In a libertarian society...

You are not a poor person with substandard education living in a one-industry town, restricted by your circumstances to working for the only employer available. The facts of life are that without laws, some of those with power and money will take advantage of those without power and money unless they are restricted by law from doing so.

This is a fact that Libertarians seem incapable of understanding - that some people are bastard-covered bastards with bastard filling, and will oppress others simply because they can. And not everybody has the privilege of being able to move freely between jobs or living situations to escape that exploitation.

It’s mind boggling to me that you think I should meekly accept people telling me what to do (that is, whom to fire and hire) with my own money.

Everyone is in such a position. An employer needs and employee just like the employee needs an employer. When I am saying 30 years in the work force, it wasn’t high paying professional jobs all 30 years. I started out at lowly almost-minimum-wage jobs in the low 1980s - when unemployment was high and wages were low. And I quit a couple of jobs where I thought I was being taken advantage of.

And of course, for the sake of that “poor person with substandard education etc etc”, the restrictions have to be placed EVERYWHERE on EVERYONE. Lest that poor person suffers.

I have seen a few private sector bosses who were bastard-covered bastards etc. A couple were brilliant and retained/attracted employees by sheer charisma. The rest had to pay higher wages and had much higher employee turnover, causing their businesses to be less competitive. That is how it should be.

Who said anything about meekly accepting anything? You need to drop this attitude that everyone who’s not libertarian is some sort of sheep that wants the government to control everything. That simply isn’t true.

No. If there’s a surplus of labor (as there almost always is, especially for unskilled labor)) then employers do not need the employees as much as the employees need the employers. Without regulation, employers can pay rock bottom wages and put workers in unsafe conditions and still have no problem finding people willing to put up with it since they have no other choice. This isn’t idle speculation. There are abundant historical examples of this happening. Your desire to believe that this somehow isn’t true doesn’t change the facts.

I refuse to find it an onerous regulation that bosses can’t demand to fuck their employees in order for those employees to get or keep jobs. Surely you’re not claiming that making quid pro quo sexual harassment illegal is somehow harming employers? If so, please explain how.

Again you ignore the very real situations of people not being able to be mobile in their job or living situations. Your solutions would trap the powerless in ever-deepening cycles of exploitation.

One of the (many) failures of many libertarians is that they seem to think that everyone is just like them. Everyone had the same advantages, everyone has the identical abilities, everyone has the same amount of luck, everyone has the exact same health situation as them.

They cannot fathom how someone can get in a difficult situation. Why? Because they didn’t get in that same situation personally. If someone has not been successful - they believe it must be because of that person’s failings.

Essentially, they frequently lack empathy with other human beings.

Another is their inability to see that freedom isn’t some absolute and objective concept that exists in opposition to pure authoritarianism.

For example, the freedom of employers to fire anyone who refuses them sexual favors is in direct opposition to the employee’s freedom to be free from such demands. Claiming that one is true “freedom” and the other is onerous government interference is simply not a defensible position.

I don’t know about you, but I never had a problem finding unskilled labor jobs. Just because there are so many of them. True, some may be hard or disgusting, but there are still so many of them. It’s when I moved to skilled labor and more skilled labor that finding a job became harder. More lucrative though.

The “quid pro quo sexual harassment” can be easily overcome simply by having an employment contract that outlines your work duties and states that requiring anything outside of those work duties has to be done with mutual agreement and cannot be grounds for dismissal.

Oh yes, I had huge advantages. Came to this country with $100 in my pocket, no English, parents that had that $100 in their pockets as well, and no connections or school buddies or old boys network that could help out. HUGE advantages.

Of course people can get in a difficult situation. That’s what charities are for. And yes, in this country, if someone cannot make ends meet it’s either because of a mental handicap or that person’s failings.

Why not just have sexual harassment outlawed? You still haven’t made any decent argument as to why the outlawing of sexual harassment is so very onerous for employers.

Well, you surely didn’t prosper based on your ability to craft logical arguments.

Nonsense. Because you got lucky, that hardly means that everyone who didn’t is personally at fault.

There are five jobs for each applicant right now. How is it possible that every single person in financial distress is lazy or a mental deficient?

Your ideas are dogmatic utterances of faith, not facts or unassailable logic.

Did you mean five applicants for each job?

And I totally missed that statement of Terr’s, which reveals a type of magical thinking usually only associated with songs about wishing on stars.

OK. But I am taking this stapler.

I don’t want to see any more comments like this in this thread. From here on out, if you post a sarcastic personal comment, insult, or other derogatory remark, you’re getting a warning.

Bullshit. “Luck” has nothing to do with it. Talk about “dogmatic utterances”.

This is probably true from one perspective, you worked hard no doubt and got your just rewards. But it’s luck nevertheless - you didn’t contract a terrible illness stopping you from working for one example.

So let’s say this unfortunate turn of events did happen in Libertopia as you pitch up on the dockside with USD100 to your name, what happens next? Who pays for your medical care?

Is that a Swingline?


Mercury shoots out of every sprinkler head on my property, my guests arrive, bathing them in quicksilver colored freedom.

“Welcome!” I say, as I invite them into my luxurious parlor room, where mercury flows from the bronze mouths and penises of Cupid fountains.

“You have arrived to my slice of heaven.”

“C-can I have a towel?” One of my guests whines as they try to wipe the mercury out of their eyes.

“Don’t be silly, a towel won’t be adequate to mop up heavy metals.” I shut off the lights, and the Cupid fountains are a’glow!

“Wow!” exclaims one of my other guests.

“Yep, Radium. Pretty cool, huh?” I say with a touch of pride.

“I’m s-s-scared.” I ignore that. Commie bastard. I shouldn’t have invited him, but I throw him a towel, doped with LSD to keep his wringing hands busy.

“So hey, where’s this so called ‘mercury pool’?” Ahh, yes, my libertarian friends are already itching for the Pièce de résistance.

“You’re right, let’s go, it’s out in the back. C’mon!”

We all exit out the double doors. “Help your self to some Opies™,” I say pointing to a candy dish full of white-chocolate covered pills.

“Wow! I’ve been meaning to try these, but they’re damn expensive.”

“They are, but hey, I make good money. And I want my guests to feel gooood.”

“So, they’re heroin?” Says the Commie.

“Don’t be ridiculous, it’s just oxycodone.” I roll my eyes.

“Ladies!” Naked women seem to literally pour from every hole, crack and opening in the surroundings. “Bow to me, and pleasure our guests!”

“Now wait a minute…” The Commie again, and the girls unzip his pants.

“No, man, it’s cool… they signed my Terms of Agreement.”

“No, I’m gay.” Ahh, well then…

“Larry!” I keep him on stand-by. They’re cheap, since they’re in lower demand, anyway.

“Now, what we’ve all been waiting for… the Pool of Mercury!”

Flood lights light up the yard. Glowing blue neon and ultraviolet accent lighting reflect in the surface of the shimmering pool of metal. It’s a site rivaled by any natural wonder. The bowling balls just float atop, as if by magic.

“Are those eyeballs?!” No one knows what the Commie is talking about. The LSD must be kicking in.

In the distance, we hear a gravelly voice, “That abomination leaks on my property, I’ll have your balls!”

“Fuck off and die, Deward! This is America, land of the free!” I whip out my side arm and fire a round just past his wrinkly bag of a face. He ducks inside.

Silence. Yes.

“Shall we?” Before I can even finish, my cell phone begins to ring.

“Crap, it’s my boss.” I answer. “Yes. Yes, sir. Uh huh. Right away sir!”

Everyone looks to me as I hang up.

“Welp, party’s over.”

“What?! We just got here! And it wasn’t easy, we had to circle and loop miles and miles out of our way to avoid the most expensive toll booths!”

“I don’t know what to tell you, my boss needs a blow job – stat.”

“What? You got a job where they harass you like that?” I roll my eyes at the Commie again.

“Look around you, you think this comes cheap? I have a fucking pool of mercury, ferchristssake. A POOL of MERCURY. It was this, or working at Fuzzy Peaches, canning their shitty, bacteria-ridden product for mere pennies. And don’t preach to me about using antibiotics, since they’re rendered useless now…”

Everyone’s bummed.

“I do have some Cobalt 60 in the linen closet however. Some peaches for the road?”

The Commie runs, screaming.

As much as everyone would like to believe that hard work is the only necessity for success, there is luck involved in a lot of success. It may take the form of being born into a family that values education and doesn’t beat the shit out of you while you’re growing up, or being able to attend decently-funded schools, or being born with more internal resources (i.e., intelligence) than others, or hundreds of other things that are outside of our conscious control. Those things DO constitute luck, and while it is something possible to overcome them all, a compassionate and self-aware person (or society) recognizes that holding everyone up to the standards of “get the fuck over it, I did” isn’t workable for the good of the society.

Passing laws that prevent employers (who have more power than prospective or current employees) from exploiting their workers who may or may not have the luxury of leaving a job if the job description includes sex protects people against oppression. You have still not described why this is an onerous burden for employers.

This is magical thinking on you part. Do you think that prosperity is a spell that you cast by working hard?

By your standards, every poker game is won on the basis of skill, every Monopoly game goes to the shrewder player, and no one is ever unlucky, just lazy or stupid.

That is complete nonsense. There are always situations out of a person’s control. Working hard increases the chances of success. It does not insure it.