|
Caros posted:Conversely, don't poo poo up the thread and be assholes if libertarians come in to discuss their viewpoints. Try not to anyways. Sure, and while we're at it lets all wish that democratic control over capital would have a favorable outcome.  EDIT: For content it might be worth adding Self Ownership to the OP along with the NAP if we're focusing on the An-cap/voluntarist flavor here. LogisticEarth fucked around with this message at 00:26 on May 23, 2014 |
#
¿
May 23, 2014 00:23
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 23:20 |
|
|
I'd also suggest taking Mises and Hayek out of the straight-up An-Cap territory. While they're held up frequently by Mises.org and other an-cap havens, both of them were minarchists at the least. I think in a previous thread someone tried to argue that Hayek wasn't even libertarian and was instead a liberal when I cited him as a notable right-libertarian who supported a basic income. I would also suggest maybe including market anarchists and/or modern mutualists in the list if we're not just going to have a big rag-fest on 
LogisticEarth fucked around with this message at 00:33 on May 23, 2014 |
|
#
¿
May 23, 2014 00:30
|
|
|
Crowsbeak posted:You may want to add a section on the Chicago school, even tough most of them just vote straight republican, and may actually occasionally support some form of social programs. Pretty sure the Chicago School is neo-liberal, not libertarian. Phyzzle posted:There is a third type of force that is rarely mentioned: retributive force. Libertarians tend to believe that the government alone has the right to seek vengance for aggressive attacks. Anarcho-capitalists want to privatize that as well. The idea behind libertarian state/law violence isn't generally about vengeance, but restitution. If you break someone's window you pay to fix it, and maybe some extra for lost time, inconvenience, etc.
|
|
#
¿
May 23, 2014 02:15
|
|
|
im gay posted:What is the libertarian answer to environmental issues such as climate change that require international responses? A libertarian-ish solution reliant on state power would probably be some kind of a universal carbon tax, the revenue from which would be returned to the general population via a no-strings-attached citizen's dividend. Make problem (carbon) more expensive but don't try and jury rig the market via industry or product subsidies, or heavy planning. A non-state solution would probably involve innovating our way out of it. Generally you can get a decent idea of potential libertarian solutions through the following preferences: Market control > Democratic/political control Spontaneous order from a number of decentralized small private planning groups > Centrally planned solutions from a national authority with a final say.
|
|
#
¿
May 23, 2014 03:15
|
|
|
ToxicSlurpee posted:What I find baffling is that there's all of this "well you should own yourself and be free" but then they're suggesting literally selling living, breathing humans on a free market. Like, OK, it's not OK to own and coerce somebody, unless they're a baby. Cool, got it. The whole child-market thing seems slightly less sinister in context. The idea isn't that the actual children aren't being sold, but the right of guardianship. Once a child expressed their self agency (e.g. by running away or seeking help in leaving) then the guardian ceased to have any right to detain or direct the child. Of course there are a whole host of other problems with that, but it's not as direct and less overtly evil as a simple child-market. Of course Rothbard and others describe our current child welfare system as a market as well, just one that is nationalized and politically controlled. And to be clear, I'm not a proponent of Rothbards system, just trying to do my part to break up the usual Rothbardian dogpile.
|
|
#
¿
May 23, 2014 16:53
|
|
|
spoon0042 posted:That misses the part where the evil government can't do a thing if a parent lets their kid starve. The counter to this is that if a guardian were letting the child starve or were otherwise dangerously negligent, one could argue that they had abandoned the claim to guardianship and the child would be free to be "rescued". In a broad sense this is not too much different than current child welfare systems.
|
|
#
¿
May 23, 2014 17:39
|
|
|
Well we at least made it to page 2 before the one-line poo poo posting and personal attacks started in earnest. I consider that social progress.
|
|
#
¿
May 23, 2014 21:48
|
|
|
Jastiger posted:Libertarian friend of mine said... Jastiger, you always pop into these threads and describe your conversations with various libertarian friends who seem to be complete shitheads. You should probably get some new buddies. Trying to get an idea of what any ideology/economic theory/philosophy is about by talking to randos at the bar or on Facebook is like the least efficient and most frustrating and misleading way of going about things.
|
|
#
¿
May 24, 2014 14:10
|
|
|
Jastiger posted:Ehh I just think its an interesting forum to bounce ideas around. I find a good conversation, be it on here or on Facebook is far more interesting and productive than circle jerking about things we all agree about. It's an interesting forum to bounce things around, but the whole "my vulgar libertarian friend said..." thing really doesn't contribute to much other than perpetuating the circle-jerk in D&D. Not just you specifically, of course. These threads quickly and inevitably devolve into that until wacko #47 shows up and trolls the poo poo out of it. If you really want to understand libertarianism, for better or worse, go read the source material and critiques of it. Trying to understand it merely by talking to people who label themselves libertarian will give you about as much insight as discussing the labor theory of value with some high schooler who has read the Communist Manifesto.
|
|
#
¿
May 24, 2014 15:56
|
|
|
Who What Now posted:If someone came up to me with a gang of 50 men and women all holding AKs and told me what a nice house I had and how awful it would be if something were to happen to it but luckily he and his nice employees behind him could protect me from anything terrible happening, yes I absolutely would feel coerced because most people understand things called "implicit threats". The "implicit threat" and the state's near monopoly on all such threats are basically the two of the primary clarion calls for libertarianism. As it stands special interests can manipulate the state to use it's power without direct cost or involvement themselves. The libertarian objective on this topic is that the general population would benefit from having this monopoly busted up. Two major reasons being that 1.) Those wishing to use such force would be more directly related to it's cost and "bad PR" and 2.) It gets rid of the cover that implicit violence is "just" because it's filtered through the State and a democratic facade. EDIT: The potential for coercion in society exists no matter what. The question is how centralized it is, and whether the coercion, implicit or not, is of an aggressive or defensive nature. EDIT 2: And going back to what SedanChair was saying, merely having a stockpile of weapons isn't aggression, it's whether that implicit force is applied aggressively. Coming up to someone with a gang and shaking them down for protection money is different than, say, having a gang stay inside of a warehouse or town limits to protect the goods or residents from outside aggressors. People often conflate coercion and aggression but they're not interchangeable. LogisticEarth fucked around with this message at 17:33 on May 24, 2014 |
|
#
¿
May 24, 2014 17:20
|
|
|
Jastiger posted:I think its useful because I know these people and I can see how they think. Its also useful to see how my own ideas are viewed when posted here and we can discuss them from different points of view. But, I totally hear ya man. Fair enough, just don't think that it's actually leading to a better understanding of the overall schools of thought. It's pretty much limited to understanding the individuals and your own musings. One of the best pieces of advice I got when I was younger was this: If you want to really understand something, stop arguing about it on the internet, and start picking up books. Debate and discussion is useful to a point, but it can often lead to your opinions being formed in an echo-chamber.
|
|
#
¿
May 24, 2014 19:53
|
|
|
Time to read Zinn posted:Isn't it the other way around, what they believe, or am I mistaken? For Self-Ownership based libertarians, the basic premise is that you own yourself. Your time and labor represent, for lack of a better word, portions of your owned self mixed with the physical world. So you own the product of your labor. However, if the capital/land/raw resources used belong to someone else, then you don't necessarily own everything you produce if you used someone else's stuff in the process.
|
|
#
¿
May 25, 2014 01:15
|
|
|
Unlearning posted:A great source for anti-libertarian arguments is blogger Matt Bruenig. He seems to make short work libertarian theories on a daily basis (at least IMHO), in particular the implicit 'just deserts' theory of income distribution and the non-aggression principle. He also shreds the worst libertarians like HHH specifically. After reading a few of his articles, his takedown of the NAP is a bit weak and strawmans the libertarian position a bit. The NAP, in my understanding, is generally a system of conflict resolution that can be applied to a variety of property schemes. If you don't also accept the property right scheme then of course it doesn't make sense. Many libertarians believe in homesteading based on a use-rights system of property rather than a "spatial" rights system. By "spatial" rights I mean something akin to Lockean homesteading (e.g. mixing your labor with the land). However use-rights are based not on a metaphysical mixing of self and substance, but on the general principle that people should be free to pursue work and plans that they think will better their lives and achieve their goals. To illustrate the difference, imagine Person A is growing corn on a plot of land. Person B puts up a radio tower next door and starts broadcasting radio signals that pass through A's land and corn. Is B aggressing against A? If you're operating under a spatial-rights system, then yes, as they're sending energy into the area A owns. However, if you're under a use-right scheme, then B's radio waves are in no way affecting A's right to continue growing their corn unmolested. Aggression is based upon affecting the other person's broader actions that they have already set in place, not merely a metaphysical claim to matter occupying a 3 dimensional space. I think the NAP becomes far more consistent and less troublesome under a use-right regime rather than one based on spatial-rights. For example, using the NAP to justify the old trope of someone getting shot because they happened to wander over a property line falls apart under a use-rights scheme. Bruneig mentions Matt Zwolinski's Six Reasons Libertarians Should Reject the Non-Aggression Principle, and I think applying the NAP under a use-rights system address points 1, 2, 5, and 6. Point 4 (fraud) is a weird one because libertarian objections to fraud have usually been about the fact that a voluntary agreement was made under intentionally misleading circumstances. The perpetrator of the fraud intentionally deceives another party into voluntarily making an exchange that would otherwise be involuntary. When the fraud is uncovered and provable, the victim is free to take retributive action as if any other straightforward theft had occurred. Point number 3, regarding risk, is the only one that I don't think the NAP would really be useful in addressing, and is tied into issues a libertarian system has with preventative measures rather than reactive ones. Probably one of the things that would be addressed with the nebulous hypothetical common law of Libertopia.
|
|
#
¿
May 25, 2014 16:02
|
|
|
Unlearning posted:Maybe I'm misreading, but to me this just seems like an argument for socialist-style possession over property: people have a right to own something if they are using it, rather than just by legal fiat - as is the case now. I mean, how can you justify unused stocks of food and massive fortunes while others starve under a use-rights ethic? The difference is that the use-rights are homesteadable, transferable, and perpetual until abandonment, as determined under whatever legal structure exists. In the aforementioned crop scenario, you're using a certain plot of land for agricultural/production purposes. You decide to stop growing corn, perhaps because you have enough but plan a new crop for next season, perhaps because you're letting the soil lie fallow, etc. The land isn't free to be developed or planted, because that would interfere with the currently existing right for agricultural development. Of course, the owner could choose to use the land for a different purpose, homesteading new rights, or transfer the use-rights to someone else. For things like capital, stocks of food, etc. they're all generated from labor, land, and capital, which would all be owned prior to the production of surpluses, and the "rightful" owners would be the individual producer or whatever group of individuals were operating under mutual agreement. Presumably people are producing surpluses of food, capital, etc. for a purpose or plan; either for direct use, stockpile for later use, or for trade. It comes down to how property is defined, when one considers it abandoned, and the question of whether one can trade labor (i.e. wages). Everything else is a moral question of when it is moral (if not legally right) to break the law. Using the stockpile example, is it wrong for someone to keep a stockpile of seed corn for the next season, when people are starving outside? What about a a stock of food that is meant to last the winter, when the neighbors are already starving during the summer? What about a stock of finished goods that you wish to sell to leave a nest egg for your family's future well being, while someone else needs healthcare today? These are moral and ethical questions though, not a theory of property rights. LogisticEarth fucked around with this message at 18:17 on May 25, 2014 |
|
#
¿
May 25, 2014 18:09
|
|
|
Unlearning posted:I'm not talking about when somebody postpones using the land; I'm talking about when they simply abandon it and have no reason to exclude others from accessing it. This seems unjustified by your earlier definition of use-rights: you said that "B's radio waves are in no way affecting A's right to continue growing their corn unmolested". The same thing applies if A stops using the land to grow corn (indefinitely), and C decides that he'd like to do so instead. C's decision does not affect A at all. Well, how do you determine the difference between postponing the use, a very low-impact use (e.g. land conservation), and abandonment? I'm not sure there's really a universal standard for this anywhere. Historically this has been a matter of common law and dispute resolution/legal systems. The vague answer is "when they're not using it" or "using it legitimately" but that's going to be entirely circumstantial. A land tax is one way to discourage effective abandonment, however it also encourages some less desirable things, like over development or over-production. quote:They are moral and ethical questions which have direct bearing on the theory of property rights and when they may or may not be justified. This kind of stuff already contributes to actual political and legal decisions, so I don't see why a legal structure of possession that made ethical and moral questions the criteria for ownership would be any more problematic than the current one. Not whether the rights themselves are justified, but whether violating the rights are justified or understandable. A system of rights based on whatever was deemed moral/ethical at the time is hugely arbitrary. Static rights, based on fundamental principles, that may happen to be violated from time to time by crimes of necessity seems a lot less open to abuse and confusion. And it also creates a system of restitution after the fact, should it be deemed appropriate. Consider the old lifeboat scenario. Two guys in a boat in the ocean, only enough fresh water for one. Man A kills man B out of desperation to survive. Did A violate B's rights? Absolutely. Was it wrong? That's a whole other question. You can't expect A or B to patiently wait, bhudda-like to die of thirst. But as A violated B's right to life, then whoever is taking up the case of B (heirs, state justice system, whatever) has a claim against A. The act might be forgiven, or it might be punished.
|
|
#
¿
May 26, 2014 15:26
|
|
|
CCrew posted:It seems like the major complaint here is the lack if counterpoint to any of the critiques we give to libertarianism. Is there a reason nobody has suggested trying to find some means of debating directly with libertarians? Is there a forum rule or precedent against buying accounts for people to argue with? I'd be willing to throw $10 in if somebody found a worthwhile subject, maybe an r/libertarian mod or something? Otherwise, it's not like SA has never "invaded" other forums, again unless there's a rule I don't know. I actually did this one time on the Mises.org forums, or one of the offshoots, linking one of the older threads to get someone over here. Basically what happens is that the only people willing to persistently brave the anti-libertarian viper pit that is D&D are natural trolls. It's entertaining, but not really productive. Like I was telling Jagtiger before, the only thing you often learn from casual forum debate is that trolls talk the loudest. Also, pretty sure forum invasions are discouraged nowdays, unless you were talking about some kind of reverse-invasion of posters coming to SA.
|
|
#
¿
May 26, 2014 22:25
|
|
|
BiggerBoat posted:I get what Libertarians are driving at (limited interference, personal responsibility, good pay for hard work, individual liberty, the freedom to make bad choices, etc.). I used to be one myself also. But once I grasped a firm understanding of the commons I gave it up. Libertarianism has no answer for this at all except 'privatize everything' which only leads to monopolies and fascism. The call to "privatize everything" isn't really entirely true though. Not-for-profit and social organizations are typically prominent role in libertarian theory. Some libertarians support public property, just not administered by the state. Part of the difficulty in discussing "commons" and "public resources" are that people often confuse "the people" with "the state". While some times the interests of the state lie with the "public", it's not inherently the case. And then you have the larger problem of whether you can even define "the people" or "the public" as an actual definable unified group that has any legitimate claims to assert political power. While a lot of the vulgar libertarian message is moralizing about "hard work and personal responsibility", a lot of the real meat of the message are critiques of consolidation of power and centralized economic planning. Also, going back to an earlier question of yours: BiggerBoat posted:As long as I'm on it though, what about things like hunting and fishing restrictions? What if some rear end in a top hat collects all the fish and game in the county and nobody has anything to eat unless they pay extortionist prices brought about by the monopoly on the fish and game supply? It's worth noting that this sort of thing could happen in any system. You just need a comically evil person to amass enough power. It's entirely possible (and maybe more likely?) for a state bureaucrat to do the same thing. What happens then? Well usually you get a revolt. That's the likely outcome in a libertarian situation like that as well. No system of law and economics is going to be stable if you happen to get people in charge who are flagrantly antagonistic to the population at large. LogisticEarth fucked around with this message at 20:32 on May 27, 2014 |
|
#
¿
May 27, 2014 20:29
|
|
|
Bob le Moche posted:Some systems of government are structured so as to have checks and balances, accountability to the public, or other forms of democratic control, making it possible in theory for such amassing of power by bureaucrats or anyone else to be avoided. These kinds of "success-punishing regulations" are precisely what libertarians oppose, though, so I don't think it's correct to take the anti-authoritarian way they paint themselves at face value. Well, of course libertarian economic theory, and not just Rothbardian stuff, claims that there are anti-monopoly and anti-authoritarian market mechanisms. And not just competition, but informational problems that cause larger organizations to destine themselves for disintegration. There are also counter claims about why "public" democratic control isn't always desirable. To assume that a libertarian society, even a specifically right-libertarian society would involve authoritarian capitalism, crony capitalism, or corporate capitalism as we see it today is a bit hasty. Here's a blog post by Charles Johnson discussing the topic. He has another more expansive article discussing the various definitions of "capitalism" and their use in libertarian rhetoric but I can't find it at the moment. SedanChair posted:But if somebody other than the state administers public or once-public property, that's literally what privatization is. Unloading the duties of social services on community organizations, even if they were somehow capable of handling that load, is also privatization. Privatization is another one of those words with nebulous definitions. When you hear it in common usage it often refers to stuff like selling off state-controlled utilities to the highest bidder. That's not what they're talking about here. If you're talking to a libertarian or anarchist of any stripe, you'll find a common theme that the state isn't really "public" itself. Modern states are basically gigantic bureaucratic bodies that are only indirectly affected by a distant and obfuscated democratic process. What makes property "public" in practice boils down to a matter of access and funding. quote:The fact that this guy is struggling to hold onto libertarian ideals after coming this far is either despicable or laughable, I can't decide. I suppose you'd prefer he throw up his hands and run to the status-quo answers that are riddled with problems? Anyway, Long identifies as a left-libertarian so I'm not sure what ideals you think he's holding that are in conflict with those statements. LogisticEarth fucked around with this message at 22:39 on May 27, 2014 |
|
#
¿
May 27, 2014 22:36
|
|
|
Bob le Moche posted:I would say that is the ideal of private property. Rejecting private property is far from being the "status quo" answer. The term left-libertarian also typically describes people like anarchists and anti-authoritarian socialists who do reject private property. I might be wrong but I don't think SedanChair rejects the idea of private property, from previous posts I've seen, and tends towards regulatory or tax-based state solutions, which is why I suggested he prefers the "status quo". I could have jumped the gun there. As for left libertarianism, the definitions I've always seen don't universally reject private property, but rather traditional lockean property. Geolibertarians and left market-anarchists don't explicitly reject private property.
|
|
#
¿
May 27, 2014 22:52
|
|
|
SedanChair posted:Oh you might be surprised. Now some of their most abstruse and marginalized theoreticians (like Long) might be in favor of some kind of devolution of public property to community property administered by a soviet (ha) or something, but be assured that as far as pro-business libertarians are concerned, a selloff is exactly what they want. Remember, these are the guys who praise the railroad barons. I'm well aware of that, although I'd say it's almost exclusively contained in vuglar "mainstream" libertarianism. Any kind of blanket statements about libertarians looking to privatize everything by selling it off to the current 1% are just wrong though. Even Rothbard proposed a solution to "privatization" that suggested turning factories and property over to workers, or the public at large: Rothbard - Confiscation and the Homestead Principle posted:But how then do we go about destatizing the entire mass of government property, as well as the "private property" of General Dynamics? All this needs detailed thought and inquiry on the part of libertarians. One method would be to turn over ownership to the homesteading workers in the particular plants; another to turn over pro-rata ownership to the individual taxpayers.
|
|
#
¿
May 27, 2014 23:07
|
|
|
It's been a while since I've really read modern market anarchists and mutualists like Johnson and Chartier, and Carson, but the impression I remember getting from them was that private property (i.e. means of production rented out for wage labor) wouldn't explicitly be forbidden, but rather be suppressed significantly by freed-market forces and labor activity. So you might be able to hire a clerk for your hardware store but larger operations utilizing undesirable wage labor would be increasingly difficult to maintain.
|
|
#
¿
May 27, 2014 23:38
|
|
|
Doctor Spaceman posted:Schooling seems like a better example of de facto segregation to me. Yeah, the leap from railroad segregation in the 1890s to racism in modern sentencing is a bit of a leap. It would probably be best to just drop the bickering over comparisons. The basic issue is that racism is profitable when it's popular. Of course, it's also politically favorable when it's popular too. An interesting question is if a minority of businesses who have anti-racist policies would help drive society towards integration and non-racism in the absence of state power enforcing the status quo (e.g. Jim Crow, modern drug law enforcement, etc.).
|
|
#
¿
May 28, 2014 15:31
|
|
|
800peepee51doodoo posted:Wait wait wait so Rothbard's big idea here is to turn over the means of production to the workers? Like, he's advocating The Literal Definition of Socialism? That's utterly amazing. To be clear, this was one of his ideas on how to unspool all the misallocated and stolen property associated with the State, associated contractors, and potentially large corporations dependant on state support in general. He had no problems with someone owning the means of production if acquired through (in his view) legitimate means. So not really Literal Socialism, just an idea that you'd traditionally expect from a leftist. If you read his reasoning its grounded in a homesteading theory of property acquisition.
|
|
#
¿
May 28, 2014 16:34
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that her first novel, We the Living about Russia just after the collapse of the White forces is pretty good. The characters are actually complex and interesting, because it's before she got completely up her own rear end about Gorgeous Angular-Faced Superman and the pudgy, slouching, jealosy-eaten villains who want to burn it all down out of spite. One of the heroes is actually an honest-to-god true-blue (red?) Communist. To this day We the Living is the only Rand I've read, and I'll probably keep it that way. The characters seem like they could be real people, and it lacks the distinctive "supermen" that seem to be the theme of later books. Granted, from a D&D standpoint it still probably sucks as the main characters are offspring of either aristocrats or moderately wealthy entrepreneurs. However, even the passionate Communist revolutionaries are portrayed in somewhat sympathetic, although largely negative, light.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 2, 2014 17:53
|
|
|
^^^Randians worship copyright and intellectual property. I wouldn't be surprised if the copyright holder (Lenord Peikoff?) Required that something like the speech be kept largely intactPththya-lyi posted:I never made much of a study of political science, so I didn't actually know the distinction between neocons and libertarians. Going by Wikipedia's description of neoconservatism, I can see that my dad's beliefs hew very closely to it. He identifies as a libertarian (or at least more of a libertarian than anything else), though. Thanks for letting me know! I think one of the biggest PR problems for libertarianism right now (along with the echos of paleolibertarianism in the likes of Hoppe) is that a good deal of vocal self-identifying libertarians are actually neo-cons or general Republicans who have their first introductions to anti-state or anti-central banking ideologies. You end up with these weird concoctions where people try and rationalize the Fox News patriotism and love for the status quo while at the same time advocating against institutions that prop all that up. LogisticEarth fucked around with this message at 14:05 on Jun 3, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Jun 3, 2014 13:58
|
|
|
Is there any more information on the Republic of Minerva/Tonga thing? I always thought it was never any kind of principled experiment, and was just some Vegas real-estate tycoon who blundered forward with some absurd project that was obviously doomed regardless of ideology. Like a libertarian version of hippie communes or whatever.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 9, 2014 03:33
|
|
|
Nintendo Kid posted:First, here's an account of a man who was with the Tongan forces that ousted the Minerva people: http://www.queenoftheisles.com/HTML/Republic%20of%20Minerva.html Thanks. Although not too much information about what flavor of libertarianism they were going after, it just seemed like a general anti-government shtick. Also didn't see anything about fishing extortion. Unless I missed it the only time that's mentioned is when Tonga used fishing rights as a justification to claim sovereignty over the reefs. I've read some other plans to set up "economic freedom cities" or something in receptive third-world countries. Basically asking for a section of land to build a new libertarian city-state. Slightly more feasible, slightly less Bioshocky.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 9, 2014 04:01
|
|
|
BrandorKP posted:I've been arguing across threads that this libertarian stuff is a religion. Other less loaded ways to say the same thing might be to talk about their use/appropriation of myth, story, national ideal or to use Mr. Cruz's language their use of "meta-narratives." This isn't peculiar to Mr. Cruz either. Roger Ailes does this with Fox. The Kochs do this with their funding of university programs and SuperPac ads. Even down to the small fry, I think Jrodenfeld was trying to do this with his thread. Is this really unique to libertarian movements though? Every time I hear someone say "Libertarianism is a religion", and then point to a figure like Cruz or Rothbard, it doesn't really contribute to anything. The use of myth and narrative as populist motivators is widespread across pretty much every political or ideological movement, including the status quo.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2014 19:58
|
|
|
Gantolandon posted:Some religious motives were present in neoliberalism. You have a benevolent God (free market) that makes the world a beautiful place. The virtuous people - the ones that are diligent and industrious - are rewarded with wealth and prosperity, while the lazy parasites are left in poverty. Economists are similar to priests who interpret the omens and announce the commandments of the deity. Socialism is a bad thing, because it interferes with the god's will. This narrative only became stronger with the wake of the crisis - the priests announced that humanity has sinned too much and angered the Lord, who decided to withdraw the prosperity he used to provide. Now we have to make a heavy penance to become worthy in the eyes of the God again. Your Protestant comparison is a good one vis a vis liberalism, but on the broader scale it just seems like you're shoehorning in terms into the pre-determined narrative that it's a religion. Certainly there's are groups out there that are similar to what you describe, but that's more the Tea Party brand of vulgar libertarianism. Again, the "religion" descriptor isn't unique to the broader body of liberatarianism any more than any other group, outside of accepting the basic premises. I mean, with the same shallow premise you can brush off Socialism/Communism as a religion because some groups revere Marx's deterministic theory of history as undeniable prophecy. That doesn't mean it actually is, and as you're probably aware various free-market groups make the same "religion" accusations of the left. Point being, it's often used as a hollow smear to discredit one's opponent as a shallow-minded zealot, and as such doesn't really contribute to the conversation.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2014 21:58
|
|
|
BrandorKP posted:LogisticEarth, I didn't say it had to be, I said some people, and certainly here in D&D, use it as such. I'm interested in the analysis, but also object to overly broad proclamations that lump the whole collection of libertarian groups together. So, maybe a discussion of "libertarianism as religion" rather than "libertarianism is religion". Going back to Ted Cruz, he may be using religious methodology to tap into populist libertarian sentiment, but you can't paint the whole movement with that brush.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 2, 2014 17:20
|
|
|
The libertarian narrative is that child labor helps to boost household income and raise people out of poverty, and that once out of poverty child labor fades away. For most of human history it was the norm, however it was already being eliminated by rising productivity by the time labor laws were introduced. In modern times labor laws complicate things and lead to unpaid and under the table labor, as well as villianize benign children's work. That's the short version anyway, as I'm phone posting. A simplistic narrative, and as such has lots of problems, but its not a cartoon-villain "Back to the mines Timmy!" story.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 8, 2014 15:22
|
|
|
BrandorKP posted:Telling a story of libertarianism in a "descent into dogma" is attacking it's foundation. Telling the story of how that foundation is detached from reality is attacking that foundation! Telling the stories of how libertarian ideas do not result in the things they promise is attacking it's foundation! Saying that it is an "utter failure in prognostication" (prophecy is a synonym of prognostication), that it's prophecies are false, is an attack on that foundation! Unless I'm missing something here, this has already been the boilerplate anti-libertarian message for years if not decades. I don't think this is the silver bullet you're looking for. I mean, Mises even says that in Human Action, if new information comes to light about the basic premises he used to build his a prior system were somehow testable in the future, that praxeology/economics should be reevaluated. The question is if the basic premises he laid our are thoroughly disproven enough so as to be unusable. An important thing to remember was that praxeology was never intended to be a complete theory if the universe, even though Rothbard and others often throw it about as such. It was something that was meant to be used in concert with scientific data and historical inquiry.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 8, 2014 18:09
|
|
|
Spatula City posted:I've been doing a little reading about the origin of social contract theory, and it reminded me that some random libertarian here (was it jrodefeld? I'm not sure) said something about the social contract being a lie, or false, or a myth. Which weirded me out at the time and seems ever stranger now, as the social contract is pretty much the basis of modern political theory. Seeing that statement disoriented me, made me realize there are few to no philosophical principles I probably have in common with ardent libertarians. We may agree on general policy statements like "Marijuana should be legal" and "America shouldn't be the world's policeman", but I realize now that the libertarian's journey to those statements is entirely alien to me in terms of its chain of arguments. I think you're getting a bit ahead of yourself here. Generally, anti-social contract libertarians view the concept as sort of false contract, one in which it is not practical to reject the "contract" of state supremacy. In practice the social contract ideal is far from how it's practically implemented. It's assumed that the State's monopoly is just, and that the State actually can legitimately claim to represent society at large. In practice pretty much every state in existence has a history of violent formation and entrenched power structures. When you throw in skepticism of democracy, or at least unlimited democracy, then the libertarian sees the democratic process not as an expression of an individual's power, but more as a useful illusion for the State to claim social legitimacy. The option given is either to become an outlaw, or go live in Antarctica or something. Oft cited is Lysander Spooner's No Treason. Spooner was an abolitionist, and later socialist/anarchist. I always have a soft spot for Spooner because he started up a competitor to the US Postal Serice. The service was successful and cheaper, but the government shut him down because it claimed a monopoly. 
LogisticEarth fucked around with this message at 11:35 on Jul 18, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Jul 18, 2014 11:28
|
|
|
Pththya-lyi posted:This means that you have (or should have) the right to sell yourself into slavery, among other things. That's not a universal position, even among far right libertarians. Rothbard didn't find slave contracts to be just, for example. He held the position that the participants of any contract must be able to leave it voluntarily, with the caveat that the "wronged" party would have a claim against whatever payment had already been issued to the party that broke the contract. Of course, you also have winners like Walter Block who take the opposite position and are all about the "right to slavery". The important distinction to make is that a self-ownership theory of rights doesn't automatically lead to slave contracts.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 18, 2014 13:55
|
|
|
DrProsek posted:Molyneux is also the father of the DRO, the Libertarian version of courts and police force. Basically, according to his own paper, any dispute is handled by the plaintiff and defendant's DROs both trying whatever case is being brought forward to them, and if there is a dispute in the two DRO-Court's rulings, the two DROs come together, pick out a third party, and that third party tries the case again. If you quit your DRO and don't sign up for a new one, every DRO will send a letter out to every member of their DRO telling their clients to never allow you onto their property and to not associate with the former member (like say a husband being sent a letter demanding he divorce his wife because she quit the DRO) thereby providing a mechanism by which everyone will make sure they are a member of a DRO and they can provide law and justice to all of society. Your statist mind might wonder "But in a truly voluntary society, shouldn't I have the freedom to say that I don't want to be a client of any DRO? Surly insisting I must maintain membership with at least 1 DRO or else I can't even buy food because every food merchant will refuse to let me into their store because the DRO blacklisted me is at least as much a use of force against me as insisting I pay my taxes so that the society I live in has schools?" I honestly don't know what the answer to that is. Molyneux is in no way the father of this idea. This is old hat, private defense/court agencies and all that. He has his own spin on it of course, but it's not "his" idea in any sense.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 17, 2014 05:18
|
|
|
There are a number of minarchist libertarians who support some kind of a UBI, and not only on a Georgist basis. BHL had a bit of a compilation of discussions on the topic earlier this year: http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2014/01/basic_income_roundup/
|
|
#
¿
Aug 27, 2014 02:45
|
|
|
Obdicut posted:I think that Georgism should be re-looked at in the age of the interwebs, because as well as addressing the environmental impacts of industry (probably the single biggest problem in the world today), if we considered the internet infrastructure as well as the transportation infrastructure common goods, it would address most forms of making income. Internet and transportation infrastructure aren't "free" though, like land. They need to be produced and maintained. As I understand it, the basic justification for the Georgist/geolibertarian land tax is that the users of land haven't really "earned" the right to property ownership by creating it. Land is different than capital in that it pre-existed humanity, and is therefore commonly owned. Internet infrastructure is totally different. Really the whole idea of "internet as a basic right" is one of the most egregious forms of "universal right" creep. Yes it's a very powerful tool, but so are any number of other forms of capital. It's also fairly cheap and the information is infinitely reproducible.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 27, 2014 19:51
|
|
|
Obdicut posted:Land is also not free and needs to be maintained. From some(modern) Georgist perspectives, they are like land because they are shared by all but more use of them is made by some than others, and the usage of them by some crowds out the use of them by others. Land is free and doesn't need to be maintained. Farms need to be maintained. A lawn needs to be maintained. A conservation district needs to be maintained. Fallow land doesn't need to be maintained. It just exists. Land ownership is just about controlling access and use within a set of X, Y, and Z coordinates. quote:I'm sorry, I'm not talking about the internet as a basic right, so this part is confusing me a little bit. I got my signals crossed a bit because the whole point behind the Georgist land tax is that they believe people have the right to use all non-human-created resources, primarily land. The land tax is sort of a rent payment by the land user to the rest of society (e.g. the "owner"), for their right to exclude others and operate some venture on the parcel. By claiming that internet infrastructure, transportation, etc. should be collectively owned on Georgist terms, you're claiming that each individual has a right to use these resources, or at least extract a rent from them. BrandorKP posted:I thought the Austrians didn't like Georgism or is it just that specific Austrians don't like it? Technically Austrians don't have anything to say about the ethics of Georgism. For what it's worth, Hayek and Friedman, although the latter was Chicago-school, both had semi-favorable opinions of it. Friedman called the land tax "the least bad" form of taxation. Ultimately the main Austrian critique is that calculating the proper price of unimproved land, and the extrapolated tax, was very difficult if not impossible. Austro-libertarians find the philosophy immoral because they reject the idea that unimproved land is collectively owned by humanity. But in general, it's not that far from an-cap, and it sort of has a "single sin" of the land tax, as Georgism is usually anarchist or minarchistic otherwise.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 27, 2014 23:22
|
|
|
Obdicut posted:Okay. Georgism focuses, in addition to the immutability and pre-existence of land, the common value of it. That if someone is using a bit of land, someone else can't use that bit of land. This is something that applies to many other common utilities as well, which is why Georgism is associated with socialism. In retrospect I might be conflating some ideas of geolibertarianism, which is more rooted in property rights, with the the pragmatic features of Georgism. However, historically Georgism is heavily associated with the land tax as a single tax. If modern Georgists view things like transportation and telecommunications infrastructure as common property rather than created wealth, and still support private property otherwise, that really opens it up and sort of waters it down a bit as a separate school. In fact that strikes me as more practically compatible with social democrat/liberal governments than anything radical.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 28, 2014 00:58
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 23:20 |
|
|
Cemetry Gator posted:This is why it's great that we have a government that will fund the sciences and scientific research because a lot of it is just so difficult to get money for from a free-market system, and yet, a lot of it ends up being incredibly useful. Sure, there might not be any direct market gains from figuring out the workings of the big bang, but 20 years from now, that science may be driving the science that makes your car use less gasoline or something. Not defending the Molyneux video, but part of the issue with funding research that might make your car use less gasoline 20 years from now is that...it might lead to a marginal increase in efficiency 20 years from now, maybe. The argument generally is that pushing the bleeding edge of technology further and further from the "normal" marketplace leads to a bunch of discoveries that, while enlightening to a small minority, only reaches usefullness to the larger population decades after it's been discovered. At the same time it fosters a disconnect from practical science, and I think in parts leads to the "egghead" perception of science as a bunch of whiz-bang uselessness. Like, I had a conversation with a doctor friend about the state of medical care in the US including patents, and the cost of medical research. His initial position was that medical patents were absolutely necessary because without them new methods and medicines would be developed at a much slower rate, due to cost. My counterpoint was that the real problem with healthcare at the moment wasn't necessarily a lack of good medicines or methods, but exorbitant costs and limited access to care. Would we be better off with a system that was less "cutting edge" but far more accessible and egalitarian by cutting out patents? This is not to say that projects like the LHC are the cause of all social ills and inequality. That's obviously absurd. But it does make me consider if the resources weren't better spent on something more immediately practical. Even manned space flight is at least more "real" to most people, and could potentially lead to much more tangible practical applications like orbital solar, asteroid mining, or the whole "new frontier" of colonization. I remember being fascinated by new physics, but I have been oddly disinterested in the whole LHC, Higgs Boson story, and theoretical physics in general. And yes I know things like quantum theory allows transistors, lasers, and everything to work. However, if we were at a point where theoretical physics is more in line with the "rest of technology", practical applications can be prototyped and tested without having to invest tens of billions of dollars and brain power into giant capital science projects. Or the capital experiments would be less costly to build. For example, some organizations throw around the number that hunger could be eliminated with $100 billion or something in that range. Would getting 1/10th the way to that goal be worth postponing the discoveries of the LHC for a few decades? How much extra technology, production, and culture would we get by freeing a good chunk of the world's population from poverty?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 30, 2014 01:19
|
|