on water distribution, why is this a problem? it is unlikely that a water provider would want to start charging monopoly prices as this is a highly ineffective strategy... communities that are gouged on water prices could truck in their water, get it from wells, or there could be a water providing business that approaches members of the community and agrees to build pipes and sell them water at a reasonable market price as long as the patrons agree to get their water from them for whatever amount of time is specified on the contract.
But the water provider can just stop them from doing that with your private protection agencies...
on how the legal system would work, people would patronize private protection agencies which would offer them dispute resolution services in exchange for a monthly fee. now you might ask couldn't big businesses ignore the private protection agencies? well the big businesses wouldn't be able to stay big for very long if they spent revenue on a private army instead of reinvesting it back into the business. now wouldn't the private protection agencies fight each other?, well the answer to that is that it is unlikely that two protection agencies would fight each other because it is expensive and would be bad press, instead they would negotiate the dispute or they would choose a mutually agreed upon arbitrator to decide on the case.
...If the only business that makes nuclear weapons decides "Why not branch out into selling water?" and threatens every other company with being nuked if they don't cease and desist from selling water, and gains control of all water supplies country-wide again with threat of being nuked, whatcha gonna do? No one else has the power to nuke. And this is how government forms in these anarchocapitalist situations. And not a positive government.
2. Who wants to subscribe to a rights enforcement agency that supports bad people? The answer is bad people. There are more good people than bad people, so good REAs beat bad REAs. It's not that hard...
This argument seems very naive. "There are more good people than bad people?" Jeez.
Doesn't this also contradict your "Everyone's out for themselves" philosophy? I mean, some of the biggest things about being a good person are generally altruism, empathy, and selflessness. But maybe you're going off of a different measure?
You did not specify an anarcho-capitalistic society in your post, and Blinking Spirit's second point you responded to with this clearly had nothing to do with anarcho-capitalism.
As far as I've seen, this seems to be the issue American Libertarians argue the most. Not if they should have equal rights, but who gets to make the laws to grant equal rights.
That's weird, as far as I've seen the libertarian party spends its time arguing over whether you should be able to sell heroine to children.
Can you defend this or are you just throwing this out there? I've seen no evidence prior to this point, confirmed or unconfirmed, to support this point.
Even in non-violent situations, I would imagine a more wealthy client could continue a grievance fight longer than someone who can barely afford their REA. Pro-tip: Most of the disputes will end pretty one sided, even giving you the benefit of the doubt that every case wouldn't come to violence.
I think that there's a logical assumption to libertarianism that is where this doesn't make sense to a libertarian: That everyone starts equal in the system, that everyone starts with a blank slate, the same degree of motives, etc... Because if everyone is a perfectly equal robot, then libertarianism would work. But when humans are different from each other, it doesn't work so well.
We aren't debating the creators of these videos, we are debating you.
... I still have an issue here that should be mentioned. This theoretical system encourages people to murder as long as their victim doesn't have someone who would/could definitely attempt revenge, either through a "rights enforcement agency," or themselves. Or, even if that person could, if the killer has enough money, they can still pay their way out of things. And there's no reason why a private judge and pair of arbitration companies wouldn't become corrupt. There's nothing to stop loopholes from forming by hiring specific agencies for the purpose of corrupt tax. Agencies have no reason to be globalized, and forming an agency is easy enough. So I form my two enforcement agencies, one to fake out people who I want to kill for the hell of it, and the other to protect me legally. I can replace the fake-out agency any number of times, as there is nothing preventing me from forming a new agency. And heck, I can amp this up one further by buying a judge agency. Yes, it would have limited scope, but what's going to stop me? Some "Super-hero" enforcement agency working for the good of the people? Either it's effectively identical to government enforcement, or it is ineffective.
And while you can always say "But we can make this system an ideal one because...", there will always be an incentive for corruption to form. And in a lot of those circumstances, corruption will win out, especially when accompanied by lots of money and by irreparable violent crime such as murder or rape.
No, FYGM, exists in every country. Perhaps you have heard of this refugee crisis in Syria and how people are refusing to let them into their countries because they are "full up."
One way to explain it is that libertarians are opposed to the government being above the law in the following ways: taxation- if a business or an individual were to partake in the forceful redistribution of money to the cause the he thought was worthy of it, he would be considered a thief, war- war is mass murder and conscription is slavery, why do we tolerate the government doing this and are fine with the government being above the law? I don't know.
Edit: an idea I recently came up with is that if we could get the government so small that its only purposes would be to provide a court system and national defense, couldn't it be funded voluntarily by the government starting a sort of lottery/online gambling business? I know I would buy lottery tickets if it meant supporting my military...
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Quote from VidarThor » »
We have big social mobility, something libertarians want, but can not provide through libertarianism. If you look at social democracy from Scandinavia, its achievements are closer to the end goal of libertarianism then libertarianism itself has.
Edit: To be more precise. Is not the true measure of freedom how much can do? Instead of what your are allowed to do? Being allowed to do something is not the same as being able to do it. Are you not more free if you are able to do something instead of not being able to do it? I would think so.
Because raising your taxes reduces your freedom to decide how to spend your money, and providing you with state-run services reduces your freedom to shop around for the service you want. Social democracy sure as hell isn't fascism, but it's still unquestionably a relative reduction in personal freedom.
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What more are you looking for in the way of responses?
The fact that you think you would 'winn an argument about disney' does not change the fact that my goverment sett in motion countermeasure to offer a better alternative for choildrem when the disney channel launched.
Because it has nothing to do with the merits of libertarianism versus other governments. Anybody can say "I don't want my children watching Disney content." Such a ban is not dependent on European-style socialism. As much as any of us may or may not agree with you that European-style socialism is a good system, it is not the point. Would American libertarians be happy starting under that system? No, and it has to do with some earlier points: Americans are used to an oligarchical representative republic. As an American, I still would hesitate to call my country's government democratic. And there's still keeping in mind:
If you look at social democracy from Scandinavia, its achievements are closer to the end goal of libertarianism then libertarianism itself has.
Just my thoughts. Bernie Sanders was maybe to strange for America, but if his plans had been implemented (fat chance) the end goals of libertarians would be close then if libertarians has won.
However, a majority of Americans would heartily agree with Blinking Spirit:
Because raising your taxes reduces your freedom to decide how to spend your money, and providing you with state-run services reduces your freedom to shop around for the service you want. Social democracy sure as hell isn't fascism, but it's still unquestionably a relative reduction in personal freedom.
and feed into the propaganda machine hinted at by Lithl:
Nah, you have plenty of those people in your country too.
I've found it to be a little different worldwide; most countries appear to be significantly more liberal than the USA, so while USA libertarians are essentially right-wingers that support personal freedoms, other countries might be more likely to have liberals that support some business freedom. Or just anarchists for the sake of anarchy.
Asking for "a monopoly that occured without government intervention" is absurd on any nation-wide scale. It's not realistic. But saying that monopolies are because of government intervention is a conflation of correlation and causation.
Forcing people to do business with others is immoral.
Well, actually... If someone really doesn't want to do business with someone else, they can close shop whenever that person would attempt to do business with them. Does that mean that they could be closed indefinitely? That's their choice. They could make that same choice with or without government interference. Now, will that impact their business? Yes. But so will refusing to do business with the person in the first place.
Rent implies that the government owns your property which it doesnt. Also what if I dont want to live under that legal system?
Well, it's (theoretically) government by the people, which implies that you own some percentage of what government owns, which it is not unreasonable to say is your property. Therefore you own your property... Also, if you don't want to live under that legal system, you don't have to do so. You can always go somewhere else.
You'd leave the private sector and free marcet economy with all the power in the world and laws would be pretty much made by those who have the necessary means to build their own army/security force (i.e. people and companies who are already rich) thus leading into some sort of dictatorial plutocraty.
It sounds like you might need a socialist redistribution of wealth for a Libertarian ideal state to work... And I doubt that redistribution fits in with the Libertarian ideals.
But the water provider can just stop them from doing that with your private protection agencies...
...If the only business that makes nuclear weapons decides "Why not branch out into selling water?" and threatens every other company with being nuked if they don't cease and desist from selling water, and gains control of all water supplies country-wide again with threat of being nuked, whatcha gonna do? No one else has the power to nuke. And this is how government forms in these anarchocapitalist situations. And not a positive government.
This argument seems very naive. "There are more good people than bad people?" Jeez.
Doesn't this also contradict your "Everyone's out for themselves" philosophy? I mean, some of the biggest things about being a good person are generally altruism, empathy, and selflessness. But maybe you're going off of a different measure?
You did not specify an anarcho-capitalistic society in your post, and Blinking Spirit's second point you responded to with this clearly had nothing to do with anarcho-capitalism.
Can you defend this or are you just throwing this out there? I've seen no evidence prior to this point, confirmed or unconfirmed, to support this point.
I think that there's a logical assumption to libertarianism that is where this doesn't make sense to a libertarian: That everyone starts equal in the system, that everyone starts with a blank slate, the same degree of motives, etc... Because if everyone is a perfectly equal robot, then libertarianism would work. But when humans are different from each other, it doesn't work so well.
While I agree with Gentleman Johnny's comment...
... I still have an issue here that should be mentioned. This theoretical system encourages people to murder as long as their victim doesn't have someone who would/could definitely attempt revenge, either through a "rights enforcement agency," or themselves. Or, even if that person could, if the killer has enough money, they can still pay their way out of things. And there's no reason why a private judge and pair of arbitration companies wouldn't become corrupt. There's nothing to stop loopholes from forming by hiring specific agencies for the purpose of corrupt tax. Agencies have no reason to be globalized, and forming an agency is easy enough. So I form my two enforcement agencies, one to fake out people who I want to kill for the hell of it, and the other to protect me legally. I can replace the fake-out agency any number of times, as there is nothing preventing me from forming a new agency. And heck, I can amp this up one further by buying a judge agency. Yes, it would have limited scope, but what's going to stop me? Some "Super-hero" enforcement agency working for the good of the people? Either it's effectively identical to government enforcement, or it is ineffective.
And while you can always say "But we can make this system an ideal one because...", there will always be an incentive for corruption to form. And in a lot of those circumstances, corruption will win out, especially when accompanied by lots of money and by irreparable violent crime such as murder or rape.
Let's go through some responses:
This entire post.
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See this post.
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This post applies here.
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What more are you looking for in the way of responses?
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And a bit in closing:
Because it has nothing to do with the merits of libertarianism versus other governments. Anybody can say "I don't want my children watching Disney content." Such a ban is not dependent on European-style socialism. As much as any of us may or may not agree with you that European-style socialism is a good system, it is not the point. Would American libertarians be happy starting under that system? No, and it has to do with some earlier points: Americans are used to an oligarchical representative republic. As an American, I still would hesitate to call my country's government democratic. And there's still keeping in mind:
After all, it's certainly true that:
However, a majority of Americans would heartily agree with Blinking Spirit:
and feed into the propaganda machine hinted at by Lithl:
It's unfortunate, but that's how it is.
I've found it to be a little different worldwide; most countries appear to be significantly more liberal than the USA, so while USA libertarians are essentially right-wingers that support personal freedoms, other countries might be more likely to have liberals that support some business freedom. Or just anarchists for the sake of anarchy.
Asking for "a monopoly that occured without government intervention" is absurd on any nation-wide scale. It's not realistic. But saying that monopolies are because of government intervention is a conflation of correlation and causation.
Well, actually... If someone really doesn't want to do business with someone else, they can close shop whenever that person would attempt to do business with them. Does that mean that they could be closed indefinitely? That's their choice. They could make that same choice with or without government interference. Now, will that impact their business? Yes. But so will refusing to do business with the person in the first place.
Well, it's (theoretically) government by the people, which implies that you own some percentage of what government owns, which it is not unreasonable to say is your property. Therefore you own your property... Also, if you don't want to live under that legal system, you don't have to do so. You can always go somewhere else.
Which would be paid for by people who don't feel they have to pay for goods and services? Uhh...
It sounds like you might need a socialist redistribution of wealth for a Libertarian ideal state to work... And I doubt that redistribution fits in with the Libertarian ideals.