Jastiger posted:

Posted this in the other thread, but might get an actual answer here.



A question. Why are advocates of property rights and libertarian folk all about getting rid of estate taxes and stuff like that, yet, I don't see them advocating for all debts and wrongs to be passed on.

Its ok if I hand my kids tax free a billion bucks, half the state of Arkansas, and all the rights to my company TAX FREE. But oh ho ho ho ho ho no, I can set up a legal frame work to absolve them of all debts?

Why should that be allowed?

How does a libertarian handle the debts in their no tax, no government world?

spoon0042 posted:

Kind of related, it occurred to me after the last thread that assuming people are perfectly rational spheres should obviate contracts but 99% of the time libertarians say oh yeah we need government to enforce contracts (this is absolutely never elaborated upon). Of course that's only if two people would only agree to something that was to their mutual benefit as rational actors. If contracts are just a way for the wealthy and powerful to extract more wealth from the underclass though...

spoon0042 posted:

I was serious about how the minimal contract enforcing state is never explained though. It's always just tacked on to whatever horrible point they're trying to make. What is meant by enforce, how this state has any power to do so, how it is funded for this purpose, etc. Particularly the last one, are taxes voluntary? Are those who voluntarily pay given preference? Who's to stop them if so?

LogisticEarth posted:

The whole child-market thing seems slightly less sinister in context. The idea isn't that the actual children aren't being sold, but the right of guardianship. Once a child expressed their self agency (e.g. by running away or seeking help in leaving) then the guardian ceased to have any right to detain or direct the child. Of course there are a whole host of other problems with that, but it's not as direct and less overtly evil as a simple child-market.

Of course Rothbard and others describe our current child welfare system as a market as well, just one that is nationalized and politically controlled.

And to be clear, I'm not a proponent of Rothbards system, just trying to do my part to break up the usual Rothbardian dogpile.

IMJack posted:

I've always thought the funny thing about the "non-aggression principle" is that in order for it to work for you, you need to be a credible enough threat in yourself that nobody dares be aggressive against you. People who hold to this either don't understand that bit and assume people are capable of peace-and-love coexistence that they otherwise deride; or they believe money will buy them muscle and that the muscle is uninterested in turning against them; or they have a fantasy about their own ability to kill anyone who challenges them.

tbp posted:

It seems a bit masturbatory to continuously pose ridiculous theoretical libertarian societies and then have everyone claim how bad they'd be.

CharlestheHammer posted:

You could go away or contribute more than your own personal circlejerk.

I mean I don't think you will but theoretically you could.

SedanChair posted:

For all the wrong reasons. When segregation was profitable they promoted it.

SedanChair posted:

Always? The prison-industrial complex is its most obvious current incarnation.

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.

You're totally right. It's not segregation, but it IS a system that is racist as hell.

BrandorKP posted:

Aren't their actual "business friendly" places like that already? With names like "Free Trade Zones" or "Economic Opportunity Areas" that type of thing. Places with reduced regulatory burdens or that don't have the normal import export tariffs or that just don't have customs inspections, I think there is quite a lot of variability in what they get out of having to do and that they are all over the place.

Filippo Corridoni posted:

Tripe.

Talmonis posted:

By all means, tell us more about how great Pinochet's regime was.

Nintendo Kid posted:

Allende's system was objectively working better than the Pinochet regime ever did.

quote:

Chilean presidents were allowed a maximum term of six years, which may explain Allende's haste to restructure the economy. Not only was a major restructuring program organized (the Vuskovic plan), he had to make it a success if a Socialist successor to Allende was going to be elected. In the first year of Allende's term, the short-term economic results of Minister of the Economy Pedro Vuskovic's expansive monetary policy were highly favorable: 12% industrial growth and an 8.6% increase in GDP, accompanied by major declines in inflation (down from 34.9% to 22.1%) and unemployment (down to 3.8%). However by 1972, the Chilean escudo had an inflation rate of 140%. The average Real GDP contracted between 1971 and 1973 at an annual rate of 5.6% ("negative growth"); and the government's fiscal deficit soared while foreign reserves declined.[45] The combination of inflation and government-mandated price-fixing, together with the "disappearance" of basic commodities from supermarket shelves, led to the rise of black markets in rice, beans, sugar, and flour.[46] The Chilean economy also suffered as a result of a US campaign against the Allende government.[47] The Allende government announced it would default on debts owed to international creditors and foreign governments. Allende also froze all prices while raising salaries. His implementation of these policies was strongly opposed by landowners, employers, businessmen and transporters associations, and some civil servants and professional unions. The rightist opposition was led by the National Party, the Roman Catholic Church (which in 1973 was displeased with the direction of educational policy),[48] and eventually the Christian Democrats. There were growing tensions with foreign multinational corporations and the government of the United States.

Allende also undertook Project Cybersyn, a system of networked telex machines and computers. Cybersyn was developed by British cybernetics expert Stafford Beer. The network was supposed to transmit data from factories to the government in Santiago, allowing for economic planning in real-time.[49]

In 1971, Chile re-established diplomatic relations with Cuba, joining Mexico and Canada in rejecting a previously-established Organization of American States convention prohibiting governments in the Western Hemisphere from establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba. Shortly afterward, Cuban president Fidel Castro made a month-long visit to Chile. Originally the visit was supposed to be one week, however Castro enjoyed Chile, and one week turned to another.

In October 1972, the first of what were to be a wave of strikes was led first by truckers, and later by small businessmen, some (mostly professional) unions and some student groups. Other than the inevitable damage to the economy, the chief effect of the 24-day strike was to induce Allende to bring the head of the army, general Carlos Prats, into the government as Interior Minister.[46] Allende also instructed the government to begin requisitioning trucks in order to keep the nation from coming to a halt. Government supporters also helped to mobilize trucks and buses but violence served as a deterrent to full mobilization, even with police protection for the strike breakers. Allende's actions were eventually declared unlawful by the Chilean appeals court and the government was ordered to return trucks to their owners.[50]

Throughout this presidency racial tensions between the poor descendants of indigenous people, who supported Allende's reforms, and the white settler elite increased.[51]

Allende raised wages on a number of occasions throughout 1970 and 1971, but these wage hikes were negated by the in-tandem inflation of Chile's fiat currency. Although price rises had also been high under Frei (27% a year between 1967 and 1970), a basic basket of consumer goods rose by 120% from 190 to 421 escudos in one month alone, August 1972. In the period 1970–72, while Allende was in government, exports fell 24% and imports rose 26%, with imports of food rising an estimated 149%.[52]

Export income fell due to a hard hit copper industry: the price of copper on international markets fell by almost a third, and post-nationalization copper production fell as well. Copper is Chile's single most important export (more than half of Chile's export receipts were from this sole commodity[53]). The price of copper fell from a peak of $66 per ton in 1970 to only $48–9 in 1971 and 1972.[54] Chile was already dependent on food imports, and this decline in export earnings coincided with declines in domestic food production following Allende's agrarian reforms.[55]

Throughout his presidency, Allende remained at odds with the Chilean Congress, which was dominated by the Christian Democratic Party. The Christian Democrats (who had campaigned on a socialist platform in the 1970 elections, but drifted away from those positions during Allende's presidency, eventually forming a coalition with the National Party), continued to accuse Allende of leading Chile toward a Cuban-style dictatorship, and sought to overturn many of his more radical policies. Allende and his opponents in Congress repeatedly accused each other of undermining the Chilean Constitution and acting undemocratically.

Nintendo Kid posted:

Yes it was, becuase it didn't involve murdering tons of people and the average Chilean was no better off under the murder regime.

Filippo Corridoni posted:

Some really dumb

asdf32 posted:

Well it's pretty much identical, and as fascinating as leftists that will do the same for Stalin etc.

Absurd Alhazred posted:

I'm actually interested in that period of time in Chile, through reading way too much about Project Cybersyn/Synco. If you wanted to create a relevant thread in... I guess SAL? I would gladly participate. Otherwise, would you say Sergio Bitar's book, "Chile: Experiment in Democracy" is good for getting a better idea of the economic background to Allende's rise and fall?

Filippo Corridoni posted:

Absurd Alhazred posted:

Ooh, and in PDF, to boot! Thanks a bunch! In return, if you're ever interested in the history of the European Southern Observatory in the Atacama desert, there's a recent 50-year retrospective available online here. Has a little bit about the Pinochet coup, although it doesn't really go into Chilean politics very much.

Hodgepodge posted:

Yeah, the idea that someone would want a colony of entitled, rich white people in their country is like thinking that people love cancer and want a form that will metastasize as quickly as possible.

VitalSigns posted:

Oh, literally everyone did? Well that's just coincidence because those statists weren't smart enough to believe that Chile is totally down to sell off its sovereign territory to a few hundred white people wanting to start a new country.

Helsing posted:

Don't the Galt's Gult people realize that because of this scam they will get a bad reputation and lose market share? Pretty soon they are going to be out competed by a libertarian Jonestown colony that totally doesn't scam people, and then you filthy statists will see that the system works.

DrProsek posted:

Like, if you asked "what makes a full communist state so special that it can stop pollution while a capitalist state cannot?" I can at least point to the communist economy being structured in way where the person running the powerplant doesn't really benefit from not implementing the environmentalist policies they're supposed to unless they start siphoning money out of the powerplant's budget into their own pocket (which would be hella illegal instead of just the company deciding a raise for its CEO is a much better use of money than things like not polluting as much).

DarklyDreaming posted:

If my house is on fire in Libertopia I feel I should not have to stop and make a rational decision to figure out who has the best fire department in my community. I am opposed to having the right to this decision because I know I will make the wrong choice every time, as my only criteria for "Best fire department" is the one that shows up first. I will pay them literally anything to save any valuables and/or family members trapped in the blazing inferno, and I would not regret that decision, and if I tell my friends that they are a terrible fire department that overcharged me, I feel it would not impact their decision to hire that same fire department if their house was on fire. That is a situation I would like to avoid and have come to the conclusion that a state can prevent that from happening.

DarklyDreaming posted:

That is a situation I would like to avoid and have come to the conclusion that a state can prevent that from happening.

DarklyDreaming posted:

And here's where you ultimately lose me. If I live in a city with a poo poo fire department I get the impression I have two choices:

-Get a bunch of people together to drop their existing day jobs, put up a little money for engines and hoses and make a competing fire department that does it better
-Get a bunch of people together to vote in the next municipal election to improve the city fire department.

Which is easier to accomplish and more likely to yield lasting results? Show your work. Because I am under the impression we tried privatized fire departments and it sucked.

AlternateAccount posted:

I'd say unless you have either a very stout metal door or some means to defend yourself, you're probably hosed.

Vahakyla posted:

Is it like a government and a law enforcement agency established that people do not pay directly into?

Grand Theft Autobot posted:

To summarize this post:

edit: National Defense requires an absolutely massive bureacracy in the modern world, and adequate national defense could not be achieved with a small government. You have to employ and house full-time soldiers, own enough property and equipment and staff to run bases, accomodate part-timers, enforce awol restrictions, manage supply contracts and transportation lines, provide medical and dental care on base and afterwards, provide some kind of schooling to those who want it, oversee defense industry manufactures and contracts. I'm definitely missing a ton of poo poo.

And if you don't have the bureacracy, along with good salaries and benefits to compete with the glourious job creators, then you'll get nothing but fuckups and have massive desertion problems. I know quite a few extremely bright students who went into the military before or during college specifically because the benefits were excellent, it paid for their schooling, and there were an absolute ton of different jobs to do, from IT to logistics, healthcare to policework, on and on, and it was a good way for them to get experience in those fields.

McAlister posted:

There is also the vigorously ignoring how libertopia will ensure children are educated enough to have the skills to survive in libertopia as anything other than chattel.

Cause it won't.

Raskolnikov38 posted:

AKA a libertarian

Who What Now posted:

So did you completely miss Jrod and Mutato's posts, or are you making a concious decision to pretend that they don't exist and didn't post in this thread? Just curious.

Raskolnikov38 posted:

-EDIT-


The way you buy things and the way a government buys things are so radically different that it's nonsensical to compare the two in any way, shape or form.

VitalSigns posted:

jrodefeld, against whom the posts these last few pages have been made, is an anarcho-capitalist. He believes the very concept of a State with a monopoly on force is immoral by definition because it usurps without explicit consent the individual's right to use retaliatory force against aggressors. He believes that taxation is theft and therefore the State, simply by collecting the taxes it needs to run a government however "small" is the greatest mass violator of human rights.

VitalSigns posted:

If you want to propose some flavor of minarchism and debate that, then propose it and let's do it. But accusing people of strawmanning when they are attacking the actual positions of the only libertarian-leaning poster who has bothered to assert a positive definition of his ideal society is ridiculous.

Rather than quoting post after post aimed at jrodefeld's ideas and blathering about #notalllibertarians, why don't you actually be specific about what ideas you're defending instead of forcing us to guess how you differ from jrod.

Talmonis posted:

They also don't count economic coercion as agression.

Raskolnikov38 posted:

Well they do have fairly obvious solutions its just that no one actually enjoys or wants toll roads except for the people that own toll roads.

And idiots.

Grand Theft Autobot posted:

More like "Hormel fired me for complaining about the pig brain disease I contracted while working for them."

VitalSigns posted:

Yes. Are you saying that's an impossible definition?

VitalSigns posted:

While climbing, I come across somebody dangling from a rope over a precipice. "Oh I'll haul you up" I say, "but only if you promise me a million dollars in exchange and agree to work off your debt to me if you don't have the cash." With no other option, he agrees. Is this a legitimate contract to you, agreed to voluntarily without any coercion? Do I legitimately own this person now (or, if you believe in the statist concept of bankruptcy courts, so I at least get everything he can't shield in bankruptcy?)

VitalSigns posted:

stuff

VitalSigns posted:

So is taxation an absurd burden because it puts people on the wrong side of ethics (not to mention prison bars) just for refusing to transact?

Mr Interweb posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M24wFd6D4k

As far as roads go, none other than right-wing kingpin Rush Limbaugh has constantly advocated for the idea of private roads.

These awful opinions aren't really as fringe-y on the Right as you wish they were.

Caros posted:

In and of themselves private roads aren't especially problematic. Replacing all public roads with private roads as part of an ideological libertarian quest for no-government-ever purity however is pretty problematic.

Raskolnikov38 posted:

I know! Instead of using public funds to build roads everyone can use for free we'll add another burden to people by making them pay more money than they already do to get where they're going because I hate the concept of government!

Rhjamiz posted:

So, wateroverfire, what does your version of small-L libertopia do to prevent pollution in a deregulated market?

VitalSigns posted:

Because taxation is an example of a mandatory transaction, which you declared is immoral and absurd.

QuarkJets posted:

Stuff.