If your purpose is to understand then why not try to flesh those ideas or examples out then. As it stands it appears you have no interest in doing so hence your obstinance. When you start the discussion with ‘you guys all suck and here is why’ you are not going to get a lot of engagement.
The “here is why” part is the key to constructive debate, the rest is window dressing. A constructive debate doesn’t have to consist of “please explain to me why yours is the best idea ever”. It can consist of a clearly opposing POV, as long as it’s logically articulated, and as long the poster is willing to listen to the responding argument. IMHO a particular poster’s style may be blunt, but that doesn’t change the merits of the argument.
Well, as Dave Barry once put it, who is to say how many ice cubes may be left in the tray before the last person has to refill it? I am! 
More seriously, the problem with an entire political philosophy based on a single word is exactly the same as the problem with any philosophy or movement that is based on a bumper-sticker slogan: it’s simplistic and ultimately meaningless. All the more so when what you’re trying to define isn’t some bounded political issue, or even an economic philosophy, but what appears to be a complete philosophy of life. It’s no coincidence that it was so easy to take 16 or so of the points from the Libertarian Party platform and find the obvious humor in them.
Libertarianism may be well-meaning but it seems to me to be naive in the extreme. Obviously we have very different political ideologies in general and will probably never agree on a common one, but from my POV what irks me about libertarianism is that it’s so diametrically at odds with pragmatically evolved systems like social democracy – systems which actually have been implemented, and generally with great success – and indeed it arguably forms the basis of most western democracies. Social democracy is usually associated with its purest examplars like Sweden, but when you come right down to it, most of its precepts have been implemented to a greater or lesser extent in most western democracies. This is a pretty good summary – note that it’s the kind of balanced pragmatism can’t be reduced to a bumper sticker slogan:
To me, libertarianism stands in stark contrast to this unassuming pragmatism as a sort of wild-west ideal of individualism and close cousin of anarchy.
If you can’t define “freedom” my fellow libertarians, then you need to stop hiding behind “well your scenario is bogus because that’s not what freedom means.”
You sound like the oft-doted progressives on this board who continually preach about “inequality” but never manage to actually define “inequality.”
Allow me! 
The word itself can mean a number of different things, like inequality of opportunity based on race, economic stratum, or other factors, or it can simply mean income inequality. These are metrics and as such, they be defined and they can be measured. For income inequality, a good metric is the Gini coefficient.
But I don’t know how you define “freedom” in the general case because one man’s freedom inevitably becomes another man’s restriction, loss, or burden.
Or, in the case of a man selling himself into slavery, his freedom becomes his own restriction, loss, and burden!
Libertarian theories either fail to address conflicts between rights at all – we’ve had people in this thread refuse to discuss them, considering the very idea unfair to bring up – or else offer empty promises of how conflicts would be resolved. We’ve been told that the “community will come to an agreement,” but never how this will happen, and never how such an agreement will be guaranteed not to violate anyone’s rights and freedoms.
I want to play my music really loud. My neighbor doesn’t like it. Now what?
An absolutely purist property-rights view would be that I don’t have the right to inflict my music onto my neighbor’s property at all. If he can hear it, no matter how faintly, I’m trespassing. Once more, yes, this is an extreme view, but it is held by some libertarians.
A non-libertarian approach is simply to set limits. No louder than this, and even less after ten at night, with civil or even criminal penalties. Some libertarians will agree with this as a compromise – but can they define the limits of such governmental regulation? What is their organic protection against excess? We’re never told!
No employer is “required” to hire anyone. If you can highlight an example, there are millions of unemployed Americans that are waiting to hear from you with bated breath.
No employer is “forced” to hire anyone. Again, I challenge you to find an example of this.
The dichotomies you set up don’t make any sense. These examples, especially the one above, doesn’t happen in the real world so why you’re building it up full straw and malt and knocking it down?
Who do you think you’re fooling? You’re advocating a system to run roughshod over people and pretending it has to do with liberty and personal freedom. It doesn’t. You think a multinational corporation that sends their goods to market on roads pays enough taxes for their upkeep of those roads? Really? You must don’t live in the United States and your morning commute must be pot-hole free, bless your heart. Who is going to keep your hypothetical underpaid laborers from looting, pillaging, and burning your business to the ground when you don’t share in the profits? Oh, that’s right: the fire and police department. Who pays for that? Who do you think pays for the primary and secondary education of your workforce: oh, that’s right: property taxes from the taxpayer. Corporations are hiding their money in subsidiaries in Ireland and the Cayman Islands because they have no conception of the social contract. I see no reason to think the narrative would be any different in libertopia, businesses would be even more selfish than they are now.
- Honesty
Can Progressives define the limits of governmental regulation to reduce income inequality? Can they even define how much inequality is permissible? Why do we get different answers from different Progressives?
Libertarians needn’t be “property rights purists”. Just as your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begin, your right to blare music ends at my property line. It’s a policy matter, not a matter of principle. There is no reason that Libertarian philosophy must define, from first principles, what decibel level is allowed. No more than it needs to define when a pat on the back becomes a physical assault. Again, that is a policy matter.
But on issues of principle (can I snort cocaine on my own property? can I hire myself out for any wage I agree on with my employer?), that is not a matter for the government to decide. Those are issues of personal freedom that don’t impinge on anyone else’s freedom, and so there is no conflict for the government to resolve, no policy to set.
We define the system, explicitly. We have a government that is divided into branches, each having an interest in limiting the power of the others.
Libertarians? Dead silence.
Most libertarians don’t go that far, and understand that some noise from the neighbors will inevitably drift across the fenceline. I do note, though, that there are a few extremists. (Just as there are a few atheists who are actively ant-theist.)
One means of approaching moderation is to try to exclude extremism.
Agreed, and, other than to address the extremist issue of those who say “None whatever,” I didn’t ask for that.
By and large, agreed. The libertarian philosophy is nice and consistent in closed affairs. In matters where there are conflicts, it is painfully silent as to the means and limits of law-making.
You can snort all the cocaine you want on your property. Can you run a meth lab, or refine gold using the cyanide method? How deep a water well can you dig? Can you dam a stream on your property, diverting it away from mine?
How are these decisions to be made?
Again, who in this thread or on this board has done this and where? Unless you want to advance a specific position or argue against one that has been proposed, this is nothing more than a strawman, and a poor one at that. If I say that Democrats want to abort all babies and make the US a communist country, because one or some people somewhere have said so, that would be a stupid fucking way to attack Democrats.
How will laws be enforced? Are you kidding? By the police. Laws will be reasonable in the same way that they are right now.
There is nothing within the libertarian ideal that precludes branches of government, a constitution, laws, enforcement, etc. Libertarian ideals can be held within communist groups, pure capitalists, or any group that wants to associate voluntarily.
Then instead of myopically focusing on positions not being advocated here, why not inquire about the areas you think are contentious?
Really? Do you speak for all conservatives and liberals and progressives? Because if you are making that claim it’s rather arrogant. In any case, it’s good to know that some of the major party platforms aren’t based on any fundamental ideology and often change over time. That’s a great basis for a moral philosophy. Wait, no. It’s actually fucking awful.
It’s an ideal to strive for. Every policy decision should keep the ideal in mind and to the extent possible maximize individual liberty.
Don’t confuse bluntness with accuracy. The OP started with faulty premises and a giant strawman. Like this: Democratic beliefs are terrible because they want to eat everyone’s children.
You failed to answer the question. Was that on purpose?
This has already been shown to be completely false. Tell me, when women were granted suffrage, who’s freedom was reduced in that transaction? If the US allowed import of Cuban cigars, who’s liberty is impacted? This idea that freedom or liberty is a zero sum game is laughably unintelligent.
Who in this thread refuses to address conflicts between rights? Posters have said multiple times that there are areas of conflict and plenty to criticize the belief system on. The attempts thus far have been poorly thought out.
The community will come to an agreement in much the same way the community does now. Is that so hard to believe? Law enforcement, a court system, a constitution, etc.
John has it completely right. Much of these issues are policy choices, not ones of principal. A better way to go about this would be to compare how the constitution and associated interpretations would be different in a libertarian ideal. Instead of that interesting discussion this group would rather have a hay bailing party.
You have missed the point entirely, or I failed to explain it. I’ll assume the latter.
Your answer tells me nothing about what the Progressive position on income inequality is. I didn’t ask how the decision would be made, I asked what the decision would be. And I asked what limits would there be on the government in implementing that decision. Your answer didn’t even touch on those. Why can’t Progressives state their unified position on these things. (Hint: It’s a rhetorical question.)
What kind of government would Libertaria have? It would be democratic, but whether it was a parliamentary system or not, a federal state or not is of no matter. It could be either. Libertarians tend to like a federal model, but it’s not something that is essential to Libertaria. It could a federal system like the US or more centralized system like some European countries. That’s sort of like asking how often elections would be held in Libertaria-- it could be all over the map in different Libertarian Countries.
As for issues like damning a river, there is no reason to assume that just because the river crosses your property, that you own the entire river. These are not issues that Libertarians needs to march in lock step on any more than Democrats or Republicans need to.
Whoa, there, big guy. I started the discussion with “you guys all suck and here is why”?
Here’s what I wrote in the OP:
That’s asking questions, not insulting anyone.
What about the equal opportunity to make as much money as you want and keep it?
Isn’t it unequal of our society to treat some people different because of the size of their bank account? Similar to our trouble defining freedom, you are arbitrarily choosing certain metrics as the ideal for equality while ignoring others, aren’t you?
(and so on and so on…)
And you were told your premises #1-3 did not present any conflicts as you assumed they were. Why you didn’t accept that, or use different examples I have no idea. I suspect because you were being disingenuous, but feel free to demonstrate otherwise.
You’re asking for absolute extremism and condemning it later on. It depends on the situation, of course.
Then it would seem we already live in your “libertarian” government, and no changes are necessary.
I’m not Bone, but I think he meant that the laws that existed in Libertaria would be reasonable, even though they were only a subset of the current laws in the US. You might think that many “reasonable laws” would disappear (like Min Wage laws), but there wouldn’t be any new laws that you would consider “unreasonable”.
I could be missing something, but I’m not coming up with any law in Libertaria that you would consider unreasonable, even if you would surely think that the lack of certain laws would be unreasonable.
I’m not religious. But, I think of Jesus as someone who would prefer socialism (a society where all are cared for) than libertarianism (a society with a government that does — well — nothing).
How am I being disingenuous? I think I’ve been completely open about my views on this subject. That’s one of the things you’re complaining about.
I disagree with some of the things that have been posted here. That doesn’t mean I think the people that posted them “suck”. Some people here - including you, obviously - are disagreeing with things I’ve posted. But I don’t take this disagreement as a personal insult.
I’m here for a discussion about libertarianism. So why are my motives for wanting to have that discussion an issue?
It might be a straw-man argument…if it actually were an argument at all, which it is not.
It is not fallacious to say, “There are those very few Libertarians who hold extremist views. May we discard these, then, and explore for the truth along more moderate avenues?”
You, incorrectly, are interpreting this as, “Libertarians hold extremist views.”
The answer I’m looking for, and not getting, is: how are the laws made in this proposed Libertarian government. If they are made in pretty much the same way we make them now, then what is the difference in the form of government?
I guess I might better ask: Is Libertarianism a proposal that entails a change in the form of government? Does it actually have a systemic or organic proposal for reforms in the legislative process?
If not, if none, then it’s just a “platform” – an agenda of specific laws that its followers would like to see (usually repealed.) Marijuana and Cocaine would be legalized, etc.
However, a great many Libertarians (capital-L or lower-case l) are opposed to such specific organic powers of government such as eminent domain. This is a very definite change in the way that government functions. It goes beyond asking Congress to repeat a burdensome regulation; it asks for, in essence, a Constitutional Amendment to limit the power of government to take up property for public works.
So what I’m trying to get a sense of, here, is: what mere legislative changes would constitute a libertarian government, and what drastic constitutional alterations will be necessary.
And this is one of the reasons I mention the extremist views, held by only a very few, and not espoused by anyone here: I want to know how these views are going to be sent packing and their partisans given to disappointment. I want some indication of a “Bill of Rights” that protects my ability to play my radio, even if it means my neighbor can hear it on his property. There are some who would hold that to be an impermissible trespass, and I want to know how, in a libertarian society, I am to be protected from such limitations on my liberty.
The U.S. Constitution, in addition to listing a bunch of things Congress can’t do, also lists a bunch of things Congress can do. I want to know what the libertarian reformers would change in that list.
There is nothing that is going to protect you against “extremists” except their numbers. Extremists in the US today could outlaw abortion, mandate prayer in school, etc.
No democratic system of government can be protected from extremists, if the extremists become a majority. Even a constitution can be amended (Prohibition anyone?).
Libertaria would have a constitution like the US, except with more restrictions on government. And when it says “Congress shall make no law…” it will actually mean that “Congress shall make no law…”.
Libertarianism is not a different form of government, but a much more limited one. Were there some government institutions that you think might exist in Libertaria that wouldn’t exist in, say, the US today? There would be fewer, for sure. But I can’t think of any new ones.
Contrary to what some posters here might think, there won’t be a requirement that you pay your workers the absolute minimum possibly imaginable. You could pay them anything you like. There would not be a Department of Making Sure No One Donates to Charity.