Sometimes I lean libertarian in a practical sense, but this is perhaps the first thread in which I take the strict Libertopian side of the argument. Well played, OP.
There’s no dilemma here, voluntary association doesn’t mean others have to treat your group and its members in the way you’d prefer (ask neo-Nazis or the KKK if they have trouble finding jobs because of their association), it means no one can use force to break up your association, compel others to join, and so forth.
Again, no dilemma. The employer can’t actually infringe on his employees’ political freedom, he can’t forcibly prevent them from voting or campaigning, or he’ll go to jail.
The owner, there’s no individual right (in this country) to use others’ property without their consent. That’s no more an infringment on the hikers’ liberty than denying them the right to sleep in the man’s house would be. Individual liberty is no more absolute than property rights are.
Also, by way of context, what prompted my post that’s quoted in the OP was Little Nemo’s assertion that libertarians would be pro-slavery if they were around at that time:
The reason libertarianism seems so focused on property rights is a reaction against economic collectivism, whether it be communism, socialism or classic “property is theft” anarchism. The objection is that such schemes essentially amount to a tyranny of the majority: that your property- or your freedom, or your life- is at the sufferance of the rest of the human race. Libertarianism is one form of individualism, the doctrine that persons should not be (or be as little as possible) subordinate to the mass. Ayn Rand’s Objectivism was a flawed attempt to establish a complete moral doctrine of individualism. Libertarianism asks only one thing of other people: that they reciprocate respect for individual liberty by renouncing the domination of others.
Or rather, that establishing the power to collectively force people to stop doing something you find morally reprehensible is wrong. But on the other hand a libertarian would see no problem with helping slaves escape or revolt. In other words, the fight against slavery would be individual, one person following their conscience, rather than calling for a crusade.
Like the Atlas Shrugged thread, the OP has rested his conclusions on a faulty premise (or several faulty premises). I don’t understand why he doesn’t simply tell us what that premise is and then we can address it. If his premise is that Libertarianism’s central basis is property rights, then he’s simply wrong. He might as well say that the basis is fucking sheep.
I think there’s an interesting debate here, that the OP may not have done the best job of sussing out. As someone who agrees with many libertarian ideas and yet tends to vote Democrat, I often see this problem wherein libertarian ideology sounds nice, but it struggles as a practical form of governance.
If I may try my hand at another example, ripped straight from my own Facebook feed when I got into an argument with a self-professed libertarian friend of mine over the Arizona “religious freedom” law that would have allowed business owners to discriminate against homosexuals for deeply-held religious beliefs. My friend didn’t see what the big deal was, and when he finally admitted that he didn’t agree with the entire concept of “protected classes,” I was forced to end the argument. With that said…
Libertarians, I think in general, would say that religious freedom is a good thing, a core tenant of individual liberty and freedom of association. Let’s imagine a closed society where the majority, 99% of people, worship the exalted leader Kim Some Guy. A minority, the remaining 1%, practice Jabroniism. The extremely limited libertarian government is completely secular, and there are laws in place preventing the official establishment of Some Guy-ism as state religion, and also preventing the government from discriminating against people based on their religion.
In this society, though, the Some Guy-ists hate the Jabronis. Some Guy business owners refuse to hire Jabronis, they refuse to serve Jabronis, they refuse to do business with Jabroni business owners. Some Guy land owners refuse to let Jabronis onto their property, which includes the many privately owned toll roads here in Libertopia. Each individual act of Some Guy-on-Jabroni discrimination is condoned under the “property rights” aspect of libertarian ideology; that is, the business owners are allowed to discriminate because the government isn’t allowed to tell them what to do with their own property.
The net result of all of this is a pretty miserable society for the Jabroni minority. The Some Guy-ists claim to be all for religious freedom, but in practice there is none. Yes, the Jabronis can still worship their god, and they can still do business with other Jabronis, but life is undeniably harder for them. The government might stand for religious freedom, but an objective observer would come to the undeniable conclusion that this society does not.
What the OP is saying that libertarians might say that they place individual liberty as a core tenant of their ideology, IN PRACTICE they would willingly let individual liberty fall to the wayside rather than allow the government to step in and enforce that concept over property rights. Of course, this is painting with an extremely broad brush, and I have a hard time believing that even my libertarian Facebook friend would condone the actions of the society I’ve described. I hope.
Congrats. You established that in imagined and extremely unrealistic test cases Libertarian ideology would lead to bad results. But then, to be fair, when 99% hates hates hates the 1%, no society model would work for the 1%. The Jabronis would just leave (in societies that allow it) or die out (in societies that don’t).
You are using a different definition of “liberty” than is used by Libertarians. I, as a private citizen cannot deny you liberty without using force. Your liberty (in a Libertarian concept) is not compromised because I don’t let you shop at my store. In fact, my liberty is compromised if Big Brother forces me to let you in.
Why is it you think you have a right to shop in my store, per Libertarian principles? Whether that makes you happy or not is besides the point. Libertarianism doesn’t promise to make you happy. Just free.
Yes, that’s a point worth noting. If 99% of a democratic society hates 1%, and refused to do business with them, it’s absurd to assume that they will elect a government that treats the 1% well.
Libertarianism has it’s flaws, but that’s not one of them.
How would you Libertarians that say the three questions were loaded unload them? Could you propose three hypothetical scenarios involving property vs. voluntary association, political freedom, and individual liberty that you would then be willing to answer?
There’s no hidden agenda here. I told everyone what I think in the OP.
And the problems with libertarianism are similar to the problems with objectivism. If you just stay inside the system, it looks perfect. Both avoid mentioning the flaws in their systems. If you just read libertarian tracts, you’ll think libertarianism is perfect. It’s only by stepping outside of libertarianism that you can see the flaws in it.
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A man owns a business. The employees in that business decide to form a union. The owner doesn’t like unions and says he will fire any employee that belongs to a union. The employees start up their own competing business. The market solves the problem.
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Another man owns a different business. This man is an ardent supporter of a candidate in an upcoming election. He says any of his employees who fail to support the candidate he likes or who show any support for an opposing candidate will be fired. The people who support the other candidate start up their own competing business. The market solves the problem.
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Yet another man owns a piece of property. A group of hikers are traveling along and they want to walk through the man’s property. They assure him they will not take anything from his property or cause any damage. They just want to travel across it. But the man doesn’t want anyone to trespass on his property at all. The hikers offer to buy the property from him. The market solves the problem.
You see? With libertarianism there are no problems. The market solved them all and everyone is happy in a libertarian system. Libertarianism is perfect. It says so in all the libertarian literature. You should read the libertarian literature in order to understand libertarianism. Or ask a libertarian. He will tell you libertarianism has no problems. And he will tell you to read the libertarian literature.
The thing about libertarianism that I find so appealing is that there are no conflicts of principal, other than certain externalities (big area) and that the positions are virtually all internally consistent. None of the prominent political ideologies can make this claim.
I think the real conflict or interesting part of debate is how to treat those externalities. Costs of health care due to uninsured, pollution, national security, etc. The examples given only seem to present a conflict to the OP because of a misunderstanding of libertarian principals themselves.
I’ll take a stab at it, I suppose. They aren’t perfect, but neither are the ones in the OP:
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A person or a government claims a set of people as property. The people dispute this, and claim to be free human beings. The principle of individual liberty suggests that the people are indeed free and equal humans, the principle of property rights would suggest that the person couldn’t be deprived of his property without due process, thus the slaves should remain slaves. Answer: individual liberty wins.
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A government had decreed that, in order to vote, a citizen must own 50 acres of land. Now, it has been proposed that this qualification be eliminated. The principle of political freedom suggests that free and equal participation in government is crucial for a free society. The principle of property rights suggests that the reform would make land less valuable, which could constitute deprivation of property without due process. Answer: political freedom wins.
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A government has decreed that members of the state church are excused from paying taxes. Now, it is proposed that this law be eliminated. The principle of voluntary association suggests that the state should neither compel nor forbid such associations. The principle of property rights suggests that property shouldn’t be confiscated by the state. Answer: voluntary association wins.
It’s your thread and all, but I submit that it’d be a more productive one if you try and keep it confined to the particular issue of property rights vs. other human rights. These sorts of generic anti-libertarian rants are a tangent to your OP, and unproductive ones at that.
Well, that’s something you just made up.
No one claims there are no problems. As I said above, Libertarianism doesn’t profess to make you happy or to solve the world’s problems or end bigotry or make you rich or even give you a job. It just professes to make you free. If you expect it do anything else, you don’t understand what it is.
See, now you’ve equated religious freedom with the trifling promise of “being happy.” Which, I think, is the point of the OP. It’s not that I want the Jabronis to be happy, it’s that this society, which claims to care about religious freedom, does no such thing. There is de facto religious persecution at an alarming scale, all while the Some Guy-ists can shrug their libertarian shoulders and say, “What, you’re free to practice your religion and be miserable, what’s the big deal?”
Libertarianism doesn’t promise that you won’t be miserable. Is that better? It doesn’t promise that other people will sell you things, employ you, or preside over your wedding. It promises you nothing other than personal freedom.
Libertarianism doesn’t concern itself with de facto anything. You can discriminate like a mother fucker, as long as you do so as a private citizen and not the government. Because your desire to shop in my store does not trump my desire that you don’t. You are free to set up your own store and keep me out, if you so choose.
Now, you and I might decide we don’t want to live in that type of society. But that doesn’t make it self-contradictory.
So Jim Crow laws were all about liberty? Yippeeee!
I’d argue that this is part of the problem with libertarianism (and most forms of unregulated free-market capitalism). Shouldn’t the goal of any political union be the contentedness of those affected by the system? (Then again, I’m the kind of weirdo who thinks “Brave New World” is a utopia, so feel free to disregard that.)
Yep. But I think for many (most?) actual Libertarians, they think that all they need is freedom in order to be happy. So to them, it’s not such a problem. Of course, how that actually would work out IRL is a question that hasn’t been answered.
My own sense is that if you set up a strictly Libertarian society, it just wouldn’t last very long. Because people want to be free, for sure, but that’s not their #1, #2 and #3 priority at all times. There is a certain amount of security they want, and then some Libertarian style freedoms have to go out the window. Libertarianism isn’t designed well for an actual society of H. sapiens.