Libertarians: You fire fighter lovers sure are good at debate!

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

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

wateroverfire posted:

Not a libertarian, but someone should at least try to take up the other side or this thread is just a circle jerk.

I imagine debts would be paid out of whatever exists of the estate, like they are now. Depending on what flavor of libertarianism a person subscribes to enforcing contract law is something the government can do - libertarians aren't anarchists, necessarily - so the government would intervene if someone tried to default on a debt. In an An-Cap world I guess you'd either pay or have your knees broken by the other party's Dispute Resolution Organization or something, but custom (and not wanting to get wrecked) would compel most people to "voluntarily" pay.

In ethical terms libertarians believe utility springs from agency and the way to maximize agency (and utility) is to minimize coercion. Strong private property rights are the instrument that minimizes coercion - they allow you to do what you want with your stuff, while making it difficult to impose yourself or your preferences on other peoples' stuff. That encourages voluntary associations on equal terms which increases agency and thus happiness, etc.

Some libertarians would couch their ethics in terms of natural law, but I find that weird so I'm not going to attempt that.

There isn't a lot to be gained by criticizing libertarianism based on hypotheticals. Pure libertarianism breaks down in application because people aren't 100% benevolent altruists with good intentions. However, so does every other utopian political philosophy - shout out to all the socialists or left anarchists in the audience.

As much as I tend to argue with far-leftists here, I think most socialists are more sophisticated than that. For that matter, people being self-interested rather than altruistic is a key tenet of many forms of libertarianism; the main thing that makes libertarians naive is their assumption of rational self-interest. Agreed about left-anarchists, though.

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Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

Chalets the Baka posted:

How can you be unsure of what the "correct" answer is in a situation where there is no correct answer? You already confused socialism with communism earlier (even despite claiming you knew what they were) so perhaps the issue here is that you're just regular old "unsure". The type of socialism bandied about in D&D is usually democratic socialism, which is a fairly conservative form of socialism and isn't outside the realm of reality; a lot of the OECD member countries have in fact successfully implemented socialist policy, proving that not only does it look good on paper, it looks good in practice too.

You're also doing an incredibly good job of avoiding debate and discussion in the debate and discussion forum.

D&D soi-disant socialists generally distinguish democratic socialism from social democracy, with social democracy referring to the successful policies you seem to be talking about, and democratic socialism referring to policies that have never been implemented in an actual democracy. Tpb seems to be saying that social democracy is workable but democratic socialism isn't.

This doesn't excuse tpb's arguing style, which is pretty annoying.

# ¿ May 23, 2014 23:37

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

rudatron posted:

Power structures will still exist sans a strong state, because power vacuums don't stay vacuums for long. The alternative to the 'tyranny of the majority' isn't some society of total liberty (which is ten times as utopian as communism), but a 'tyranny of a minority'.

I don't know about tbp, but I'm not quite cynical enough to think that relative balance between majority rule and minority rights, or between power structures in general, is impossible. A strong state is necessary, but only to a point. (Talking in generalities here because others seem to be.)

# ¿ May 24, 2014 02:45

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