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Sam Sedar will be debating Anthony Furey, another libertarian, at 12 noon ET today. I'm sure it'll be as enlightening as the one he had with Walter Block.
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# ? May 27, 2014 16:38 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 09:33 |
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I get what Libertarians are driving at (limited interference, personal responsibility, good pay for hard work, individual liberty, the freedom to make bad choices, etc.). I used to be one myself also. But once I grasped a firm understanding of the commons I gave it up. Libertarianism has no answer for this at all except 'privatize everything' which only leads to monopolies and fascism.
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# ? May 27, 2014 19:46 |
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BiggerBoat posted:I get what Libertarians are driving at (limited interference, personal responsibility, good pay for hard work, individual liberty, the freedom to make bad choices, etc.). I used to be one myself also. But once I grasped a firm understanding of the commons I gave it up. Libertarianism has no answer for this at all except 'privatize everything' which only leads to monopolies and fascism. The call to "privatize everything" isn't really entirely true though. Not-for-profit and social organizations are typically prominent role in libertarian theory. Some libertarians support public property, just not administered by the state. Part of the difficulty in discussing "commons" and "public resources" are that people often confuse "the people" with "the state". While some times the interests of the state lie with the "public", it's not inherently the case. And then you have the larger problem of whether you can even define "the people" or "the public" as an actual definable unified group that has any legitimate claims to assert political power. While a lot of the vulgar libertarian message is moralizing about "hard work and personal responsibility", a lot of the real meat of the message are critiques of consolidation of power and centralized economic planning. Also, going back to an earlier question of yours: BiggerBoat posted:As long as I'm on it though, what about things like hunting and fishing restrictions? What if some rear end in a top hat collects all the fish and game in the county and nobody has anything to eat unless they pay extortionist prices brought about by the monopoly on the fish and game supply? It's worth noting that this sort of thing could happen in any system. You just need a comically evil person to amass enough power. It's entirely possible (and maybe more likely?) for a state bureaucrat to do the same thing. What happens then? Well usually you get a revolt. That's the likely outcome in a libertarian situation like that as well. No system of law and economics is going to be stable if you happen to get people in charge who are flagrantly antagonistic to the population at large. LogisticEarth fucked around with this message at 20:32 on May 27, 2014 |
# ? May 27, 2014 20:29 |
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LogisticEarth posted:It's worth noting that this sort of thing could happen in any system. You just need a comically evil person to amass enough power. It's entirely possible (and maybe more likely?) for a state bureaucrat to do the same thing. What happens then? Well usually you get a revolt. That's the likely outcome in a libertarian situation like that as well. No system of law and economics is going to be stable if you happen to get people in charge who are flagrantly antagonistic to the population at large. Some systems of government are structured so as to have checks and balances, accountability to the public, or other forms of democratic control, making it possible in theory for such amassing of power by bureaucrats or anyone else to be avoided. These kinds of "success-punishing regulations" are precisely what libertarians oppose, though, so I don't think it's correct to take the anti-authoritarian way they paint themselves at face value. I think it's also a mistake to put the blame on the person in charge being "evil" or antagonistic to the public. The idea that the problem with capitalism or other authoritarian systems is that the wrong people are CEOs/despots is quite misleading and harmful.
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# ? May 27, 2014 20:54 |
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LogisticEarth posted:The call to "privatize everything" isn't really entirely true though. Not-for-profit and social organizations are typically prominent role in libertarian theory. Some libertarians support public property, just not administered by the state. Part of the difficulty in discussing "commons" and "public resources" are that people often confuse "the people" with "the state". While some times the interests of the state lie with the "public", it's not inherently the case. And then you have the larger problem of whether you can even define "the people" or "the public" as an actual definable unified group that has any legitimate claims to assert political power. But if somebody other than the state administers public or once-public property, that's literally what privatization is. Unloading the duties of social services on community organizations, even if they were somehow capable of handling that load, is also privatization. e: from your link: quote:Far from providing a sphere of independence, a society in which all property is private thus renders the propertyless completely dependent on those who own property. This strikes me as a dangerous situation, given the human propensity to abuse power when power is available. quote:It may be argued in response that a libertarian society will be so economically prosperous that those who own no land will easily acquire sufficient resources either to purchase land or to guarantee favorable treatment from existing land owners. This is true enough in the long run, if the society remains a genuinely libertarian one. But in the short run, while the landless are struggling to better their condition, the land owners might be able to exploit them in such a way as to turn the society into something other than a free nation. The fact that this guy is struggling to hold onto libertarian ideals after coming this far is either despicable or laughable, I can't decide. woke wedding drone fucked around with this message at 22:14 on May 27, 2014 |
# ? May 27, 2014 22:10 |
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Bob le Moche posted:Some systems of government are structured so as to have checks and balances, accountability to the public, or other forms of democratic control, making it possible in theory for such amassing of power by bureaucrats or anyone else to be avoided. These kinds of "success-punishing regulations" are precisely what libertarians oppose, though, so I don't think it's correct to take the anti-authoritarian way they paint themselves at face value. Well, of course libertarian economic theory, and not just Rothbardian stuff, claims that there are anti-monopoly and anti-authoritarian market mechanisms. And not just competition, but informational problems that cause larger organizations to destine themselves for disintegration. There are also counter claims about why "public" democratic control isn't always desirable. To assume that a libertarian society, even a specifically right-libertarian society would involve authoritarian capitalism, crony capitalism, or corporate capitalism as we see it today is a bit hasty. Here's a blog post by Charles Johnson discussing the topic. He has another more expansive article discussing the various definitions of "capitalism" and their use in libertarian rhetoric but I can't find it at the moment. SedanChair posted:But if somebody other than the state administers public or once-public property, that's literally what privatization is. Unloading the duties of social services on community organizations, even if they were somehow capable of handling that load, is also privatization. Privatization is another one of those words with nebulous definitions. When you hear it in common usage it often refers to stuff like selling off state-controlled utilities to the highest bidder. That's not what they're talking about here. If you're talking to a libertarian or anarchist of any stripe, you'll find a common theme that the state isn't really "public" itself. Modern states are basically gigantic bureaucratic bodies that are only indirectly affected by a distant and obfuscated democratic process. What makes property "public" in practice boils down to a matter of access and funding. quote:The fact that this guy is struggling to hold onto libertarian ideals after coming this far is either despicable or laughable, I can't decide. I suppose you'd prefer he throw up his hands and run to the status-quo answers that are riddled with problems? Anyway, Long identifies as a left-libertarian so I'm not sure what ideals you think he's holding that are in conflict with those statements. LogisticEarth fucked around with this message at 22:39 on May 27, 2014 |
# ? May 27, 2014 22:36 |
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LogisticEarth posted:I suppose you'd prefer he throw up his hands and run to the status-quo answers that are riddled with problems? Anyway, Long identifies as a left-libertarian so I'm not sure what ideals you think he's holding that are in conflict with those statements. I would say that is the ideal of private property. Rejecting private property is far from being the "status quo" answer. The term left-libertarian also typically describes people like anarchists and anti-authoritarian socialists who do reject private property.
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# ? May 27, 2014 22:42 |
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Bob le Moche posted:I would say that is the ideal of private property. Rejecting private property is far from being the "status quo" answer. The term left-libertarian also typically describes people like anarchists and anti-authoritarian socialists who do reject private property. I might be wrong but I don't think SedanChair rejects the idea of private property, from previous posts I've seen, and tends towards regulatory or tax-based state solutions, which is why I suggested he prefers the "status quo". I could have jumped the gun there. As for left libertarianism, the definitions I've always seen don't universally reject private property, but rather traditional lockean property. Geolibertarians and left market-anarchists don't explicitly reject private property.
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# ? May 27, 2014 22:52 |
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LogisticEarth posted:Privatization is another one of those words with nebulous definitions. When you hear it in common usage it often refers to stuff like selling off state-controlled utilities to the highest bidder. That's not what they're talking about here. Oh you might be surprised. Now some of their most abstruse and marginalized theoreticians (like Long) might be in favor of some kind of devolution of public property to community property administered by a soviet (ha) or something, but be assured that as far as pro-business libertarians are concerned, a selloff is exactly what they want. Remember, these are the guys who praise the railroad barons.
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# ? May 27, 2014 22:57 |
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SedanChair posted:Oh you might be surprised. Now some of their most abstruse and marginalized theoreticians (like Long) might be in favor of some kind of devolution of public property to community property administered by a soviet (ha) or something, but be assured that as far as pro-business libertarians are concerned, a selloff is exactly what they want. Remember, these are the guys who praise the railroad barons. I'm well aware of that, although I'd say it's almost exclusively contained in vuglar "mainstream" libertarianism. Any kind of blanket statements about libertarians looking to privatize everything by selling it off to the current 1% are just wrong though. Even Rothbard proposed a solution to "privatization" that suggested turning factories and property over to workers, or the public at large: Rothbard - Confiscation and the Homestead Principle posted:But how then do we go about destatizing the entire mass of government property, as well as the "private property" of General Dynamics? All this needs detailed thought and inquiry on the part of libertarians. One method would be to turn over ownership to the homesteading workers in the particular plants; another to turn over pro-rata ownership to the individual taxpayers.
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# ? May 27, 2014 23:07 |
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LogisticEarth posted:As for left libertarianism, the definitions I've always seen don't universally reject private property, but rather traditional lockean property. Geolibertarians and left market-anarchists don't explicitly reject private property. The way I see it, geolibertarians basically redefine private property to mean something completely different ("private property" is not owned but instead rented from the community). As far as I know market anarchism also rejects private property as does any form of market socialism. I might be wrong about that though, and maybe worker control is widely referred to as private property in some circles but I'm not aware of that.
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# ? May 27, 2014 23:15 |
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It's been a while since I've really read modern market anarchists and mutualists like Johnson and Chartier, and Carson, but the impression I remember getting from them was that private property (i.e. means of production rented out for wage labor) wouldn't explicitly be forbidden, but rather be suppressed significantly by freed-market forces and labor activity. So you might be able to hire a clerk for your hardware store but larger operations utilizing undesirable wage labor would be increasingly difficult to maintain.
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# ? May 27, 2014 23:38 |
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SedanChair posted:Oh you might be surprised. Now some of their most abstruse and marginalized theoreticians (like Long) might be in favor of some kind of devolution of public property to community property administered by a soviet (ha) or something, but be assured that as far as pro-business libertarians are concerned, a selloff is exactly what they want. Remember, these are the guys who praise the railroad barons. In defense of the railroad barons, they were also the guys who paid Plessys legal fees in Plessy vs. Ferguson, trying to make government enforced discrimination illegal. The railroads hated segregation because it cost them money, so they tried to make segregation illegal, and took it all the way up to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled that separate but equal was totally OK. The railroad barons were on the right side of history complaining about the unequal effects of separate but equal.
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# ? May 28, 2014 10:02 |
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thrakkorzog posted:In defense of the railroad barons, they were also the guys who paid Plessys legal fees in Plessy vs. Ferguson, trying to make government enforced discrimination illegal. The railroads hated segregation because it cost them money, so they tried to make segregation illegal, and took it all the way up to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled that separate but equal was totally OK. For all the wrong reasons. When segregation was profitable they promoted it.
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# ? May 28, 2014 14:16 |
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SedanChair posted:For all the wrong reasons. When segregation was profitable they promoted it. When was segregation profitable?
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# ? May 28, 2014 14:17 |
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wateroverfire posted:When was segregation profitable? Always? The prison-industrial complex is its most obvious current incarnation.
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# ? May 28, 2014 14:19 |
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SedanChair posted:Always? The prison-industrial complex is its most obvious current incarnation. How is the prison-industrial complex an instance of segregation? They don't have separate prisons for white people.
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# ? May 28, 2014 14:28 |
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wateroverfire posted:How is the prison-industrial complex an instance of segregation? They don't have separate prisons for white people. Census data for 2000 of the number and race of all individuals incarcerated in the United States revealed a wide racial disproportion of the incarcerated population in each state: the proportion of blacks in prison populations exceeded the proportion among state residents in twenty states; the percent of blacks incarcerated was five times greater than the resident population. You're totally right. It's not segregation, but it IS a system that is racist as hell.
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# ? May 28, 2014 14:40 |
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anonumos posted:Census data for 2000 of the number and race of all individuals incarcerated in the United States revealed a wide racial disproportion of the incarcerated population in each state: the proportion of blacks in prison populations exceeded the proportion among state residents in twenty states; the percent of blacks incarcerated was five times greater than the resident population. Wow, that is one train wreck of a wikipedia article. Can we agree that SedanChair's point seems dumb given that prison is not in fact an instance of segregation?
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# ? May 28, 2014 14:57 |
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wateroverfire posted:Wow, that is one train wreck of a wikipedia article. No. It is extremely good business to lock up as many black people as possible. That some white people go to jail, too, is immaterial. Like I said, it may not be "segregation" but the profit motive is there to victimize minorities. Stop splitting hairs. God drat it. I'm defending SedanChair.
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# ? May 28, 2014 15:02 |
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La la la. Not a law, not segregation.
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# ? May 28, 2014 15:02 |
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Schooling seems like a better example of de facto segregation to me.
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# ? May 28, 2014 15:05 |
The ACLU has been saying that the public school disciplinary system is a way of funneling black people into the prison system for a while so they both are probably true.
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# ? May 28, 2014 15:10 |
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Doctor Spaceman posted:Schooling seems like a better example of de facto segregation to me. Yeah, the leap from railroad segregation in the 1890s to racism in modern sentencing is a bit of a leap. It would probably be best to just drop the bickering over comparisons. The basic issue is that racism is profitable when it's popular. Of course, it's also politically favorable when it's popular too. An interesting question is if a minority of businesses who have anti-racist policies would help drive society towards integration and non-racism in the absence of state power enforcing the status quo (e.g. Jim Crow, modern drug law enforcement, etc.).
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# ? May 28, 2014 15:31 |
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LogisticEarth posted:The basic issue is that racism is profitable when it's popular. Of course, it's also politically favorable when it's popular too. An interesting question is if a minority of businesses who have anti-racist policies would help drive society towards integration and non-racism in the absence of state power enforcing the status quo (e.g. Jim Crow, modern drug law enforcement, etc.). Wouldn't it be much more likely that those buinesses were destroyed, either by the Invisible Hand or by the visible hand of out-and-out terrorism if that took too long? I guess it depends to some extent on just how much of a majority is racist.
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# ? May 28, 2014 15:42 |
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LogisticEarth posted:I'm well aware of that, although I'd say it's almost exclusively contained in vuglar "mainstream" libertarianism. Any kind of blanket statements about libertarians looking to privatize everything by selling it off to the current 1% are just wrong though. Even Rothbard proposed a solution to "privatization" that suggested turning factories and property over to workers, or the public at large: Wait wait wait so Rothbard's big idea here is to turn over the means of production to the workers? Like, he's advocating The Literal Definition of Socialism? That's utterly amazing.
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# ? May 28, 2014 16:21 |
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800peepee51doodoo posted:Wait wait wait so Rothbard's big idea here is to turn over the means of production to the workers? Like, he's advocating The Literal Definition of Socialism? That's utterly amazing. To be clear, this was one of his ideas on how to unspool all the misallocated and stolen property associated with the State, associated contractors, and potentially large corporations dependant on state support in general. He had no problems with someone owning the means of production if acquired through (in his view) legitimate means. So not really Literal Socialism, just an idea that you'd traditionally expect from a leftist. If you read his reasoning its grounded in a homesteading theory of property acquisition.
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# ? May 28, 2014 16:34 |
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LogisticEarth posted:Yeah, the leap from railroad segregation in the 1890s to racism in modern sentencing is a bit of a leap. It would probably be best to just drop the bickering over comparisons. No, there will always be profit in providing services that exclude minorities.
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# ? May 28, 2014 16:44 |
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SedanChair posted:No, there will always be profit in providing services that exclude minorities. I heard something on the radio yesterday explaining how a policies involving red lining made racism a rational response to incentives ( I think was on "Tell Me More"). If a neighborhood was deemed transitional, which it was if even a single African American family moved in, nobody (of any race) in the neighborhood could get a loan any more causing property values to precipitously drop. This created a large and very real incentive to prevent any African Americans from moving in neighborhoods else ones house becomes worthless. So it's worse than just "profit in providing". It's "profit in providing" while creating a systemic situation that compels what otherwise might be ambivalent segments of the public to participate in the systemic racism or be directly harmed thus perpetuating or even multiplying the racism. Then I get really depressed when I realize the charter school movement or school choice movement are doing something similar (albeit via class standing in for outright racism) and that I may be confronted with that very choice in a few years.
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# ? May 28, 2014 17:16 |
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Against the defense of railroad barons, the Pullman train company came up with their own private, voluntary segregation policies: namely that sleeping car porters all be black men, and that they all be called “George”. That led to the formation of the Society for the Prevention of Calling Sleeping Car Porters George, or SPCSCPG which turned into the first black-led labor union, whose members ended up organizing the Montgomery Bus Boycott. So I guess it worked out in the end.
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# ? May 28, 2014 17:31 |
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BrandorKP posted:I heard something on the radio yesterday explaining how a policies involving red lining made racism a rational response to incentives ( I think was on "Tell Me More"). If a neighborhood was deemed transitional, which it was if even a single African American family moved in, nobody (of any race) in the neighborhood could get a loan any more causing property values to precipitously drop. This created a large and very real incentive to prevent any African Americans from moving in neighborhoods else ones house becomes worthless. And coincidentally, Tell Me More is being cancelled because it makes wealthy NPR donors uncomfortable.
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# ? May 28, 2014 17:52 |
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LogisticEarth posted:To be clear, this was one of his ideas on how to unspool all the misallocated and stolen property associated with the State, associated contractors, and potentially large corporations dependant on state support in general. He had no problems with someone owning the means of production if acquired through (in his view) legitimate means. So not really Literal Socialism, just an idea that you'd traditionally expect from a leftist. If you read his reasoning its grounded in a homesteading theory of property acquisition. Uh huh. I would expect that from a leftist because it is the antithesis of capitalism. Rothbard went so far to the right he came around the other side to unironically advocate collectivism. I find that hilarious no matter what tortured bullshit rationalization he came up with to support it.
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# ? May 28, 2014 21:19 |
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Guys, did you know that The Harry Potter series is libertarian?Benjamin H. Barton, "Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy" abstract, Michigan Law Review, Vol. 104, May 2006 posted:This Essay examines what the Harry Potter series (and particularly the most recent book, The Half-Blood Prince) tells us about government and bureaucracy. There are two short answers. The first is that Rowling presents a government (The Ministry of Magic) that is 100% bureaucracy. There is no discernable executive or legislative branch, and no elections. There is a modified judicial function, but it appears to be completely dominated by the bureaucracy, and certainly does not serve as an independent check on governmental excess. So is the Hunger Games series! John Tamny, Forbes.com, 3/20/2012 posted:In Panem food, something we take for granted, is scarce thanks to power hungry politicians. Even more than monetary debasement, the creation of food scarcity through unnatural barriers to production and trade is the easiest way for politicians to divide the citizenry, and to be fair, often results from monetary debasement. And with hunger a constant burden, politicians have created a situation whereby the brutalized citizens of Panem will do anything to eat, including killing their fellow citizens in government-organized games that so thrill the Capitol politicians. Read that last paragraph again and tell me how Tamny's not describing a satire of capitalism.
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# ? May 29, 2014 10:28 |
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800peepee51doodoo posted:Wait wait wait so Rothbard's big idea here is to turn over the means of production to the workers? Like, he's advocating The Literal Definition of Socialism? That's utterly amazing. It's amazing how an ideology can pick up on all the right messages and facts but still come to such an utterly wrong interpretation and conclusion.
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# ? May 29, 2014 11:24 |
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LogisticEarth posted:The call to "privatize everything" isn't really entirely true though. Not-for-profit and social organizations are typically prominent role in libertarian theory. As an actual solution for social problems, or as a smoke-screen to avert criticism from people asking what will happen to the underprivileged in the libertarian utopia? Because non-profit and social organizations are nice, and they do a lot of good, but they're grossly insufficient to the scale of social problems. In fact the most successful ones usually act in partnership with the state. quote:Some libertarians support public property, just not administered by the state. Meaning there would be public property that everyone has access to but no one is charged with maintaining or defending. How would that work, exactly? Or is this going to be another case where damage to the commons would supposedly be met with lawsuits in arbitration courts? I see that in this the guy briefly pretends to address the question by going on in abstruse theoretical terms about how people would spontaneously organize to defend the commons for their own use, but IRL we know that doesn't actually happen. His whole bit there in the "Policing Public Property" section amounts to an inversion, claiming that crime happens because there are police, and if there were no police, everybody in society would pick up the slack and we would all in fact be safer. This is good for a laugh but not convincing. This seems to be a repeated theme in libertarian argumentation, where when somebody identifies a problem that happens in real life that libertarian means of social organization have no apparent means of dealing with, their retort is to claim that it is actually government action to ameliorate a problem that is preventing people from solving the problem themselves. Given that we know governments assumed various forms of policing responsibility in large part because no private entity would do so (environmental regulations would be a big example), it's hard to credit this argument with any relevance or usefulness at all. Pththya-lyi posted:Guys, did you know that The Harry Potter series is libertarian? The Harry Potter books actually contain a certain amount of anti-government sentiment but in a particularly English sense. Rowling's dissatisfaction with the feckless bureaucratic twilight of New Labour isn't libertarianism, but I think the movement's lack of impact in popular culture leads some people to try to claim things for it. Schenck v. U.S. fucked around with this message at 13:52 on May 29, 2014 |
# ? May 29, 2014 13:50 |
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TheRamblingSoul posted:It's amazing how an ideology can pick up on all the right messages and facts but still come to such an utterly wrong interpretation and conclusion. When you ascribe to a methodology that explicitly rejects empiricism, and holds that starting premises are unchallengeably correct even in the fact of clearly contradictory evidence, it's amazing the conclusions you arrive at! Or, to give you the short version: Praxeology
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# ? May 29, 2014 14:37 |
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I'm waiting for that word to pop up in a news show. I keep hearing the libertarian think tank guys on as commentators (even on NPR). They always seem to give it away with the "because Liberty" line of argument, they appeal to praxeology without ever saying action axiom or praxeology. I occasionally hear hosts push back, but none of them push back with specific questions that use the libertarian language. I think it could be really interesting, to have one of the think tankers or hell even one of the Paul's get asked something like: "You're appealing to the action axiom, why don't you tell us a bit about praxeology?" They can't not answer it because the different ways they interpret Mises are the fault lines between the different Libertarian groups, so dodging it would be harmful to their faction to not answer. And it's not like they'd want to dodge it, these ideologies are all about "education" spreading the good word of freedom. I don't think it matters if they perceived it as coming from a hostile source or as a friendly sympathetic question either.
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# ? May 29, 2014 15:13 |
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They'll dodge it or reframe it as "Mises' study of human action." Good pundits aren't just gonna blurt out "Xenu" on NPR. Of course if NPR had any guts to confront the think-tank machine they'd do it themselves.
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# ? May 29, 2014 16:34 |
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It's some three times before the cock crows level denial for them to do that. Is it even a something that would be on their radar as needing to dodge? I mean the Scientologists they know the Zenu poo poo is out there. I don't think the libertarians know the praxeology stuff is out there. I mean to some of them it's the American ideal (and there was that Koch editorial saying as much). I think some of them might even take it as a "now is the time to talk about this moment" spontaneously occurring if the circumstances were right. And yeah I saw Tell Me More got cancelled. I've been hearing a lot about African American Churches telling members not to donate to NPR over it. http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/05/28/316712350/church-group-announces-boycott-of-npr-over-tell-me-more-cancellation
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# ? May 29, 2014 18:48 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 09:33 |
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LogisticEarth posted:The basic issue is that racism is profitable when it's popular. Of course, it's also politically favorable when it's popular too. An interesting question is if a minority of businesses who have anti-racist policies would help drive society towards integration and non-racism in the absence of state power enforcing the status quo (e.g. Jim Crow, modern drug law enforcement, etc.). No, they wouldn't. The local DRO would use retaliatory force against those integrationist businesses who are aggressing against the community norms, and the town would be quickly Redeemed.
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# ? May 29, 2014 19:37 |