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Cnidaria posted:Libertarianism is funny since it heavily focuses on individualism but would require everyone to have the exact same principles, believes, and life experiences for it to work, essentially eliminating individualism. This. The major issue with libertarianism is that either everyone follows the "gentleman’s agreement" system or it completely fails and is abused. jrodefeld, I am asking you this with the hope of a serious answer but there are a few issues people have raised that I cannot find you supplying an answer for. I apologise in advance if you have, and if you'd quote your response to anything already answered, that would be appreciated. The keystone of libertarian society is that everyone must adhere to the gentleman’s agreement that jrodefeld has outlined, that people will not use force unless required to do so (i.e. self-defence) and will only do so in an amount that the situation would "require". A second failing is that when someone does (and will) transgress (either through violence or say, breaking an agreement/trade), how exactly can the transgressed party do anything about it at all? Now keep in mind, you no longer have a central authority. That's the very thing you're seeking to remove. Human nature will mean that some, probably a very large group, will not agree with the gentleman’s agreement on force that you seem to hold so close to your heart. People are violent, greedy and irrational. That's simple human nature. The only thing that stops a lot of people killing outright is the punishment they would receive from the state law. jrodefeld, you mention police a few times, but in a libertarian society where there is no state police, what police is there? A private police firm paid for by people wanting protection? How then does this not amount to a basic mercenary company, enforcing rule on others just as those horrible state police do today? What is to stop someone paying this force from invading and taking over others private property, and if they do so, how will others stop them? Buy hiring other security forces? And since one person cannot afford a decent sized private army of his own, what happens when a group of people start hiring/private security, a large enough group that then has more force than others and is able to enforce its will freely. Or, let’s say the security firm gets ideas of their own and starts charging people more for protection, essentially become a gang extorting money out of people in return for ensuring their "safety". How would anyone stop this? Form their own group? With what weapons, from where? With what assets or capital, since the security firm just took those from you. One thing libertarians like to put forward is that anyone who acts in an immoral or unethical manner would be "shunned", no one would trade with them. This is a third failing of libertarianism, because there will always be a market for someone, no matter what. Let's say you're a producer of goods, and James, a customer, offers to purchase/trade/barter for those goods. You come to an agreement; James takes delivery but then doesn't uphold his side of the agreement. This also ties back to the second failing I've mentioned. James now comes to me, a producer of goods myself, and makes me an offer at slightly more than the free market would suggest is the right price. Now, I know of James' previous dealings with you, but, since he's offering me a very good price, I HONESTLY DONT CARE. As long as he upholds his side of the agreement with me, why should I care if he doesn't with you, or anyone else? Now, maybe this time James still won't uphold the agreement (in which case we go back again to the second failing I've mentioned), or maybe I'll take precautions that ensure James upholds his side of the agreement, something like payment before delivery (which would also be open to abuse in the form of taking payment and not delivering). But, at the end of the day, why should I care about his dealings with you and, in not caring, why should I be restricted in whom I can trade with, based on your say so? That goes against the very core of your libertarian ideals. I should not be restricted in who I can trade with, because if I am, how is that a libertarian society? The fourth failing I'm going to mention now I brushed upon a little before, the concept of individuals forming groups. Now under a libertarian society, let's say I'm in the natural gas business. I have a meeting with other individuals in the same business as myself, and we come to an arrangement to act as a group, a cartel. We'll use our power as group as leverage against others in the business, buying out who we can to increase our holdings and boost our position against others in the market. Eventually, left unchecked, it would be very possible for us to secure the entire natural gas market. Now, your defence might be that someone, anyone could start in competition against us, but without our asset base and resources, how could anyone compete? How would it be feasible at all? And if it were, what is to stop us either buying them out, inviting them to join our cartel or forcing them out of the market? We could merely undercut their price for a time, as we would have more resources and last long in a price war, wait for them to fall over and just return to the previous price once again. And after we corner the natural gas market, why not corner the other energy markets too? We'd have the resources, after all. And there would be nothing to stop us. Well, nothing except other cartels, of course. What other defence would any other person have against a cartel, but to make one of their own? How else can you compete against a grouping of others? Now, the concept of cartels and of forming groups seems an alien concept to a lot of libertarians, but it is core to basic human nature. This is how we have been for thousands of years; we form communities and groups, giving up a little bit of our freedoms to gain a whole lot more. And this is an important concept to understand, that people WILL gladly give up some freedom if the gains, in their eyes, are enough. In modern society, we give up some freedoms for protection and prosperity. A single cell cannot achieve what an organised group of cells can, in the same way a single human cannot hope to achieve with a society of humans can. If Earth were populated with robots, each programmed to follow your concepts, yes, it might be a very interesting system that might work. But since we're all human and have different views, beliefs and morals (morality is completely different debate), it'll fall flat on its face and we'll have a world full of cartels and private armies running around ensuring the benefits of a few at the detriment of the whole. CrazyTolradi fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Aug 11, 2014 |
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Aug 11, 2014 03:42
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jrodefeld posted:STUFF Please answer my questions, I have listed several failings of your philosophy and would love to hear your explanations for how I'm wrong.
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Aug 11, 2014 03:59
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jrodefeld posted:I don’t know how this concept could be made any clearer. Civilization itself depends, literally, on the enforcement of private property rights. The reality of scarcity and the conflict that scarcity naturally produces means that the first owner, or the earlier owner of some scarce resource should have a better claim to authority over its use than anyone else. And the transfer of that scarce resource to a subsequent owner can only occur through voluntary sale, gift or trade. But you no longer have a State, no central court, no central police, no central authority. How, then, can you enforce anything? Because not everyone is going to go along with your gentlemans agreement and accept the authority of Dispute Resolution Firm #46363. Wouldn't the enforcement of such a firm be against Libertarian principle anyway, since a third party is enforcing it's will on you and making you do things you don't want to. The whole premise of libertarianism is contradictory, since your private proptry rights cannot, generally, be enforced except by.....force itself. I note that you've refused to answer my post before and ignored the failings I've pointed out to you. Not such a perfect philosophy if you choose when to defend it and when not to. I.e why should I, a businessman, care what Stan has done to you or anyone else, as long as I can ensure Stan's compliance in any agreement (and I would naturally do so, knowing his past through some magical authority who has the ability to alert everyone everywhere to someone's "contract-rating" lolohgod) I really wouldn't care. If this is what your whole system hinges on to not fall on its face and be devoured by the hordes willing to abuse it, you're in for a shock. CrazyTolradi fucked around with this message at 08:20 on Aug 11, 2014 |
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Aug 11, 2014 08:09
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fibblins posted:How would the radio spectrum not become an overlapping clusterfuck of interference in a libertarian society? Or any kind of overall communications infrastructure, or any kind of infrastructure at all for that instance. How am I supposed to know that Stan is a two time double crossing no gooder when I'm only on Dialemup's local area internetwork, but it doesn't connect to Speedyspeedo's tincan and string phone service that the Contract Rating company uses in the area he usually operates in? And why can't Stan just bribe the contract rating company with a take of his scam earnings? For the right price, surely they'd be able to come to an arrangement. It is, after all, a free market society. Bribery, scamming, racketeering, extortion, what a wonderful system! You'd almost think the people who came up with it had no idea about human nature and could only see the universe from their own view!
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Aug 11, 2014 08:27
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Somfin posted:We've got one in the thread. Let's ask him. As a free market entity, the privately-owned DRA/DRO would clearly refuse any bribes..surely?
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Aug 11, 2014 08:45
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Little Blackfly posted:Of course, otherwise they'd get scammer tags. And we can totally trust the company issuing those tags, right? Because they could never, ever have an agenda or conflict of interest. No, that'd be immoral and against the libertarian code.
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Aug 11, 2014 08:54
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So, basically DRO's are more controlling over our freedoms than a State is? Good to know. Lol jrodefeld, you literally posted an entire explanation of how you're not free at all, but totally under the mercy of the DRO system. Good work in destroying your own philosophy. Talk about an own goal.
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Aug 11, 2014 09:39
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Caros posted:The bizzare thing to me is that they don't see it. I guarantee you that Jrodefeld is going to come back and if he says anything on the topic at all its going to be that I'm totally wrong, and that the essay there is not a full throated suggestion of a totalitarian nightmare, because people 'voluntarily' choose to do business with these companies. I "choose" to deal with DRO's because I like not starving and dying on land no one else owns (because I'm not allowed on private streets/property anymore). Oh wait, what land no one else owns?
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Aug 11, 2014 09:51
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QuarkJets posted:Goonswarm decided to form a communist coalition just because it made all of the little libertarian try-hards mad. This was so successful that they're now the leading alliance in the game, owning more conquerable space than anyone else. Eh, Goonswarm itself only controls a portion of actual null, but via the CFC and rented out space, controls about 1/3rd of conquerable sov. EVE itself is a great idea of what happens when people are thrown into an environment and have little to no restriction on interactions. Market manipulation and scamming are common place and you can't trust even your best friend. There is still some level of intervention from the game devs, however, and some restriction on market place (some good aren't player generated/made for instance) so it isn't a perfect example of a liberatarian utopia, but it does show a good degree of core human nature, which is to lie, cheat and steal. Also, if libertarians are disturbed by the State watching and gathering information on them, how the hell can they forward the concept of a DRO and be totally ok with a group that is actively watching them and giving out information they gather freely to other private companies. CrazyTolradi fucked around with this message at 13:07 on Aug 11, 2014 |
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Aug 11, 2014 13:02
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As a few have mentioned before, under libertarianism, what stops the RF range from becoming a totally useless mish mash of interference? How can you claim spectrum as "private property" or are we all at the mercy of anyone who wants to transmit on any frequency range? What's then to stop me from making a device that prevents you using that range because I'm a total dick who gets off on that (people do this)?
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Aug 11, 2014 22:27
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Grand Theft Autobot posted:How is Libertopia not a videogame yet? Or is it Minecraft? It doesn't even work in Minecraft, after all, the server ops/admin are evil statists who decide who's right in situations such as when some bastard mines the diamonds under your home. Most MC servers usually have some kind of control method for who can do what in what plots of land or people usually build big gently caress-off fortresses and shun the rest of the world. It might work with some groups though, but it's pretty telling when it's hard for the most "logical way to organise society" to even work in a computer game that has near endless resources.
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Aug 12, 2014 00:43
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Jrod, what's to stop me from using the river my plot of land is on as a toilet, dumping all my human waste into its waters. Then I decide, screw paying my monthly dumping fees to the local garbage disposal company, I'll just dump it into the river. How does libertarian society deal with this? Do I just get black listed and made a non-person by a DRO (it's not a State, really, it isn't!)?
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Aug 12, 2014 06:31
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One thing I don't get about most Libertarians I know is that they're usually Economy grads and seem to think that economic growth is the entire point of living. It's like gaining wealth is both a means AND an end.
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Aug 14, 2014 03:06
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So, it basically is only "libertarians I know" then, good to know. I guess all I can take from this is that Libertarianism has no end game, and it's basically a huge treadmill of making as much wealth as you can because making wealth is all that matters. It'd be a lot easier to sell if you had something beyond "making money", like, what that money would go to.
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Aug 14, 2014 03:48
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Was trading "viewpoints" with a libertarian friend today and he replied this to Jrod's way of DRO operation:Libertarian person posted:Having a DRO setup marketwide that relies on individuals paying and makes a case-by-case basis based on payment and things like that, it's highly ineffcient, impractical, and doesn't work. So alternatives to that, other methods of maying payment happen or even alternative methods of funding the DRO. I can't rightly say what is the best setup of a DRO, only that the market will tend towards an ever-increasing level of efficiency because of the competitive nature of the market. Unhappy customers/unfulfilled needs are opportuities to profit, and if one person can't turn a profit, there are 50 others who want to make that happen. And it's impossible to make money in a free market by pissing people off, exploiting them, and creating what they don't want, creating ways for others to profit. If you don't know how it will work, it's ok! The free market will sort it all out! Yeah I'm sure people are going to line up for the huge level of uncertainty this system brings. You could argue that if the majority wanted it, we'd have it, but since we don't have it then we can just notch this one up as "strange mind experiment".
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Aug 14, 2014 06:48
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So, all I can take from this thread really is that libertarians are like virgins telling others how they should have sex. Whenever I press my few libertarian friends for details, they always come back with "Well, the free market will form that.". It's like a bunch of people who claim to not believe in a higher power....believing in a higher power. Replace "free market" with "God" and it kinda works as a religion.
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Aug 14, 2014 23:39
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Socrates16 posted:Every single fear of the privatized police force is entirely conjectural. The reality of the horror that is the state police force is factual and observable. So is your entire philosophy. It's never been tried or tested nor does it have any empirical evidence that it could work at all. It makes many assumptions on human behaviour, completely ignores known psychology and literally rests on a single axiom, "The free market will decide.".
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Aug 15, 2014 06:15
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The thing I don't get about socrates and his ilk is that they seem to think that someone can just start a business out of thin air to compete with establish corporations who already have major assets and market share. "I'm not happy with my communications service, I'll just start my own!" works only if you have major capital and assets behind you already. A libertarian free market would either rip itself to shreds, or one company would eventually end up absorbing all the others becoming one super corporation having a monopoly in all markets. One interesting concept, on a more human level, is how hosed up dating would be in a libertarian society. Imagine having to do background checks and make sure any prospective girlfriend/boyfriend had DRO/health/et al coverage before you went on a date or had sex.
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Aug 15, 2014 06:31
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