Libetarianism (In Brief)

[Nickolai77]

*snip*

I completely agree. Libetarianism, and other forms of laisze faare economics assume that the amount of work one does is equivalent to how much wealth a person owns.

Which isn't true-
1)- Some people get lucky and others are just unlucky in life- you can spend most of your working life hard at work and never make as much money as you hoped for, or you could be quite successful and still blow it due to an unlucky investment.

2)starting blocks are not equal-person A comes from a stable wealthy family and is privately educated, and leaves university with a degree in say, economics.
Person B comes from a broken family, and leaves high school with poor grades.- while it is possible that person B is as or more successful as person A, that is extremely unlikely.

The more economic freedom a country has, the greater the divide between rich and poor there is due to lack of taxation- the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Economy is a big boom and bust cycle. I imagine social tensions would be high.

In a country with less economic freedom, no one is super-rich and no one is is super-poor due to taxation most people are either lower middle class or middle class. Markets are more stable but less money is made.

I think its a question of finding the balance between left and right wing economics- i'm personally roughly centralist, leaning towards the left.

 

[lostclause]

snip

I don't know if this point has been raised already but isn't this belief incompatabile with democracy? The victor of an election must impose his values on all equally. This belief seems to suggest that you don't recognise that who you don't vote for. Also this belief would make any kind of governance difficult. They remove our liberty when they imprison us, they murder us with the death penalty (may not be applicable to some but the point stands), they have institutionalised theft. None of these are too great a problem when they are applied correctly but removing these powers would result in anarchy.

 

[xblade0]

Logic quiz for after the video.

According to the video, you own yourself and your labor, and therefore all products which come from you, and none should have the ability to coerce your labor for their benefit.

Anything which you produce is therefore yours to do what you with.. you can choose to ignore it, destroy it, maintain it, use it, sell it, what-have-you, correct?

So. What happens when you produce a child? Is it yours to dispose of as you wish? If not, who has the right to coerce you to use your labor for its benefit? If it has self-ownership, what responsibility is it of yours to maintain? If it attains self-ownership at some point, who decides what that point is, and why do they have any more right than you?

Pure logic and impossible economic/political systems are fun to daydream about it's true. Unfortunately, the real world is rarely so clean.

The issue of children in a free system is a tough one. But let's imagine it as such: having children is a desire created by evolutionary process to propogate the human species. Many people see this as a more overbearing instinct than that of self-preservation, and choose not to partake in it. This is fine. Some see it as more enjoyable than creating wealth in a capitalist market. This is also fine.

When one has a child, that person essentially makes the choice of the next generation over the current generation. The impetus for this can range from just evolutionary instinct to family construction, but essentially doesn't matter so much as the values aren't imposed by force. The child possesses all the natural rights of any human, and is allowed to assert self-ownership at any time it wishes. The parent may care for the child in a way it deems fair and just until the child's logical cognition can voice protest and explain the reasoning behind the protest. However, these methods may never directly harm the child, only restrict liberties that the child cannot or will not back by logical cognition.

The parent does not own the child. He or she can, however, refuse to care for the child. It is at this point that many people stop reading and start crying foul. But here's the essential problem: if the parent does not wish to care for the child, is it best to force the parent to care for the child? If one value's the person's life so much, is within range of contact to punish the parent, wouldn't it be much more efficient and beneficial for the protester to assume care of the child? If the issue is maintaining a value (the child's life), it'd be much better served in the hands of those who wish to uphold it, not those who are forced to. Helpless children do die every day, but if one's values align with helping them, it's much better to help the children than punish those that didn't help them.

Note that this is not saying and toddler can do as he pleases. This says that, by the child accepting the parent as a guardian and the parent accepting the child as a dependant, the parent may restrict actions the child cannot explain as self-beneficial.

Concerning luck and "old money", the issue is better stated as thus: if one man has an apple, and the other man has no apple, may the other man demand half of the apple? A libertarian will say no because the claim isn't based on production or trade, it's based on sacrifice and force. Can a man give his apple? Yes, but only if the recipient chooses to receive it. This is trade. Hard workers having their production swept aside by natural disaster is just a fact of nature, but a good employer and discerning eye will always want for a hard worker. Some people may even value your spunk in certain conditions and grant you gifts, as you are an ideal they value. But you are not allowed to take by force that which you didn't earn, at least from men like me. That is something we do not allow. And if no one grants you purchase, then all the cries of entitlement and justice will fall to the cruelest arbiter: reality. The essential tenet being people are not responsible for you unless they want to be.

I like to daydream.

 

[Pocket Apocalypse]

I'm roughly centre-right by British standars, which probably still makes me an extreme hippy gay-Nader-fans-for-peace supporter by US standards (yes, I'm so liberal I steal John Stewart's jokes).

Cartman86; I sympathise with your frustration. Anyone who believes that businesses shouldn't be regulated (ie. the doctrine laughably billed as 'free enterprise') ought to read (as one example) the story of farming in the Texas Hill Country between the Civil War and I guess about the 50s as recounted in volume 1 of Robert Caro's 'The Years of Lyndon Johnson' (which I'm borrowing from my dad at the moment). It's as stark a picture of the problem with laissez-faire economics as I can imagine.

EDIT IN RESPONSE TO XBLADE: Your apple example is a bit of an oversimplification. I'm not saying that if A has an apple and B doesn't, A has to give B half the apple. However, if A has an apple and B neither has an apple nor has the means to acquire an apple (let's just assume here that 'apple' means the minimum consumable goods necessary to sustain his existence), A at least owes B some of the seeds from the apple. Everyone has a basic right to life, the apple is necessary for life (by definition) so everyone has a basic right to an apple. If everyone has a basic right to an apple, then everyone with an apple has a basic duty to enable B and others like him to get on the path to an apple.

Sorry, this metaphor is getting twisted out of shape. My point is, basically, that strict libertarianism makes no provision to ensure the lives of the abjectly poor, and yet claims that life is a basic, fundamental right.

 

[annoyinglizardvoice]

Nice to see people noticing that liberatarianism is a separate factor to the left/right divide. It bugs the hell out of me when people get that one wrong.

 

[resultsmayvary]

When taking political polls or tests I tend to be classified as a Libertarian.

My main political view is that the government should only do for people what people cannot do for themselves. Paving roads, supplying police and military protection. Things of that nature.

 

[Rolling Thunder]

Fondant

XBlade - I have not countered your points, because you haven't made any. You've regurgitated. More to the point, you regurgitated in abstract, and I responded in the same, abstract style. Put something concrete on the table, and I'll do the same.

Okay, I'll lay them in plain sight for you.

1) Government officials do not have the authority to regulate business. Being elected by a majority gives you no right to muck around in the steel industry you know little about and can only control by coersion.

2) Consent is more productive than force.

3) Any form of "-cracy" requires victims to function.

4) If your point is good enough (IE in the recipient's self-interest), you do not need to use force. If the recipient does not act on self-interest, the lessons of reality are more instructive than the tyrant's whip.

5) Force is not a claim on existence.

1. I distinctly beg to differ. Business has no right to pollute my drinking water, toxify my air and hand out crippling industrial disabilities simply because they are too cheap to do anything about it. Unregulated capitalism leads to boom and bust, pollution, disease and is, in essence, distinctly unfeasible. Business, if left unregulated, would simply aggluninate into giant cartels, fix prices, cease competing and merrily let the economy rot as they sat on their money and laughed.

2. Stalin would beg to differ. Not that I agree with him, but in terms of pure economic growth, there has never been as rapid a growth as those economies based on coercion (China, USSR).

3. All forms of life require victims. All countries are founded by conquest - America was founded on wholscale genocide and slaughter, Britain was invaded half a dozen times....without blood, humans simply lie back and enjoy a paradise of living until they're 40 and having plenty of raw meat to consume. Misery, suffering, violence - these are the things that drive change, that drive the dynamo that is the human mind into it's most selfdestructivly brilliant overdrive.

My point is thus - a magical Libertarian state will require victims too - everyone but the super-rich!

4. And yet people have yet to stop smoking....

5. Point, but you forget that there is more than one means of applying force.

6. I hereby demand sources for all your claims.

 

[xblade0]

It's not a right to life, it's a right to one's own life. The problem with claiming virtue on need, or claiming any sort of vindicated force, is that you're working against people's values to enforce your own. If you want to help out the poor, that's your own perrogative, but mandating that other must do so, without any sort of benefit to them or any sort of explaination, is rather brutish.

Those who have are not responsible for those who don't. You can't claim you deserve my belongings more than myself because you were born in different circumstances than me. And you cannot enforce it without resorting to violence or coersion. If you are virtuous and productive, prove it. If you're just being held back by some circumstances, explain it to me logically. This is where loans and IOU's stem from: future profit due to reasonable potential.

 

[Cocamaster]

So, in libertarianism, human life has no implicit value, except to oneself?

...I can't say I like that.

 

[Pocket Apocalypse]

I don't understand how you can have a right to 'your own' life without having a right to life. A right to your own life *is* a right to life, surely?

And the idea that the have-nots can borrow from the haves without completely forfeiting their liberty to corporations is made a mockery of by history everywhere since the Industrial revolution. A man who is in debt is in no way free, nor does he have control of his own life and, most crucially of all, he *has no way of improving his position at all*. If you're quite happy to trap the have-nots in such a situation, then we're just going to have to disagree.

 

[lostclause]

So, in libertarianism, human life has no implicit value, except to oneself?

...I can't say I like that.

Can you explain this statement a little.

 

[Cocamaster]

What I mean is, and correct me if I'm wrong, that it seems that since life's value is defined by its owner, and the only implicit right you have is to own your live, the value of life itself is null to anyone but you.

Only you have a right to use it.
Only you have a right to end it.
It's not transferrable.

So it has no implicit value, except to you, the owner.

No one else has a right to end it, enslave it or charge for it, but no one is forced to ensure its extended existance ether, even if their inactivity results in its death.

 

[xblade0]

Fondant

XBlade - I have not countered your points, because you haven't made any. You've regurgitated. More to the point, you regurgitated in abstract, and I responded in the same, abstract style. Put something concrete on the table, and I'll do the same.

Okay, I'll lay them in plain sight for you.

1) Government officials do not have the authority to regulate business. Being elected by a majority gives you no right to muck around in the steel industry you know little about and can only control by coersion.

2) Consent is more productive than force.

3) Any form of "-cracy" requires victims to function.

4) If your point is good enough (IE in the recipient's self-interest), you do not need to use force. If the recipient does not act on self-interest, the lessons of reality are more instructive than the tyrant's whip.

5) Force is not a claim on existence.

1. I distinctly beg to differ. Business has no right to pollute my drinking water, toxify my air and hand out crippling industrial disabilities simply because they are too cheap to do anything about it. Unregulated capitalism leads to boom and bust, pollution, disease and is, in essence, distinctly unfeasible. Business, if left unregulated, would simply aggluninate into giant cartels, fix prices, cease competing and merrily let the economy rot as they sat on their money and laughed.

2. Stalin would beg to differ. Not that I agree with him, but in terms of pure economic growth, there has never been as rapid a growth as those economies based on coercion (China, USSR).

3. All forms of life require victims. All countries are founded by conquest - America was founded on wholscale genocide and slaughter, Britain was invaded half a dozen times....without blood, humans simply lie back and enjoy a paradise of living until they're 40 and having plenty of raw meat to consume. Misery, suffering, violence - these are the things that drive change, that drive the dynamo that is the human mind into it's most selfdestructivly brilliant overdrive.

My point is thus - a magical Libertarian state will require victims too - everyone but the super-rich!

4. And yet people have yet to stop smoking....

5. Point, but you forget that there is more than one means of applying force.

6. I hereby demand sources for all your claims.

1) Dumping, causing damage to the property on which they dump, is distinctly covered in the right to property. Air pollution is perhaps the only claim government has on business before men begin to feasible own cubic acres of atmosphere for development. Industrial disabilities are easily avoided by not working for that employer. Cartels are dissolved by people providing service for less. New resources and technology almost make the notion laughable, as the only reason for all industry to set high prices for everyone would be to take away the production capacity of the consumers, reducing the ability to create products and therefore decrease everyone's quality of life, including their own.

2) The USSR barely had any trading exports, millions starved, only guns were produced, the entire country collapsed in fifty years. China's economy hasn't been Communist since Mao.

3) Having lived a good few years, I haven't killed or coerced anyone to get what I have. You don't need a victim for someone to create a product of unrefined materials and trade for another product of unrefined materials.

4) People can do with their life as they wish.

5) Like?

6) May I ask the same?

 

[Cocamaster]

Industrial disabilities are easily avoided by not working for that employer.

WHAT?!

 

[xblade0]

The issue of children in a free system is a tough one. But let's imagine it as such: having children is a desire created by evolutionary process to propogate the human species. Many people see this as a more overbearing instinct than that of self-preservation, and choose not to partake in it. This is fine. Some see it as more enjoyable than creating wealth in a capitalist market. This is also fine.

When one has a child, that person essentially makes the choice of the next generation over the current generation. The impetus for this can range from just evolutionary instinct to family construction, but essentially doesn't matter so much as the values aren't imposed by force. The child possesses all the natural rights of any human, and is allowed to assert self-ownership at any time it wishes. The parent may care for the child in a way it deems fair and just until the child's logical cognition can voice protest and explain the reasoning behind the protest.

Well and good up to here.

However, these methods may never directly harm the child, only restrict liberties that the child cannot or will not back by logical cognition.

Here you're getting into coerciveness. When you say "these methods may never directly harm the child", you are essentially saying that the state may restrict the actions of a person toward an entity that does not have self-ownership. You also open up all sorts of questions about who decides what constitutes "direct harm"? Is not feeding the child direct harm? How about not feeding the child meat? Preventing the child from receiving a blood transfusion? Not sending the child to school? Refusing to teach any skills that enable the child to survive on its own? Not being willing to pay for medical treatment? Not being willing to provide clothing? You see where this rabbit hole is going?

The parent does not own the child. He or she can, however, refuse to care for the child. It is at this point that many people stop reading and start crying foul. But here's the essential problem: if the parent does not wish to care for the child, is it best to force the parent to care for the child? If one value's the person's life so much, is within range of contact to punish the parent, wouldn't it be much more efficient and beneficial for the protester to assume care of the child? If the issue is maintaining a value (the child's life), it'd be much better served in the hands of those who wish to uphold it, not those who are forced to. Helpless children do die every day, but if one's values align with helping them, it's much better to help the children than punish those that didn't help them.

Okay, so you're willing to be monstrous rather than a hypocrite. Admirable, in a strange sort of way. Unfortunately, now you're running into the problem of charity in a libertarian society.

The problem of charity is thus: In a society where the disadvantaged and helpless are only aided by willing charity, those willing to perform such charity will be at an economic disadvantage to those who do not. Given this, it does not take long before you reach the situation where the only people willing to provide charity are those who cannot afford it, and the only people who can afford it are those who do not wish to do so. "So what?" cries the monstrous, "charity breeds inefficiency in the system." Well.. yes and no. Unfortunately, those who need charity do not just conveniently disappear. They may turn to desparate measures, violently coercive measures even, to ensure their survival. And now you have a system that is perpetuating it's own destruction.

Note that this is not saying and toddler can do as he pleases. This says that, by the child accepting the parent as a guardian and the parent accepting the child as a dependant, the parent may restrict actions the child cannot explain as self-beneficial.

Until a certain point, this includes EVERYTHING, as the child is incapable of explaining anything.

Concerning luck and "old money", the issue is better stated as thus: if one man has an apple, and the other man has no apple, may the other man demand half of the apple? A libertarian will say no because the claim isn't based on production or trade, it's based on sacrifice and force. Can a man give his apple? Yes, but only if the recipient chooses to receive it. This is trade. Hard workers having their production swept aside by natural disaster is just a fact of nature, but a good employer and discerning eye will always want for a hard worker. Some people may even value your spunk in certain conditions and grant you gifts, as you are an ideal they value. But you are not allowed to take by force that which you didn't earn, at least from men like me. That is something we do not allow. And if no one grants you purchase, then all the cries of entitlement and justice will fall to the cruelest arbiter: reality. The essential tenet being people are not responsible for you unless they want to be.

I like to daydream.

Ah, this is a fun one. Consider, if I were to say to you "Pay me a certain amount (or perform a service for me) or you will die."

Why is this more legitimate if I am a doctor than a mugger?

The essential problem that comes from mentality is that moral emphasis is put on that which you didn't do rather than what you have done. If I do not aid a beggar, am I responsible if he dies? If I do not pay for a child in Africa, did I kill him? Essentially, if I do not, am I responsible for those who do?

Imagine the doctor did not exist in your example. Where's the issue? There is no moral issue, just the physical one of a man dying. Now imagine there is a doctor. He can help the man. Why does he have to? Simply because he can? Such a rationalization is no more than an extention of original sin; that if I can help others, I must. There is no reason, neither personal or ethical, just that I can.

 

[theSovietConnection]

Libertarianism sounds all well and good on paper, much like most forms of government. However, if there is one thing you can always count on, its that in the end people will inevitably muck it up somehow.

 

[lostclause]

What I mean is, and correct me if I'm wrong, that it seems that since life's value is defined by its owner, and the only implicit right you have is to own your live, the value of life itself is null to anyone but you.

Only you have a right to use it.
Only you have a right to end it.
It's not transferrable.

So it has no implicit value, except to you, the owner.

No one else has a right to end it, enslave it or charge for it, but no one is forced to ensure its extended existance ether, even if their inactivity results in its death.

That's a good point. I'd have to say that any leader you appoint would be one who gave such guarantees (such as healthcare) and the rest would be down to individual ethics (or mutual benefit, the compulsion to act in hopes that someone will do the same for you sometime).

 

[Reverend_Randy]

What I mean is, and correct me if I'm wrong, that it seems that since life's value is defined by its owner, and the only implicit right you have is to own your live, the value of life itself is null to anyone but you.

Only you have a right to use it.
Only you have a right to end it.
It's not transferrable.

So it has no implicit value, except to you, the owner.

No one else has a right to end it, enslave it or charge for it, but no one is forced to ensure its extended existance ether, even if their inactivity results in its death.

That's a good point. I'd have to say that any leader you appoint would be one who gave such guarantees (such as healthcare) and the rest would be down to individual ethics (or mutual benefit, the compulsion to act in hopes that someone will do the same for you sometime).

But if the leader creates a form of public healthcare, it is no longer libertarianism.