Libertarian Summer Camp

[moda0306]

There is something unique about the moral stance libertarians take.  They essentially dismiss all government as illegitimate, but still want to impose their view on property on me.

Libertarianisms greatest strength (it's foundation on the concept of a fundamental truth in individual sovereignty) is also its greatest weakness (individual sovereignty being impossible to obtain in a shared "biodome."

Other political philosophies work in different fundamental truths to varying degrees, and usually seek to strike a balance, and that balance is often admitted by the practitioners as being somewhat arbitrary.

Not saying other philosophies are better.  But they start with the premise of balance. It's vague, but in the end it's more based in reality.

[Libertarian666]

There is something unique about the moral stance libertarians take.  They essentially dismiss all government as illegitimate, but still want to impose their view on property on me.

dismissing all government as illegitimate is a anarchist position, and not a libertarian one as far as i know. understanding that all government is coercive is a sound philosophical starting point from which the debate over which limited forms of coercion are acceptable can be begun.

The political school called anarcho-capitalism is a variety of libertarianism. As the name suggests, it is both anarchistic and capitalistic.

[Libertarian666]

there is certainly a spectrum of libertarian thought (a fairly wide one) but to argue that "libertarians" take a moral stance on the anarchist end of the spectrum and then want to impose government (property rights) from an authoritarian position seems disingenuous..  i would expect a far more nuanced understanding of the libertarian position from somebody on this board, especially if they have been arguing against it for so long.

I wouldn't expect that. Arguments in favor of coercion are not notable for their logical or moral consistency.

[moda0306]

there is certainly a spectrum of libertarian thought (a fairly wide one) but to argue that "libertarians" take a moral stance on the anarchist end of the spectrum and then want to impose government (property rights) from an authoritarian position seems disingenuous..  i would expect a far more nuanced understanding of the libertarian position from somebody on this board, especially if they have been arguing against it for so long.

What is the nuance?  Force is force.  Libertarians say so.  The lack of nuance started when they said that they don't think the use of force is legitimate in a shared biodome of animals like us.  It is not only legitimate, but it must exist.

If it's a softer libertarian who likes courts, roads and some military, then they are simply picking their favorite forms of coercion, so they shouldn't judge other forms of political thought that are doing the same thing as somehow being illegitimate because they "use force" to pay for universal healthcare.

Withholding necessary resources for somebody else's labor is inherantly forceful.  Not letting me traverse the world as I please by "defending your property" is inherantly forceful.  We are sharing this world. Force is going to be part of it. It's unavoidable. That's the nuance.

I don't blame anyone for wanting the government to do some things and not others.  The rub is when they base it on an inaccurate premise (that we can interact without it being inherantly forceful on someone else), and proceed to tell others their preferred form of force is illegitimate because it includes force.

And let's be clear... "Soft libertarians," when they say they want "small government," most usually mean they still want roads, cops, military, judges and sewer, but not welfare, blue laws, universal healthcare, and a central bank.

I don't have a problem having that debate, but I refuse to submit to arguing as someone advocating the use of force against someone advocating breaking of the chains of tyranny.

[moda0306]

there is certainly a spectrum of libertarian thought (a fairly wide one) but to argue that "libertarians" take a moral stance on the anarchist end of the spectrum and then want to impose government (property rights) from an authoritarian position seems disingenuous..  i would expect a far more nuanced understanding of the libertarian position from somebody on this board, especially if they have been arguing against it for so long.

I wouldn't expect that. Arguments in favor of coercion are not notable for their logical or moral consistency.

If you "owned" a farm that I wanted to camp on in a perfectly anarchistic world, even you would walk up with a gun and force me to get off even though I didn't come anywhere close to harming your sovereign self. That is force.

It appears that moral or logical consistency is tough for anarcho-capitalists as well .

[Libertarian666]

there is certainly a spectrum of libertarian thought (a fairly wide one) but to argue that "libertarians" take a moral stance on the anarchist end of the spectrum and then want to impose government (property rights) from an authoritarian position seems disingenuous..  i would expect a far more nuanced understanding of the libertarian position from somebody on this board, especially if they have been arguing against it for so long.

I wouldn't expect that. Arguments in favor of coercion are not notable for their logical or moral consistency.

If you "owned" a farm that I wanted to camp on in a perfectly anarchistic world, even you would walk up with a gun and force me to get off even though I didn't come anywhere close to hadming your sovereign self. That is force.

It appears that moral or logical consistency is tough for anarcho-capitalists as well .

I'm perfectly logically and morally consistent, as if the situation were reversed I would respect your property rights just as I would expect you to respect mine in the posited situation.

Following the Golden Rule is all that is necessary.

[moda0306]

Who says it's your property?  It was there before you were.  What if I think it's mine?  What if I think I can do better to produce value from it?

Your right to property appears to be an infringement on my right to go where I please.  That's a positive right, or to a libertarian, no right at all.

[Pointedstick]

I'm surprised, moda. I would have expected less of a cartoon character strawman explanation. Libertarians don't pretend a force-free world can exist. Rather, they frown on initiating force against other humans. You're allowed to defend yourself using force. You're allowed to use force against animals.  The libertarian way purports to be a method of organizing force by dividing it into categories--justified and unjustified--with fixed, comprehensible rules that govern which category any given use force ends up in.

That's the difference. Most other political philosophies take a "ends justify the means" approach to force that necessarily means that any use of force can be somehow justified--even things most would consider heinous.

I mean, consider the "No pressure" film produced by green party folks in the UK which depicted the bloody grotesque murder of people--including children--who disagreed with global warming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Pressure_(film)

This is a film no libertarian would or could ever, ever produce. The fact that a bunch of presumably smart, talented people could produce such a vile, odious work of media is enough for me to question the sanity of the moral and philosophical principles that underpinned its creation.

[Pointedstick]

Moda, are you arguing against property as a concept, or the "first appropriation" method of determining ownership of previously unowned property? Some of your arguments imply that you think the concept of property itself is illegitimate, which I'm pretty sure you have said in the past that you don't believe.

Can you clarify?

[moda0306]

Well libertarianism is built on a very simple premise.  Leave others alone.  It sounds awesome, but it's impossible in reality.

I'm just simply pointing out that just by existing, taking up space, and using resources, especially as those resources become scarce, we are coercing others in some way.  I guess that's the simplest way to put it.

I think private property is a phenomenal tool to help organize our resources as fair and peacefully as possible, and to maximize productive use of that property.  However it has it isn't all that is required to induce a positive society (some roles of government are pretty vital imo) and if it's taken too far it can sometimes hinder it (cant build an efficient infrastructure system if the govt doesn't own some property, environmental externalities).

[Pointedstick]

Well libertarianism is built on a very simple premise.  Leave others alone.  It sounds awesome, but it's impossible in reality.

No, that's not it. It's really not. Libertarianism has nothing to do with "leaving people alone." We're not a bunch of hermits here!

The very simple premise is "Don't initiate force against other humans." Can't you see how radically different that is from "leave others alone?" If they're the same, that implies that any human contact amounts to an act of coercive force and that would just be a terribly depressing thing to believe. If I catch a fish in the ocean, am I coercing every single other human being on earth by depriving them of the ability to catch that fish? If I shepherd a cow, am I coercing every single other human being on earth by denying them the ability to milk or eat that cow?

What about when I breathe? When I inhabit the space taken up by the mass of my body?

[moda0306]

Sorry that's exactly what I should have said.  "Don't initiate force."

And yes, in a small way, any space you take up, home you built, or fish you eat is in a small way coercing all others.  This becomes much, much more obvious and impactful when massive economic expansion and scarcity begin to enter the picture. Your 200 acre hunting woodland or a fishing operation over-fishing a bay are examples of this.  They have an identifiable coercive impact on others who wish to use those resources.

[Pointedstick]

Sorry that's exactly what I should have said.  "Don't initiate force."

And yes, in a small way, any space you take up, home you built, or fish you eat is in a small way coercing all others.  This becomes much, much more obvious and impactful when massive economic expansion and scarcity begin to enter the picture. Your 200 acre hunting woodland or a fishing operation over-fishing a bay are examples of this.  They have an identifiable coercive impact on others who wish to use those resources.

I guess I just fundamentally disagree with this premise, perhaps because I have a different definition of "coercion." Are you saying that you're coercing me right now by using the handle "moda0306" and depriving me of the ability to go by that name? Are you coercing me by inhabiting a house in Minnesota that I could not live in without paying you? Are you coercing me by being an accountant, thereby reducing the demand for accountants and making it more difficult for me to enter the accounting profession at a wage acceptable to me?

Are you coercing me by existing?

Of what possible use is this definition of coercion, other than to make all of us miserable all the time?

[moda0306]

PS,

We are getting into some infantecimal stuff, but the fisherman in overfished waters, or people with no land to hunt on because it's "owned" by someone else, people whose ground water was polluted by another idustrialist... All these make for a very different picture.

So at some point our claiming of resources becomes material coercion to others' freedom.  We're well past that point.

[Pointedstick]

We are getting into some infantecimal stuff, but the fisherman in overfished waters, or people with no land to hunt on because it's "owned" by someone else, people whose ground water was polluted by another idustrialist... All these make for a very different picture.

So at some point our claiming of resources becomes material coercion to others' freedom.  We're well past that point.

What's ironic is that both cases you cite--overfishing and lack of hunting land--are casualties of government restricting the ability of people to declare them as private property. It's a tragedy-of-the-commons problem. Nobody takes responsibility for management of the resource except for the government, which has no real information to determine the appropriate level of utilization.

Water and fishing is generally public, resulting in overfishing because nobody has responsibility for preventing overfishing. In the opposite direction, the government has declared all land un-huntable without a complicated system of permits and licenses and hundred-page books of regulations that differ between all the states (hey, I'm throwing you a bone here! ) As a result, there is under-hunting and in many places like New Jersey and New York for example, wild animals run rampant, die of starvation and disease, and endanger motorists.

[Pointedstick]

But moda, to get back to your moral assertion that claiming anything as your own is a coercive act because it violates everyone else's right to claim it... I'll admit that this really kind of throws me for a loop. Right now I see it as a hopelessly sad way of looking at the world that implies that the most moral thing we could do is nothing at all, or even commit suicide... anything to relinquish the resources we're coercively and selfishly hoarding... or something like that?

It seems so out of left field… I think I want to step back from trying to debate about it because I need to understand the logic and morality behind this principle better. Do you think you could try to explain it in more detail?

[doodle]

Sorry that's exactly what I should have said.  "Don't initiate force."

And yes, in a small way, any space you take up, home you built, or fish you eat is in a small way coercing all others.  This becomes much, much more obvious and impactful when massive economic expansion and scarcity begin to enter the picture. Your 200 acre hunting woodland or a fishing operation over-fishing a bay are examples of this.  They have an identifiable coercive impact on others who wish to use those resources.

I guess I just fundamentally disagree with this premise, perhaps because I have a different definition of "coercion." Are you saying that you're coercing me right now by using the handle "moda0306" and depriving me of the ability to go by that name? Are you coercing me by inhabiting a house in Minnesota that I could not live in without paying you? Are you coercing me by being an accountant, thereby reducing the demand for accountants and making it more difficult for me to enter the accounting profession at a wage acceptable to me?

Are you coercing me by existing?

Of what possible use is this definition of coercion, other than to make all of us miserable all the time?

Libertarianism in a low tech, low population density world is a much different animal than the situation that exists when the same principles are applied in a high tech, high density world. In the former scenario people would probably just inhabit some small piece of suitable territory which they would might farm as well as gather and hunt from the surrounding areas. Their impact on one another would be so minimal as to be inconsequential. However, once we establish conceptual things such as LLC companies that we treat as essentially immortal humans and give government protection and sanction people to purchase wide swaths of territory using fiat currency the libertarian principles become more problematic. Taking the second system and reducing it to absurdity it would be entirely acceptable (given the principles of libertarianism that you advocate) for a corporation or individual to purchase all of the land and water in the United States and then start charging people the moment they are born and set foot on this earth.

[Pointedstick]

Taking the second system and reducing it to absurdity it would be entirely acceptable given the principles of libertarianism that you advocate for a corporation or individual to purchase all of the land and water in the United States and then start charging people the moment they are born and set foot on this earth.

Uhh....... You just described the federal government of the United States. 

[doodle]

But moda, to get back to your moral assertion that claiming anything as your own is a coercive act because it violates everyone else's right to claim it... I'll admit that this really kind of throws me for a loop. Right now I see it as a hopelessly sad way of looking at the world that implies that the most moral thing we could do is nothing at all, or even commit suicide... anything to relinquish the resources we're coercively and selfishly hoarding... or something like that?

It seems so out of left field… I think I want to step back from trying to debate about it because I need to understand the logic and morality behind this principle better. Do you think you could try to explain it in more detail?

Maybe the principle of property should be limited to your individual body and the space that you can physically inhabit. I can see the benefit of not doing this from a productive standpoint, but that is a different argument than to claim that you have some god given right to own a billion acres as your personal property.

[doodle]

Taking the second system and reducing it to absurdity it would be entirely acceptable given the principles of libertarianism that you advocate for a corporation or individual to purchase all of the land and water in the United States and then start charging people the moment they are born and set foot on this earth.

Uhh....... You just described the federal government of the United States. 

Yes, but the last I checked that was a public entity, not a private one. In other words it's a government of, by, and for the people. The moment you are born you are a shareholder in the government.  an LLC on the other hand is a government animal as well in  that it depends on society to defend its rights but it privatizes all the profits.

[doodle]

If the libertarians concede that we get rid of government sanctioned llc corporations then I will start to take their philosophy more seriously. As long as they rail against government out of one side of their mouth while they praise the government nurtured capitalist system of LLC corporations, I am going to have to label them hypocrites.

[Mdraf]

Just so I understand your point better doodle why are you picking on LLCs specifically ? Why not C and S corps?

[Pointedstick]

If the libertarians concede that we get rid of government sanctioned llc corporations then I will start to take their philosophy more seriously. As long as they rail against government out of one side of their mouth while they praise the government nurtured capitalist system of LLC corporations, I am going to have to label them hypocrites.

If you'll recall, I've agreed with you on this on many occasions, and I think all of the anarchists here will as well (by definition, there can be no government-created entities in the absence of government). I really think you're confusing libertarians with republicans. Libertarians aren't corporatists; they don't worship money and laugh haughtily when indigenous people are crushed beneath the treads of industry and poor people are thrown into the boilers of progress; we hate collusion between government and corporations. Private prisons, the military industrial complex, pharmaceutical company drug pushers... these are all things we're going to join with you in decrying!

These strawman arguments are getting a little tiresome. We've been over this again and again...

[doodle]

If the libertarians concede that we get rid of government sanctioned llc corporations then I will start to take their philosophy more seriously. As long as they rail against government out of one side of their mouth while they praise the government nurtured capitalist system of LLC corporations, I am going to have to label them hypocrites.

If you'll recall, I've agreed with you on this on many occasions, and I think all of the anarchists here will as well (by definition, there can be no government-created entities in the absence of government). I really think you're confusing libertarians with republicans. Libertarians aren't corporatists; they don't worship money and laugh haughtily when indigenous people are crushed beneath the treads of industry and poor people are thrown into the boilers of progress; we hate collusion between government and corporations. Private prisons, the military industrial complex, pharmaceutical company drug pushers... these are all things we're going to join with you in decrying!

These strawman arguments are getting a little tiresome. We've been over this again and again...

Maybe, I don't disagree with your form of libertarianism...but I have to say that the libertarian party platform is full of the types of contradictions that moda and I have been bringing up: http://www.lp.org/platform

[Pointedstick]

The Libertarian Party is a joke. It might as well not exist. There are many types of libertarians, but fundamentally, if you can avoid stereotyping libertarians as heartless land rapist republicans, you're going to find wide agreement with any objection you raise about the government subsidizing something, offering it favorable tax treatment,  protecting it from competition or anything else like that.

Back me up here, guys! Wouldn't other libertarian-minded folks here agree?