A thought occured to me that I can’t think of a case where there has been a Libertarian government. I can think of some cases where policy is very libertarian (like in Holland), but I don’t think they are under an actual Libertarian regime.
I was wondering if there are any other (reasonable, semi-popular/well-known) political concepts which have never been put to the test some time or another.
Many commies will argue that Communism has never been implemented.
Pure democracy.
Oh, and how about “compassionate conservatism.” 
I wouldn’t call Holland libertarian; the Netherlands has some pretty high taxes compared to other countries.
Hmm… do I detect a pattern here?
“Pure” libertarianism— never been done.
“Pure” communism— never been done.
“Pure” democracy— never been done.
What conclusion could we draw as to ideological formulations in someone’s head vs. life in the real world?
Jomo “wary of ideologies” Mojo
Lest I come off as overly cynical, I do think very highly of democracy … but only in the sense of Power to the People. Not the phony, cynical invocation of “democracy” by Bush as a pretext for attacking other countries. What the fuck kind of democracy do you expect him to impose on Iraq through military force?
Florentine Pogen writes: “A thought occured to me that I can’t think of a case where there has been a Libertarian government.”
How about the United States? Washington’s Cabinet consisted of a Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of War, and an Attorney-General. The Four Basics.
Anarchy has not been seriously experimented with yet.
Anarchy — see what I mean?
No matter what ideology, you can always make the case that “it’s never really been done… yet.”
I get scared when people cannot distinguish between ideologies and real life. Especially when they take power.
Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War experimented with an anarcho-syndicalist government. But I wouldn’t call it “pure” anarchy in a Le Guin’s Dispossesed sense.
This is really more a Great Debates thing.
The word “pure” does not appear in the OP. If you seek “pureness” you’ll never find it in the human relm. I would feel very comfortable callling the US a democracy, or perhaps more acurately a democratic republic.
The Netherlands (slight nit pick: Holland is not a country, but a region of the Netherlands) is NO WAY a Libertarian country, though. It may have fairly “liberal” social freedom policies, but it’s economic policies are pretty far from Libertarian (ie., laissez faire capitalism).
Pure libertarianism? Libertatia may come close, if it existed. Captain Mission is certainly a fascinating character, and it’s not completely sure he’s ahistorical.
I was trying to say that many of their views (like their lax sex and drug laws) are very Libertarian ideas. I know those are two of the most important views of the Libertarian party (individual liberty). There is much more to Libertarianism I know. I could name a few gov’ts in history which completely abolished taxes, or whatever. But they probably weren’t Libertarians either.
I’m not looking for “pure” anything. Communist Russia (and China, etc) is good enough to count as a communist government. Ancient Greece was close enough to an ideal Democracy for it to count as one. The U.S. is more or less a republic. And of course there have been hundreds, if not thousands of authoritarian gov’ts of all shapes and sizes.
I would think the reason that Libertaria has never been tried yet is because it is pretty unbeneficial to the people in charge- who normally are incredibly power hungry.
Yes, Libertarianism gives ordinary people a lot of power that now resides in, well, the powerfull elites. Good point. But I think if you go back in time, you will find the US to have been more libertarian in the past than it is now.
I can’t speak for Libertarians, but I do recall a recent debate in this forum where the “Libs” agreed that economic issues (like reducing taxes) were higher on the priority list that social issues (like drug laws). That’s where I was coming from on the issue concerning The Netherlands.
I’d imagine it would be quite similiar to the kind of democracy that was imposed on Japan and West Germany through military force. :rolleyes:
You know, the kind of democracy that lends stability and promotes economic growth… The sort that could turn Iraq into the economic powerhouse it is destined to be while keeping it friendly to other democratic nations… Is that the same kind of democracy as your seemingly vague populist vision?
But don’t mind me, I wouldn’t dream of interfering with your Bush-bashing.
Here’s one: Global Free Trade
Technocracy has never been tried. I forget the details, but it is an idea thought up by a scientist or engineer in the 1930s. It means society should be governed in a technical fashion by technical experts. You can read a cartoon-historical account in “The Big Book of Losers,” by Factoid Press. Howard Waldrop wrote an alternate-history short story, I forget the title, in which the U.S. has gone technocratic and become “The United States of America, Incorporated.” Every citizen is considered a stockholder and receives an annual dividend from the country’s economic output, though the amount is not specified. To this extent, it is similar to the techno-utopian future society described in Robert A. Heinlein’s first (and arguably worst) novel, “Beyond This Horizon.” What you have in that book is a world republic which is non-ideological but, in effect, democratic-socialist in its operation, while being governed by a technocratic-intellectual-professional elite of “encyclopedic synthesists.” You have to have a stellar IQ and a perfectly eidetic memory even to think of becoming an encyclopedic synthesist. Most economic activity is in the hands of private enterprise but nobody questions the State’s power to regulate, tax, etc., to whatever exent seems good to the rulers. Interesting that Heinlein, after writing this book, later developed in a dramatically libertarian direction.
When you think about it, the Progressive slogan, “There is no Democratic or Republican way to pave a street!” expresses a sort of technocracy-in-embryo. You might also characterize Stalin’s regime in the Soviet Union as a form of technocracy, or something that aspired to technocracy.
Another thing that has never been tried is “plural voting,” an idea endorsed by John Stuart Mill. Mark Twain wrote a short story, “The Curious Republic of Gondor,” explaining the idea. Robert Heinlein also thought very highly of it. It’s a form of democracy, but NOT based on “one man, one vote.” Everybody gets AT LEAST one vote, but you can qualify for ADDITIONAL votes – that is, your vote on any point carries extra weight in the counting – based on your education, wealth, and services to society. E.g., a college graduate might have two votes, a Ph.D. three, a millionaire two (based on his wealth alone), etc. This is similar to the early American practice of property qualifications for voting, or post-Reconstruction literacy qualifications, or South African Apartheid – except that in plural voting, everybody does get at least one vote and nobody is entirely frozen out of political participation.
Plural voting is, obviously, based on the assumption that all people are NOT equal; that is, they might all be equally deserving of civil rights but they are not all equally qualified to make a useful contribution to public decisions. So stated, that is hard to dispute; but it appears to me that people with more wealth and/or education ALREADY have disproportionate political influence in every “democratic” society and there is no need to formalize it. Political scientists have studied voting behavior and found that most people vote after seeking guidance from more sophisticated friends, what they call “sociological stars.” (No cites for this, sorry, it’s just something I remember from a poli.sci. course.) Even more obvious is the role the rich and powerful play in selecting the candidates before ordinary voters get to choose among them.
Furthermore (this is not original but I forget who said it), democracy is not based on the assumption that the people know what is best for them; it is based on the assumption that the people know what they want, and deserve to get it, good and bad. It’s not a theory of GOOD government, it’s a theory of LEGITIMATE government. All the people, good and bad, rich and poor, wise and ignorant, are equally citizens, so why shouldn’t all get (in principle) an equal voice?
Still furthermore, political scientist Robert Dahl, in his book “Polyarchy,” a term he chose to avoid all the historical baggage attached to the term “democracy,” showed that it really does make a difference whether you can vote or not. E.g., in South Africa under Apartheid, the blacks, who could not vote, were effectively living under a dictatorship, with no civil rights, while the voting white minority were effectively living in a democracy, where they had civil rights. When American women got the vote in 1920, it did not lead to the pacifist utopia some suffragettes had foretold, but it did lead to a dramatic improvement in the legal and political status of women, for the obvious reason that, while most politicians still were (and still are) men, now they had to please the female half of their constituency if they wanted to be reelected.
A “plural voting” regime would not necessarily reduce the common “single voters” to second-class citizenship – but what it would do to them is hard to say, since it’s never been tried.
How about a matriarchy?
Earl of Sandwhich said:
Not libertarian. Remember that the federal government coexisted with state governments, which were decidedly not libertarian.