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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Libertarians: You fire fighter lovers sure are good at debate!
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jrodefeld
Sep 22, 2012

by Shine
From what I have read thus far, predictably for leftists you all express great concern for those who you feel would slip through the cracks in a market economy. You are convinced that charity and voluntary organizations could never come close to being sufficient to address the social need that will exist in society. Caros in particular dropped his libertarianism primarily for this reason when his friend was unable to get the help she needed and died as a result. I strongly disagree that charity and the market could not address social problems as well, if not better, than any coercive authority. However, I am NOT a utilitarian, but rather I am a deontologist. I believe that actions are right or wrong based on the nature of the action itself. What results from moral actions may or may not be beneficial to a specific individual or group, but I would always consider it wrong to employ immoral action to change social outcomes. Say you are designing policy and say "first step is that we empower a small group in society with the authority to confiscate all our money through force and then..." I'd immediately stop you then and inquire "who gave these people rights that the rest of us do not possess? Why is it appropriate that these people be permitted to take my property against my will, yet a similar action by any other member of society is considered an act of violent aggression that is punished? From this inconsistency, I must conclude that the act of taking my property through the threat of violence is immoral in and of itself and it matters not what you plan to spend that money on. The only way you can begin to square this circle is if you try to argue that all individuals have the equal right to take their neighbors property through force. But in this case the ethic breaks down and society with it. All property rights break down if this ethic is universalized and society would revert to subsistence and constant conflict.

I would say to you that "it is immoral to use force to steal the property of others". So, regardless of your end goal, ten or twenty steps down the line, you must rethink your approach because the means you are employing, in and of themselves, are immoral. Your end goal may be that the homeless man on the streets gets enough food or the cancer patient gets treatment, then I would propose that we go together and help the poor get on their feet, contribute to voluntary organizations that provide charity. Since each step I am proposing is, in and of itself, moral and universalizable to all of society, this approach is deontologically sound.

Your view that, from a utilitarian perspective, the outcomes of applying ethical behavior in the construction of a society for some people might not be to your liking or sufficient to meet the needs of this group or that, is really a prejudice and assumption you have. You really have no idea of the outcome of applying moral action to a specific individual. In fact, the power is in your and my hands to create a society where social problems are addressed to the best of our fallible abilities as human beings. Since desires are infinite and we live in a world of scarcity, we know for certainty that some people will want more than what they end up getting in any economy.

The Statist fallacy you seem to accept is that people, while not competent to act voluntarily to help others and address our human problems, will nonetheless be competent to vote responsibly for politicians that will somehow centrally plan and redistribute wealth in a manner that helps people more and better solves social problems than the many disparate "plans" of free people interacting on a voluntary basis.

But I want to take a step back and inquire about your world view from a broader perspective. As I understand it, your view is that the State must coercively tax the citizenry to fund social welfare programs for those that need it, to regulate and police business actions and pollution and manage the economy to control the business cycle.

I have heard endless attempts by different members of this forum to discredit the libertarian ethic by trotting out hypothetical after hypothetical. The goal is to discredit the validity of the non-aggression principle by illustrating some scenario whereby the initiation of force against another's property is justified for the far greater good. Examples that have been offered include that oft cited "lifeboat" scenarios. If I am starving and I could steal a loaf of bread from a wealthy store owner, would it be morally justified to do so?

Another one I heard mentioned on another website recently includes organ donation after death. Suppose I am not an organ donor and my religious beliefs dictate that I be buried "intact" so my soul can be at rest. But on the other hand, suppose my kidney could be donated to someone who is dying? I am already dead and harvesting my organs could save the life of another. Why should my property right or wishes be respected if, by doing so, another human being would die? A Statist would argue that "society" has determined that my personal religious beliefs are irrational and stupid and my legal contract and will is to be disregarded for the good of society, in this case saving a human life.

Now when you cite examples such as these, I'll admit you make an emotionally compelling case. A very reasonable person could easily conclude that, in some cases, respecting the non-aggression principle and a persons private property rights is NOT morally justified. What this means is we have drifted into moral relativism and this concession can be the beginning of a moral defense of the entire Statist system.

I would argue that most people probably would compromise any notion of private property rights or non-aggression when confronted with such hypotheticals. A libertarian would not, and I'll explain why. A philosopher must be concerned with the macro and not just the hypothetical micro. We have to also begin to address the world as it actually is, not as reflecting some abstract theory. And, sure enough, the State does not behave anywhere close to the theories offered by any non-Anarchist left liberal.

If a person were to concede the validity of using aggression in a particular instance, we must examine the ramifications for human society of accepting the authority of the State and aggression as codified policy over time. And, specifically to Caros, if the State had used violence against a rich person to provide your friend with healthcare and saved her life, that would have been a joyous outcome for her and for you. For a utilitarian perspective, such a system would have worked out for her in that moment. But we must look at the far reaching consequences for society in the long run.

The State is not easily controllable, if at all. You have an idea in your head of what the State must do and you surely have an idea of what the State should NOT do. The problem of controlling and restraining oppressive State power has been contemplated by philosophers and political theorists for centuries. The classical liberals felt that the State could be restrained through written Constitutions. A limited Republic, a night watchman State with a specific and limited list of delegated functions was proposed.

George Washington famously said: "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force. Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearsome master.”

I respect the classical liberals and modern day minarchists for their valiant attempts to restrain State power but one must conclude that their efforts have thus far proven to be failures. They managed to keep out a central bank from the United States for most of the 19th century and some provisions held State power in check for a time.

But I feel that they had some insights into the nature of State power that modern left Progressives don't. You seem to think that the State, the ultimate tool of force and aggression, can be made into the Red Cross, a provider of social services and charity, a "public servant" if you will.

And what means have you all proposed to keep this "fearful master" in check? Not a written Constitution, but the "democratic vote". This is absolutely laughable to me. Democracy doesn't restrain government, but causes it inexorably to grow.

You want the State to have the power to redistribute wealth in society, but you'd like it to be spent on things which are genuinely in the "common good" such as healthcare and a social safety net. But how can you prevent the State from using that money to provide welfare to the rich instead? You would like the Federal Reserve to manage the business cycle but how do you prevent it from financing endless deficit spending and wars of aggression?

You want the State to police business behavior through a complex regulatory system but how do you prevent business interests from achieving regulatory capture and creating monopoly privileges for themselves? How do you prevent the State monopolized police forces from terrorizing the public through a war on drugs, which criminalizes private, consensual behavior?

The truth is that you CAN'T control the State, especially when you envision a State with essentially unlimited powers as do most left liberals. Funds are fungible. You want the State to coercively expropriate people to provide for charity and social services, but that money inevitably and in increasing amounts goes towards a privileged "elite" who influence the State. Untold millions have been killed by our government. Central power is incredibly dangerous. We have to live in the real world and realize how States behave and what perverse incentives they provide.

If any supporter of the State is remotely familiar with the real world, I would suggest they take stock of the approach adopted by the classical liberals. gently caress democracy. "The will of the majority" has little bearing on the ethics of policy. You must decide which actions are completely necessary and indispensable that you feel the State, and only the State, can provide. You must carefully consider the ethics of these actions. And you must think VERY carefully of how you can possibly limit the authority of the State to a very strictly limited set of policies, without the ability to do the incredibly damage to society that State authority is capable of.

I don't hear this from any left liberals. I only see a fetish for democracy. As long as the "people" express their opinion through politics, the State can do any drat thing conceivable.


You may make a compelling emotional (if not logical) argument about a lifeboat scenario where force could be seen as justified for the greater good, but you have to divorce yourself from living in a fantasy and reckon with the reality of State power as it actually exists in the real world. If we are speaking about ethics, let's examine what States have done. 270 million corpses have been piled up in the 20th century by governments killing their own people. Wars account for tens of millions more at least. States use the gun to interfere with every conceivable voluntary human association imaginable. This is not theoretical, it happens right now every single day.

So, on balance, I think you would be hard pressed as people who favor Statism to look down upon libertarians who feel that philosophy is important, the use of aggression is immoral and that we must be consistent in our application of ethics (i.e. ethics must be universal) as morally inferior. Your entire contention for this view is that you don't think that some people will be adequately provided the goods and services they need or want without coercion and violence.

You don't know that a voluntary, libertarian society won't provide, on balance, a better utilitarian outcome for most of society, your prejudice causes you to assume that it won't. You make the assumption that aggressive violence is necessary for human flourishing.

Yet this attitude has precisely caused all the rights abuses that States have perpetrated on their people and the population of the world.

If you cannot bring yourself to understand how anarchy could work, I don't blame you. To understand the incentive structure and economics which makes competing defense agencies, courts and private arbitration based on common law and restitution a feasible alternative to State monopoly provision of these services requires a good deal of reading and thought.

That is precisely why most libertarians are not yet anarchists. Libertarianism is a big tent philosophy and even Ludwig Von Mises was a minarchist rather than an anarchist. I can understand the reason one might be inclined to see the State as necessary, only for providing laws protecting private property rights and the non aggression principle, courts and national defense, but nothing else. A true night watchman State. Protect our natural rights and property, defend us against other Nation States should they attack.

You could join us in that position, even if you cannot bring yourself to accept anarchy. If a moral principle is valid, I believe you must continue to extend these moral principles further and further. Therefore I am an anarchist, but I think we will probably need to revert to minarchy and a night watchman State first before people come to understand that we can begin to substitute State monopolized police and courts without society breaking down into Hobbesian anarchy. The minarchist position is one that I respect and even admire. But the naive left liberal view of democracy and essentially unlimited State power is, on the other hand, incredibly dangerous and remarkably foolish.

I'd appreciate your comments.

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 06:28
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Ravenfood
Nov 4, 2011
Probation
Can't post for 30 minutes!

quote:

"who gave these people rights that the rest of us do not possess? Why is it appropriate that these people be permitted to take my property against my will, yet a similar action by any other member of society is considered an act of violent aggression that is punished?
The people gave those rights to the small group based on an understanding that specialization of labor is more efficient and produces better outcomes. People have, numerous times in this thread, elaborated on governments that arise from voluntary actions and asked you to explain how people voluntarily ceding the responsibility of governance is somehow immoral.

And you're begging the question by implying that taxation is theft rather than something akin to membership dues.

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 06:37
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VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

 Counterpoint: deontological ethics suck because they're just you kinda makin' up a bunch of poo poo about what's moral and what's not without a care about whether your arbitrary subjective ideals are beneficial or harmful to people when you put them in practice in the actual real world.

You're just making poo poo up. I could easily make up a deontological ethics based on a document, oh, something like this:

Cornerstone Speech posted:

The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically...Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.”

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails. I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle, a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of men. The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds, we should, ultimately, succeed, and that he and his associates, in this crusade against our institutions, would ultimately fail. The truth announced, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics as it was in physics and mechanics, I admitted; but told him that it was he, and those acting with him, who were warring against a principle. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal.

Ta-dah, starting from the self-evident premise (so self-evident that, like the NAP, it need not be proven but is an axiom) that the Negro is a naturally inferior species of man, we can conclude that slavery is proper, and to those foolish liberals who are concerned for the suffering of those involved, well, that's utilitarianism and I'm a deontologist. So when those hand-wringers say the Negro should have equal rights and privileges to the white man, I stop them right away and ask why man should be so arrogant as to try to make equal what our all-wise Creator has plainly made unequal

VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 06:47 on Nov 14, 2014

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 06:42
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jrodefeld
Sep 22, 2012

by Shine

Ravenfood posted:

The people gave those rights to the small group based on an understanding that specialization of labor is more efficient and produces better outcomes. People have, numerous times in this thread, elaborated on governments that arise from voluntary actions and asked you to explain how people voluntarily ceding the responsibility of governance is somehow immoral.

And you're begging the question by implying that taxation is theft rather than something akin to membership dues.

How can you delegate a right you don't already have? I don't have the right to use aggression against my neighbor but somehow I can "give" this right which I never had to politicians and have them use aggression on my behalf? That is not a coherent belief.

Yes, specialization of labor is more efficient and produces better outcomes. Couldn't agree more.

Now, what you are not understanding is that while I personally can cede authority to any person I want over my life, I cannot grant authority to such a person to have authority over another person who does NOT want to be ruled over.

People WILL inevitably want to seek guidance and cede authority to wise men. This is what Hoppe was referring to when he spoke of "natural elites". I know that people wanted to turn that into some statement of racism, where the elites will all be white because they are genetically superior, but that is NOT what Hoppe was saying at all. Rather, the Natural Elites would be people who society voluntarily view as wise, intelligent and virtuous owing to their achievement and track record. People would cede "authority" only in a voluntary sense. This would be the outcome of a true division of labor.

But are politicians worthy of reverence? Are they superior to the rest of society? I think history speaks for itself. Politics rewards sociopaths, the best liars, the most duplicitous and cunning rather than the most wise.

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 06:56
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Ravenfood
Nov 4, 2011
Probation
Can't post for 30 minutes!

jrodefeld posted:

How can you delegate a right you don't already have? I don't have the right to use aggression against my neighbor but somehow I can "give" this right which I never had to politicians and have them use aggression on my behalf? That is not a coherent belief.
Why do you not have this right? Because of an arbitrary starting position that you've made up? You're starting from principles, declaring them universal, then building a system from them. That works great as long as everyone agrees on your starting assumptions.

quote:

Now, what you are not understanding is that while I personally can cede authority to any person I want over my life, I cannot grant authority to such a person to have authority over another person who does NOT want to be ruled over.
Wait, so you're saying that if 10 of my friends and I all arrive on an uninhabited island and declare it ours, appoint a rotating leadership position we all voluntarily agree to be bound by, and then some random 11th jagoff shows up on our island and says that he doesn't want to be ruled over, our leader has no power or ability to remove him from our land? Well poo poo.

quote:

People WILL inevitably want to seek guidance and cede authority to wise men. This is what Hoppe was referring to when he spoke of "natural elites". I know that people wanted to turn that into some statement of racism, where the elites will all be white because they are genetically superior, but that is NOT what Hoppe was saying at all. Rather, the Natural Elites would be people who society voluntarily view as wise, intelligent and virtuous owing to their achievement and track record. People would cede "authority" only in a voluntary sense. This would be the outcome of a true division of labor.
Yeah, that worked really well for the Captains of Industry. Its like PR isn't a thing in Libertopia.

quote:

Politics rewards sociopaths, the best liars, the most duplicitous and cunning rather than the most wise.
So does business, but that doesn't stop you from creating an entire ethical framework that relies on rewarding that.

e: You're still assuming that taxation is theft.

Ravenfood fucked around with this message at 07:12 on Nov 14, 2014

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 07:02
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VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

 A Tale of Deontological Ethics

:v:Assume I am right, therefore I am right. From this I derive a full system of ethics. Here ya go!
:raise: Hey dude, we tried your ethics and people are dying in the streets, children are being sold to sweatshops, those too poor to afford DROs are being enslaved or hunted for sport, and everywhere modern society has collapsed into a chaotic maelstrom of war, famine, disease, and ruin.
:v: What?!?! BEGONE, UTILITARIAN! Real world effects are irrelevent to a moral edifice built upon :sparkles:PURE REASON!:sparkles: :ancap:

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 07:06
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QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

 jrod, from your definition of force, an HOA is using force if they repossess a house for unpaid membership dues. Does that makes an HOA a type of state, in your view?

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 07:10
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Raskolnikov38
Mar 3, 2007

We were somewhere around Manila when the drugs began to take hold
 I know gently caress all about philosophy but deontology requires there to be a universal truth right? If so provide this universal truth or truths jrod.

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 07:13
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QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

jrodefeld posted:

How can you delegate a right you don't already have? I don't have the right to use aggression against my neighbor but somehow I can "give" this right which I never had to politicians and have them use aggression on my behalf? That is not a coherent belief.

By your logic, it's immoral to enforce any kind of contract, social or otherwise.

You're not an ancap libertarian, you're an anarchist

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 07:13
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Raskolnikov38
Mar 3, 2007

We were somewhere around Manila when the drugs began to take hold

QuarkJets posted:

By your logic, it's immoral to enforce any kind of contract, social or otherwise.

You're not an ancap libertarian, you're an anarchist idiot
* # ? Nov 14, 2014 07:14
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QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

 So if I decide to set up a tent in the middle of your libertopian garden that's totally cool, right? Don't worry I peed a little on some of these vegetables so I'm mixing my labor with the land and that makes it mine now.

Oh you don't like that? Well tough titties, it'd be immortal for you to try and remove me from the land that is now rightfully mine

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 07:17
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jrodefeld
Sep 22, 2012

by Shine

VitalSigns posted:

Counterpoint: deontological ethics suck because they're just you kinda makin' up a bunch of poo poo about what's moral and what's not without a care about whether your arbitrary subjective ideals are beneficial or harmful to people when you put them in practice in the actual real world.

You're just making poo poo up. I could easily make up a deontological ethics based on a document, oh, something like this:


Ta-dah, starting from the self-evident premise (so self-evident that, like the NAP, it need not be proven but is an axiom) that the Negro is a naturally inferior species of man, we can conclude that slavery is proper, and to those foolish liberals who are concerned for the suffering of those involved, well, that's utilitarianism and I'm a deontologist. So when those hand-wringers say the Negro should have equal rights and privileges to the white man, I stop them right away and ask why man should be so arrogant as to try to make equal what our all-wise Creator has plainly made unequal

But slavery could never be defended consistently because the idea was contradictory. It was clear, even at the time of the founding of the country, that slavery was incompatible with Natural Rights theory and Enlightenment Era thought that otherwise guided the drafting of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. It was a compromise that was absolutely transparent and obvious even at the time.

Now it shouldn't be hard to see how utilitarianism has excused every manner of atrocities. If you take John Stewart Mill's definition of utilitarian ethics, "Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness." The "happiness" he referred to is, in his words, "not the agent’s own greatest happiness but the greatest amount of happiness all together."

Putting aside that concepts such as "happiness" are much too vague, what if lynching black men in Alabama in 1910 provided great pleasure to the vast majority of the population? You could easily make the case that the total amount of sadistic pleasure that the murders caused in the white population was, in total, much more than the amount of unhappiness experienced by the murdered blacks.

You could NOT oppose this policy on utilitarian grounds. Utilitarian ethics is, by its very definition, concerned only with the outcomes rather than the means employed to arrive at that outcome. In contrast a deontologist would make a statement that the act of murder is wrong in and of itself. The consequentialist outcomes of murdering some black people versus not murdering them is immaterial. It is STILL immoral to use violent force against them.

Whichever sort of ethics you subscribe to, you still must universalize your ethics. For a utilitarian, a private citizen should have the right to act in all manner of ways, provided that the end result is a greater amount of happiness for society as a whole.

Preference for private property in our own person and the superiority of discourse and voluntarism over conflict is necessarily implied through the act of discourse. To demonstrate through your action a preference for peaceful conflict avoidance through discourse and arguing for an ethic that upholds the opposite is called a performative contradiction.

This is another way that libertarians can logically prove the correctness of our deontological ethic of non-aggression which we subscribe to. You also are a libertarian, but you don't know it. You have divorced the concept of the State from the use of violence. You don't see the State as violence, but mental gymnastics allow you to see it as a voluntary club, a provider of charity and social services.

By nature of the fact that you are choosing to peacefully discuss these issues on an internet forum like this, you are through your actions affirming the libertarian ethic of non-aggression.

You would never in your life dream of using violence in the same way the State does. Out of sight out of mind as the saying goes. The violence of the State is out of sight, so you can avoid seeing the gun that the State wields against the innocent.

Once you comprehend the violence that the State commits, and understand the performative contradiction which affirms the libertarian ethic of non aggression, you will have no choice but to cede the moral argument to us.

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 07:22
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Ravenfood
Nov 4, 2011
Probation
Can't post for 30 minutes!
You're really just going to skate by you undermining your entire system of a contract based society while declaring my position inconsistent? That's cute.

Incidentally, I'd I had to choose between a logically consistent hellhole and an incoherent semi-okay place, I know which one I'd rather live in.

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 07:26
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Muscle Tracer
Feb 23, 2007

Medals only weigh one down.

jrodefeld posted:

I'd appreciate your comments.

I'm going to leave the line-by-line bits for others, and focus on something else for a moment: what I, personally, see as the role of government.

The reason that the free market doesn't work on the whole is twofold: people don't know what's best for them, and they don't know (or don't care) what's best for society. This isn't an elitist "I know what's best, but the proles are just dumb!" comment: I don't know what's best for me, either.

This first assertion can be validated everywhere. People don't wear their seatbelts, despite irrefutable data showing they reduce deaths from traffic collisions. People smoke cigarettes, despite irrefutable data that doing so will shorten their lifespan and eventually cause them a painful death. People drink and drive. People date assholes, break up with them, and then get back together with them. People refuse to go to the doctor for chest pain. People get into heroin. People accumulate vastly more wealth than they are capable of using, much less enjoying. People are loving stupid.

And the second can be demonstrated easily by looking at politics. The U.S. is split roughly 50/50 between Dem and Rep, as always, so doesn't it then logically follow that, at best, half of the country is wrong about what's best for it? Either the Dems are wrong, the Reps are wrong, or both, yet the vast majority of people identify with one or the other, or none.

The obvious conclusion here is that people are not rational actors. Humans are animals, ruled by hormones and emotion, with logical centers so weak that even the most blindingly apparent facts, like "don't smoke because it will kill you," can be impossible to implement. It is optimistic but naïve to assume that humans are capable of acting in a free market, even if it were one with perfect information (nobody's hiding anything about cigarettes), and yet most of the time it's almost impossible to know what you're buying, or what you're supporting by buying it.

This is a sidebar, but important -- people cannot obtain reliable, much less perfect, information. Even with the unparalleled access to information afforded to citizens of the 21st century first world, people manage to be astonishingly ignorant about vaccination, economics, religions, race, biology, even basic geography and recent history verging on current events. It is unreasonable to expect a person to obtain all available knowledge about automobiles in order to avoid getting screwed when their car breaks down, while having the same responsibilities when it comes to their healthcare, legal rights, nutritional needs, exercise habits, available political views, home maintenance, etc. People are incredibly lucky to be a truly qualitied expert in a small few topics, which is why we have specialization of labor.

So, what can people do to overcome their own overwhelming mass incompetence, and prevent us from electrocuting ourselves and flying out of our car windows?

Your answer seems to be that they ought to trust corporate mafia--that's the only logical outcome of a group of people with a government that doesn't collect taxes, and does nothing but enforce contract law. Yet, what is the purpose of a corporation--who calls the shots? In the end, investors call the shots, and those with the most shares are the wealthiest, and what they want are dividends. And though they would have you believe otherwise, providing the highest quality product is NOT, in fact, the way to the highest profit margins! Apple is not in the business of making the best possible phone: it's in the business of making money, which is why its phones fail after a few years. Monsanto isn't in the business of selling the best seed, it's in the business of making money for its investors, which is why it suffocates smaller farmers and litigates everyone it can into oblivion. Comcast isn't in the business of telecommunications, it's in the business of making money for its investors, which is why the United States telecom infrastrucutre looks positively paleolithic compared to other countries. FedEx doesn't care about package recipients in Bumfuck, MO; Exxon doesn't care about your devestated ecosystem halfway across the globe; Nike doesn't care about its barefoot Asian child laborers. They care about money, and if the price of money is blood, so be it.

If all power is ceded to the wealthy, and our country is run, not by a democratic one-person-one-vote system but a capitalist one-share-one-vote system, then the well-established trends of such societies will continue: the aristocrat will squeeze every last dollar out of the worker, and will rage at the worker for not being more grateful for his table scraps.

So, what is the alternative? The alternative is a virtue-ethical system: that the people choose the most qualified among them to create, in essence, one tremendously large corporation, not with a profit motive, but a utlitarian motive. By cultivating a ruling group with the best knowledge and virtues, it becomes possible to provide for the common good, out of the common pocket. A government empowered to find those most qualified to make inquiries into the relative value of seatbelts, cigarettes, and life insurance, will determine what is best for the people. And if they let the people down, others will be found to take their place.

"Ah!" I can hear the people shout, "But government can be corrupted! What of Lysander Spooner's essay!?"

Well, answer me this: what corrupts government? Corporate interests. The wealthy. Money. The government is made worse, not when it is run by the people, but when it is influenced by the very people that libertarianism hopes to empower even more! In fact, the American political scene is one of the freest markets around right now, and it's been shown time and again that it's the wealthy, not the ordinary, who benefit. The effect of corporate money in politics alone should be an all but irrefutable demonstration that The Market is irretrievably broken when it comes to addressing the needs of common people, and a demonstration that the richest are not, in fact, the best deciders of the course of the nation.

Either way, this trust is ceded to someone. You either trust Tyson to feed you a chicken that's not filled with toxins, or you trust the FDA to watch over them. Why, then, would you trust the organization whose stated mission is to make more money at any cost, over the organization whose stated mission is "[P]rotecting the public health by assuring the safety, efficacy and security of [...] our nation's food supply"? Are you going to trust a person to make the right decision in the moment, dozens of times a day, about things they don't truly know or care about? Or are you going to trust tehm to elect politicians who do care, and have track records of success?

---

A final, unrelated note. Jrode, you say "If a moral principle is valid, I believe you must continue to extend these moral principles further and further." I agree with this statemnt. But I don't find the moral principle of Libertarian property rights (better known to most kindergateners as "Finders Keepers, Loosers Weepers") compelling in the slightest. To me, the only moral principle worth the term (at least in the context of politics) is indeed, as you said, the utilitarian principle of the greatest good for the greatest number. Human happiness, it appears to me, is the only thing with truly intrinsic value, and any "moral" system that renounces net human happiness in favor of arbitrary rules rings hollow. What is the value of rigorous property rights, if they make people more unhappy than the alternatives already in practice? Why does your right to pour mercury down your own private well outweigh my right to not die of avoidable cancer? Why does your right to have more wealth than you can ever use outweigh my child's right to proper nutrition?

You may want to reconsider the "deontologist" mantle, by the way, if you admit in the same post that your rules are non-universalizable. If you can't universalize them, you're not a very good deontologist.

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 07:34
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Lemming
Apr 21, 2008
 The concept of owning property is obviously immoral though. Libertarians are cowards who try to hide behind the concept of property combined with the "non-aggression principle" so they can justify using violence or the threat of violence to keep others from using what everyone justly should have equal access to. Denying others access to what no individual owns is morally repugnant. A preferable alternative is a state which prevents individuals from hoarding too much and keeping it from society. Different systems have different successes in this regard, but the libertarian ideal, where individuals have absolute control over an unlimited amount of space or objects, is an extremely violent and aggressive place.

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 07:45
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Wolfsheim
Dec 23, 2003

"Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."
Nope, I could totally see myself using violence the way the State does. It would be way easier in libertarian society, in fact. If I had more guns and people, whose going to stop me from taking your poo poo? The police and military that no longer exist? The DRO that me and mine pay far more in dues to than you do, especially now that I've successfully stolen everything you had?

Also gonna guess whenever you asked which of those libertarians you cited are racist and Caros immediately produced links showing half of them are in pro-Confederacy groups that you're going to quietly pretend that didn't happen. Sorry all the people who influenced you are racist shitheels jrode :(

Wolfsheim fucked around with this message at 08:19 on Nov 14, 2014

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 07:49
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jrodefeld
Sep 22, 2012

by Shine

QuarkJets posted:

By your logic, it's immoral to enforce any kind of contract, social or otherwise.

You're not an ancap libertarian, you're an anarchist

That is not true. By signing a contract two parties are both voluntarily ceding authority over the enforcement of that contract to a third party. Since authority is agreed upon, enforcing that contract is not a violation of the non-aggression principle.

That should be obvious but it seems as though you are trying to be perverse rather than trying to understand the argument.

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 07:58
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Raskolnikov38
Mar 3, 2007

We were somewhere around Manila when the drugs began to take hold
 And what if the contract doesn't reference a third party for enforcement

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 08:01
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QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

 jrod, why are all of your replies 500 word essays? Every time you post something it's some huge post full of inane ramblings about all sorts of stupid poo poo, and it's tiresome sorting through the fluff while looking for the meat of your arguments.

It's not that hard to respond to people with concise and well-written arguments, you should try doing that sometime.

For example, here's your most recent post:

jrodefeld posted:

But slavery could never be defended consistently because the idea was contradictory. It was clear, even at the time of the founding of the country, that slavery was incompatible with Natural Rights theory and Enlightenment Era thought that otherwise guided the drafting of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. It was a compromise that was absolutely transparent and obvious even at the time.

Now it shouldn't be hard to see how utilitarianism has excused every manner of atrocities. If you take John Stewart Mill's definition of utilitarian ethics, "Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness." The "happiness" he referred to is, in his words, "not the agent’s own greatest happiness but the greatest amount of happiness all together."

Putting aside that concepts such as "happiness" are much too vague, what if lynching black men in Alabama in 1910 provided great pleasure to the vast majority of the population? You could easily make the case that the total amount of sadistic pleasure that the murders caused in the white population was, in total, much more than the amount of unhappiness experienced by the murdered blacks.

You could NOT oppose this policy on utilitarian grounds. Utilitarian ethics is, by its very definition, concerned only with the outcomes rather than the means employed to arrive at that outcome. In contrast a deontologist would make a statement that the act of murder is wrong in and of itself. The consequentialist outcomes of murdering some black people versus not murdering them is immaterial. It is STILL immoral to use violent force against them.

Whichever sort of ethics you subscribe to, you still must universalize your ethics. For a utilitarian, a private citizen should have the right to act in all manner of ways, provided that the end result is a greater amount of happiness for society as a whole.

Preference for private property in our own person and the superiority of discourse and voluntarism over conflict is necessarily implied through the act of discourse. To demonstrate through your action a preference for peaceful conflict avoidance through discourse and arguing for an ethic that upholds the opposite is called a performative contradiction.

This is another way that libertarians can logically prove the correctness of our deontological ethic of non-aggression which we subscribe to. You also are a libertarian, but you don't know it. You have divorced the concept of the State from the use of violence. You don't see the State as violence, but mental gymnastics allow you to see it as a voluntary club, a provider of charity and social services.

By nature of the fact that you are choosing to peacefully discuss these issues on an internet forum like this, you are through your actions affirming the libertarian ethic of non-aggression.

You would never in your life dream of using violence in the same way the State does. Out of sight out of mind as the saying goes. The violence of the State is out of sight, so you can avoid seeing the gun that the State wields against the innocent.

Once you comprehend the violence that the State commits, and understand the performative contradiction which affirms the libertarian ethic of non aggression, you will have no choice but to cede the moral argument to us.

That's a lot of bullshit and fluff with only a few underlying ideas. You start off talking about how slavery doesn't jive with Natural Rights, completely missing the point that VitalSigns made. Then you compare utilitarianism and deontology, trying to claim that lynching black people in 1910 Alabama generated more happiness than unhappiness (what the gently caress). Then you go off on a tangent about how everything that the state does is violent and that everyone just doesn't see it. Then you make a cultish remark about how we're all really libertarians but just haven't seen the light yet. Okay, let's edit down your post now:

jrodefeld posted:

But even back then, slavery could never be defended consistently because it conflicted with the Natural Rights ideals that guided the drafting of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Slavery was a compromise that was transparent and obvious even at the time.

Utilitarianism has excused innumerable atrocities; according to John Stewart Mill's definition of utilitarian ethics, actions that promote the greatest amount of total happiness are the most morally right. But what if lynching black men in Alabama in 1910 provided the greatest total happiness to the population? You could easily make the case that the total amount of sadistic pleasure that the murders caused in the white population was much greater than the amount of unhappiness experienced by the murdered blacks. By contrast, a deontologist would state that the act of murder is wrong, and the happiness outcomes of murdering some black people versus not murdering any is immaterial; it is STILL immoral to murder them.

Your real problem is that you have divorced the concept of the State from the use of violence. You don't see the State as violence, but mental gymnastics allow you to see it as a voluntary club, a provider of charity and social services. The violence of the State is out of sight, so you can avoid seeing the gun that the State wields against the innocent. By choosing to peacefully discuss these issues on an internet forum, you are affirming the libertarian ethic of non-aggression. Once you comprehend the violence that the State commits, and understand the moral superiority of deontology, you will have no choice but to cede the moral argument to us.

There, half as many words to say the same things, but in more effective ways. It's just as weird and culty in the end, but there's not much to be done with that sort of poo poo.

(seriously, you think that it would be easy to argue that lynching blacks in 1910 Alabama generated more net happiness than not lynching them? What the gently caress is wrong with you? You understand that no one here is going to accept that the net happiness of a few dozen sick lynching fuckers is more important than the happiness of an entire population, right?)

Also, the claim that posting on the internet is equivalent to being a libertarian is just :psyduck:

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 08:07
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QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

jrodefeld posted:

That is not true. By signing a contract two parties are both voluntarily ceding authority over the enforcement of that contract to a third party. Since authority is agreed upon, enforcing that contract is not a violation of the non-aggression principle.

That should be obvious but it seems as though you are trying to be perverse rather than trying to understand the argument.


jrodefeld posted:

How can you delegate a right you don't already have? I don't have the right to use aggression against my neighbor but somehow I can "give" this right which I never had to politicians and have them use aggression on my behalf? That is not a coherent belief.

These are contradictory positions.

Just to be explicitly clear, In the second quote, you're stating that certain concepts, like aggression, can't be given to anyone, not even third parties, not even if you agree to it. In the first quote, you're saying the opposite of that.

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 08:09
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Caros
May 14, 2008

 Hey Jrodefeld, respond to my Molyneux post. You promised you'd do it in the last libertarian thread, and made a similar claim in this one. Please explain why you believe he is a good person to take information from while at the same time ignoring virulent misogyny. Thank you in advance.

jrodefeld posted:

From what I have read thus far, predictably for leftists you all express great concern for those who you feel would slip through the cracks in a market economy. You are convinced that charity and voluntary organizations could never come close to being sufficient to address the social need that will exist in society. Caros in particular dropped his libertarianism primarily for this reason when his friend was unable to get the help she needed and died as a result. I strongly disagree that charity and the market could not address social problems as well, if not better, than any coercive authority. However, I am NOT a utilitarian, but rather I am a deontologist.

I believe that actions are right or wrong based on the nature of the action itself. What results from moral actions may or may not be beneficial to a specific individual or group, but I would always consider it wrong to employ immoral action to change social outcomes. Say you are designing policy and say "first step is that we empower a small group in society with the authority to confiscate all our money through force and then..." I'd immediately stop you then and inquire "who gave these people rights that the rest of us do not possess?

Why is it appropriate that these people be permitted to take my property against my will, yet a similar action by any other member of society is considered an act of violent aggression that is punished? From this inconsistency, I must conclude that the act of taking my property through the threat of violence is immoral in and of itself and it matters not what you plan to spend that money on. The only way you can begin to square this circle is if you try to argue that all individuals have the equal right to take their neighbors property through force. But in this case the ethic breaks down and society with it. All property rights break down if this ethic is universalized and society would revert to subsistence and constant conflict.


Is this a paragraph? Jesus my loving eyes are going blurry trying to read this.

That said, after putting loving paragraph breaks into it for my sanity here is my reply. We know you are a deontologist. We think that deontology is generally stupid or unhelpful for determining human action outside of a classroom setting. Even your example is stupid because it relies entirely on a point of perspective.

Ignoring the fact that you are begging the question with your phrasing "authority to confiscate all our money through force" (when the gently caress does this happen), your example falters because you immediately call it an inconsistancy without considering any other point of view. You declare from the outset that your point of view is the only logical and viable method.

We all agree that your reading of the situation is one possible reading. It is possible to look at those facts and go "Who gave them this power." It is also possible to look at it from our perspective and say "Government taxation is not theft because property is only determined by an agreement between people." You have been unable to refute the basic fact that property is nothing but an agreement between people. If we can all agree that your house is yours, then why can we not also agree that you have to pay taxes on it?

Your example only works if we work from your assumptions. So yes, if we assume you are correct, you are correct. We are not however assuming you are correct, so there are a ton of different ways to read the situation, which is why your "Objective Morality" is stupid as all fuckballs.

quote:

I would say to you that "it is immoral to use force to steal the property of others". So, regardless of your end goal, ten or twenty steps down the line, you must rethink your approach because the means you are employing, in and of themselves, are immoral. Your end goal may be that the homeless man on the streets gets enough food or the cancer patient gets treatment, then I would propose that we go together and help the poor get on their feet, contribute to voluntary organizations that provide charity. Since each step I am proposing is, in and of itself, moral and universalizable to all of society, this approach is deontologically sound.

Why is it immoral? Who decides that it is immoral? God? I don't think you are religious so it must be logic. Your logic says that it is immoral to use force to steal the property of others. I agree with that, but I don't agree with you on why it is immoral. I believe that theft is immoral because the vast majority of humanity has agreed that theft is immoral, that is that its subjective.

Your approach is deontologically sound, but deontology is not in and of itself sound. It doesn't work except in your own weird fever dream where every human interaction can be broken down into logical chunks where something is observably right or wrong.

quote:

Your view that, from a utilitarian perspective, the outcomes of applying ethical behavior in the construction of a society for some people might not be to your liking or sufficient to meet the needs of this group or that, is really a prejudice and assumption you have. You really have no idea of the outcome of applying moral action to a specific individual. In fact, the power is in your and my hands to create a society where social problems are addressed to the best of our fallible abilities as human beings. Since desires are infinite and we live in a world of scarcity, we know for certainty that some people will want more than what they end up getting in any economy.

Yes, and we also know that people need more than they end up getting in our current economy. I'm not the most staunch utilitarian in the world since I do understand the idea that the ideology has its own flaws, and also falls into traps of moral reasoning, but I think the greatest good for the greatest number of people is a better code to live by than "gently caress it, let the chips fall where they may because LOGIC!"

quote:

The Statist fallacy you seem to accept is that people, while not competent to act voluntarily to help others and address our human problems, will nonetheless be competent to vote responsibly for politicians that will somehow centrally plan and redistribute wealth in a manner that helps people more and better solves social problems than the many disparate "plans" of free people interacting on a voluntary basis.

Could you please cut it out with the loving statist crap. We call you a libertarian because you identify as one. You make up a word and fill it with insulting innuendo and it really brings forth how little you think of us. Personal courtesy, loving stop it.

Also simply because you declare something a fallacy does not make it so. I believe that groups of people working towards specific goals can do a better job of meeting those goals than a bunch of random individuals firing off in whatever direction they think will best suit them. Universal healthcare is better than private healthcare because it sets out with one goal "Healthcare for everyone" and it accomplishes it admirably in a way that you simply cannot in a system of individuals. Go talk to Eripsa about his ants if you want an explanation.

quote:

But I want to take a step back and inquire about your world view from a broader perspective. As I understand it, your view is that the State must coercively tax the citizenry to fund social welfare programs for those that need it, to regulate and police business actions and pollution and manage the economy to control the business cycle.

I have heard endless attempts by different members of this forum to discredit the libertarian ethic by trotting out hypothetical after hypothetical. The goal is to discredit the validity of the non-aggression principle by illustrating some scenario whereby the initiation of force against another's property is justified for the far greater good. Examples that have been offered include that oft cited "lifeboat" scenarios. If I am starving and I could steal a loaf of bread from a wealthy store owner, would it be morally justified to do so?

Yup, and I want to remind everyone that your answer to those lifeboat scenarios is that the person 'should' take whatever course would save his life, but that the person is taking an inherently immoral act all the same. Also you think that the person denying them lifesaving whatever should not press charges, and that if he does he would be ostracized from his community. You literally described it as an immoral act that everyone agrees is the right course of action.

For the record, if everyone thinks you did the right choice, its typically a moral action. Or at the very least morally ambiguous, not that your system can handle anything but binary good/bad choices.

quote:

Another one I heard mentioned on another website recently includes organ donation after death. Suppose I am not an organ donor and my religious beliefs dictate that I be buried "intact" so my soul can be at rest. But on the other hand, suppose my kidney could be donated to someone who is dying? I am already dead and harvesting my organs could save the life of another. Why should my property right or wishes be respected if, by doing so, another human being would die? A Statist would argue that "society" has determined that my personal religious beliefs are irrational and stupid and my legal contract and will is to be disregarded for the good of society, in this case saving a human life.

Ummm... what? Do you seriously see people arguing this? I suspect this is a good strawman for you!

The typical utilitarian argument, or at least the one that I would make is that forcing organ donation after death wouldn't be worth the trouble for one thing. Burial rights are a big thing in pretty much every culture the world over, and the net positive of lives saved via organ donation in this fashion would probably be outweighed by the collective societal "gently caress you" heard round the world.

quote:

Now when you cite examples such as these, I'll admit you make an emotionally compelling case. A very reasonable person could easily conclude that, in some cases, respecting the non-aggression principle and a persons private property rights is NOT morally justified. What this means is we have drifted into moral relativism and this concession can be the beginning of a moral defense of the entire Statist system.

I would argue that most people probably would compromise any notion of private property rights or non-aggression when confronted with such hypotheticals. A libertarian would not, and I'll explain why. A philosopher must be concerned with the macro and not just the hypothetical micro. We have to also begin to address the world as it actually is, not as reflecting some abstract theory. And, sure enough, the State does not behave anywhere close to the theories offered by any non-Anarchist left liberal.

So are you not a libertarian then? Or do you really think that saying "No its totally still immoral even though I would absolutely do the 'bad' thing in that situation and expect people to agree with me for doing it!" is an actual argument that we will accept?

It is hilarious that you want to address the world as it is, by the way, after dodging it all this time.

quote:

If a person were to concede the validity of using aggression in a particular instance, we must examine the ramifications for human society of accepting the authority of the State and aggression as codified policy over time. And, specifically to Caros, if the State had used violence against a rich person to provide your friend with healthcare and saved her life, that would have been a joyous outcome for her and for you. For a utilitarian perspective, such a system would have worked out for her in that moment. But we must look at the far reaching consequences for society in the long run.

The state wouldn't have used violence you condesending gently caress. Stop reinventing words to make them mean what you want them to rather than what they actually mean. Come to think of it, is that why you think there are no racists in the libertarian party? Do you think racist means "People who love black people?"

quote:

The State is not easily controllable, if at all. You have an idea in your head of what the State must do and you surely have an idea of what the State should NOT do. The problem of controlling and restraining oppressive State power has been contemplated by philosophers and political theorists for centuries. The classical liberals felt that the State could be restrained through written Constitutions. A limited Republic, a night watchman State with a specific and limited list of delegated functions was proposed.

George Washington famously said: "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force. Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearsome master.”

First off, George Washington famously did not say that. The statement is apocryphal. Might I suggest running quotes through google before you use them from now on? Because I could tell at a glance that was not a washington quote, primarily because I am not predisposed to believing everything I am told by other libertarians.

As to the rest of your post, yes, determining the power of government is a balancing act, and it can grow beyond what we might otherwise like, just as it can (in the case of the USA) be kept from performing goals that would otherwise suit the public good. So what?

quote:

I respect the classical liberals and modern day minarchists for their valiant attempts to restrain State power but one must conclude that their efforts have thus far proven to be failures. They managed to keep out a central bank from the United States for most of the 19th century and some provisions held State power in check for a time.

Why must we conclude this? You keep doing this. You keep just going "we must conclude" or "Clearly" or "It is very obvious" or a dozen other similar phrases. This is argument by assertion, not by fact. You want to try and convince someone? Argue statistics, bring up dates or examples. When you post "We must conclude that their efforts thus far have proven to be failures" you lose all credibility because you're just throwing around sophistry and expecting that we'll nod our heads and smile.

quote:

But I feel that they had some insights into the nature of State power that modern left Progressives don't. You seem to think that the State, the ultimate tool of force and aggression, can be made into the Red Cross, a provider of social services and charity, a "public servant" if you will.

Yes, I do believe that. Because the Canadian healthcare system has been around since before I was born and will be alive long after I am dead, keeping generation after generation of Canadians healthy at costs lower than market alternatives. So yes, I do believe the government can be a public servant using just one of a nearly infinate number of examples.

quote:

And what means have you all proposed to keep this "fearful master" in check? Not a written Constitution, but the "democratic vote". This is absolutely laughable to me. Democracy doesn't restrain government, but causes it inexorably to grow.

Uhh... US Constitution, Charter of Rights and Freedoms, I dunno... the loving Magna Carta? Why do you think that the constitution is not designed to keep powers in check when that is one of if not its primary purpose. I'm glad that you think that democracy is funny, because I think being ruled by the Natural Social Elites is hilarious. Fortunately for all of us, your joke is just that, a joke while mine is the primary system of government in north america for the last several centuries.

quote:

You want the State to have the power to redistribute wealth in society, but you'd like it to be spent on things which are genuinely in the "common good" such as healthcare and a social safety net. But how can you prevent the State from using that money to provide welfare to the rich instead? You would like the Federal Reserve to manage the business cycle but how do you prevent it from financing endless deficit spending and wars of aggression?

You want the State to police business behavior through a complex regulatory system but how do you prevent business interests from achieving regulatory capture and creating monopoly privileges for themselves? How do you prevent the State monopolized police forces from terrorizing the public through a war on drugs, which criminalizes private, consensual behavior?

Are you going to get to a point anytime soon? Also I totally read the start of this block in the Ultron Voice from avengers 2. You want the state to have the power to redistribute wealth but you're all just... puppets. Tangled in... yeah, etc.

At this point I can't even really argue with you because you're just making outright assertions with no backing and frankly no point to speak of. How can we prevent the state from using that money to provide welfare to the rich? The democratic process. Is it perfect? No, but I prefer it to being ruled by a King as HHH suggests, or DRO Valhalla as Mr. Molyneux proposes. You have not provided an alternative that is better, and you kind of need to do that if you want to convince us to throw out centuries of the best society in human history.

Your whole argument here is that "The state isn't perfect". Our argument is that Anarcho-Capitalism is impossible, or at best much, much, much, much, much, much worse.

quote:

The truth is that you CAN'T control the State, especially when you envision a State with essentially unlimited powers as do most left liberals. Funds are fungible. You want the State to coercively expropriate people to provide for charity and social services, but that money inevitably and in increasing amounts goes towards a privileged "elite" who influence the State. Untold millions have been killed by our government. Central power is incredibly dangerous. We have to live in the real world and realize how States behave and what perverse incentives they provide.

Why is this the truth? Argument by assertion doesn't mean you are right. All you are doing is stating (ha!) things that you don't like about the state and declaring victory.

quote:

If any supporter of the State is remotely familiar with the real world, I would suggest they take stock of the approach adopted by the classical liberals. gently caress democracy. "The will of the majority" has little bearing on the ethics of policy. You must decide which actions are completely necessary and indispensable that you feel the State, and only the State, can provide. You must carefully consider the ethics of these actions. And you must think VERY carefully of how you can possibly limit the authority of the State to a very strictly limited set of policies, without the ability to do the incredibly damage to society that State authority is capable of.

gently caress Monarchy, or the Natural Social Elites. gently caress being ruled over by a plutocracy of the wealthy. gently caress your entire ideology and thank god that it is nothing more than a fringe belief held largely by white supremacists and teenagers.

quote:

I don't hear this from any left liberals. I only see a fetish for democracy. As long as the "people" express their opinion through politics, the State can do any drat thing conceivable.

You want to talk fetish? The funny thing is that a lot of us agree that markets can do things pretty well. I think that Apple is a hell of a lot better at designing a new iPhone than the government, but I also believe that every piece of tech in it started out in a government funded lab because the market sucks at properly funding research.

You believe that the government is always bad. I believe that capitalism is bad at a lot of things and good at a lot of things. You are the one who is fetishizing something.

quote:

You may make a compelling emotional (if not logical) argument about a lifeboat scenario where force could be seen as justified for the greater good, but you have to divorce yourself from living in a fantasy and reckon with the reality of State power as it actually exists in the real world. If we are speaking about ethics, let's examine what States have done. 270 million corpses have been piled up in the 20th century by governments killing their own people. Wars account for tens of millions more at least. States use the gun to interfere with every conceivable voluntary human association imaginable. This is not theoretical, it happens right now every single day.

So, on balance, I think you would be hard pressed as people who favor Statism to look down upon libertarians who feel that philosophy is important, the use of aggression is immoral and that we must be consistent in our application of ethics (i.e. ethics must be universal) as morally inferior. Your entire contention for this view is that you don't think that some people will be adequately provided the goods and services they need or want without coercion and violence.

People in power do bad things. Congrats. People in power in a libertarian society would also do bad things if such a society could even exist, which it wouldn't because it would inevitably end up back with states or states by another name (covenants) as far as I'm concerned.

I don't think you are morally inferior, I simply think that humanity does not want your moral system. There is nothing inherently wrong with devising a perfectly logical moral system like you have, just like there is nothing wrong with morality based in religion. The difference is that no one wants your morality because it leads to outcomes that we find unpleasent at best and disturbing or horrific at worst.

quote:

You don't know that a voluntary, libertarian society won't provide, on balance, a better utilitarian outcome for most of society, your prejudice causes you to assume that it won't. You make the assumption that aggressive violence is necessary for human flourishing.

I'm just going to start calling you an rear end in a top hat every time you accuse me of accepting 'violence' when we talk about taxes? Sound good rear end in a top hat? And don't worry I mean something totally different than what you are assuming.

That said, I also don't know if tomorrow I will see a unicorn. I've followed your ideology for nearly a decade as a proponent and the opposition. I don't think it will work because I've "logically" looked at the arguments for and against. Feel free to prove me wrong, but I will fight you tooth and goddamned nail if you are trying to interupt things like universal healthcare in favor of your flight of fancy.

quote:

If you cannot bring yourself to understand how anarchy could work, I don't blame you. To understand the incentive structure and economics which makes competing defense agencies, courts and private arbitration based on common law and restitution a feasible alternative to State monopoly provision of these services requires a good deal of reading and thought.

Oh come the gently caress on Jrod. We can't bring ourselves to see the truth and understand anarchy? Do you really believe we don't understand your position by this point? Because that is incredibly loving insulting. We've read the same work you have, we've just come to different conclusions because information can be subjective just like morality.

quote:

That is precisely why most libertarians are not yet anarchists. Libertarianism is a big tent philosophy and even Ludwig Von Mises was a minarchist rather than an anarchist. I can understand the reason one might be inclined to see the State as necessary, only for providing laws protecting private property rights and the non aggression principle, courts and national defense, but nothing else. A true night watchman State. Protect our natural rights and property, defend us against other Nation States should they attack.

You could join us in that position, even if you cannot bring yourself to accept anarchy. If a moral principle is valid, I believe you must continue to extend these moral principles further and further. Therefore I am an anarchist, but I think we will probably need to revert to minarchy and a night watchman State first before people come to understand that we can begin to substitute State monopolized police and courts without society breaking down into Hobbesian anarchy. The minarchist position is one that I respect and even admire. But the naive left liberal view of democracy and essentially unlimited State power is, on the other hand, incredibly dangerous and remarkably foolish.

How can you respect and admire that position? Any state will inevitably have unlimited power. You can't control the state, you made that clear above didnt' you? You explained how simply having a state means that the state will grow in size and power over time. Or does monarchy hold the weird hosed up key to preventing that thing you said was inevitable.

quote:

I'd appreciate your comments.

gently caress you. No, seriously. gently caress you. I'm done being nice and civil with you because you are in iteration 1,827,299 of the same loving poo poo you've said over and over. No one here is buying what you are selling, no one here is 'confused' or 'fails to understand'. What you are talking about.

You want to keep talking, thats fine. But drop the holier than thou, apologize for presenting someone else's' work as your own and for the love of god maybe try seeing things from someone elses prospective for once, hard as that is.

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 08:11
  • Quote
Caros
May 14, 2008

jrodefeld posted:

How can you delegate a right you don't already have? I don't have the right to use aggression against my neighbor but somehow I can "give" this right which I never had to politicians and have them use aggression on my behalf? That is not a coherent belief.

We delegate rights all the time. I don't have the right to arrest my neighbor, but the police do. If I put someone in prison that is kidnapping, if the police do it then it is justice. A firefighter can kick down my door to save me even though that is breaking and entering. Even your libertarian society has this. If someone steps onto your property the DRO cops can come and haul him away and put him in prison.

quote:

People WILL inevitably want to seek guidance and cede authority to wise men. This is what Hoppe was referring to when he spoke of "natural elites". I know that people wanted to turn that into some statement of racism, where the elites will all be white because they are genetically superior, but that is NOT what Hoppe was saying at all. Rather, the Natural Elites would be people who society voluntarily view as wise, intelligent and virtuous owing to their achievement and track record. People would cede "authority" only in a voluntary sense. This would be the outcome of a true division of labor.

HHH posted:

Because these people are genetically superior, and because of social/civil advantages, these Natural Social Elites will typically have children that will continue their line.

:fuckoff:

Seriously, do you think I can't go two pages back? Hans Hermann Hoppe believes that society will pick people 'voluntarily' to rule over them and dispense universal (?) justice. He also firmly believes that these traits are loving hereditary, and judging by the rest of his work where he talks about how great Heterosexual white men are it is not loving hard to infer who he believes the natural social elites are.

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 08:20
  • Quote
VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

jrodefeld posted:

But slavery could never be defended consistently because the idea was contradictory. It was clear, even at the time of the founding of the country, that slavery was incompatible with Natural Rights theory and Enlightenment Era thought that otherwise guided the drafting of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. It was a compromise that was absolutely transparent and obvious even at the time.
As I have already shown, Enlightenment Era thought came to incorrect conclusions because it is based on the erroneous premise that the races which Almighty God created unequal are in fact equal. In fact, by even claiming the races to be equal, our Enlightenment thinker is actually engaged in a performative contradiction by using his superior white mind to reason away its own superiority, even though true philosophy is the creation and province of white heterosexual Western male puissance. Once you use your superior white mind to debate the issue, you have no choice but to concede that I am right, for if you were no better than a Negro you wouldn't be able to grasp philosophical concepts at all.

jrodefeld posted:

Now it shouldn't be hard to see how utilitarianism has excused every manner of atrocities. If you take John Stewart Mill's definition of utilitarian ethics, "Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness." The "happiness" he referred to is, in his words, "not the agent’s own greatest happiness but the greatest amount of happiness all together."

Putting aside that concepts such as "happiness" are much too vague, what if lynching black men in Alabama in 1910 provided great pleasure to the vast majority of the population? You could easily make the case that the total amount of sadistic pleasure that the murders caused in the white population was, in total, much more than the amount of unhappiness experienced by the murdered blacks.

You could NOT oppose this policy on utilitarian grounds. Utilitarian ethics is, by its very definition, concerned only with the outcomes rather than the means employed to arrive at that outcome.
Nope, our evil utilitarian could in fact come to the unnatural conclusion that lynching blacks for fun is an immoral crime by simply assigning the social value of sadistic pleasure at the death of a black man to be zero and very unnaturally assigning the life of an inferior negro to have some positive value.

You and I, as noble deontologists, can derive the correct conclusion by beginning from the self-evident fact that blackie is an inferior species, and thus we find that it is unconscionable to aggress against a white man to stop him from the enjoyable hunting of animals, be they pigeons, deer, or subhuman Negros.

jrodefeld posted:

This is another way that libertarians can logically prove the correctness of our deontological ethic of non-aggression which we subscribe to. You also are a libertarian, but you don't know it. You have divorced the concept of the State from the use of violence. You don't see the State as violence, but mental gymnastics allow you to see it as a voluntary club, a provider of charity and social services.

Okay I have a question for you. Beginning from the axiom Humans Act, von Mises concluded that the proper way to arrange society is with a night-watchman State that uses its geographical monopoly on force only to police crime, enforce contracts, and for national defense. Yet you, starting from the same premise conclude that minarchism is immoral on its face, an irredeemable coercive burden upon the brow of the noble industrialist.

Given that you want us to believe that your philosophy is as rigorous as the methods of geometry, why should we believe you or the axioms you pull out of your rear end when two Libertarians use them to derive completely opposite conclusions? Whoever heard of two geometers starting from Euclid's postulates and deriving that the internal angles of a triangle both do and do not sum to 180 degrees, each maintaining that the other's conclusion is a ridiculous falsehood?

And why do you keep quoting the immoral coercion apologist von Mises at us anyway when the State he describes violates your all-or-nothing moral principles?

VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 08:27 on Nov 14, 2014

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 08:22
  • Quote
jrodefeld
Sep 22, 2012

by Shine

Lemming posted:

The concept of owning property is obviously immoral though. Libertarians are cowards who try to hide behind the concept of property combined with the "non-aggression principle" so they can justify using violence or the threat of violence to keep others from using what everyone justly should have equal access to. Denying others access to what no individual owns is morally repugnant. A preferable alternative is a state which prevents individuals from hoarding too much and keeping it from society. Different systems have different successes in this regard, but the libertarian ideal, where individuals have absolute control over an unlimited amount of space or objects, is an extremely violent and aggressive place.

What is your evidence that clearly defined and enforced private property rights creates "an extremely violent and aggressive place"? Because all the evidence points to the exact opposite. Private property is a norm of human civilization that came into being precisely for the purpose of conflict avoidance. If and only if people are made clear about who has jurisdiction over which scarce resource and conflict be avoided and peace be possible. Societies without property rights are incredibly violent, each is fighting over desired scarce resources with no means of avoiding such inevitable conflict.

You say that the concept of private property is "obviously" immoral. Then why don't you give away all your possessions? Is it not contradictory for you to own a car, a house, a computer, clothes and a television and expect others to not use them without your permission if you claim to oppose private property?

Or is only property owned "beyond a certain level" immoral? By what arbitrary standard do you determine which property is justified and which isn't? Because I can guarantee that both you and I are in the 1% of the worlds population in terms of wealth and material comforts. The fact that we are not giving away all our possessions necessarily means that we don't reject the validity of private property. The difference between us is that you are committing a performative contradiction. You are simultaneously arguing against the morality of private property while at the same time expected your property rights to be enforced.

To be clear, charity and helping others is great. It is fantastic. But never confuse the right to property as synonymous to greed. Remember that it is only those that acquire significant wealth and excess resources through abstaining from consumption (savings) that allow them the ability to contribute significantly to charity. The rest of us living paycheck to paycheck are not able to help the poor much.

Ironically, it is your rejection of private property rights that makes savings impossible. People save nothing without property rights. It is only through savings that real investment can occur. It is only through the accumulation of excess money that social programs and mutual aid and charity can be funded in the first place.

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 08:24
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Wolfsheim
Dec 23, 2003

"Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."
Somehow the Natural Social Elites are just more noble, more pure than the rest of us, you know? So much so that this nobility must be in their blood or something.

I mean, I get how any kind of attempt at libertarian society would lead to feudalism almost immediately but I didn't expect them to openly tout it as a positive.

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 08:24
  • Quote
Wolfsheim
Dec 23, 2003

"Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

jrodefeld posted:

You say that the concept of private property is "obviously" immoral. Then why don't you give away all your possessions? Is it not contradictory for you to own a car, a house, a computer, clothes and a television and expect others to not use them without your permission if you claim to oppose private property?

On the reverse, if you say taxes are so immoral why don't you move to Somalia, free from the violent oppression of the State? Your favorite website recommends the poo poo out of it.

quote:

To be clear, charity and helping others is great. It is fantastic. But never confuse the right to property as synonymous to greed. Remember that it is only those that acquire significant wealth and excess resources through abstaining from consumption (savings) that allow them the ability to contribute significantly to charity. The rest of us living paycheck to paycheck are not able to help the poor much.

Ironically, it is your rejection of private property rights that makes savings impossible. People save nothing without property rights. It is only through savings that real investment can occur. It is only through the accumulation of excess money that social programs and mutual aid and charity can be funded in the first place.

Holy poo poo, do you literally believe billionaires got where they were by being thrifty :psyduck:

Wolfsheim fucked around with this message at 08:37 on Nov 14, 2014

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 08:34
  • Quote
Caros
May 14, 2008

jrodefeld posted:

You say that the concept of private property is "obviously" immoral. Then why don't you give away all your possessions? Is it not contradictory for you to own a car, a house, a computer, clothes and a television and expect others to not use them without your permission if you claim to oppose private property?

If taxation is obviously immoral, why do you pay them? I assume you do pay them right?

quote:

To be clear, charity and helping others is great. It is fantastic. But never confuse the right to property as synonymous to greed. Remember that it is only those that acquire significant wealth and excess resources through abstaining from consumption (savings) that allow them the ability to contribute significantly to charity. The rest of us living paycheck to paycheck are not able to help the poor much.

Charity accounts for a drop in the loving bucket compared to government spending, and nearly 1/3rd of that bucket is spent on religion. Also that bucket is tax deductible. Charity will not sold the worlds problems. Also the poor donate 3.2% of their income to charity, while the wealthy donate 1.3%, because the wealthy are assholes.

Charity cannot and will not replace welfare programs. 2/3rds of our elderly lived in poverty before social security, and a roughly equal number would fall into poverty again if the program were disbanded.

quote:

Ironically, it is your rejection of private property rights that makes savings impossible. People save nothing without property rights. It is only through savings that real investment can occur. It is only through the accumulation of excess money that social programs and mutual aid and charity can be funded in the first place.

So when the NIH accounts for 50% of all spending on health research in the USA, that is not a 'real' investment? When the government builds roads that is not a 'real investment'? It sure as gently caress isn't funded by savings, unless you're counting T-bills and opening a big fuckin can of worms.

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 08:37
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1000101
May 14, 2003

BIRTHDAY BIRTHDAY BIRTHDAY BIRTHDAY BIRTHDAY BIRTHDAY FRUITCAKE!

jrodefeld posted:

What is your evidence that clearly defined and enforced private property rights creates "an extremely violent and aggressive place"? Because all the evidence points to the exact opposite. Private property is a norm of human civilization that came into being precisely for the purpose of conflict avoidance. If and only if people are made clear about who has jurisdiction over which scarce resource and conflict be avoided and peace be possible. Societies without property rights are incredibly violent, each is fighting over desired scarce resources with no means of avoiding such inevitable conflict.

And then your private property has some poo poo on it I want and I'm stronger than you so I take your private property.

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 08:38
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VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

jrodefeld posted:

If and only if people are made clear about who has jurisdiction over which scarce resource and conflict be avoided and peace be possible. Societies without property rights are incredibly violent, each is fighting over desired scarce resources with no means of avoiding such inevitable conflict.

The Roman Empire, a famously nonviolent society because of their recognition of private property, the necessary and sufficient condition for nonviolence.

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 08:40
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TLM3101
Sep 8, 2010

jrodefeld posted:

I'd appreciate your comments.

And oh boy, you'll get them.

jrodefeld posted:

From what I have read thus far, predictably for leftists you all express great concern for those who you feel would slip through the cracks in a market economy. You are convinced that charity and voluntary organizations could never come close to being sufficient to address the social need that will exist in society. Caros in particular dropped his libertarianism primarily for this reason when his friend was unable to get the help she needed and died as a result. I strongly disagree that charity and the market could not address social problems as well, if not better, than any coercive authority. However, I am NOT a utilitarian, but rather I am a deontologist. I believe that actions are right or wrong based on the nature of the action itself. What results from moral actions may or may not be beneficial to a specific individual or group, but I would always consider it wrong to employ immoral action to change social outcomes. Say you are designing policy and say "first step is that we empower a small group in society with the authority to confiscate all our money through force and then..." I'd immediately stop you then and inquire "who gave these people rights that the rest of us do not possess? Why is it appropriate that these people be permitted to take my property against my will, yet a similar action by any other member of society is considered an act of violent aggression that is punished? From this inconsistency, I must conclude that the act of taking my property through the threat of violence is immoral in and of itself and it matters not what you plan to spend that money on. The only way you can begin to square this circle is if you try to argue that all individuals have the equal right to take their neighbors property through force. But in this case the ethic breaks down and society with it. All property rights break down if this ethic is universalized and society would revert to subsistence and constant conflict.

I would say to you that "it is immoral to use force to steal the property of others". So, regardless of your end goal, ten or twenty steps down the line, you must rethink your approach because the means you are employing, in and of themselves, are immoral. Your end goal may be that the homeless man on the streets gets enough food or the cancer patient gets treatment, then I would propose that we go together and help the poor get on their feet, contribute to voluntary organizations that provide charity. Since each step I am proposing is, in and of itself, moral and universalizable to all of society, this approach is deontologically sound.

The problem here, of course, is that your initial premise that all boils down to property rights, is a fallacy. There is nothing 'inherent' about the right to property. You might like to think that we have 'inalienable rights' but the harsh, cold, brutal fact of the matter is that, from a strictly rational point of view, we do not possess any such thing. You may think they exist, but there is nothing in nature that grants us any greater significance or claim to special treatment than, say, an armadillo, an ant, a moose, a mosquito, or a cockroach.

Human rights, whether the right to worship the god of our choice ( or none at all ), to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness', to marry another consenting adult regardless of gender or skin-colour? Every single one is a polite fiction that most of us have agreed exist. They do not have an independent existence outside of our cultural landscape. I'm sorry to be quite so stark about this, but it's important for you to understand that there is absolutely nothing in nature that gives you any rights whatsoever, whether to life or property.

If I were to bash your head in with a rock, from a strictly 'natural' view, I would have not have perpetrated a crime or done anything wrong or right. One human is dead, the other is alive. Nature doesn't care.

However, we care. From the point of view that we as a society have adopted, from a cultural view I would have committed a monstrous crime, and would need to be punished for it. And that is the point: 'Property rights' or any other kind of right - yours and mine - only exist insofar as enough of us agree that they exist.

They are not innate.

They are not self-evident.

They are not eternal.

They are fictions that we abide by.

And they are only enforced by the collective will of the people, through the state.

The rest of your wall of text moves on, but as I've no doubt Caros, QuarkJets and Muscle Tracer are already poking holes in them ( fake edit: I see I was right ), I'm not going to bother to parse the rest of your post, especially since it follows from very basic and easily falsified first principles.

I seriously cannot repeat this enough to you, JRodefeld:

Any and all rights attributed to human beings have no independent existence outside of those human beings!

If you want to disprove me, then I want you to grind down the universe* and find me an atom of liberty, or a molecule of the NAP, or a particle of Property Rights.

These. Things. Do. Not. Exist.

( *actually, the universe will not be required. A decently sized rock would do. Or a pebble. Perhaps a piece of lawn would yield a proton of Property? Or a swimming-pool a quark of Non-Aggression? )

TLM3101 fucked around with this message at 08:47 on Nov 14, 2014

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 08:45
  • Quote
jrodefeld
Sep 22, 2012

by Shine

Wolfsheim posted:

Nope, I could totally see myself using violence the way the State does. It would be way easier in libertarian society, in fact. If I had more guns and people, whose going to stop me from taking your poo poo? The police and military that no longer exist? The DRO that me and mine pay far more in dues to than you do, especially now that I've successfully stolen everything you had?

Also gonna guess whenever you asked which of those libertarians you cited are racist and Caros immediately produced links showing half of them are in pro-Confederacy groups that you're going to quietly pretend that didn't happen. Sorry all the people who influenced you are racist shitheels jrode :(

I promised myself I was not going to get baited into a race game, but Caros provided no such thing. All he did was reiterate that he thinks Molyneux is a misogynist, NOT a racist. This is patently false and even if it WERE true, that is an outlier that has nothing to do with your narrative that libertarians are racist. What about the other names I listed? Where were the produced racist and supremacist quotes from them? Crickets.

It is interesting how you all relish the topic of race. The word "racist", "misogynist", "homophobe" and others in that vein serve as emotionally charged epithets designed to distract from the arguments being presented. You should focus on the content of the arguments offered. Shouting an epithet is not an argument. Unless a person is quite explicit, it is difficult or impossible to prove racism. That is why you are hyper vigilant in looking for "code" language that you can interpret in a self serving light.

One of the only things holding together the modern left Progressive movement is identity politics and victim baiting. If and when the African American community starts to splinter off from the Democratic Party and embrace more diverse ideological views then this tactic will lose all its power.

The socialists have long favored attacking the free market because it is "racist" and therefore we need the State to redistribute money from the white privileged classes towards the victimized black and minority populations. What is ironic is that this sort of paternalism and condescension is itself incredibly racist. What is NOT racist is acknowledging the brilliance and capability of a culture and a people and treating them as equals rather than inferiors. The paternalistic attitude peddled by many socialists is that black people could never excel without State assistance to compensate for white racism. This of course ignores the historical reality of other discriminated against groups such as Jews and Asian Americans who succeeded in spite of racism against them.

It is quite appropriate to point out where blatant racism occurs. People like Donald Sterling deserve the condemnation they receive. It is not even wrong to point out where institutional racism exists and seek to fix it, as many libertarians do constantly. It is so funny because my favorite libertarian commentators, from Scott Horton to Will Grigg and many others have made it a central part of their journalism to condemn the police, the prison system, the war on drugs and many, MANY different policies and attitudes precisely because of their racist effects. But this is not about intellectual honesty or any genuine concern for the welfare of black Americans or any other minorities. This is about hurling an inflammatory epithet against someone in a desperate effort to ensure that the ideas of the free market and non aggression don't catch on more fully within the non-white base of the Democratic Party.

I understand the term "racist" is designed to assassinate a persons character. It is like an emotional tick you have. But there is no philosophic content or value to such a label. As libertarians and philosophers, we are interested primarily in ideas and in ethics. I understand that by declaring this libertarian or that a racist you have made an attempt to taint the source, but you still haven't said a thing about the argument.

After you finish with your Tourette's like outburst of race bating epithets and victim-condescension, you still have to address the argument.

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 08:49
  • Quote
VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

jrodefeld posted:

One of the only things holding together the modern left Progressive movement is identity politics and victim baiting. If and when the African American community starts to splinter off from the Democratic Party and embrace more diverse ideological views then this tactic will lose all its power.

Suck it, liberals! Once the blacks become devotees of the human biodiversity movement and embrace diverse ideological views about the genetic superiority of the White Man, you're in for 1,000 years of Libertarian neoconservative dominance :chord:

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 08:56
  • Quote
jrodefeld
Sep 22, 2012

by Shine

Raskolnikov38 posted:

And what if the contract doesn't reference a third party for enforcement

Do you honestly think that two parties would EVER agree to a contract if it was not understood and clear that said contract would be enforced? Sure you can have a verbal contract and personal agreement but in that case it is clear that if one person goes back on their word, you cannot enforce the verbal agreement.

But for business deals and regarding serious matters of import, both parties will want to be explicitly clear that the contract they are signing WILL be enforced should the other party violate the conditions they agreed to. An arbitration body will be assigned and agreed to in the contract.

If you agree to something you agree to it. If it is signed in a legal document that means it is legally binding.

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 08:57
  • Quote
Wolfsheim
Dec 23, 2003

"Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

jrodefeld posted:

I promised myself I was not going to get baited into a race game, but Caros provided no such thing. All he did was reiterate that he thinks Molyneux is a misogynist, NOT a racist. This is patently false and even if it WERE true, that is an outlier that has nothing to do with your narrative that libertarians are racist. What about the other names I listed? Where were the produced racist and supremacist quotes from them? Crickets.

I guess you missed that post? Here you go man:

Caros posted:

And just for shits and giggles before bed.

Racist or Majorly associated with Racists

Sheldon Richman - Wrote for Reason magazine which as I've mentioned, posted numerous examples of Aparthied support and Holocaust Denial. More damning is the fact that he was a temporary board member for the Institute for Historical Review, which is pretty much the Holocaust Denial think tank (insofar as that is basically all they do). Also you have never quoted an article or made any mention of Sheldon Richman except when you are trying to appear to have thinkers who are not racist.

Tom Woods - An easy one. An avowed member of the League of the South which the Southern Poverty Law Center describes (for good reason) as a neo-confederate hate group. Absolutely a racist.

Walter Block - Argued that "Otherwise, slavery wasn't so bad. You could pick cotton, sing songs, be fed nice gruel, etc. The only real problem was that this relationship was compulsory." Yeah... And look! An actual libertarian you've quoted in this thread!

Probably Racist and definitely Associated with Racists

Jacob Hornberger - Massive associations with Ron and Rand Paul, which basically puts him in the same typical social circle as two dog whistle racists. More the the point, he's close friends with Rand Paul's fired advisor "The Southern Avenger." He goes in the maybe only because I can't find proof that he has attended League of the South meetings in person. Also you have never quoted an article or made any mention of Jacob Hornberger except when you are trying to appear to have thinkers who are not racist.

Scott Horton - League of the South connections. Somewhat tenuous, but I'd say anyone who interviews multiple members of the league of the south in a positive fashion is probably on the borderline. He'll go in the maybe. Also you have never quoted an article or made any mention of Scott Horton except when you are trying to appear to have thinkers who are not racist.

Might not be Racist.

Anthony Gregory - I can't find poo poo about this guy other than a spartan wikipedia, so you get a pass. Also you have never quoted an article or made any mention of Anthony Gregory except when you are trying to appear to have thinkers who are not racist.

Not Racist

Gary Chartier - I actually can't find a bad thing about him, and a lot of positive stuff. So good on you!

I'm going to get the rest in the morning as it is 1:00 here. Anyone else want to field some, go nuts.

Also :laffo: on Molyneux not being a misogynist

EDIT: on a sidenote I really hope this somehow segues into you defending Holocaust denial

Wolfsheim fucked around with this message at 09:09 on Nov 14, 2014

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 09:01
  • Quote
Malleum
Aug 16, 2014

Am I the one at fault? What about me is wrong?
Buglord

jrodefeld posted:

Do you honestly think that two parties would EVER agree to a contract if it was not understood and clear that said contract would be enforced? Sure you can have a verbal contract and personal agreement but in that case it is clear that if one person goes back on their word, you cannot enforce the verbal agreement.

But for business deals and regarding serious matters of import, both parties will want to be explicitly clear that the contract they are signing WILL be enforced should the other party violate the conditions they agreed to. An arbitration body will be assigned and agreed to in the contract.

If you agree to something you agree to it. If it is signed in a legal document that means it is legally binding.
This is literally how you envision your utopian society working.
* # ? Nov 14, 2014 09:01
  • Quote
Wolfsheim
Dec 23, 2003

"Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

jrodefeld posted:

Do you honestly think that two parties would EVER agree to a contract if it was not understood and clear that said contract would be enforced? Sure you can have a verbal contract and personal agreement but in that case it is clear that if one person goes back on their word, you cannot enforce the verbal agreement.

But for business deals and regarding serious matters of import, both parties will want to be explicitly clear that the contract they are signing WILL be enforced should the other party violate the conditions they agreed to. An arbitration body will be assigned and agreed to in the contract.

If you agree to something you agree to it. If it is signed in a legal document that means it is legally binding.

Who enforces these contracts? The privately-funded DROs? What if we have two separate DROs who both think the other party is at fault? What if we are members of the same DRO but the person I'm involved in a contract dispute with contributes significantly more? Should we just take the DROs at their word that they'll remain unbiased?

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 09:04
  • Quote
jrodefeld
Sep 22, 2012

by Shine

QuarkJets posted:

jrod, why are all of your replies 500 word essays? Every time you post something it's some huge post full of inane ramblings about all sorts of stupid poo poo, and it's tiresome sorting through the fluff while looking for the meat of your arguments.

It's not that hard to respond to people with concise and well-written arguments, you should try doing that sometime.

For example, here's your most recent post:


That's a lot of bullshit and fluff with only a few underlying ideas. You start off talking about how slavery doesn't jive with Natural Rights, completely missing the point that VitalSigns made. Then you compare utilitarianism and deontology, trying to claim that lynching black people in 1910 Alabama generated more happiness than unhappiness (what the gently caress). Then you go off on a tangent about how everything that the state does is violent and that everyone just doesn't see it. Then you make a cultish remark about how we're all really libertarians but just haven't seen the light yet. Okay, let's edit down your post now:


There, half as many words to say the same things, but in more effective ways. It's just as weird and culty in the end, but there's not much to be done with that sort of poo poo.

(seriously, you think that it would be easy to argue that lynching blacks in 1910 Alabama generated more net happiness than not lynching them? What the gently caress is wrong with you? You understand that no one here is going to accept that the net happiness of a few dozen sick lynching fuckers is more important than the happiness of an entire population, right?)

Also, the claim that posting on the internet is equivalent to being a libertarian is just :psyduck:

You're doing an awful lot of nitpicking about the format of my reply and hardly any effort to respond to the points I made.

You are right that I could and probably should be more concise. But I am trying to make sure I get out my arguments fully and say what I need to say. I'd rather my posts be longer but know that I said everything I wanted to say rather than have them shorter but lacking any important arguments. If I was writing an article that would be published, I'd certainly do several revisions and edit everything down.

But we are debating. The question is who has the stronger argument, not whose posts are too wordy.

To be clear I was saying that a utilitarian argument could be made, by using John Steward Mill's definition of "greatest happiness", that the subjugation of a small percentage of blacks caused an "overall" greater happiness in a VERY racist society. This is an example of reductio ad absurdum. Utilitarianism has fatal flaws and I am illustrating some of them by illustrating a clearly immoral act that could be justified by the "greatest happiness" argument.

Also you clearly misunderstood a lot of what I am saying. I was paraphrasing what is called "argumentation ethics", which is one of the more rigorous logical defenses of the libertarian ethic. Look it up.

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 09:08
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VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

jrodefeld posted:

If you agree to something you agree to it. If it is signed in a legal document that means it is legally binding.

Oh good, no right of secession for the slave states then! They signed a legally binding contract to make a perpetual union into a more perfect union!

I guess they can secede from the union the same way I can secede from my HOA: by selling their land and moving the gently caress somewhere else to do what they want.

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 09:08
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TLM3101
Sep 8, 2010

jrodefeld posted:


If you agree to something you agree to it. If it is signed in a legal document that means it is legally binding.

According to whom? And according to which law?

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 09:09
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# ? May 21, 2024 15:30
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sudo rm -rf
Aug 2, 2011


$ mv fullcommunism.sh
/america
$ cd /america
$ ./fullcommunism.sh


 "Guys, please address my arguments!"

*ignores post after post about plagiarism and the documented success of public heath care systems*

* # ? Nov 14, 2014 09:09
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