An Honest and Accurate libertarian Discussion Thread

Libertarians do not reject the use of force, they reject INITIATION of force.

 

I know. they follow the nap, which makes it impossible to organise an effective army, so they cant defend themselves.

what I mean is, for all other systems and ideologies, the answer is: "we form an army funded by involuntary contributions". libertarians can't do that. So they're defenseless. I don't have to explain the free rider problem to you do I?

 

Libertarianism depends on courts. It depends on Police. Libertarians believe that the only purpose of governments is to serve public goods. A public good has a very specific definition, and this is extremely important so please do not gloss over it:
A true public good is a good that the market can not consistently produce due to the free rider phenomenon.

The free rider phenomenon is the phenomenon that you can observe in nature where by a public good deteriorates because no individual has an incentive to maintain it. They don't maintain it because the investment of maintenance has little to no return or the return is captured by other individuals. Since it does not belong to you, you do not care about it.

Examples:
Ever have a roommate? Ever get into an argument about taking the trash out or buying new paper towels? No one owns 'the trash'...so it rarely gets maintained unless you have some sort of intervention.

So Libertarians suggest that the government should be small in SCOPE. I think that is what is lost about this 'small' government argument. The scope of the government should be narrowed to goods defined to be public goods: police, courts, army...that's it.

Libertarians would argue that a government is basically incapable of doing anything else efficiently and so there is absolutely no reason for a government to do anything outside of a public good.

Think about everything the government does, they fail miserably. From the VA (lines so long people die waiting for treatment) to the DMV to the post office to heck, just name a government service and we can be assured it is a horrendous service measured by any means. We can barely even prosecute wars. The saving grace of how poorly we prosecute war is that we are fighting other incompetent governments.


There is another concept that I have not seen come up in this thread too which is required by the libertarian philosophy: externalities. I have seen it stated that Libertarians believe you can do whatever you want. Well the truth is, libertarians believe you can do whatever you want so long as you don't violate anyone else's property. We protect all sorts of property in this country and around the world. We protect land of course. We also protect intangible things such as Reputations (slander), brands (copyrights), and intellectual property (patents).

So we must recognize that property rights in this country are already highly valued. The US is by and large libertarian. The only thing Libertarians can really complain about are wasteful tax expenditures and arbitrary laws that prohibit certain actions such as continuing to prohibit drugs.

Getting back to externalities. Libertarians reconcile the do whatever you want philosophy by tracking the costs to others of your actions. The costs to others of your own actions are called externalities. A good practical example of externalities are pollution.
If you owned a factory by a river and dumped into that river compromising the value of the land of others in the vicinity, then those land owners should be compensated. We already practice this! Again, another example of this country being very libertarian already.

Further, if you sell somebody something that ends up hurting them. The customer of course pays a cost they did not agree to: this is an externality. Thinks about cigarettes and the resulting class action lawsuits. The US courst followed the principle of compensating victims of externalities.
Another great example is the NFL. The NFL was exposing its players to externalities, head injuries, and as a result were slapped with a massive class action lawsuit. These examples prove that you technically can do whatever you want, however you will pay for it dearly.

This is why libertarians require courts and police. You need courts to sort out externalities and contracts and you need a police force to enforce these decisions if they are not followed peaceably.

Does that help?

 

I'm not even going to read any more of this nonsense after that absurd, self-serving, gratuitous beginning.

Government exists for all sorts of reasons...mainly so that civilization and society can function.

Libertarianism is a move to destroy that needed function. It WILL ultimately lead to chaos and anarchy.

Doesn't much matter, though, because libertarianism is going nowhere...it cannot prosper, because if it were to prevail...chaos and anarchy would destroy what it built.

Anyone who begins with what you began with...is not going to say anything worthwhile further into his/her thoughts.

 

Didn't mean to offend. Goal was to spur conversation and shed light on certain aspects of libertarianism. My apologies.

 

My strongly negative feelings regarding libertarianism sometimes cause me to get carried away, GM.

I offer my apologies in return. I crossed a line there.

I think I will put this topic on the back burner for a day or two...until, as my wife often says, I am able to play well with others when discussing it.

 

You're begging. You do have a choice. You could choose to accept what I wrote, but you choose to accept the patently absurd aspirations of "most libertarian thinking [you've] encountered".

You are framing a context to suit a pretext to hide a subtext. You are comparing your best intentions to the less-than-best intentions of others. You beg your argument when you cite anarchists who claim to be libertarian.

 

Government is the legal use of force. Conserving the use of force, legal or otherwise, to the defense of self-possession is libertarianism. Libertarians are conservative with the legal use of force. Libertarians are not liberal with the legal use of force.

 

Well put. Well written. Hear here.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of what is currently done by force of law [dollar for dollar] is the transfer of wealth from those who own it to those who empower those who transfer wealth with absolutely no nexus to what is so well outlined above. Government cannot conduct charity because charity has a voluntary nature.

 

There is no government on earth that deals with charity effectively solely thru private enterprise. None.

 

Charity is never confiscatory; it is always voluntary. Anything else is theft, not charity.

 

Then in that case there is no country on earth that handles charity without theft. I make the case that it can't be done effectively

 

In other words I should choose the rationalizations of some stranger using an alias on the Internet...rather than my lying eyes???

C'mon.

Be real.

You libertarians...including YOU...are always moaning and groaning about smaller government...with less laws so that you people can do what you want when you want.

Well...society does not work that way...and never will. Let you guys have your way...and the result WILL be chaos and anarchy.

 

At the risk of being nit-picky: No charity is theft, because all charity is voluntary. Government cannot administer charity, unless it does so by soliciting voluntary contributions to fund it.

 

When the government does charity we call them social programs.

There is no government on earth that deals with social programs effectively solely thru private enterprise. None.

 

Someone else's right to swing their arm, ends at my nose.

 

I'll drink a cold one in your honor my man. Let's continue the discussion.

 

Thank you for the kind words brother. Here is to Gary Johnson lol.

 

No time to read all posts, but wanted to add:

The concept of property only works when an individual has some. There are many MANY people in the world (even in the rich western part of the world) who have none but their own person.

 

A very good, well-reasoned contribution to this thread. Thank you- it is appreciated.

 

This is inaccurate, as many libertarian espouses that the mechanism of volunteerism resolves the issue to which you refer. As a result, public goods do not have to be "tax funded" but can be provided via contract providing explicit consent.

Also, here is a very good article regarding the free rider "problem", to which I am sure to which you (or others, if the have not already) you will refer.

 

explain to me how volunteerism would solve the problem.

No, that article missed the point completely. It talked about someone owning bees and niehgbors who happened to benefit from that. The case I speak of is completely different. My case is:

1. everyone wants protection, in the form of a military in this case
2. protection is a public good that is non-exclusive. ie, since the military protects a particular area, rather than individuals, it is not possible to exclude individuals within that area from being protected.
3. Everyone has a personal incentive to let others pay for funding the military, since they'd still be protected anyways if they live within that area.
4. this leads to some people "free riding" on others.
5. because it would be an innitiation of force to demand that everyone contribute, or to force them to leave the protected area, there is no way for NAP followers to solve the problem
6. Thus, the military would likely disband after a while, as people wouldn't put up with the unfair situation. In this scenario, everyone wanted a military, but there is no way to ensure a fair funding for the military while also following NAP, so everyone is dissappointed.
7. OR, the military would in any case by greatly inferior to a rival statist military, which would simply use innitiation of force to solve the free rider problem.
8. More people means more resources which mean a stronger military, but the free rider problem gets harder and harder the more people you add. Therefore, statist societies have a huge advantage over libertarians.
9. thus, a libertarian society would inevitably get conquered by other societies. It is not sustainable, it cannot protect itself.

 

Actually, it asserts a couple of things that the free rider "problem" is not a problem, at all. That is one perspective.

Another would be your point #3 is not correct- Everyone does NOT have a personal incentive to allow for everyone else to pay for the military, as their incentive is to have their personal property protected by the military.

Per said article:

l

 

the case in teh article is not the same kind of case. he talks about a positive externality. That's something different.

of course people have such an incentive. What do they want? They want to be protected, but they also would prefer to not pay if that's possible. It's a classic case of "prisoners dilemma". Look at this chart.

here we have two players who each have two options: To cooperate or defect. the numbers represent the value they gain, and each player wants to maximise their value. As you can see, the blue player gets most value if player red contributes while blue defects. Same is true for red. So, both players have an incentive to defect, but if they both defect they are worse off than if they'd both cooperated.

statists can just force everyone to cooperate, making it fair and good for all, but people who follow the NAP can't do that, meaning that things will instead reach the nash equilibrium, ie everyone defects, making large scale organisations impossible.

and this isn't the first time i'd had to explain these kinds of things to libertarians or anarchists... They really seem to be an unknowledgeable bunch. This is pretty basic I'd say.