A Q for Libertarian on Libertaria

Great Debates
101

Lib:

As a group. This statement is based on the very majoritarianism you oppose. It assumes that the democratic process will have rendered the group’s consent with one voice. Government governs territory and everyone/everything in it, not individuals. If you remain within the jurisdiction, you have consented to be governed. If you are having a dispute with your neighbor, it’s not as if he can be governed and you won’t be. A particular government agency has jurisdiction, which encompasses the area of contention and applies the law as it intervenes. There is no substitute for this. If you are stronger than your neighbor, that doesn’t mean you should get your way.

If you don’t want to be governed, you can go float in the ocean somewhere, but laws exist (largely) to prevent you from causing problems for others. The potential for this is omnipresent, so government must be omnipresent.

102

You’re doing it again. Once again, you extoll the virtues of libertarianism and ignore its faults. You criticize the faults of the system we have now and ignore its virtues. This is lying by omission.

I want you to list as many of libertarianism’s faults that you can. Many of the faults of our current government have already been listed by its supporters on this thread; you cannot deny that. That we’re willing and able to acknowledge those faults does not mean we have no faith in it. It merely indicates that we are aware that it is imperfect; it does not necessarily mean that we wish to dump it in favor of something else.

Corect me if I’m wrong, Lib, but it seems to me that you are unwilling to live under an imperfect system and you think libertarianism is the perfect system. This is unreasonable because no system created by fallible mortals can ever be perfect. (Can imperfect beings create perfection? I don’t believe so and I don’t think you do, either.) Libertarianism no more came from God than democracy or monarchy. It came from Man, the same fallible creature that created the systems you despise so much.

If you cannot admit that libertarianism is imperfect, it will be difficult for me to have respect for you.

103

But you never addressed the main point I raised. You are proposing a society based on two classes of people and at the same time claiming a classless society. It don’t work that way.

If you can explain this illogic please do so.

104

Jab:

A republic is a system of government. A democracy is a system of governmet. A monarchy is a system of government. Liberalism, conservatism, libertarianism, authoritarianism — these are philosophies.

How dare you blackmail me with your so-called respect.

Degrance:

These classes you’ve manufactured (I said nothing about classes) are no different than the classes in the society that you claim you don’t defend. There are those with political clout, and those without. Those without subsist on whatever handouts those with clout will allow them. Those with political clout may make laws allowing them to do whatever they please, but leaving those without political clout unable to pursue their own happiness in their own way, for no reason other than the whim of a gang.

105

Sam Stone: *One of the fundamental principles of the market is that if there is a need for something, someone will fulfill that need. So if there is a need for consumer protection, the market is the best thing to do it. And it does this extremely well today. *

Hmm, while I agree with your basic principle about the usefulness of markets, I’m not so sure that consumer protection falls into the category of typical goods and services that market forces are adequate to provide. I think that it’s more prone to market failure.

For example, if a government agency discovers a flaw in a device that might have killed a dozen people, it will be front page news. But at the same time, thousands of companies are making hundreds of thousands of small decisions about the quality of THEIR products, which affect many, many more people.

Decisions which are heavily influenced by government consumer protection laws.

*So back to private markets - if there is a need for safe products, for standards, and for worker and consumer protection in general, how will the market address that? Well, it already has. Look at any electrical device in your home. It almost certainly has a UL sticker on it. UL is Underwriter’s Laboratories, an agency of insurance companies. UL approved appliances are generally necessary to keep your insurance from being voided in case of fire, and the UL standards are much higher than government minimums. *

UL is actually an independent nonprofit agency, not run by insurance companies. Also, a great deal of its work for clients is in providing certification of compliance with national regulatory standards. It’s not at all clear to me that UL would be the consumer-protection powerhouse that it is without the existence of strong government product regulation.

*Two powerful regulating factors in a free market are insurance companies and Tort law. Insurance companies have a very powerful interest in making sure that products have standards, that they are safe, and that they are used responsibly. If Ford makes unsafe cars, insurance companies will respond by charging higher premiums for Ford purchasers. This punishes Ford, and they lose market share. Therefore, they have a vested interest in pleasing the insurance companies. *

This is largely true, but it neglects the fact that government regulation plays a large role here too. If it weren’t for the fact that automobile liability insurance is legally mandatory in many places, and that the provisions and rates for various types of insurance are legally regulated, many people wouldn’t have the insurance coverage they now have and the insurance pressure for product safety would be reduced in practice.

Then there are consumer agencies, magazines like Consumer Reports, private watchdogs and ombudsmen, and the like. Many of these traditional market roles have been marginalized by the encroachment of government, but if government were scaled back they would help fill the gap.

However, they couldn’t fill the gap in regulation and enforcement. I think you may be somewhat overestimating the power of consumer preferences, as informed by nongovernmental watchdog agencies, to discourage producers from cost-saving measures. Consumers may be concerned about a particular safety issue but not feel that they have alternatives available. There has to be a critical mass of people changing their consumption habits in order to eliminate the savings that a producer derives from safety-compromising measures. I can think of maybe five or ten effective, widespread consumer boycotts over the past couple of decades that succeeded in changing product safety standards. I think that government regulatory agencies had a bigger impact.

*Then there is Tort law. This is an extremely powerful regulating force. Build a product with a hidden defect, and the resulting lawsuits will cost you far more than fixing the defect in the first place. *

Sometimes (and of course, so-called “tort reform” legislation seriously hampers this regulating force).

In fact, I would argue that the market is MUCH better at protecting people than is the government. For one thing, it’s a lot easier to buy a politician than it is to recover a damaged reputation.

That assumes that the producer’s safety-compromising procedures really do end up damaging its reputation, which is not always the case. And often it takes a federal investigation really to turn the spotlight on the situation, as in the Ford/Firestone tire recall.

Look at industries that are heavily regulated, vs industries that have almost no regulation, and you’ll usually find that the industry with lower regulation has higher quality products and often safer ones, too.

Can you cite some specific examples? And are you sure you’ve got the cause-and-effect going in the right direction, and that it’s not that the intrinsically dangerous industries inspire heavier regulation? Inherently less dangerous products, after all, don’t need heavy regulation to be safer than dangerous ones.

What about workers? Same thing. […] But the larger point is that the law of supply and demand applies to workers as well. If a company provides an unsafe workplace, it will find that it has to pay workers more in order to get them to work there.

Unless it has the advantage of economic compulsion, that is. Libertaria-scenarios generally seem to assume that the practical range of choices actually available to workers and consumers will be much greater than it often appears in real life.

You may think that these are trivial effects, but they make up the VAST majority of worker-employee relations. Very few workers are ever on the ‘margins’, making minimum wage, working on the threshold of legal safety, etc. Most workers get FAR more from their employers than the mandated minimum requirements, because the market forces their employers into it.

How many do you consider “very few”? According to this report, in 1999 there were 10.3 million workers, or 8.7% of the total workforce, making minimum wage or up to $1/hour more than that. (And over 70% were 20 or older, and nearly 80% worked more than 20 hours per week, so we are not looking primarily at burger-flipping middle-class teenagers here). I don’t consider that as getting “FAR more from their employers than the mandated minimum requirements.” As for worker safety, according to this report, “every year over 6,000 Americans die from workplace injuries, an estimated 50,000 people die from illnesses caused by workplace chemical exposures, and 6 million people suffer non-fatal workplace injuries.” That sounds like quite a few people “working on the threshold of legal safety”. Moreover, there seems to be a strong correlation between improved safety in the course of recent decades and OSHA/NIOSH supervision.

So again, I don’t think you can simply assume that the fact that most private regulatory standards are higher than the government-imposed minimum isn’t significantly influenced by the government’s imposition of that minimum. If it weren’t for government regulation, the private standards might very well seriously deteriorate, and I for one do not feel enough confidence in Libertaria-scenarios to remove the government regulation in order to find out.

106

From your first post on this thread.

Bolding mine.

Rights accrue from property. If you have property you have rights. If you have no property you have no rights. The most significant form of property is land. If you own land you have rights accruing from that land. If you do not own land you do not have these rights. Therefore there are two (at least) classes of people in your proposed society, the landed and the unlanded.

So you have proposed a system that inherently has at least two classes one having more rights than the other. The group with the rights would be in a position of power over those without those rights and could use that power to control those without those rights.

Are you with me here. I’m not picking this stuff out of the air. I am deriving everything I am saying from your own description of the society you are proposing.

107

Something you always seem to omit, and I am never sure why, but you do have well thought responses and I often wonder about this…

Regulatory committees and such government activism is initiated by constituents of the government complaining to their senators. In other words, the people really do say something first. If this is the case, and such people can sway the minds of the few, then why is the regulation necessary when the public can obviously intitiate a similar action through similar activism such as protesting, etc?

That is, why can we talk enough people into getting the government to do something but we can’t talk enough people into getting the people themselves to do something? Do you feel that there is some subtle part of human nature that begs for regulation/pampering/someone-else-to-do-the-work? Do you think it is impossible, impractical, or unlikely that the methods Libertarian and Sam ascribe to public usage (in the face of a lacking regulatory agency ) will work? Why?

“Government is an illusion in the minds of the governors,” is a quote from a favorite author of mine, but it could just as easily be “Government is an illusion in the minds of the governed.” Do you disagree with this statement? If not, then why do you feel that the particular illusion of government is necessary over some other illusion of regulation/control, such as market forces, union forces, public activism, the media, etc?

In lack of a regulatory commission of some sort I think we would find, almost instantly, a “Consumer Reports” style group(or groups) forming rapidly to cover all areas. One, there is huge money in it since no one else is watching our backs. Two, there is no two.

Anyway, in a nutshell, why can we successfully get a government to initiate policy but we could never successfully initiate any other sort of change anywhere else without a government?

108

Degrance:

Once more. The fact that rights are an attribute of property is not something that is endemic to libertarianism. Rights are an attribute of property — period. They are an attribute of property even in a majoritarian context. Property in the U.S. is owned by government. Because of eminent domain, the property you think is yours may be taken from you for what the taker determines is a fair price. Because of asset forfeiture, the property you think is yours may be taken from you for what the taker considers to be suspicion of a crime. Because of millions of laws and regulations, written in a language that requires the equivalent of a Ph.D. to decipher, you don’t own nothin’. Squat. Diddly. Government calls the shots. Government owns the property. That is why you perceive your rights as coming from a government or its scribbles. Rights are an attribute of property. Here. There. Everywhere.

109

arl: *Regulatory committees and such government activism is initiated by constituents of the government complaining to their senators. In other words, the people really do say something first. If this is the case, and such people can sway the minds of the few, then why is the regulation necessary when the public can obviously intitiate a similar action through similar activism such as protesting, etc?

That is, why can we talk enough people into getting the government to do something but we can’t talk enough people into getting the people themselves to do something?*

Why, of course we can: as I noted in my post, there are such things as consumer boycotts, which sometimes do have significant effects. There is also direct action in the form of pleas made directly to the executives of the company that is compromising public or worker safety (although the success rate of this tactic is notoriously low); and there are shareholder initiatives where people who own stock in a company can vote on company policy on conscientious grounds. There are also lawsuits, which are sort of a cross between government regulation (since it’s the government-controlled civil justice system that gives them their teeth) and private protest. The problem, I think, is that it’s much harder to get any of these (with the exception, perhaps, of the lawsuit) to have a significant effect on policy than it is to get a government regulatory agency to have a significant effect.

The reasons, IMHO, are these:

  1. You need the participation of many, many more people to conduct a successful boycott (or, in most cases, a successful shareholder initiative) than you do to bring an infraction to the attention of a government agency. Especially in the case of large markets, there’s a huge effort involved even in the dissemination of information, not to mention coordinating actual action.

  2. The direct consumer effort is usually on a completely volunteer basis, which puts a terrible drag on its effectiveness. Yes, many people are noble and public-spirited, but they also have to put food on the table and so forth; volunteer public service is simply low on most people’s list of things to do today. I may feel it’s a citizen’s duty to combat extreme-libertarian silliness on the SDMB :), but I don’t get paid for it, alas, so I have to limit my participation in it. Regulatory-agency bureaucrats, on the other hand, do get paid precisely for taking action to identify and suppress regulatory infringements, so right there they have a much greater motive for effectiveness and much more time and resources to devote to the task.

  3. This time, I finally remembered to say “Hi, Opal!” :slight_smile:

  4. The government has an overt, direct power over businesses that individual citizens do not: the might and majesty of the law. Yes, every now and then a strong surge of consumer opposition really will convince a company to change its policies. But it’s often a whole lot faster and more effective simply to have Uncle Sam say “Bad corporation! Big fine!”

I know that it may seem odd to portray consumers as having little effect on corporate decisions, when we know that everything from soft-drink-can design to the number of chocolate chips in cookies will change at the slightest whim of consumer preference as viewed through focus groups and marketing research. Market populists are fond of claiming that this in fact proves consumers’ power to get anything we want out of the free market. But I think that overlooks an important distinction between two different types of corporate decisions: the decisions that exist only to improve market share by attracting more consumers, and the decisions that exist to increase profits in other ways.

Certain features of corporate production indeed have no function other than to attract consumers, and it’s there that our power is supreme. Are we intrigued by the possibility of green ketchup or square-toed shoes or titanium cookware? Lo, the market is our slave, existing only to cater to our inclinations! But other features, like safety or health or environmental safeguards, are in addition strongly influenced by the desire to minimize costs. And if some consumer-unfriendly policy is a significant cost-saver, it will take a lot of consumer leverage to counteract the advantage of keeping it in place. In such cases, the market can be extremely stubborn and refractory.

“Government is an illusion in the minds of the governors,” is a quote from a favorite author of mine, but it could just as easily be “Government is an illusion in the minds of the governed.” Do you disagree with this statement?

Um, I’m afraid I don’t quite understand what it means (in either case). In what way is government supposed to be illusory? In the sense that it doesn’t have actual effects on the lives of the governed? That’s silly: sure it does. In the sense that it is in the last analysis powerless over the liberty of the human spirit, “stone walls do not a prison make nor iron bars a cage” and all that jazz? Yeah, I guess I buy that, although in the mass it can have a profound influence on public opinion and private thought. In the sense that government would no longer effectually exist if all the governed just decided to ignore it? Well, duh, but that’s a pretty far-fetched thought experiment, isn’t it? see my comments above on the difficulty of coordinating a true massive change in the opinions and actions of many people. Okay, you tell me, do I disagree with that statement or not? :slight_smile:

In lack of a regulatory commission of some sort I think we would find, almost instantly, a “Consumer Reports” style group(or groups) forming rapidly to cover all areas.

Well, as I pointed out above, it couldn’t fill the void in terms of regulatory clout, as it would have no actual power over the producers; this makes it sort of an apples-and-oranges comparison, in my book. We already have “Consumer Reports”, and it is not the same thing as OSHA or the EPA.

One, there is huge money in it since no one else is watching our backs.

You think the motivation to found such a group is that “there’s huge money in it”? That doesn’t quite seem to square with the fact that all the major watchdog organizations in existence that I know of—UL, Consumers Union (which produces “Consumer Reports”), Better Business Bureau, etc. etc.—are nonprofits. Why do you suppose that is? I would be a little troubled by a watchdog organization that was out for profits—for one thing, one of the fastest and easiest ways to make big money is to take bribes from the people you’re supposed to be regulating, as we citizens know to our cost.

Anyway, in a nutshell, why can we successfully get a government to initiate policy but we could never successfully initiate any other sort of change anywhere else without a government?

Heck, nobody ever said we couldn’t, and I apologize if I gave the impression that I didn’t think we could. It’s just that it would most likely be immensely more complex, laborious, and slow, for the reasons stated above.

110

How would schools and education be handled in Libertaria?
Would those who have kids(and some of those that don’t) fund a general education school, or would it break down into Companies having specialized schools for Jobs they hire people for?

111

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Libertarian *
**Jab:

A republic is a system of government. A democracy is a system of governmet. A monarchy is a system of government. Liberalism, conservatism, libertarianism, authoritarianism — these are philosophies.**I am aware of all of this. What I want you to do is list the faults of the philosophy of libertarianism.

You could also answer the following question, if not for me, then for anyone else who may be reading: How would air traffic be controlled in Libertaria? Would there be an organization like the FAA? (This occurred to me when all of you discussed competing airports.)

112

First off, thanks.

This is only half of the story, though I don’t disagree with it. The other half of the story is in the removal of such restrictions after they have become entrenched in law and case law. In such cases, it seems, the market is more efficient at changing than a beauracracy. Once Ford has decided to stop making Escorts (god willing) consider it done. Once we decide to start legalizing marijuana, get ready for stagnation. Would you agree with the polarization in speedy action here?

I agree, largely because an organization currently is in place to make volunteering largely a matter of patting one’s self on the back; an ego-booster, if you will. Were there no such organization in place I don’t have a doubt in my mind that volunteering and community activity would become much larger.

Allow me to ramble on a bit, then. The first part, being an illusion in the mind of the governors, is that the government is a self-defining entity. As such, the government is whatever the governors say it is, and the governors themselves are defined by the government. At different times different governments have written down codes to live by; they said it was codes that the government should follow, but the difference between the governors themselves and the government, IMHO, is nil. They implement the government; they are the government. Without governors there is no government.

The latter statement, that it is an illusion in the minds of the governed, deals with the acceptance, tolerance, or apathy with which citizens deal with their governors. The government is few, the citizens are many. Only two things, then, allow the government to exist: the will (and/or apathy) of the people and the weapons the governors point at the people. Given a reasonably peaceful nation, the latter can be ignored and we are left with pure consent to being ruled. This is especially telling in any form of democracy where the governors and the governed are linked through some mechanism other than fear. That is, and this is the most important part to me, we are governed my a government because we let it be there through some means (again, apathy or actual consent).

In neither scenario does a government actually exist; it only exists in that we tell ourselves it exists (the possible exceptions being theocracies, monarchies, etc). The government could dissolve tomorrow and become completely privatized and nothing would change until people realized that their perception of government had changed.

In this way, I feel, government is an illusion. It is no more real than the market, as well. The important difference between the free market and the government is that more people actively engage in market activities, if out of nothing but necessity (food, clothing, shelter, etc). In government we see that voter turnout represents the side of apathy. The government exists because no one is doing anything different. The market exists as an illusion so long as people recognize differences in ability between two individuals AND feel that those differences belong to the individual which exhibits them. This is property. This is proprty rights, involving labor, intellectual rights, material rights, land-based property rights, etc. They are nothing more than an agreement between a shitload of people.

We recognize property. The market activates and values property. The government acts as an arbiter of property rights. At every level we have built an illusory house of cards, and it only stands because we are holding it up.

Now, why, if both the market and the government are an illusion, would I choose the market over the government? First, people are more active in the market, partially due to necessity, but also due to liesure and pleasure. Second, the market illusion is not built on force (though it may include it if property rights are not properly defined or understood). Third, the market, when free, is decentralized. It is harder to infiltrate all of Europe, and it is harder to corrupt whole legions of businesses, than it is to tak over one business or one government and spread out from there using force as the primary means of expansion. Given a non-coercion principle (which would take more than one page Lib:wink: and proper litigation force tactics can be largely eliminated from market interaction. In this way no centralized power source can arise. Finally, the market, humans, and society are more fluid than any government based on codified, increasing laws.

(Whew)

The conditions you see as requiring a government gfor intervention I see as requiring a government for intervention only because a government is already there in the first place. In America, Europe, et al, there are laws to hide behind. In Libertaria the sun beats down everywhere with the same intensity. Its got my vote.
[fixed da bolding-Czarcasm]

[Edited by Czarcasm on 05-17-2001 at 01:39 AM]

113

The group I was referring to is [it]The American People*. Don’t you think that’s who the DOI was referring to as well? If you’re not part of the group it’s because you live in another country!

Sheesh!

114

Education:

It is hardly surprising that, in a risk-free society where people need have no concern over any consequences of their actions — except where those actions might run contrary to some frivolous law such as not putting a penis in your butt — more thought is given to buying a new car than having a child. The State will provide you prenatal care, pay for your delivery, subsidize your day care (day care subsidy is one of North Carolina’s largest discretionary political expenditures, i.e., a most effective way to buy votes), build complexes where your child can learn The State’s values and curriculum for twelve years (and sometimes more), and then if your child turns out to be crazy (as you might expect a State-owned child to turn out), The State will twist the arms of employers and force them to hire your child. What’s more, the more of these you do the better! You can effectively reduce your income tax load to zero by churning out a half-dozen of these.

But The State will not (yet) buy you a car. You must take out your pencil and paper and look at what you can and cannot afford. How will you insure the car? How will you maintain the car? What down payment can you afford? What monthly expenses can you sustain? There are lots of questions you have to answer before you haul off and buy one car, much less a half-dozen of them. If you were responsible to raise your own children and educate them, you would have to give quite a bit more thought to how you would provide for them than even how you would afford a car.

(I eagerly await the “so you’re saying poor people shouldn’t have children” mischaracterization and red herring.)

Faults of the Libertarian Philosophy:

“Peaceful honest people should be free to pursue their own happiness in their own way.”

Let’s see… After ten minutes of concentrated squinting and grunting, not to mention a decade of careful research, I can only conclude that I must be too stupid, perhaps due to my lack of formal education, to find a littany of faults in this inoffensive notion.

FAA (and other regulatory agencies):

While there are no regulatory agencies per se, there is strict “regulation” of coercion.

Love it or leave it:

In Libertaria, the solution to the discontent of an individual with her government is to elect not to renew her consent contract and stay right where she is. In Majoritaria, the solution is to abandon the property she has peacefully and honestly acquired and improved with her toil and sweat, and go live in the ocean. What a benevolent gang it is that rules there.

115

But you still fail to see my point. In various other societies the individual has other guaranteed rights. The only rights you have mentioned as people having in your society are property rights and what ever limited rights you might extract from your “one law”.

What about the right to free speech or freedom of the press?

I see nothing in your system that guarantees either of these. There are many ways to keep someone from being heard (or read) without coercing them or engaging in fraud.

What about the right of religious freedom?

In your society there is nothing to prevent the majority religion from driving any minority religions out or underground. Again I can think of many ways this can be done without resorting to coercion or fraud.

What about the right of free movement?

It has already been pointed out that this right can be abridged by the land owners. Something you even agreed was possible but again according to you in your society no one would actually exercise that power.

What about the right to representation with taxation?

In your system each individual would be taxed from all sides and have no representation in deciding the extent of said taxes or how those taxes are spent.

The ONLY rights in your society come from ownership of property. In most modern societies every individual has certain rights whether they own land or not (Lets agree that these rights exist even if they are illegally denied by some tyrants). Therefore your proposed society has a built in class system that most societies are free of.

The failings of other societies don’t really concern me here. The status quo in the US doesn’t concern me here. The plight of the unlanded in Libertaria concerns me here. I have seen nothing in your replies and I can think of no mechanism that would prevent the unlanded in your proposed society from being second class citizens and in a few generations the equivalent of serfs.

Without resorting to the failings of any other system please try to explain why this thought on my part is in error.

116

Simply because you refuse to consider that the source of rights is always property, no matter what the “system”. That’s all I can say. Scribbled “rights” mean nothing. All that matters is what the owner of property — even if the owner is government — will allow you. Even ignoring the history I gave you about how feudalism arose, even forgetting that libertarianism is not an economic philosophy, even conceding the unproven conclusion for the sake of argument that libertarianism will lead a free-market to serfdom, nothing — absolutely nothing — has been offered to show any ethical difference between a serf of a lord and a serf of The State. Why do I not have the “right” to walk into your home and squat there, say what I please, and eat your food? One reason. Rights accrue from property.

Rights do not accrue from scribbles. The Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics enumerated rights to a fare-thee-well:

[ul]
[li]Citizens of the USSR enjoy in full the social, economic, political and personal rights and freedoms proclaimed and guaranteed by the Constitution of the USSR and by Soviet laws. The socialist system ensures enlargement of the rights and freedoms of citizens and continuous improvement of their living standards as social, economic, and cultural development programs are fulfilled.[/li][li]Citizens of the USSR have the right to work (that is, to guaranteed employment and pay in accordance wit the quantity and quality of their work, and not below the state-established minimum), including the right to choose their trade or profession, type of job and work in accordance with their inclinations, abilities, training and education, with due account of the needs of society.[/li][li]Citizens of the USSR have the right to rest and leisure.[/li][li]Citizens of the USSR have the right to health protection.[/li][li]Citizens of the USSR have the right to maintenance in old age, in sickness, and in the event of complete or partial disability or loss of the breadwinner.[/li][li]Citizens of the USSR have the rights to housing.[/li][li]Citizens of the USSR have the right to education.[/li][li]Citizens of the USSR have the right to enjoy cultural benefits.[/li][li]Citizens of the USSR, in accordance with the aims of building communism, are guaranteed freedom of scientific, technical, and artistic work.[/li][li]Citizens of the USSR have the right to take part in the management and administration of state and public affairs and in the discussion and adoption of laws and measures of All-Union and local significance.[/li][li]Every citizen of the USSR has the right to submit proposals to state bodies and public organizations for improving their activity, and to criticize shortcomings in their work… Persecution for criticism is prohibited. Persons guilty of such persecution shall be called to account. :D[/li][li]In accordance with the interests of the people and in order to strengthen and develop the socialist system, citizens of the USSR are guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly, meetings, street processions and demonstrations. :smiley: :D[/li][li]In accordance with the aims of building communism, citizens of the USSR have the right to associate in public organizations that promote their political activity and initiative and satisfaction of their various interests. :smiley: :smiley: :D[/li][li]Citizens of the USSR are guaranteed inviolability of the person. No one may be arrested except by a court decision or on the warrant of a procurator.[/li][li]Citizens of the USSR are guaranteed inviolability of the home. No one may, without lawful grounds, enter a home against the will of those residing in it.[/li][li]The privacy of citizens, and of their correspondence, telephone conversations, and telegraphic communications is protected by law. :smiley: :smiley: :smiley: :D[/li][/ul]

I gotta stop. It’s killing me.

117

What is wrong with that? Nothing. However, peaceful honest people are hard to find, there may be four throughout the world who are peaceful and honest all the time. Do you propose regular checkups to maintain peace and honesty throughout Libertaria? Are people going to go on “Peaceful Probation?” Will they be “peacefully relocated” if they are not honest and peaceful?

Okay, I can vote in a new governor, but I cannot vote in a new lord. I may get lucky and find a new lord who will take me in, but if that isn’t the case, then I am screwed.

Also, how are property boundaries going to be defined, by a juristictive body or by will you get to make up your own boundaries as long as you do it first?

and just 4 Libertarian’s enjyment, i am riting this sentense wif no captials and many speling erors, so he can mke fun off ti.

118

Get your head out of the sand. In fact, get it out of the grassy knoll and the wheat field, as well. Proprety is not just land.

As well, there is no linear relationship between the quantity of property one owns and the number of rights one possesses. The guy with a million acres and the guy with a beat up junker car have the same rights. In fact, the guy with a patent and the guy with his own mop have the same rights. Rights come from property, but not the quantity of property. They come from the recognition of individual ownership of anything, be that mental originality, physical land, material goods, etc.

Your concern is based on the idea that landlordship will create a servile class. Why wouldn’t it once you’ve made that split mentally in your picture of the way things are? If you’ve already decided that the have’s and the have-not’s are in some way seperated then what makes you think anyone could ever convince you otherwise?

In the level of human interaction there is always an inequality. This is why we interact, eh? If we already had everything there would be no need to interact at all.

If your concern settles around an oligarchy of landowners telling us how to live on their property then I suppose you have a legitimate concern with any system anywhere that can be devised which allows for private ownership of anything. Really, what are you saying here?

You mention that the government may step in to force the use of private property in a way that is more conducive to your view of how property should be used (ie-regulated against bigotry). Then who owns the property? Not the so-called owner who obviously cannot dictate how “his” property may be used. And again you feel the govenment secures these rights, and agin Lib will tell you: that’s because the government owns all the property!

Your concerns seems to center around a few points. One, that there will be inequalities in the quantity of property people own. I reply, no kidding, that’s the point. Two, the quantity of property that certain people own will directly affect other people. I reply, no kidding, that’s the point. Three, the affect achieved by these property owners (again, not just land for christ’s sake) can and will be used against the rest of the people. I reply, huh? The feudalism you fear requires a forceful rule under centralized government. That property gets its value through the king/lord/whoever. Property of any sort in Libertaria gets its value through its usefulness toward leisure activities and necessities. The king make make his shit(literally) valuable by declaring it legal tender; the individual can only make his property valuable by showing other men why it is so, and having them agree. Your pile of mulch is useless to me as I do not garden; it has no value, no matter how much you hop up and down and tell me so. In fact, unless you create a government and legislate the value of your mulch through forceful action, it won’t have any value to me.

Now, you do have some legitimate concerns with respect to necessities. Clean water, shelter, and food raise concerns. I do not have the background to argue about such things, really, and collounsbury has raised these issues (especially the water issue) elsewhere to my dismay. Perhaps lib can address the necessities better than I.

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I’m sorry but I don’t agree. Property is just another way of keeping score. You might as well say that rights always stem from party membership, or that rights always stem from patrilineal decent from the right blood line, etc. Just because you propose it as a part of your philosophy does not make it so.

No “rights” mean anything outside of the context they are used in. Any “rights” are the construct of philosophy. When I say someone has an innate right it is shorthand for saying under the philosophy I espouse every human should be treated in such a way that they are able to enjoy these protections. There are no innate rights except maybe that the team with the most/biggest guns wins. I thought you were proposing something a little grander than survival of the best armed.

The rights any philosophical approach lists is really a list of what human qualities they deem most sacred. If the number one “right” of my philosophy is free speech then you may make the conclusion that my philosophy makes an open forum sacred.

If on the other hand in my philosophy the only rights that exist are those that come from owning property you may safely assume that I consider landlords sacred.

Several groups of aboriginal peoples had no concept of land ownership before European peoples encountered them. These people did manage societies anyway. Their rights did not accrue from ownership. Therefore you are wrong. Rights can accrue from something other than property.

What need have I to offer any such proof. You have trust this position upon me. This is not anything I have taken on myself. There is a great deal that I don’t like about the present system. I am not here to defend it. You on the other hand are here to defend this system that you espouse. I have pointed out how your system, far from being a vast improvement from the current system in fact has innate flaws that make it, at best, no better than the current system. So why are you still supporting it?

And you end your reply by posting the exact example I anticipated in my post and asked you not to use. Yes, any society can plunge into totalitarianism. Any innate rights can be taken away by force.

Even your beloved property rights are listed here.

So there.

So innate rights don’t exist objectively they are only the construct of philosophy. Your system takes property as the “most sacred” right. I have pointed this out and you have answered that everybody’s rights everywhere stem from property. I have now shown that this is false. Property rights are “scribbled” rights just like all the rest. They were just scribbled by poets instead of by lawyers.

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Tell that to everyone who voted for Al Gore or Ralph Nader. Or what about me? I didn’t vote for anyone because I didn’t think there should be a president.

As well, the majority of americans didn’t vote for any representative, what about them? Not only that, Bsuh/Gore only got a majority vote depending on how we look at it. Bush got a relative majority of electoral college votes, Gore got a relative majority of the popular vote (only if we exclude people who could but did not vote).

You can’t vote in who you want. You can simply vote. I can’t dictate Ford’s choice in taste. I can simply buy Ford vehicles that I like (or Honda, as the case may be for me). I get both Fords and Hondas to choose from; you get stuck with Bush (or whoever, the political party is irrelevant here).

Land is neither the only nor the most powerful form of property. As well, the aboriginies did not have a market in the sense of the word we are discussing. They also did not have a government in the sense of the word we are discussing. In this case, aboriginal tribes can only stand to show that neither land ownership nor beauracratic government are necessary to survival, to which all anarchists would reply, “No shit. Where you been, man?”