Posting for MGibson, whose post wound up in the wrong place:
MGibson
Member
Registered: Apr 2000
Posts: 43
There seems to be a common misconception that Libertarians don’t like government or believe they should be involved in our lives at all. It is true that they believe government involvement should be minimal but certainly it should be there.
To start with there’s a misconception that Libertarian ideas regarding taxes makes it impossible for the government to provide for the common defense. (Such as a military.) Libertarians oppose the income tax and perhaps a few others that I’m not aware of. There are many other taxes they do not oppose.
I’m not really sure what their stance on the environment is. However I don’t think it would violate Libertarian ideology to recognize that pollution can be a rights violation and as such take actions to prevent or curtail it. This doesn’t have to entail a monster organization like the EPA to be effective.
With regard to businesses setting up monopolies. Most of the so called Robber Barons did so with the help of various politicans they bribed. If the power of politicans to interfere in business was limited so to would the incentive to bribe them. You wouldn’t get rid of all corruption but you’d certainly get rid of some.
What a fascinating and complex debate! I guess I am too humbled (and tired) to add much of value.
Out of curiosity, what do libertarians believe that the wealth distribution in a true libertarian society would look like? Since libertarians are obviously not concerned with the equitable distribution of wealth, I imagine that they are willing to concede that the ideal libertarian society would contain much more economic stratification than, say, the ideal social democratic society.
Ah, what about defense? As it happens, defense and dispute arbitration are the sole functions of a libertarian government. According to Federal Office of Management and Budget, the Fiscal Year 2001 budget for national defense allocates a little more than $306 billion to “defend the United States, its citizens, its allies, and to protect and advance American interests around the world”.
Even with the incredible bloat and wastefulness of that budget, even with the unnecessary expense of maintaining a military presence in more than 100 (more than 100!) of the nations on earth, even with the abberational advancement of “American interests around the world” — even with all that, the cost for maintaining the U.S. military is about $1,000 per person per year.
If world-wide occupying forces are withdrawn, if the military bureaucracy is trimmed to lean, and if the focus of the miliary is simply to defend U.S. citizens, the cost per person drops to an even smaller figure.
This cost per year, to defend your rights, will be what you pay when you consent to be governed. Being governed isn’t supposed to mean being parented. Being governed is supposed to mean having your rights protected.
“It is to secure our rights that we resort to government at all.” — Thomas Jefferson
I don’t think it’s a matter that you’re missing something; rather, I think it’s a matter that you’re adding something, based simply on your familiarity with majoritarianism.
You assume, for example, that “only a small percentage of the population” has no rights, or else that their rights might conflict with those of the rest of the population. “Conflicting rights” is a notion pertinent to models wherein rights are obfuscatory or poorly defined.
In Libertaria, every single solitary individual has the same right, namely, the right to be free from the coercion and fraud of others. Therefore, if you, and only you, as an individual, object to the pollution of your land, then no one — not your neighbors, not the majority, not the government, not everybody on earth — may infringe your right to be left in peace.
Remember, libertarianism is based on principle, not expedience. “The security of his rights inconveniences me” is not a legitimate charge against a man in Libertaria.
A libertarian government is not concerned with other nations or their affairs; its sole concern is the security of the rights of its own — and only its own — citizens. Those rights are secured from any coercion source, foreign or domestic. A libertarian government does not conduct diplomacy, for example. Its citizens are free to trade with anyone who will trade with them, and free to conduct their own diplomacy.
A libertarian government does not police the world, nor does it nanny its citizens.
I have seen no arguments there against libertarianism. I have seen arguments against anarchism, minarchism, and disestablishmentarianism, but where are the arguments against the Noncoercion Principle?
Perhaps in this thread, you could lay out your opposition to the notion that peaceful honest people ought to be free to pursue their own happiness in their own way.
I bet that your idea of “equitable” will differ considerably from that of the next twenty people you meet this morning. I also bet that, even among the most liberal here on the SDMB, few to none advocate all persons having the same amount of wealth, all the time.
Also, doesn’t the United States have the largest gap between the wealthiest and the poorest among the Western democracies?
By “equitable” I don’t mean equal. I agree that it is a foolish idea for a government to try to distribute wealth evenly among all citizens. But one of the factors I take into consideration when evaluating the economic health of a nation is the distribution of wealth. If 99% of the population is struggling to put food on the table while 1% is living in castles, I would consider that a bad economy. If 10% of the population is poor, 80% is middle class, and another 10% is rich, I would consider that a healthy economy.
I am not necessarily implying that a government should take an active role in redistributing the money, although I don’t see why it cannot be done to a reasonable extent. I would imagine that a good economy would naturally produce the healthy results which I have described. My question still stands: How do you, as a libertarian, believe that the wealth would become distributed in a libertarian economy?
Hmmm. So if I were a citizen of Libertaria, and I opposed the pollution of my air by internal combustion engines, everyone else has to stop using them?
Some of the questions from the OP and later indicate a preumption that all libertarians have the same view on everything. Things like “what do libertarians say about environmental issues?” Individual libertarians answer these questions in a variety of ways, often conflicting with each other. Outside of party politics, there isn’t a “platform” for the philosophy in general. Either Phil or Lib (sorry, can’t remember which to give proper credit) once said it as “We are not Borg.” I wanted to point this out, lest interested readers and critics find some particular point objectionable, and assume that this means the whole philosophy is flawed. If you’re a conservative, I imagine you wouldn’t want to be judged on the basis of Jesse Helms’ views. Keep it in mind to allow libertarianism the same breadth of viewpoints as you would expect for your own political label.
You’re just as free to move.
-Not a serious proposal. I want to wake you up.
You are free to invest in electric engines.
-Not bad if you don’t mind the wait, but you doubtless want a more immediate solution.
You are free to try and sue the people who drive cars.
-Not practical, but since when has that stopped people.
You can count on your fellow man to be just as tiffed about that reek in the air and join them in limiting the use of autos in their community.
-Perhaps not a legalistic solution, and one that would require truly amazing coordination among various houses, but the utility of such solutions is what every voting society is based upon. Perhaps you could set up a community where autos are banned, and then rent and sell things like bikes and electric carts. I think this is the best solution based upon the premise that you’re being left alone by Big Brother.
If cars are making the air near you bad, you could sue the guy who built the road so damn close to your property. Unless you move there afterwards. But, since the roads are privately built and run in a libertarian society, the people building them must take steps to ensure that the roads are not layed out to unreasonably cause health problems for the people nearby.
The road builder could then charge lower tolls for electric cars, thus encouraging people to obtain them. Is this the most effective solution to the polution problem (to the extent that it is a problem)? Probably not. But it is more just than the current system, is free of political considerations, and quite likely works just as well.
But in the USA we have tacitly given our “consent to be governed”. The USA has open borders, you can leave any day you want. I am not saying “love it or leave it”, but I am saying “work within the syatem, or leave or shut up”. (aka “lead, follow or get out of the way”)
Oh, and you forgot, when we get alibertarian government we will also have; an end to crime, world peace, immortality, and all the ice cream we can eat.
Actually the early pre constitution days of the USA were pretty libertarian. It didn’t work, and that is because libertarianism depends on people not acting like people. It is human nature to try to get awy without doing your share.
I just posted in the thread mentioned by SingleDad (The US is already a Socialist society!) my explanation of why the “open borders” argument is not non-coerced consent.
As far as I know, all the libertarians on this message board are working within the system. We just think that the system should be improved in some ways. Unless you don’t consider voting for Libertarian candidates and arguing in favor of libertarianism to be consistent with the principles upon which our country was founded.
Of course you have the right to make decisions with respect to your property. Do you prefer that, say, I make those decisions on your behalf? Or do you prefer maybe that a congress of wealthy lawyers decide how much your air may be polluted?
In a noncoercive free-market, like Libertaria, entrepreneurs are licking their chops, waiting for exactly the opportunity you describe, to launch research and development for a pollutionless mode of transporation, due to the motivation of necessity. Contrast this with a Fabianist nation-state, wherein the interests of Big Oil, Inc. are protected against your pesky druthers, and solar power technology drags on at a medieval pace.
This implies that “The USA” owns the land you occupy, and that you are merely squatting. If you are the owner, why shouldn’t it leave?
Suppose I were a visitor in your home, and you announced that you found me obnoxious and intolerable. What if my response to you were, “Well, you can leave anytime you want.”?
They were? Libertarianism is the provision of a peaceful honest social context by a government that secures the rights of each of its citizens. Which government was doing this?
Arguments about anarchy, which you have confused with libertarianism, are ongoing in another thread.
I suppose that means my father, who instilled his principles into me, was not humanly natured. Do not confuse Pavlovian conditioning by nanny government with the intrinsic nature of man.
Besides, you owe nothing to me or anyone else, except for respecting our rights. Your “share” is nothing more than providing for you and your family.
But if I make the decision for my property, what difference does that make if my neighbors decide differently? In the case of automotive pollution, most of it travels through the air. If I “make [a] decision with respect to [my] property” that I don’t want that smog, how can I prevent it other than building a barrier to keep all of the polluted air out? Surely you aren’t saying that “the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many”, are you?
Those entrepreneurs aren’t going to be beating a path to my door if I’m the only person who wants a non-polluting automobile.
Since this seems like the Libertarian Q&A forum, I’ll post some of my questions as well.
After reading the other libertarian thread and reflecting on what I learned about libertarianism from undergrad econ classes, I have become confused about the role of education in a libertarian system. For the system to work properly, it seems that every citizen should have significant knowledge about civics and economics. Also, it seems that they should also have significant knowledge about prerequisite subjects like mathematics, history, reading and writing, to name a few. That’s assuming that people are born tabula rasa. So, who pays for this education? Obviously if the market provides the education, the quality would be stratified by price. This suggests a loophole where education providers could oppress the consumers by providing erroneous information. In my mind, the market wouldn’t be able to compensate for this because the consumers would have already had misinformation about how the market works.
As a similar question to #1, in a Libertarian system who provides information on the market conditions, and who pays for it? For the system to work correctly it seems to me that every citizen would need access to all information. That way producers could make informed decisions about where to redirect their capital, and consumers could make informed decisions about which product would satisfy them most. On the one hand I can see how a producer would want to keep certain information secret, and that seems to suggest that individuals would pay for it. Likewise, the individuals would reap the rewards of the research. But, on the other hand, I can see where major inefficiencies would occur when multiple people do the same research. Would any of this information be copyrightable? If so, how could a consumer make an informed decision without the access to information that a producer had copyrighted? Also, would peoples’ income information become public domain? If not, how would the market adjust without this information (i.e. a person who finds a lucrative market niche could either hide or distort their income information thereby reducing potential for others to enter into that niche)?
In a Libertarian society why wouldn’t your capital be redistributed evenly upon your death? You have no need for it anymore, and passing that wealth on to your children (or even giving it away) seems like an injustice to all other citizens. Inheritance seems like a redistribution that would artificially distort the market, thereby hurting everyone.
