Do libertarians realize private citizens are just as oppressive as the government?

Great Debates
101

But you’re really describing in the limit anarchism (‘I have more firepower’) not libertarianism. They can border on one another, and there people on the internet calling themselves ‘libertarian’ who are comically extreme. But if say you looked to the platform and statements of recent Libertarian national candidates their program would not include for example eliminating anti-trust laws. In which you’re also yourself mixing stuff together. In “the 1920’s or 30’s” there wasn’t “no government” as you state at the end. And the 1930’s was a time of unprecedented expansion of govt power in the US, for better or worse, but that makes the reference more confusing.

I, though I don’t consider myself ‘libertarian’ mainly, can see a difference between a baseline where govt sets out neutral rules (laws which say individuals can’t gain advantage over other law abiding individuals via ‘more firepower’, people cannot create monopolies, etc, besides rules which enforce contracts and basic property rights) but is not proactively involved in insuring particular, economic particularly, outcomes.

And even more practically Libertarian Party libertarianism in the US is practically mainly about greater social freedom (to take drugs etc). On the economic front it tends to be similar to old line liberal Republicanism (in 2016 it ran a pair of ex-Liberal Republicans, Johnson and Weld for P and VP) in opposing big increases in govt involvement in the economy the Democrats now tend to favor in general, and opposing the trade protectionism now increasingly prominent in both major parties. Johnson and Weld were not proposing to radically cut back govt involvement in the economy.

So which ‘libertarians’, ‘No True Scotsman’ fringe on the internet, the L Party front men, Republican voters with libertarian tendencies? And again there is a different name for people who think we’d be better off with no govt: Anarchists.

102

Do you believe that insufficient valid reason and evidence has been presented to Americans so far to excise the scourge of racism and intolerance? I think there’s some societal afflictions that are not dealt with though logic, so that laws become a better remedy. (At least, in stemming the growth of the tumor, even if it cannot be fully cut out.)

103

People ignore reason and evidence whenever it is convenient and/or to their benefit.

104

If you’re going to play that game, you need to explicitly define all of the terms you’re using and stick to one definition. Libertarians generally use weird and shifting definitions of terms like ‘ownership’, ‘self-ownership’, ‘force’, and ‘theft’, and phrases like ‘reject self-ownership’ and ‘prove self-ownership’ don’t make sense within the usual definitions of the words. I’m probably not going to bother engaging anything that revolves around weird definitions though, as I’ve found it to be a pointless waste of time in the past.

So what you’re saying is that if you claim title to stolen property now, you get to keep what you’ve got unless someone manages to prove that they personally and individually hurt by it. And you’re free to use that immense wealth to defend the title and attack them, while they cannot use the money in dispute to pursue those claims. And if you or your ancestors killed off everyone that you stole from, there’s no individual to claim against you.

“Should have been given” is just a cop-out. Saying that people should have done something different in the past doesn’t address the issue that they didn’t do it, and continue to profit from it to this day. In principle, Libertarians might same some lofty stuff, but in practice, it’s "This is mine even though I stole it, prove that you as an individual were the one stolen from’

It’s exactly what your ‘these claims should be proven on an individual basis’ amounts to in practice.

That’s a complete dodge, typical of Libertarians “Well, law is in shambles, and I’ll ramble about why actual functioning systems are bad instead of actually answering the question.” The vague allusion to some kind of permits that would forbid some pollution but not all doesn’t actually answer the question at all. The only framework I’ve heard before from Libertarians doesn’t involve any kind of permits, but instead requires that each individual who objects to pollution has to prove specific harm in court, and that there would be no preemptive check on pollution but instead the possibility of claiming damages after the fact.

The reason is that people listen to what Libertarians say and do and who they vote for, and care about the actual effects of what the ideas would have, rather than how Libertarians would see themselves. What current anti-pollution laws do Libertarians support, for example? How do Libertarians feel about the issue of second-hand smoke, that is limitations on polluting the bodies of people near smokers?

105

Depends on what you mean by ‘recent’ - in 2000 and 2004 the Libertarian party explicitly called for the repeal of all anti-trust laws. I dispute the idea that four election cycles back is such ancient history that it’s irrelevant now, especially since Libertarians generally claim that they’re operating from a philosophy that flows logically from first principles. From https://lpedia.org/National_Platform

2000:
“Anti-trust” laws do not prevent monopoly, but foster it by limiting competition. We therefore call for the repeal of all “anti-trust” laws, including the Robinson-Patman Act which restricts price discounts, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, and the Clayton Anti-Trust Act. We further call for the abolition of the Federal Trade Commission and the anti-trust division of the Department of Justice.

2004:
We call for the repeal of all anti-trust laws, including the Robinson-Patman Act, which restricts price discounts, and the Sherman and Clayton Anti-Trust acts. We further call for the abolition of both the Federal Trade Commission and the anti-trust division of the Department of Justice.

106

First: Once again, it is shown that denigrating another system does nothing to support your preferred system. It is a logical non sequitur, and need not be treated as a real argument.

Second: Negative externalities disprove the idea that an unregulated or only after the fact regulated market can survive. You can analyze it as a straight-up example of the Prisoner’s Dilemma from game theory, and not even the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma because, one, it’s possible to leave the market when things begin to go sour, and, two, even if it isn’t, enough people will believe it is to cause problems. You need some entity outside that game theory trap to enforce rules to break everyone else out of the trap, and any entity capable of doing that is a government, regardless of what it’s called. Therefore, you not only need a government, you need a government which enforces preemptive regulations which prevent damage. Here’s a whole log essay on this basic concept.

107

You seem to be overlooking the fact that the economy is like a large ship. It takes a while to change course. The Great Depression started under Hoover and continued under Roosevelt but they were hardly responsible for it. That credit goes to Calvin Coolidge, who is best remembered for laissez-faire governing, with honorable mention to Warren Harding who was incompetent at best, corrupt at worst.

108

Yes. Once wealth is concentrated by any means, fair or foul, it should stay concentrated in perpetuity through bottomless trusts which are, preferably, subject to low or zero capital gains taxation. It is only fair to the superior spawn of those original go-getters. Also, cigarettes are good for you and poor people should stop complaining and work harder. God bless Ayn Rand!

109

You know I was being absurd. Just checking.

110

But even Libertarians understand that long term gains are better than short term gains.

I.e. knowingly contributing to the detriment of the environment is short term thinking and is not in the best interest of long term investors.

111

Do they though? I’ve seen a lot of libertarians advocate a scorched earth policy when it comes to resource extraction and dealing with long term health and environmental effects of pollution.

112

The seeds of the Depression were planted before Coolidge or Harding, for sure, and of course Hoover could have vetoed the Smoot-Hawley tariff and thus not made things a lot worse.

Saying Coolidge was “responsible for it” is just wrong. The Great Depression, like most major world events, can be apportioned to thousands of people over the course of generations. The causes of the Depression are STILL debated by very smart economists.

113

I have no idea where you’re getting this idea - the vast majority of people prefer short term gains to long term gains, and I’ve never seen anything to support the idea that Libertarians differ greatly from the population as a whole. Especially since they often act to and ally themselves with people who prioritize short term profits over long term gains.

The idea that rich people will look to protect the environment because it’s allegedly not in their interest seems hilariously optimistic when one looks at the history of pollution, conservation, and environmental law. And this isn’t some fringe element, they have enough control that there are literally laws forbidding even using science to determine what is happening in the environment when avoiding science allows for more short term profit. For example North Carolina law has banned using actual sea level predictions to set coastal property, which gives significant short-term profits to developers. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/12/us/north-carolina-coast-hurricane.html

114

No more so than anybody else.

115

Going back to the question of slavery, I will note that there is a group of people who gave up slavery peacefully, through discussion: the Quakers. Quakers did not always oppose slavery; John Woolman, a Quaker preacher, was able to travel from household to household and talk many slave-holding Quakers into freeing their slaves John Woolman - Wikipedia

Perhaps concerned about the dangers of open discussion, the South prohibited anti-slavery literature and prosecuted people who dared talk about it Trendy News Portal And Online Websites Reviews on Mecedorama

116

May I ask you a hypothetical question? Imagine as a thought experiment that you and your twin sibling are still in your mother’s womb and a genie speaks to both of you: one of you will be born free of all state oppression and will never ever pay any taxes. She will be born in South Sudan. How much taxes would you be willing to contribute as a percentage of your lifelong income for the privilege of being the other sibling, born male, straight and white in the USA, subject to the rules of the country, taxation and bureaucracy, with full citizenship rights?
(Question adapted from memory from a reference to Warren Buffet in a recent article I read in the Guardian)

117

Yes I did and I appreciated it so much I felt compelled to echo the absurdity. Unfortunately, I find that sarcasm can sometimes be misread as genuine sentiment. I thought the “God bless Ayn Rand” line would give it away since she was, much to Paul Ryan’s surprise (ha, ha), an avowed atheist.

118

OK, but by same token we could quote Democratic party policies and platforms of not much earlier by which according to my own current opinions I should find the Democrats a palatable alternative. But according to what the Democrats generally say they stand for now, I have trouble with them as an alternative, even though the Republicans have also gotten worse in their own way, both just IMO. I don’t generally cast meaningless votes for third parties so it’s somewhat moot, but I think it’s reasonable to consider a national party by what it says is its platform when it asks for your vote, or at least consider what it is saying when it asks for your vote (although it’s fair I guess to suspect it has an agenda not shown in the platform, fair with any party to consider that possibility).

119

No, we could not do that by the same token, as there was no similar explicit statement made about the Democratic party to refute. You claimed that no recent Libertarian candidates would run under a platform of abolishing antitrust laws, I pointed out that in 2000 and 2004 the Libertarian national platform called for abolishing anti-trust laws to refute that claim. Talking about old Democratic party platforms is simply misdirection from the point that what you claimed about the LP is arguably not true, depending on exactly what is meant by ‘recent’. Further, the Democrats don’t claim to be operating under a philosophy logically derived from some simple first principles the way Libertarians do; both major parties admit that they are political parties operating to represent constituents, while the Libertarian’s claim means that their platform should be more philosophically coherent.

Whether you might or might not vote for Democratic party candidates is simply irrelevant to the fact that Libertarian Party as recently as the Bush election cycle explicitly called for the abolition of all anti-trust laws in the US.

120

I will note that in threads like this you’ll see a lot of Libertarians and Libertarian sympathizers slamming other political parties and systems, making odd philosophical claims using highly specialized definitions of words, stating that things will be great under a libertarian system, examples of answers to easy questions, and asking questions like ‘do you really think a Libertarian would do X’. What you don’t see is a reasonable explanation of how they would like for things to work (not a detailed legal treastise, just a basic plan) in situations that aren’t trivial (property rights for stolen/strongarmed property and pollution to use two that I came up with) or firm answers to any of the more difficult questions. I remember years ago there was a Libertarian running for a local office who was on a message board that I was on. So I said ‘hey, you posted about being the LP candidate for X, what would you do differently than the other two candidates?’ and she couldn’t answer what she would actually do differently than Demopublicans if she was elected to an office she was running for! That seems pretty par for the course.

Also, back to the OP’s question, I think people who get attracted to Libertarianism as a philosophy tend to develop tunnel vision. I’ve frequently seen Libertarians hold up the US in the 1900s as an example of a more free society than ours today, when the US in the 1900s was aggressively conquering Native lands for profit throughout, holding slaves for the first half, and hideously oppressing the now-freed slaves for the second. I’ve also seen them write that their ideal government would be run like a Homeowners Association - apparently not realizing that an awful lot of people have had only bad experiences with those organizations. So a lot of times they are so focused on some particular thing they do like that they don’t step back and think critically about the problems that might arise should they remove all of the government interventio.