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Title: Key Concepts of Libertarianism
Source:
Cato.org
URL Source: https://www.cato.org/publications/c ... ry/key-concepts-libertarianism
Published: Jan 1, 1999
Author: David Boaz
Post Date: 2018-07-21 20:32:59 by buckeroo
Keywords: None
Views: 1871
Comments: 11
Individual Rights. Because individuals are moral agents, they have a right to be secure in their life, liberty, and property. These rights are not granted by government or by society; they are inherent in the nature of human beings. It is intuitively right that individuals enjoy the security of such rights; the burden of explanation should lie with those who would take rights away. Spontaneous Order. A great degree of order in society is necessary for individuals to survive and flourish. It’s easy to assume that order must be imposed by a central authority, the way we impose order on a stamp collection or a football team. The great insight of libertarian social analysis is that order in society arises spontaneously, out of the actions of thousands or millions of individuals who coordinate their actions with those of others in order to achieve their purposes. Over human history, we have gradually opted for more freedom and yet managed to develop a complex society with intricate organization. The most important institutions in human society — language, law, money, and markets — all developed spontaneously, without central direction. Civil society — the complex network of associations and connections among people — is another example of spontaneous order; the associations within civil society are formed for a purpose, but civil society itself is not an organization and does not have a purpose of its own. The Rule of Law. Libertarianism is not libertinism or hedonism. It is not a claim that “people can do anything they want to, and nobody else can say anything.” Rather, libertarianism proposes a society of liberty under law, in which individuals are free to pursue their own lives so long as they respect the equal rights of others. The rule of law means that individuals are governed by generally applicable and spontaneously developed legal rules, not by arbitrary commands; and that those rules should protect the freedom of individuals to pursue happiness in their own ways, not aim at any particular result or outcome. Limited Government. To protect rights, individuals form governments. But government is a dangerous institution. Libertarians have a great antipathy to concentrated power, for as Lord Acton said, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Thus they want to divide and limit power, and that means especially to limit government, generally through a written constitution enumerating and limiting the powers that the people delegate to government. Limited government is the basic political implication of libertarianism, and libertarians point to the historical fact that it was the dispersion of power in Europe — more than other parts of the world — that led to individual liberty and sustained economic growth. Free Markets. To survive and to flourish, individuals need to engage in economic activity. The right to property entails the right to exchange property by mutual agreement. Free markets are the economic system of free individuals, and they are necessary to create wealth. Libertarians believe that people will be both freer and more prosperous if government intervention in people’s economic choices is minimized. The Virtue of Production. Much of the impetus for libertarianism in the seventeenth century was a reaction against monarchs and aristocrats who lived off the productive labor of other people. Libertarians defended the right of people to keep the fruits of their labor. This effort developed into a respect for the dignity of work and production and especially for the growing middle class, who were looked down upon by aristocrats. Libertarians developed a pre-Marxist class analysis that divided society into two basic classes: those who produced wealth and those who took it by force from others. Thomas Paine, for instance, wrote, “There are two distinct classes of men in the nation, those who pay taxes, and those who receive and live upon the taxes.” Similarly, Jefferson wrote in 1824, “We have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.” Modern libertarians defend the right of productive people to keep what they earn, against a new class of politicians and bureaucrats who would seize their earnings to transfer them to nonproducers. Natural Harmony of Interests. Libertarians believe that there is a natural harmony of interests among peaceful, productive people in a just society. One person’s individual plans — which may involve getting a job, starting a business, buying a house, and so on — may conflict with the plans of others, so the market makes many of us change our plans. But we all prosper from the operation of the free market, and there are no necessary conflicts between farmers and merchants, manufacturers and importers. Only when government begins to hand out rewards on the basis of political pressure do we find ourselves involved in group conflict, pushed to organize and contend with other groups for a piece of political power. Peace. Libertarians have always battled the age-old scourge of war. They understood that war brought death and destruction on a grand scale, disrupted family and economic life, and put more power in the hands of the ruling class — which might explain why the rulers did not always share the popular sentiment for peace. Free men and women, of course, have often had to defend their own societies against foreign threats; but throughout history, war has usually been the common enemy of peaceful, productive people on all sides of the conflict. … It may be appropriate to acknowledge at this point the reader’s likely suspicion that libertarianism seems to be just the standard framework of modern thought — individualism, private property, capitalism, equality under the law. Indeed, after centuries of intellectual, political, and sometimes violent struggle, these core libertarian principles have become the basic structure of modern political thought and of modern government, at least in the West and increasingly in other parts of the world. However, three additional points need to be made: first, libertarianism is not just these broad liberal principles. Libertarianism applies these principles fully and consistently, far more so than most modern thinkers and certainly more so than any modern government. Second, while our society remains generally based on equal rights and capitalism, every day new exceptions to those principles are carved out in Washington and in Albany, Sacramento, and Austin (not to mention London, Bonn, Tokyo, and elsewhere). Each new government directive takes a little bit of our freedom, and we should think carefully before giving up any liberty. Third, liberal society is resilient; it can withstand many burdens and continue to flourish; but it is not infinitely resilient. Those who claim to believe in liberal principles but advocate more and more confiscation of the wealth created by productive people, more and more restrictions on voluntary interaction, more and more exceptions to property rights and the rule of law, more and more transfer of power from society to state, are unwittingly engaged in the ultimately deadly undermining of civilization. From Chapter 1, “The Coming Libertarian Age,” Libertarianism: A Primer, by David Boaz (New York: The Free Press, 1998). See also www.libertarianism.org.The key concepts of libertarianism have developed over many centuries. The first inklings of them can be found in ancient China, Greece, and Israel; they began to be developed into something resembling modern libertarian philosophy in the work of such seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thinkers as John Locke, David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine. Individualism. Libertarians see the individual as the basic unit of social analysis. Only individuals make choices and are responsible for their actions. Libertarian thought emphasizes the dignity of each individual, which entails both rights and responsibility. The progressive extension of dignity to more people — to women, to people of different religions and different races — is one of the great libertarian triumphs of the Western world.
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#1. To: buckeroo (#0)
So, after so many centuries of developing libertarian concepts, why are there no libertarian countries with libertarian governments and why do you libertarians remain so firmly dedicated to a centuries-old lost cause? Just askin’ …
Vs: "Nah, they're really good people" [TRUMP WE DON'T CARE , LOCK HER UP]
Let’s take only one of those eighteenth-century thinkers to look closely at. Hmmm ... Hmmm ... Okay, let’s take Thomas Jefferson and look at Thomas Jefferson vs. your Libertarian Mysticism. A peculiar trait found among a majority of libertarians is the desire to elevate Thomas Jefferson to the heroic status of intellectual forebear of their ideology. While I argue vehemently that such mythologizing is ultimately self-defeating for a movement that desires to fundamentally weaken the hold of statism, a more glaring flaw is that such a narrative is factually unfounded. From state’s rights and secession, to individual freedoms, peace, and the role of central government, Jefferson talked the talk, but never walked the walk. Far from an ideologue or proto- libertarian (lol), Jefferson was simply a successful politician, a well-read master of rhetoric and propaganda… And a statist. A casual google search will net anyone an immense cache of Jeffersonian revisionism. I decided to argue my points against one of the top cardinals of this particular church: all quotes here are taken from a 2006 Thomas J. DiLorenzo article “The Latest Defamation of Jefferson” [link]. Yes, go ahead and chalk me up on the “defamer/heretic” side. “Jefferson was against protectionism, central banking, and “internal improvements” subsidies… He was a strict constructionist.” The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807 ended the legality of the transatlantic slave trade. This in effect moved foreign competition to the black (pun!) market, and allowed domestic slave owners to charge higher rates for their “American-Made” goods. I may not be a historian, but online dictionaries and an amateur understanding of economics support my claim that this measure was Protectionism. The Louisiana Purchase stands out as one of America’s greatest “internal improvement subsidies,” with a number of foreign and domestic interests receiving their share of the wealth of the U.S. citizenry. In fact, part of the deal included the U.S. assuming $3.75 million in debt owed to private U.S. citizens by the French government. “Paying it to ourselves,” indeed. As a side note: Many people are also unaware of the private banking interests in both England and the Netherlands that were involved in financing this deal. For all of his writings against the “monied aristocracy” [link], Jefferson was more than willing to work through the wealthy bankers to achieve his goals. [link] One must finally ask: where was Jefferson’s “strict Constitutionalism” when he pushed the Louisiana Purchase Act through Congress without amendment? “Jefferson was the apostle of state’s rights… Jefferson authored America’s Declaration of Secession from the British empire, known as the Declaration of Independence. Lincoln’s overriding purpose in his war was to destroy the secessionist and states’ rights principles of the Declaration (while using slick rhetoric designed to pretend that he revered the document).” What of Aaron Burr’s conspiracy to secede? Wasn’t Burr’s alleged activities well within Jefferson’s pro-secessionist principles? History does not support this claim, with the government under Jefferson’s response being arrests, trials of treason, and government confiscation of property [link]. Though Jefferson came out of his presidency’s secession crisis with a lower body count, both him and Lincoln were more than willing to use force and “slick rhetoric” to preserve the union and their perceived Constitutional bona fides, respectively. “Jefferson was adamantly opposed to interfering in foreign wars for any reason. ‘I am for free commerce with all nations, political connection with none, and little or no diplomatic establishment,’ he wrote to Elbridge Gerry in 1799. ‘And I am not for linking ourselves by new treaties with the quarrels of Europe, entering that field of slaughter to preserve their balance…'” This defense of Jefferson stands out to me as DiLorenzo’s most glaringly bad, especially considering this was written by a supporter of the Austrian school. One needs only read over the Embargo Acts of Jefferson’s late presidency to see how poorly his actions correspond to his writings on both “free commerce with all nations” and interference in foreign wars. Not only did Jefferson interfere with the European conflict and reveal his political neutrality as hypocrisy, he added to the ever-growing apparatus and precedent of the American State’s interference in private trade and commerce. [link] Commentary Source: Buckeroo, despite the best efforts of the you depraved libertarian mystics, no amount of quote-mining, cherry-picking articles or moral spin will ever change Thomas Jefferson’s actions. Such revisionist agendas to create an imaginary hero succeeds in doing absolutely noting to promote libertarianism. Face it....libertarianism is a dying philosophy.
We start by saying that human dignity can be violated in multiple ways. The main categories of violations are: Violations of human dignity in terms of humiliation refer to acts that humiliate or diminish the self-worth of a person or a group. Acts of humiliation are context dependent but we normally have an intuitive understanding where such a violation occurs. As Schachter noted, “it has been generally assumed that a violation of human dignity can be recognized even if the abstract term cannot be defined. ‘I know it when I see it even if I cannot tell you what it is’”. More generally, etymology of the word “humiliation” has a universal characteristic in the sense that in all languages the word involves “downward spatial orientation” in which “something or someone is pushed down and forcefully held there”.[9] This approach is common in judicial decisions where judges refer to violations of human dignity as injuries to people's self-worth or their self-esteem.[10] This aspect refers to treating a person as an instrument or as means to achieve some other goal. This approach builds on Immanuel Kant's moral imperative stipulating that we should treat people as ends or goals in themselves, namely as having ultimate moral worth which should not be instrumentalized. Violations of human dignity as degradation refer to acts that degrade the value of human beings. These are acts that, even if done by consent, convey a message that diminishes the importance or value of all human beings. They consist of practices that human beings should not be subjected to, regardless of whether subjective humiliation is involved, such as selling oneself to slavery, or when a state authority deliberately puts prisoners in inhuman living conditions. These are acts that strip a person or a group of their human characteristics. It may involve describing or treating them as animals or as a lower type of human beings. This has occurred in genocides such as the Holocaust and in Rwanda where the minority were compared to insects. Examples Some of the practices that violate human dignity include torture, rape, social exclusion, labor exploitation, bonded labor, and slavery. Both absolute and relative poverty are violations of human dignity, although they also have other significant dimensions, such as social injustice. Involuntary poverty is unusual among violations of human dignity because it is usually the result of acts of omission rather than acts of commission. Absolute poverty is associated with overt exploitation and connected to humiliation (for example, being forced to eat food from other people's garbage), but being dependent upon others to stay alive is a violation of dignity even in the absence of more direct violations. Relative poverty, on the other hand, is a violation because the cumulative experience of not being able to afford the same clothes, entertainment, social events, education, or other features of typical life in that society results in subtle humiliation; social rejection; marginalization; and consequently, a diminished self-respect. Another example of violation of human dignity, especially for women in developing countries, is lack of sanitation. Having no access to toilets leaves currently about 1 billion people of the world with no choice other than to defecation in the open, which has been declared by the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations as an affront to personal dignity. Human dignity is also violated by the practice of employing people in India for "manual scavenging" of human excreta from unsanitary toilets – usually by people of a lower caste, and more often by women than men. A further example of violation of human dignity, affecting women mainly in developing countries, is female genital mutilation (FGM). The movie The Magic Christian depicts a wealthy man (Peter Sellers) and his son (Ringo Starr) who test the limits of dignity by forcing people to perform self-degrading acts for money. The Simpsons episode "Homer vs. Dignity" has a similar plot. Commentary Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dignity
Tater gives officer Fire Island a spit shine
But I will not do that and stop here because the article you posted is nothing more that a damned “puff piece”. A story of exaggerating praise that wants to channel people to accept it as totally factual. I will now close out my participation on this thread by showing you that the libertarian philosophy is really about protecting power, not maximizing freedom. Libertarians believe that the non-violent exercise of power is an absolute right no matter how harmful that exercise of power may be to other people or to the society as a whole. Political Philosophies Are All Just Theories Of Morality Political philosophies — socialism, communism, libertarianism, conservatism, liberalism, etc. — are really just an expression of the believer’s personal moral philosophy about what’s fair. They are political religions. Communists created their system as an expression of their ethical belief that it is unfair, morally wrong, for one person to be fabulously wealthy while another person is starving. That’s just a rule they made up that felt right to them. Communists wanted an economic system that embodied their ideas about morality and fairness. The fact that their system worked very poorly didn’t stop them because they were far less concerned about having a system that worked well than they were with having one that was “fair.” Other “isms” also base their political catechisms on their fundamental ideas about what they think is moral, ethical, and fair. The Core Of The Libertarian Philosophy You would think that the core purpose of a philosophy called “libertarianism” would be making sure that as many people as possible had as much personal freedom as possible, that it was about maximizing a society’s net amount of freedom, but that’s not what libertarianism is about at all. Libertarians believe that whoever gains power in any way that isn’t actually a crime owns that power like a physical object, and if anyone’s power is decreased in any way except by their voluntary agreement, that decrease in their power is automatically and always unfair, immoral and wrong. That’s just a rule they made up that felt right to them. Libertarianism Is About Protecting Power, Not Freedom Libertarians believe that the non-violent exercise of power that was not gained through violence is an absolute right no matter how harmful that exercise of power may be to other people’s prosperity or freedom or to the prosperity of the society as a whole. If one corporation’s exercise of its power decreases the freedom of a million human beings, libertarians don’t care at all. The Relationship Between Power & Freedom To understand what the libertarian philosophy is really about you have to begin with understanding the relationship between Power and Freedom. Power isn’t Freedom. Your level of power generates, energizes, your level freedom. Moreover, you can use your power to either increase or decrease the amount of freedom other people have. Pretend that we all live in little bubbles of air at the bottom of a deep ocean. The bigger the bubble, the more space we have and the more things we are able to do within that bigger space, the more freedom we have. The smaller the bubble the less freedom we have. Power, yours and others, is the energy that maintains the size and shape of your bubble. The size and shape of your bubble of freedom is directly related to the amount of Power you have and the amount of Power others have over you. If you’re an inmate in a Super Max prison, your bubble of freedom is the size of your cell. If you’re an absolute dictator, your bubble of freedom is as big as the country you rule. Inside your massive freedom bubble you can do anything and everything you want. Kim Jung Un has absolute freedom because he has absolute power. Because he has absolute power, a total dictator can energize more freedom or less freedom for other people. He can expand the bubbles, the freedom, of those he favors and shrink the bubbles, the freedom, of those he dislikes. Governments, whether they’re dictatorships or democracies, exercise power by enforcing laws. In exercising power, governments either increase the freedom or decrease the freedom of the citizens who are affected by those laws. When the U.S. government says that Americans have a right to freedom of speech and freedom of religion it’s using its power to increase the size and shape of the freedom bubbles of every citizen. When the U.S. government says its citizens are forbidden to buy or use heroin, it’s using its power to decrease the freedom of each citizen. Each of their bubbles gets a little smaller in one place. Every law changes the volume and shape of each citizen’s bubble of freedom, bigger here, smaller there, longer in this direction, shorter in that one. Freedom of speech expands your bubble on this side. The loss of the freedom to buy heroin makes it smaller on that side. Everyone Who Has Power Over You Affects Your Freedom But here is the crucial thing: Governments aren’t the only sources of power that affect your bubble of freedom. There are thousands of sources of power that affect the size and shape of your bubble of freedom. To a greater or lesser degree every person exercises some power over some other people, and every such exercise changes the size and shape of that other person’s Freedom bubble. The government doesn’t care how much TV Johnny watches, but when his parents tell Johnny that he can’t watch TV past 9:00 p.m. they’ve reshaped his little bubble of freedom. The government doesn’t limit your ability to eat ice cream, but when your spouse makes you go on a diet and stop eating ice cream your freedom bubble gets a little bit smaller on one side. Each human lives in a uniquely shaped freedom bubble whose size and contours are governed by both that person’s own power and also by the actions of everyone else who has power over them. Sometimes the person/entity that has power over you increases the size of your bubble, for example, when your boss lets you take the company car home every night. The government says that you have freedom of speech, but when your employer says that you can’t make personal phone calls at work, then during working hours your bubble of freedom gets a little dent in it. It becomes a little smaller in one corner. Your employer pays you money and to some degree that money increases your power and therefore your freedom. Your employer also orders you to perform certain tasks and refrain from others which rules decrease your freedom during working hours. Your bank, your insurance company, your communications company, etc. all provide certain services to you which services increase and reshape your bubble of freedom, but those same organizations also impose rules on you, exercise power over you, and in that exercise of their power over you they restrict and reshape your freedom. An Example Think about a small town that’s near a coal mine. Everyone works for the publicly-traded corporation that owns the mine or for a business that services the people who work for the mine. The corporation’s power over the citizens is huge. If there are no wage and hour laws, the mine can tell you that you are going to work twelve hours a day, six days a week for two dollars an hour and your only choice is to do it or leave town. The more of your time the mine takes and the less money it gives you in return, the smaller your bubble of freedom becomes. Libertarians Think That Laws Reducing Anyone’s Power Are, By Definition, Immoral But if the government enacts wage and hour laws, it takes some of the power from the corporation and transfers that power to the miners. The wage and hour laws make the citizens’ freedom bubbles bigger and they make the corporation’s freedom bubble smaller. Libertarians believe that if the mine has a stranglehold power over the citizens of the town, it deserves to have that power because it gained it by lawful means. In their view, if the government limits the mine’s power to do a lawful thing, such as what it must pay people to mine coal, the government is stealing the corporation’s power and that such a wage and hour law is automatically and always morally wrong and unfair no matter how much it increases the workers’ freedom bubbles. In their view, to be moral and fair, every transaction must be a one-on-one, my-power-versus-your power, negotiation. By definition, whatever is the outcome of that negotiation is itself always moral and fair, even when it’s not. That’s just a rule they made up that felt right to them. The Libertarian Core Philosophy In a nutshell, the libertarian philosophy is: I have my negotiating power. You have your negotiating power. Mine is tremendous. Yours is trivial. We pit our negotiating powers against each other and I crush you, which is, by definition, always and automatically right, moral and fair. If my power is so great and yours is so small that you are little more than an indentured servant and your labor makes me fabulously wealthy, then under my political religion that’s the moral, ethical and fair result and that’s how things should be. In their view, if the town’s citizens passed a law that required the corporation to pay a minimum wage, that would be no different than a bunch of people forming a gang and stealing the mine’s money. In their universe, the reducion of power through the exercise of political power instead of through the exercise of bargaining power is a big “no fair.” Why? Because that’s what their gut tells them “fair” is, just like the communist’s gut tells him that fair is equalizing the wealth. It’s just something they made up. In the libertarian philosophy it’s fair and moral that the publicly-traded corporation that owns the mine retain its almost absolute power over the citizens and it’s fair and moral that the thousand workers live more or less like indentured servants, and it’s wrong and unfair for the town to pass a law that gives the corporation a little less power and allows the thousand workers to live a little bit more like free men. That’s just a rule they made up that felt right to them. To Them A Community’s Net Amount Of Freedom Is Irrelevant To libertarians the fact that the wage and hour law greatly increases the net freedom of the human beings in the town is totally unimportant. To them, a non-human entity’s non-violent exercise of power not obtained through violence is, by definition, automatically and always right, good and fair no matter how much that exercise of power diminishes the freedom of thousands of human beings or harms an entire community. Power Is A Possession Their larger view is that power is merely something of value like gold or money, and that it and all your other possessions are inviolate. If you get anything of value by non-violent means then, by definition, it’s fundamentally wrong for any law to take any of “your stuff” away from you. That’s another rule they made up. That means that all taxes that are used for any purpose that does not directly benefit you are morally wrong, that every tax that does not pay for something that you directly use is stealing. In their view, if I can’t point to some specific, direct benefit to me from some government program then it’s immoral to tax me to pay for it. If I don’t live in Maine and some federal tax money is used to build a bridge in Maine, then my portion of that tax is stealing my money. At its heart, the libertarian philosophy is: “I have everything that I have and it’s morally wrong for anybody, for any reason, to take anything of mine, including any of my power. I don’t have any responsibility for the effect my exercise of my power has on any other people or on society as a whole. The effect my exercise of my power has on others is irrelevant. “Short of violence, I can do whatever I want no matter how negatively my actions may affect others. If they don’t like it they can bargain with me to get me to change my ways and if they can’t offer me enough to get me to stop then I get to do anything and everything I want and it’s morally wrong for anyone to tell me ‘no.’ “Short of violence, I have the right to do whatever I can get away with.” That’s just a rule they made up. No Responsibility For The Consequences Of My Actions The libertarian philosophy denies that there is actually such a thing as a society that works as a complex system where every person’s actions have a greater or lesser effect on every other person. They refuse to acknowledge that the people directly and indirectly affected by someone’s conduct have a right to adopt reasonable societal rules limiting that person’s exercise of their power. Libertarians view the world as a dog-eat-dog, survival of the fittest, struggle with only physical violence being out of bounds, as a world in which it’s moral and fair for you to do whatever you’re powerful enough to get away with and one where it’s morally wrong for those who are affected by your conduct to band together to adopt rules to limit your actions. That’s the rule they made up. Libertarians are completely unconcerned about the restrictions on human freedom or the damage to human beings caused by the private, corporate exercise of power. They are very concerned with preventing government restrictions on a corporation’s ability to exercise its power. Libertarians See No Difference Between Protecting Human Power And Corporate Power In the same way that rape is not about sex but rather is the exercise of power, libertarianism is not about protecting freedom but rather is about protecting the exercise of power. Libertarianism makes no distinction between protecting the power of human beings and protecting the power of non-human, artificial entities. One might ask, isn’t increasing the amount of freedom that human beings have more important than protecting the exercise of power by non-human, artificial entities? Shouldn’t the prosperity, power, and freedom of humans be more important than the prosperity, power and freedom of huge artificial, publicly-traded corporations like Wells Fargo or Pfizer? For the libertarians, the answer is a resounding “No.” What are some of the consequences of this philosophy? The Right To Discriminate Since all non-violent exercises of power are, by definition, moral, then if I own a restaurant and I don’t want black people in it, I should be able to ban them. If I don’t want Jews to live in my apartments, then that’s my right too. Picture a Jim Crow America and that’s what Libertarians think is fair and right. Not that they support discrimination. They support people and corporations having the power to discriminate. They will also tell you that in a perfect libertarian society discrimination will automatically cease to exist. And if it doesn’t, well, too bad, but at least we protected the power of businesses to discriminate which is the only thing that really counts as far as they’re concerned. The Right To Form Monopolies & Cartels Since all non-violent exercises of power are, by definition, moral, then if I and the other manufacturers of a generic drug want to form a cartel and divide up the market for digitalis or insulin and charge huge monopoly prices, then that is fair and right. Not that libertarians support monopoly prices instead of competitive prices. They support protecting the power to form a monopoly or a cartel. They will also tell you that in a perfect libertarian society monopolies and cartels will automatically cease to exist. And if they don’t, well, too bad, but at least we protected the power of corporations to form monopolies and cartels which is the only thing that really counts as far as they’re concerned. No Power Of Eminent Domain Since all non- violent exercises of power are, by definition, moral, then if a corporation owns the land where a bridge needs to be located it should be free to refuse to sell that land at any price or to hold out for a price that is 100 times higher than it could have sold it for if the bridge wasn’t going to be built. Not that libertarians support such extortion. They support the power to hold out for an extortionate price or refuse to sell at any price. They will also tell you that in a perfect libertarian society that it will be unnecessary for the government to have the power of eminent domain. And if they’re wrong, well, too bad, but at least we protected the power of corporations to refuse to sell land desperately needed for bridges, roads, schools and the like, which is the only thing that really counts as far as they’re concerned. The Right To Sell Toxic & Dangerous Products Since all non-violent exercises of power are, by definition, moral, then if a manufacturer wants to sell a product that is dangerous, toxic or unsafe that is fair and right. Not that libertarians support dangerous and toxic products. They support protecting the power to sell dangerous and toxic products. They will also tell you that in a perfect libertarian society dangerous and toxic products will automatically cease to exist and that the only people who will be harmed by them before they are driven out of the market will be those who were too stupid or too lazy to protect themselves and that therefore those people deserve whatever injuries they suffer. And if things don’t actually work that way, well, too bad, but at least we protected the power of corporations to sell dangerous, toxic and deadly products, which is the only thing that really counts as far as they’re concerned. The Right To Pollute Since all non-violent exercises of power are, by definition, moral, then if a manufacturer wants to spew toxic gasses into the air and discharge toxic chemicals onto his land, or cut down all the redwoods or cover the beaches with taco stands, that is fair and right. Not that they support pollution, urban sprawl and the destruction of our national treasures. They support the power to pollute and destroy. They will also tell you that in a perfect libertarian society that pollution and destruction of our national treasures will automatically cease to happen without the necessity of there being any laws against it. And if it doesn’t, well, too bad, but at least we protected the power of corporations to pollute and drain the Everglades which is the only thing that really counts as far as they’re concerned. The Same Old Excuses Why Their Theories Don’t Work When people told the communists that their system didn’t work, they made the same excuses the libertarians make for the failures of their theories to match up with events in the real world — once a perfect, communist system was in place everything would work perfectly. Any problems with the performance of the communist system were not the result of defects in the philosophy but rather were caused by people not perfectly following communist principles. Once everybody was fully on board with the communist system and once it was perfectly implemented, everything would be wonderful and the State would wither away and die. Similarly, libertarians will tell you that once we do away with most of the government and once we have a society that is totally and perfectly operated in accordance with libertarian principles then everything will work perfectly and there will be no discrimination and no monopolies and no indentured-servant wages and no poverty for anyone who is willing to work and no pollution and no unsafe, shoddy or toxic products. They will assure you that in their mythical, fantasy, libertarian utopia all problems will be automatically solved without needing any laws at all. Everything will automatically work perfectly because that’s just how real human beings do things. And I have a wonderful bridge I would like to sell you. My Proposal Abandon your political religions. Put aside all your rules about what you’ve decided is fair and unfair. Construct your government and economy only according to pragmatic principles. Here’s a situation that many people don’t like. What are the possible fixes? What will be the short term and long term direct effects of each fix? What will be the short term and long term secondary effects of each fix? What will be the short term and long term tertiary effects of each fix? Do the short term and long term primary, secondary and tertiary benefits of the fix materially outweigh the short term and long term, primary, secondary and tertiary detriments of the fix? If so, enact the fix, evaluate how it works, and adjust it or repeal it as necessary. And don’t pay any attention to how a communist, libertarian, anarchist, socialist, conservative or liberal judges the fairness or morality of the fix. Tear up your political catechisms and become a political atheist. Do what works and screw what anyone’s gut tells them is fair or unfair.
Bullshit. Name me one thing a libertine or a hedonist cannot do (assuming they do not harm another person). Drugs, prostitution, gambling, porn, immoral and unethical behavior, irresponsible and dangerous behavior, crude and obscene behavior -- all allowed under Libertarianism.
Alt LIBERALterians are kook anarchist. Ba ba ba Bucky is one... and since an anarchist can do anything and act like an asshole, they will do just that explaining that they ain’t one. For Ba ba ba Bucky to be happy, he had to move to a 3rd world country... where fucking your neighbors Rottweiler is legal.
I'm the infidel... Allah warned you about. كافر المسلح
Those behaviour modes are evident today under the distinct control of Republicans and Democrats. Meanwhile the true value of education has diminished to near zero. Are you saying it is all the libertarians that caused these issues?
I'm not talking about behavior. We currently have laws on the books prohibiting those behaviors. Libertarians and Democrats would like to eliminate those laws.
You are incorrect. One of the fundamental tenets of libertarianism is education. Not schools of contemporary : blah, blah, blah. By educating our citizenship, we don't need this rule book that you love and enjoy.
The key concepts of libertarianism have developed over many centuries.
It is deeply saddening that libertarians have developed concepts of libertarianism over many centuries and while libertarians after many centuries seem so convinced that their system of minimal government would work, they can never point to an example of a libertarian country, a libertarian government or a kind of libertarian sytem actually working.
#2. To: buckeroo (#0)
(Edited)
The Rule of Law.
#3. To: buckeroo (#0)
The key concepts of libertarianism....can be found in....something resembling modern libertarian philosophy in the work of such eighteenth-century thinkers as John Locke, David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine.
Can it now?
https://www.nolanchart.com/article9600- thomas-jefferson-vs-libertarian-mysticism-html
#4. To: buckeroo (#0)
The progressive extension of dignity to more people — to women, to people of different religions and different races — is one of the great libertarian triumphs of the Western world.
Oh is it really? Well, let’s just take a close look at this so-called “great libertarian triumphs”.
Now, buckeroo, I ask that you please show some detailed accounts and specific examples where “one of the great libertarian triumphs of the Western world” has been to specifically contributed to the correcting any of the above mention violations of human dignity.
#5. To: Gatlin, human dignity libertarian (#4)
#6. To: buckeroo (#0)
I could go on and on, buckeroo, parsing this entire article and continue ripping it to shreds. Consequences Of The Libertarian Philosophy
#7. To: buckeroo (#0)
Libertarianism is not libertinism or hedonism.
#8. To: misterwhite (#7)
(Edited)
Drugs, prostitution, gambling, porn, immoral and unethical behavior, irresponsible and dangerous behavior, crude and obscene behavior -- all allowed under Libertarianism.
#9. To: misterwhite (#7)
Drugs, prostitution, gambling, porn, immoral and unethical behavior, irresponsible and dangerous behavior, crude and obscene behavior -- all allowed under Libertarianism.
#10. To: buckeroo (#9)
Those behaviour modes are evident today
#11. To: misterwhite (#10)
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