal structure that exhibit very little control is easy to simply be changed. You've expressly stated that such a society would allow other sorts of orders within it (I presume this is what you mean). You know what I think will happen? One of those orders is not going to like your society and there going to start controlling it. Power in a society does not come from an institution, the institution is just a sampling, the real entity at work is human behaviour. Government is just one way behavior can be expressed, but there are countless others. If you want to address problems in the way people are acting, there are far more effective ways than cutting of one head of the hydra just because it's the scariest to you at the moment.
Libertarianism has a vast amount of conflicting ideas inside it, so I don't like to speak of it monolithically.
That said, the basic issue is pretty simple. The movement values "Freedom" because "freedom" because "freedom". If something increased freedom, good. If something decreases freedom, bad. Why freedom good? Because freedom. Is anything else good? Not if it reduces freedom. Because freedom is good.b
When you state it that simply, it's pretty clear why the philosophy results in absurdities like people arguing you should be allowed to juggle vials of smallpox in the middle of an urban center - and no police officer should be allowed to stop you... But the private citizens can naturally stop you, because they're acting in self defense. I've seriously run into normally quite smart people arguing this (after I posed the scenario to reveal the isseus with their line of thought).
It's better to ask, "what makes society better" not, "how do we get as free as possible without everyone dying". Traffic lights make society better. It's a net win.
While a lot of self-named libertarians might be pro traffic light, that seems to be more a product of fortunate common sense than anything you could credit to the ideology itself.
I like the idea of libertarianism, because I support liberty. I dont believe it is right to force people to pay for the poor. If you want to give to the poor then by all means do so, but dont force others to give to the poor. Basically, you are free to do what you want unless it violates other people's rights and the government's only purpose is to protect peoples' rights.
The thing is, saying “I don’t think the government should force citizens to do X, Y, Z” is giving you a blank check to avoid doing whatever it is that you don’t like. For example, “I don’t feel that governments should incarcerate people for theft, because I want to steal me some nachos.” That’s really just you drawing the line around some act as being part of “Freedom”, and saying this must be freedom because it’s grammatically possible to label that as freedom.
You might say, “Oh, but people have property rights, and the government’s duty is to protect those.” Well, someone else could also say, “human beings have a right to medical care, free education K-12, etc, etc”. Neither of you would be wrong. And no, the constitution does not grant property rights, or any other affirmative rights, it only details the processes of government and what the federal government is not allowed to do. It doesn’t define limits on what rights we do have.
The real question are the social norms that go into the definition of “freedom”. You could view that as what amounts to those “rights” when you say, “the government’s only purpose is to protect peoples’ rights.” You could also view it as the “social contract”, the tacit agreement between government and its citizens. However you view it, the ingredients of that are defined by social norms, not the dictionary definition of “liberty”. Government provides what citizens expect it to provide, which are then labeled as “rights”. But, those expectations do change over time. In return, citizens deliver certain things to the government.
And on being “forced” into providing tax revenue as our part, sorry, this relationship between citizens and government is bi-lateral. And, it was determined by people long before you or I got here. No, the government does not need to get everyone’s express written consent at birth to be part of it. You are part of it whether you like it or not, and the government will ask you for your part, whether you like it or not. You have no more right to claim to be exempt from that obligation than the States do to secede from the union.
Specifically, the Constitution is what the polity of the US agreed to be governed by, and it reads among the enumerated powers for the Legislative Branch (Art. 1, Sec. 8):
“The Congress shall have power… to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common defense and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;”
You can certainly believe in a political philosophy that is against the Constitution, but don’t expect your views to be represented by a major party if you do. Our representatives each swear oaths to uphold the Constitution. Taking out the legislature’s power to provide for the general welfare would at least take an amendment, and I doubt there would be any political traction for it. To my knowledge, that’s not in the Libertarian party platform either. So, who knows what anyone means when they say paying for welfare is a restriction of liberty.
Samantha Bee (formerly of the Daily Show) had a segment on her own show where she visited the Libertarian party convention. Some of the candidates for their presidential nominee were against driver licenses.
@Stairc, Roads will be privatized, the entity who owns these roads will be able to install traffic lights.
@Dox, public schools would be replaced with private schools. We don't need government provided healthcare, privatized health care does the job even better.
@Tiax, libertarianism will help the poor, but only if they are willing and able to work. global warming is a lie. you could argue that those who want to discriminate are being discriminated against in favor of those who don't want their feelings hurt.
I think it's the single greatest barrier to the progress of humanity. Every Libertarian I've come across wants the freedom to be a lazy pot smoking lump while benefiting from the system they blame for all their problems. It's simple a reflex to the eventual unification of world governments. The movement will either fall in line, be allowed to exist in a small minority with little to no impact, or removed from existence.
I agree. We should all only play g/x decks because they are the most objectively fun and anyone who disagrees does not know the truth about EDH. Everyone should just play their decks because interaction beyond high fiving about how many land are in play is unfun and equivalent to casting Stasis while kicking puppies. I for one will never play with anyone who casts tutors, removal spells, blue cards, things I arbitrarily decide I don't like but will probably cast myself later.
Freedom is all good and well, but only when it makes things better for people as a whole. Freedom with no positive purpose just doesn't seem to add to society, and that seems to be the end result/goal of Libertarianism as far as I can tell. A lot of freedom, but the kind of freedom that seems like it would end in social Darwinism.
@Dox, public schools would be replaced with private schools. We don't need government provided healthcare, privatized health care does the job even better.
No they wouldn't. If the government didn't provide education then the vast majority of children would go without it because their parents cannot afford it which is without a doubt a detriment to society. Same with health care. While privatized health care is higher in quality it is not available for everyone due to cost.
The global average temperature of almost every month is higher every year than the previous one, and the ten warmest years in the global average are all within the last few years.
We're sitting on 404ppm atmospheric Carbon Dioxide, up from an average 370 a few years back. That's interacting with sea water and making the oceans more acidic, causing issues with carbonate production and hurting sealife.
The ranges of various disease-carrying and famine causing species are changing due to the heat and humidity. Added to the increased incidence of droughts, you can see these climate effects in the behavior of refugees: people are abandoning their families homes in part because they literally can't grow enough food.
While I mention refugees I should point out that the average sea level is increasing to a degree that people are abandoning low Pacific Islands because their aquifers are filling with salt water and/or the ground floor of their houses are under the high tide line.
I live in a Pacific Island nation (NZ) so maybe I'm biased but I feel like if you were paying literally any attention at all to the state of the world, you'd know global warming was happening because you'd be able to see the effects. This is what I meant when I mentioned "a biosphere needing management".
I'm not gonna copypaste in all my sources, but here's a reasonably good/depressing discussion of the state of things. [link]
The global average temperature of almost every month is higher every year than the previous one, and the ten warmest years in the global average are all within the last few years.
We're sitting on 404ppm atmospheric Carbon Dioxide, up from an average 370 a few years back. That's interacting with sea water and making the oceans more acidic, causing issues with carbonate production and hurting sealife.
The ranges of various disease-carrying and famine causing species are changing due to the heat and humidity. Added to the increased incidence of droughts, you can see these climate effects in the behavior of refugees: people are abandoning their families homes in part because they literally can't grow enough food.
While I mention refugees I should point out that the average sea level is increasing to a degree that people are abandoning low Pacific Islands because their aquifers are filling with salt water and/or the ground floor of their houses are under the high tide line.
I live in a Pacific Island nation (NZ) so maybe I'm biased but I feel like if you were paying literally any attention at all to the state of the world, you'd know global warming was happening because you'd be able to see the effects. This is what I meant when I mentioned "a biosphere needing management".
I'm not gonna copypaste in all my sources, but here's a reasonably good/depressing discussion of the state of things. [link]
That doesn't matter. You'll find that in the American political system, one's belief's are fact, but not all facts are accepted. For example, violent crime is at a historic low, but most Americans believe it is at an all time high. The constitution was written by the framers, yet you will find a significant portion of the population (that votes and impact policy) that truly believe Jesus descended from the heavens in a silvery chariot and presented the constitution to the American people. A large portion of Americans believe that the United States is a Christian nation.... yet their constitution (which they love so much) specifically states that church and state must be separate. Just look at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNdkrtfZP8I. Facts don't matter. Scientific facts not only do not matter in discourse, but the population is not equipped to understand what you're saying. It's like a human having a conversation with a gecko. You're the human, capable of thinking. The global warming denier is the gecko and just acts on reptilian instinct. Whenever someone like MTGTCG hears catch tags like "global warming" their mind is no longer receptive to facts as their belief supersedes whatever you say.
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I agree. We should all only play g/x decks because they are the most objectively fun and anyone who disagrees does not know the truth about EDH. Everyone should just play their decks because interaction beyond high fiving about how many land are in play is unfun and equivalent to casting Stasis while kicking puppies. I for one will never play with anyone who casts tutors, removal spells, blue cards, things I arbitrarily decide I don't like but will probably cast myself later.
The constitution was written by the framers, yet you will find a significant portion of the population (that votes and impact policy) that truly believe Jesus descended from the heavens in a silvery chariot and presented the constitution to the American people.
@Stairc, Roads will be privatized, the entity who owns these roads will be able to install traffic lights.
But then, people don’t obey those traffic lights, because there is no traffic enforcement.
Then, maybe some road owners would employ traffic cops, three shifts a day, seven days a week. When they projected the costs of that, maybe the tolls on the roads would be around $20 a mile. But we’d all be rich under libertarian rule, right?
But maybe at some point they would realize that the thugs they hired to patrol the roads actually have no legitimacy whatsoever to do so, because of the 13th amendment of the Constitution. They would be constantly embroiled in litigation for torts like assault, false imprisonment, etc, about 100 times what current legitimate police departments actually are. All as private causes of action with lower thresholds of proof. But hey, let’s try it. I’m an attorney, and I could use the work.
Even then, the owners of roads would compete against one another, with the best funded owners buying progressively bigger sections of roads, better thugs, and better defendants attorneys in tort. Until at one point, one of these owners owns a section of roads so big or a road or bridge so critical that he can literally charge whatever he wants, and people would have to pay it. He could also use the threat of closing all the roads and bridges to coerce businesses, governments, and everyone at large into giving into his demands on basically any issue.
Wait, that exact thing actually happened. About 150 years ago. Literally. Ever heard of Cornelius Vanderbilt? You’ll forgive the rest of us who actually know the results of this thought experiment that we don’t want to enact anything like this ever again.
@Dox, public schools would be replaced with private schools. We don't need government provided healthcare, privatized health care does the job even better.
Do you know what private babysitting costs? Not even education, but babysitting? It’s between $200 and $300 a week, per child. Do you know what the median household income is in the US? It’s about $1,000 a week. About 1 in 20 people make $300 a week or less. So for about half the country then, they are paying between 20% and 100% of their income for each child, just to have someone watch the child and make sure he/she doesn’t die of thirst (food and bathrooms cost more). For comparison the real debt to income ratio for HOUSING expenses is 38%, and you are saying it should be equally expensive just to have one child.
And, I won’t even touch the private, unsubsidized health care idea. People would just start dying of things like Appendicitis because the InstaCare doesn’t accept credit card.
@Tiax, libertarianism will help the poor, but only if they are willing and able to work. global warming is a lie. you could argue that those who want to discriminate are being discriminated against in favor of those who don't want their feelings hurt.
Hey, maybe they are poor because they are unable to work? Do you want those people safe and taken care of, or sitting in the streets like in India, Brazil, etc, ready to mug you for the $50 in your pocket just for walking into their slums? Do us a favor and look up images and videos of the shantytowns that exited in the US circa the 1880s-1930’s. Then tell me what an awesome country we would live in if we went back to that.
Also, keep in mind that most of the people who lived in these shantytowns in the industrial era US actually had work. Those would be people totally willing and able to work, but are unqualified for work that actually keeps pace with living expenses (not to mention all the extra expenses above of living in a Libertarian society). Only about 30-40% of the US has a Bachelor’s degree, which is roughly the same percentage of people who have an IQ of 110 or above. So, you are saying that for these 60-70% of people, it’s their fault that they’re not engineers, nurses, consultants, etc? Would you want to buy consulting services from someone with an IQ of 90?
Thing is, even those people who are one standard deviation ABOVE average are only fit for small administrative tasks or manual labor, at best, with low entry barrier jobs like food service at worst. Besides, libertarians don’t believe in minimum wage, right? Who knows if they’d still even be getting $7.25/hr for their time. You’d feel fine telling someone, “Hey, we know you did better than most of your classmates in High School, your test scores aren’t bad, and you’re a hard worker, but because you’re basically just a warm body in this service-led, technology-driven, asset-based economy here, you’ll have to live in a shanty town. Sorry.”
To you, that stands out as the most sound governing principle that there is? Honestly, the US tried a version very similar to it, and every person with a conscience agrees that it’s one of the most shameful things that has ever happened in this country. And that was about 100 years ago, much less now.
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helpful links:
What is Libertarianism?:
https://mises.org/library/what-libertarianism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism
What about Monopolies?:
https://mises.org/library/myth-natural-monopoly
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNrHFZDIAl8
What about the Poor?
https://mises.org/library/poor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkLg4wTKBak
-Minimum Wage
https://mises.org/library/crippling-nature-minimum-wage-laws
https://mises.org/library/mythology-minimum-wage
https://mises.org/library/welfare-minimum-wages-and-unemployment
-Welfare State
https://fee.org/articles/12-reasons-to-oppose-the-welfare-state/
https://mises.org/library/welfare-welfare-state
What about the problems of the Industrial Revolution?
https://mises.org/library/truth-about-robber-barons
https://fee.org/articles/a-myth-shattered-mises-hayek-and-the-industrial-revolution/
https://fee.org/articles/the-industrial-revolution-working-class-poverty-or-prosperity/
What about the Environment?:
https://mises.org/library/austrian-theory-environmental-economics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmds8R7lyw
Isolationism you say? But what about World War 2?:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2009/09/laurence-m-vance/rethinking-the-good-war/
What's so bad about our government?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUS1m5MSt9k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhSqzANQvbk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JYL5VUe5NQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2_dPLBlvDI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKANfuq_92U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmCn2vP-DEo
AnarchoCapitalism
-How would an AnarchoCapitalist society resolve legal disputes?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTYkdEU_B4o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khRkBEdSDDo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kPyrq6SEL0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qmMpgVNc6Y
-How would an AnarchoCapitalist society defend itself from invaders?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gl1b7jKYNTE
https://christophercantwell.com/2014/05/02/anarcho-capitalist-society-repel-invasion/
http://lionsofliberty.com/2012/10/10/intro-to-ancap-private-defense-pt-2-military-defense/
What are the best books to read about libertarianism?
https://mises.org/library/new-liberty-libertarian-manifesto (it's free)
https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Political-Authority-Examination-Coerce/dp/1137281650/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
That's basically the same notion I was getting at.
Perhaps the central, most irrevocable concern is that getting right of government control over people doesn't necessarily mean giving people freedom. Where one restriction of freedom falls, another rises to take it's place, most likely, business. Ultimately I believe Libertarianism just transfers power from government to businesses. Governments are supposed to represent the people, and businesses aren't, so really they should have that power- it's their role.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
As it is, we've got millennia of messed up stuff to work through and a biosphere that needs management after several centuries of uncontrolled industry, so "no government, profits only, final destination" probably won't work.
Art is life itself.
The "Liberty is magic" types are naive. The "Liberty above all" types are cruel.
Selfishness works both ways.
To pick on the poor, I encounter a depressing number of poor who willingly refuse to pick themselves up (theough work or some other means) because it's easier to be on welfare and it often pays better than a minimum wage job. The selfishness here is the unwillingness to get off of welfare.
Not to say all welfare recepients are strictly selfish in this manner. Some Wal*mart stores actually recommended their employees leverage welfare, foodbank and food donation programs last Thanksgiving because their employees weren't being paid enough. Is the selfishness here because the employees are "unwilling" to look for better work or Wal*Mart gouging employee pay because the employee can't work elsewhere? Hard to cast a net that wide.
Point is, there are selfish people on the receiving end as well.
Pretty much hit the nail on the head. The system we have in place takes the burden off of businesses and places it on the government. It is absurd that any full time employee needs to be on welfare while the business they work for is making ridiculous profits all while having their business plan subsidized. Now not that I think the country going libertarian is going to fix this issue overnight, but I don't see anything wrong with believing in an ideal form of human interaction and working toward that. When legislation controls how things are bought and sold, the first thing to be bought and sold are legislators.
Another thing to consider: A libertarian government doesn't exclude people from setting up their own communist or democratic socialist societies, but this doesn't work the other way around.
Obviously the second one, right?
With this in mind, allow me to point out a really simple fact: Governments aren't abstract, metaphysical things. They're real. They exist.
As such, to talk about ideas of government and say, "Oh, well I like this idea in principle, but it doesn't work in real life?" That means it doesn't work. Ideas that don't work in real life are ideas that don't work. You don't get points for your idea working in theory, every idea works in theory. That's how theories work. Anyone can theorize something will work, but that doesn't mean applying the idea will result in the theoretical outcome. This is Science 101.
So taking that into account, no, the Libertarians obviously don't have a leg to stand on. Yes, I admire Thomas Jefferson's ideals, and the idea of Jeffersonian Democracy has a nice charm to it. Doesn't change the fact that it was an idea that was even set aside by Jefferson himself back in 1803.
I understand the sentiment that we need more individual self-reliance and less emphasis on government. I believe this belief in the individual and this distrust of government is central to the ideals of our Founding Fathers and is what has historically made this nation great. However, I also acknowledge that we need government, and we need more government than just the bare minimum. The Industrial Revolution taught us that unchecked capitalism doesn't work. World War I and all that has come afterward has taught us that the Monroe Doctrine doesn't work. The current environmental crisis taught us that even with an EPA, our environmental protection laws as they stand do not work. The civil rights movement taught us that relying on the "invisible hand" to move the country towards equal rights does not work.
The thing is though, I find that lassiez-faire governing principle the most antiquated of all three (and that is saying something, xenophobic racism being what it is). At least religion and racism continued to hold a place in politics until the post war 20th century. It was at the late 19th century when it was directly disproved that billionaires would push working wages up if you just gave them more money, the mid to late 19th century when vaccinations, city sanitation and so on made organized medicine and health a government imperative, and the early 20th when an isolationist foreign policy showed itself to be dangerous.
If that timeline is any indication of practicality, there should be even more eyebrow-raising at the idea that government should leave these things up to private society as there have been at Trump’s suggestions to ban Mustlims, so on. It’s just an utterly disproven political idea.
So, at least the Republican policy as now constituted offers a contemporary position on social issues and foreign policy. Libertarianism is for 20 year old contrarians who really enjoyed their college course in 18th century economics.
I’ll also say that the idea isn’t very congruent with the idea of a democratic government that elicits the participation of its citizens. To have a government composed of representatives of the people, and then say that it doesn’t work, is saying that the people can’t or shouldn’t govern themselves to their own interests. If that’s so, then it seems like you’re really advocating for something like Monarchy, with an unaccountable, infallible ruler that has some sort of divine right as long as they don’t tax or jail his citizens. If you don’t like Democracy, that’s what you’d seem to be in support of. Some sort of rule similar to George III over the American Colonies, only without the taxation. Yeah, let me know how that works out.
Right at the end there, you get at the problem with relinquishing power in order to produce freedom- others will take that power. A societal structure that exhibit very little control is easy to simply be changed. You've expressly stated that such a society would allow other sorts of orders within it (I presume this is what you mean). You know what I think will happen? One of those orders is not going to like your society and there going to start controlling it. Power in a society does not come from an institution, the institution is just a sampling, the real entity at work is human behaviour. Government is just one way behavior can be expressed, but there are countless others. If you want to address problems in the way people are acting, there are far more effective ways than cutting of one head of the hydra just because it's the scariest to you at the moment.
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That said, the basic issue is pretty simple. The movement values "Freedom" because "freedom" because "freedom". If something increased freedom, good. If something decreases freedom, bad. Why freedom good? Because freedom. Is anything else good? Not if it reduces freedom. Because freedom is good.b
When you state it that simply, it's pretty clear why the philosophy results in absurdities like people arguing you should be allowed to juggle vials of smallpox in the middle of an urban center - and no police officer should be allowed to stop you... But the private citizens can naturally stop you, because they're acting in self defense. I've seriously run into normally quite smart people arguing this (after I posed the scenario to reveal the isseus with their line of thought).
It's better to ask, "what makes society better" not, "how do we get as free as possible without everyone dying". Traffic lights make society better. It's a net win.
While a lot of self-named libertarians might be pro traffic light, that seems to be more a product of fortunate common sense than anything you could credit to the ideology itself.
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The thing is, saying “I don’t think the government should force citizens to do X, Y, Z” is giving you a blank check to avoid doing whatever it is that you don’t like. For example, “I don’t feel that governments should incarcerate people for theft, because I want to steal me some nachos.” That’s really just you drawing the line around some act as being part of “Freedom”, and saying this must be freedom because it’s grammatically possible to label that as freedom.
You might say, “Oh, but people have property rights, and the government’s duty is to protect those.” Well, someone else could also say, “human beings have a right to medical care, free education K-12, etc, etc”. Neither of you would be wrong. And no, the constitution does not grant property rights, or any other affirmative rights, it only details the processes of government and what the federal government is not allowed to do. It doesn’t define limits on what rights we do have.
The real question are the social norms that go into the definition of “freedom”. You could view that as what amounts to those “rights” when you say, “the government’s only purpose is to protect peoples’ rights.” You could also view it as the “social contract”, the tacit agreement between government and its citizens. However you view it, the ingredients of that are defined by social norms, not the dictionary definition of “liberty”. Government provides what citizens expect it to provide, which are then labeled as “rights”. But, those expectations do change over time. In return, citizens deliver certain things to the government.
And on being “forced” into providing tax revenue as our part, sorry, this relationship between citizens and government is bi-lateral. And, it was determined by people long before you or I got here. No, the government does not need to get everyone’s express written consent at birth to be part of it. You are part of it whether you like it or not, and the government will ask you for your part, whether you like it or not. You have no more right to claim to be exempt from that obligation than the States do to secede from the union.
Specifically, the Constitution is what the polity of the US agreed to be governed by, and it reads among the enumerated powers for the Legislative Branch (Art. 1, Sec. 8):
“The Congress shall have power… to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common defense and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;”
You can certainly believe in a political philosophy that is against the Constitution, but don’t expect your views to be represented by a major party if you do. Our representatives each swear oaths to uphold the Constitution. Taking out the legislature’s power to provide for the general welfare would at least take an amendment, and I doubt there would be any political traction for it. To my knowledge, that’s not in the Libertarian party platform either. So, who knows what anyone means when they say paying for welfare is a restriction of liberty.
@Dox, public schools would be replaced with private schools. We don't need government provided healthcare, privatized health care does the job even better.
@Tiax, libertarianism will help the poor, but only if they are willing and able to work. global warming is a lie. you could argue that those who want to discriminate are being discriminated against in favor of those who don't want their feelings hurt.
I can't take you seriously if you honestly believe this...
We're sitting on 404ppm atmospheric Carbon Dioxide, up from an average 370 a few years back. That's interacting with sea water and making the oceans more acidic, causing issues with carbonate production and hurting sealife.
The ranges of various disease-carrying and famine causing species are changing due to the heat and humidity. Added to the increased incidence of droughts, you can see these climate effects in the behavior of refugees: people are abandoning their families homes in part because they literally can't grow enough food.
While I mention refugees I should point out that the average sea level is increasing to a degree that people are abandoning low Pacific Islands because their aquifers are filling with salt water and/or the ground floor of their houses are under the high tide line.
I live in a Pacific Island nation (NZ) so maybe I'm biased but I feel like if you were paying literally any attention at all to the state of the world, you'd know global warming was happening because you'd be able to see the effects. This is what I meant when I mentioned "a biosphere needing management".
I'm not gonna copypaste in all my sources, but here's a reasonably good/depressing discussion of the state of things. [link]
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That doesn't matter. You'll find that in the American political system, one's belief's are fact, but not all facts are accepted. For example, violent crime is at a historic low, but most Americans believe it is at an all time high. The constitution was written by the framers, yet you will find a significant portion of the population (that votes and impact policy) that truly believe Jesus descended from the heavens in a silvery chariot and presented the constitution to the American people. A large portion of Americans believe that the United States is a Christian nation.... yet their constitution (which they love so much) specifically states that church and state must be separate. Just look at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNdkrtfZP8I. Facts don't matter. Scientific facts not only do not matter in discourse, but the population is not equipped to understand what you're saying. It's like a human having a conversation with a gecko. You're the human, capable of thinking. The global warming denier is the gecko and just acts on reptilian instinct. Whenever someone like MTGTCG hears catch tags like "global warming" their mind is no longer receptive to facts as their belief supersedes whatever you say.
That's awesome. Let me just quickly build a private toll road around your entire house.
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But then, people don’t obey those traffic lights, because there is no traffic enforcement.
Then, maybe some road owners would employ traffic cops, three shifts a day, seven days a week. When they projected the costs of that, maybe the tolls on the roads would be around $20 a mile. But we’d all be rich under libertarian rule, right?
But maybe at some point they would realize that the thugs they hired to patrol the roads actually have no legitimacy whatsoever to do so, because of the 13th amendment of the Constitution. They would be constantly embroiled in litigation for torts like assault, false imprisonment, etc, about 100 times what current legitimate police departments actually are. All as private causes of action with lower thresholds of proof. But hey, let’s try it. I’m an attorney, and I could use the work.
Even then, the owners of roads would compete against one another, with the best funded owners buying progressively bigger sections of roads, better thugs, and better defendants attorneys in tort. Until at one point, one of these owners owns a section of roads so big or a road or bridge so critical that he can literally charge whatever he wants, and people would have to pay it. He could also use the threat of closing all the roads and bridges to coerce businesses, governments, and everyone at large into giving into his demands on basically any issue.
Wait, that exact thing actually happened. About 150 years ago. Literally. Ever heard of Cornelius Vanderbilt? You’ll forgive the rest of us who actually know the results of this thought experiment that we don’t want to enact anything like this ever again.
Do you know what private babysitting costs? Not even education, but babysitting? It’s between $200 and $300 a week, per child. Do you know what the median household income is in the US? It’s about $1,000 a week. About 1 in 20 people make $300 a week or less. So for about half the country then, they are paying between 20% and 100% of their income for each child, just to have someone watch the child and make sure he/she doesn’t die of thirst (food and bathrooms cost more). For comparison the real debt to income ratio for HOUSING expenses is 38%, and you are saying it should be equally expensive just to have one child.
And, I won’t even touch the private, unsubsidized health care idea. People would just start dying of things like Appendicitis because the InstaCare doesn’t accept credit card.
Hey, maybe they are poor because they are unable to work? Do you want those people safe and taken care of, or sitting in the streets like in India, Brazil, etc, ready to mug you for the $50 in your pocket just for walking into their slums? Do us a favor and look up images and videos of the shantytowns that exited in the US circa the 1880s-1930’s. Then tell me what an awesome country we would live in if we went back to that.
Also, keep in mind that most of the people who lived in these shantytowns in the industrial era US actually had work. Those would be people totally willing and able to work, but are unqualified for work that actually keeps pace with living expenses (not to mention all the extra expenses above of living in a Libertarian society). Only about 30-40% of the US has a Bachelor’s degree, which is roughly the same percentage of people who have an IQ of 110 or above. So, you are saying that for these 60-70% of people, it’s their fault that they’re not engineers, nurses, consultants, etc? Would you want to buy consulting services from someone with an IQ of 90?
Thing is, even those people who are one standard deviation ABOVE average are only fit for small administrative tasks or manual labor, at best, with low entry barrier jobs like food service at worst. Besides, libertarians don’t believe in minimum wage, right? Who knows if they’d still even be getting $7.25/hr for their time. You’d feel fine telling someone, “Hey, we know you did better than most of your classmates in High School, your test scores aren’t bad, and you’re a hard worker, but because you’re basically just a warm body in this service-led, technology-driven, asset-based economy here, you’ll have to live in a shanty town. Sorry.”
To you, that stands out as the most sound governing principle that there is? Honestly, the US tried a version very similar to it, and every person with a conscience agrees that it’s one of the most shameful things that has ever happened in this country. And that was about 100 years ago, much less now.