No, I realize there is a difference between libertarianism and anarchy (at least in most cases - some versions of libertarianism are anarchy). A libertarian society can have a strong government that enforces laws against murder and assault and theft, for instance. But that same government might have no consumer protection laws, for example, or no laws which prohibit non-violent racial discrimination.
So somebody might think it’s great that Libertopia has no laws against gay marriage - until he gets fired from his job and kicked out of his apartment for being gay. He might think it’s great that soda companies can put saccharin in their soda - until he finds out that soda also contains diethylene glycol. He might think it’s great he can do whatever he wants on his land - until he finds out his neighbour can do the same and he’s building a massive pig farm.
But I was looking at something more subtle: what if you live in a free society, and don’t agree with its freedom… Can you teach, preach, proselytize, and promote various forms of unfreedom? Can you form a special interest group intended to advance the cause of whatever form of tyranny you favor?
How far is freedom committed to defend the liberty of people…who would destroy that freedom? Not by the ultimate act of infringement, but by the intermediate act of trying to undermine the popular belief in the value of liberty, and the fostering of beliefs antithetical to it?
And…would this differ in a Libertarian society from how it is addressed in a typical statist society?
My opinion (and, of course, opinions are like underarms) is that a Libertarian society is less able to defend itself against sedition. It might not even recognize the concept!
If my understanding of libertarianism is correct, than a libertarian republic would be less subject to this kind of “sedition”.
A “statist” society generally recognizes majority rule as a source of legitimacy. So if you wanted to legalize mopery, for example, all you’d have to do is persuade a majority of your fellow citizens that mopery was a good idea. Then that majority would enact mopery as a law and the people who oppose mopery would have to go along with it. Even those who don’t like mopery would acknowledge its legality on the basis that the majority has the right to enact a law.
But a libertarian society does not generally recognize majority rule to the extent that a statist society does. A libertarian society holds that there are fundamental principles that cannot be abridged even if the majority of people want to do so. Libertarians hold that these fundamental principles outweigh majority rule. (Imagine it as being the equivalent of a Bill of Rights that can’t be amended.) So even if a majority of the people wanted to legalize mopery - even an overwhelming majority of ninety percent - mopery could not be legalized if it the prohibition against mopery was one of the fundamental principles of this society.
That said, there’s an argument about how much liberty there is in Libertopia if ninety percent of the people want to legalize mopery and the other ten percent are able to deny this popular will and keep mopery illegal.
Actually, I think the worst of all would be the loony-militarist/militia version of libertarianism where private individuals can own nuclear weapons. The neofeudal version of libertarianism would be awful, but it’s unlikely to destroy civilization. Letting anyone who feels like it have nukes would.
You have the right of free speech, so can preach or promote anything you want, as long as you don’t actually violate anyone’s rights. Ideas compete with each other in the marketplace, just like anything else. But if your ideas include coercing others, you’re free to preach them, but prohibited from acting on them . . . even if a majority of people agree with you. There are limits on what a majority can and cannot do.
And sedition is hardly an issue, since there is no such huge colossal entity as The State.
I consistently ask “libertarians” how “democratic elections” work in their system. They pretend not to know what I’m talking about.
Libertarianism is dog-eat-dog capitalism in which government exists mainly to force beaten dogs to submit to being eaten. (This may seem incompatible with “democratic” elections … but the present U.S. electorate seems intent on proving itself a counterexample.)
Most revealing, perhaps, is that the Libertarian hero Milton Friedman was key adviser in developing one government model: Pinochet’s Chile.
(Apologies if I’ve offended any “moderate libertarians.” But, frankly, the nutcases with their anti-vaccine and anti-FRB agenda have given “libertarianism” such a bad name, any “moderate libertarians” might do well to find a new descriptor.)
The descriptions of “reasonable” libertarianism in this thread sound like nothing more than liberal representative democracy. The only difference seems to be the breadth of the bill of rights or the specific policy decisions made, with no two people agreeing on the exact contours.
Going by that then, really, libertarianism isn’t an “ism” on own but just another species of conservatism.
Anarchy is impossible in a civilized state because there must be some sort of an “absolute” who has a monopoly of force to at the minimum maintain internal order and protect against external threats.
As for minarchism (which is usually meant by Libertarianism), I think it has many virtues and admirable goals although most of them are too isolationist and too extremely laissez-faire to be fully practical. Besides his (somewhat) pro-life views and support for marijuana legalization, I find Ron Paul’s quasi-Dixiecrat paleo-libertarianism less paletable than normal libertarianism.
I agree the OP is using the term in a ridiculous way (albeit one with precedent on this board). But “anarchism” is not black and white; there are many flavors of philosophy that use that name, not all as ruggedly individualistic as you might expect.
You and I are* clearly *defining State differently. You posit a body of traditions, nay, laws that are unassailable, and thus implicitly a people (an electorate?) that will enforce them, but don’t call that a State.
Tell me, if the people are swimming in negative liberty, and under no compulsion to enforce the law on anyone else, who stops coercion? What happens when the people say, “Meh, it’s OK to coerce that guy over there.”?
This is not just theoretical. The USA was a libertarian society founded on and worshiping Liberty. It also happily practiced chattel slavery and genocide. A man with no obligations doesn’t necessary fight for the rights of his weaker neighbor.
Correct but is is very distinct from other branches of conservatism. It is the direct opposite of the religious/authoritarian branches for example. The reason it falls under the conservative category is just a matter of historical circumstances and the fact that libertarians aren’t really focused on the whole society whereas all leftist movements focus on the group rather than individuals. That is a foreign concept to us. It is all about the individual and personal freedoms with strong rights for everyone but not forcing any particular person to coerced into anything unless it infringes on the rights of other people.
That last point leaves a lot of room for personal interpretation when it comes to laws and that is why I a moderate libertarian. I think private roads, unlimited weapons, and open borders are a fool’s idea but extreme libertarians believe in those. However, unlike communism, libertarianism doesn’t require a ‘revolution’ to make it work. It is simply an ideal that can counterbalance group-think at the expense of almost all individuals and can be worked toward in any degree.
There are libertarians (not necessarily “Lumpyists”) who have major problems with intellectual property law and its constraints on technological development. They are not entirely thrilled with the fortunes made by Apple and Microsoft, and are a pretty big part of the open-source movement. So saying, “IT is libertarian,” misses a pretty big conflict between a sort of limited propertarianism and a sort of limited anarchism in IT.
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There are many different possible emphases of liberty in moral and social thought. But the libertarian society USA libertarians are dreaming of really is the USA itself, or what it was. Ron Paul is trying to return to an idealized “Constitutional” age, before FDA, New Deal, Social Security, but also before Civil Rights law, legal labor organization, and constraints on the police.
The, “I’m just doing it for myself,” society was America from colonial days up through Jim Crow–and it had people sentenced to hard labor for vagrancy (really as any excuse for conscript labor) and a majority culture that let it happen.
The USA’s idea of liberty and libertopia is the USA’s old idea of itself, dressed up in the name of our old goddess. It’s really as pathetically atavistic as that.
A libertarian friend of mine swiped the old joke about Jews: he said that if you have five libertarians in a room, you’ll have six different philosophical viewpoints.
But, actually, one of the things I admire about libertarian thought is that there is a “calculus” that fairly well predicts how they’ll view a particular proposal. “Does it limit what I can do? Then I’m against it.” I don’t know of any other major political philosophy that is as highly scrutable as libertarianism.
That doesn’t make a lot of sense. Laws against rape and murder limit what a person can do but I don’t think you’ll find any libertarians that are against those laws.
Not really; many libertarians have no problem at all with religious or other tyranny, as long as it isn’t imposed by the government. The idea that oppression or coercion is only oppression or coercion if the government does it is a common libertarian belief.
No; it’s because libertarian ideas are more useful to the Right than the Left because they get the government out of the way of the people who want to exploit and dominate the common people.
Yes it does. Very few people actually want to live under libertarianism; they want restrictions to be lifted from their behavior and protections lifted from other people, but they certainly don’t want to be the one who loses protections and they don’t want other people to be free to attack or exploit them in turn.
Plenty are; they just define rape or murder as something that can only be inflicted by the government. If they force a woman to have sex, that’s just between him and her; she had the “free choice” to be shot or starve to death rather than submit (and there seems to be a lot of misogyny in libertarian circles IMHO). And if they kill someone. it’s “necessary”.
One could make the same point about anarchy. We are gradually relying less and less on coercion and including people more and more in at least some degree of decision-making over things that affect them.
There are all kinds of good arguments for libertarianism, arguments that millions of people ought to be receptive to. So, why haven’t Libertarians fared better at the polls? Several reasons (reasons libertarians aren’t going to want to hear):
While Libertarianism is an appealing philosophy in the abstract, actual flesh and blood libertarians are frequently scary nut jobs who subscribe to a host of deranged racist, antisemitic and flat-out idiotic conspiracy theories.
Of the flesh-and-blood libertarians who AREN’T deranged racist conspiracy theorists, a large percentage are potheads and slackers.
I don’t have any desire to insult people, but I call it as I see it… and I’m speaking as someone who has some sympathy for libertarianism. If I see most actual libertarians as dangerous nut jobs, imagine how the look to people who AREN’T sympathetic!
Almost EVERYBODY gets… how shall I put it… “stuff” from the government. Farmers get subsidies from the feds. Senior citizens get Social Security. Poor people get welfare and food stamps. Suburbanites get freeways to drive on. Students get grants and subsidized loans. Get the idea? Almost ALL of us get what we think of as free “stuff” from the government, and most of us start to feel ENTITLED to the stuff we get. Libertarians preach smaller government and lower taxes, and millions of people applaud those concepts… but almost NONE of those people want to give up the stuff they now get. And they’ll vote early and often against people who campaign on a platform of taking away their free stuff.
Libertarianism is most appealing to young, single affluent males. It holds almost NO appeal for women with children. Given a choice between a politician promising to spend more moneys on parks, schools, and programs to help “the children” and one saying “Let evrybody fend for himself,” middle class Moms will vote for the former candidate every time.