Some people will learn, some won’t, some can’t.
When you conclude someone is in the latter category, the “ignore” button can be useful. IME, a good rule of thumb is when they start telling you what you think.
Good job, you’ve managed to demonstrate that you are completely and entirely ignorant of how the current system works. And even though multiple people have answered your question, you continue to demonstrate willful ignorance by ignoring their answers, making up some bullshit, then asking it again.
“Majority rule”
That answer is so laughably stupid, but know I know what to expect from you:
North Carolina Voters Pass Same-Sex Marriage Ban which passed by a margin of more than 20 percentage points. So that’s the system you’re arguing in favour of. That, in the CURRENT system is who decides what’s a valid use of government who decides what rights individuals have.
“Out of 28 states where constitutional amendments or initiatives that define marriage as the union of a man and a woman were put on the ballot in a voter referendum, voters in all 28 states voted to approve such amendments.” (wiki)
I’m glad you finally cleared that up. We can now assume that people bitching about libertarianism are homophobic and want a system where they can use tryany of the majority to what ever ends suit them.
It’s hilarious that a person can claim libertarianism might mean a gay person can’t rent an apartment, while at the same time promoting a system where until recently the government said it was illegal to be gay.
Sorry, emac, I was traveling the other day and I missed your post.
First off, I’ll point out the obvious: you’re wrong, of course. No surprise there.
There’s nothing in a libertarian government (other than libertarians’ belief in their own wonderfulness) that would prevent homosexuality from being illegal. All the libertarians would have to do is include this among the fundamental and unchangeable principles their government is based on. Then there wouldn’t be any possibility of a majority overturning these laws.
Once again, you’ve demonstrated that you not only don’t understand my position, you don’t even understand your own position.
??? How do you reconcile the libertarian system – with its emphasis on individual rights and freedoms – with a ban on homosexuality? Such a ban would require a government enforcement mechanism – a police squad that had the power to look into people’s homes and to act against gays whenever they were detected. How the hell is this liberty and freedom?
Isn’t the libertarian ideal supposed to be: if it doesn’t hurt anyone else, then you should be free to do it?
What intrusions on privacy are prohibited in this kind of libertarian community? Can we get drunk? Can we gamble? Can we swear? Can we have sex with people of the opposite sex, without the sanction of marriage? Or can all of these be prohibited by un-amendable foundational law and the society still be claimed to be libertarian?
What you’re ignoring is the fact that those “fundamental and unchangeable principles” are not arrived at arbitrarily, but are based on objective principles of liberty and individual rights. Or are you insinuating that someone’s sexual orientation is somehow a violation of someone else’s rights?
When you said “objective principles of liberty and individual rights” you caused heads to explode all over the Internet. At least I assume that explains those loud noises coming from outside.
Did you really write that? Do you not understand that’s exactly why everybody else boggles at libertarianism pronouncements? Or why the very thought that libertarians can come up with “objective principles of liberty and individual rights” that everyone will agree upon is exactly equivalent to a religion?
Simple; have it imposed by non-government organizations and individuals. In libertarian-land, it’s only oppression if the government does it.
No; “screw you, I’ve got mine” and “might makes right” are the libertarian ideal. If your boss wants to spy into your personal life and demand that you live according to his personal standards, that’s your and his business; not that of the government. And if your only choice is to work for him or starve, too bad.
Of course. As a former libertarian, I’m not arguing in favor of it, I’m only trying to clarify this one point. To many libertarians “objectivity” is an important principle, and is a safeguard against random, arbitrary laws. You may want to address the question of “Whose objectivity?” to an actual libertarian.
I went with “special values”. Those values being “selfish” and/or “naive” and/or “a–hole.”
This is the fundamental problem with libertarianism. Libertarians act like there’s a set of rules written down somewhere that everyone agrees on. That’s not true.
If this country became Libertopia, somebody would have to sit down and decide what the fundamental principles actually are. This is something that’s been repeatedly pointed out but too many libertarians wave it away like it’s not an issue.
So who would be making those decisions? The same majority that emac scoffs at? The libertarian elite that will decide what’s best for the rest of us? The ghost of Ayn Rand? Every man for himself?
Until libertarians can answer this question, nobody’s going to take them seriously.
If only there was some way to craft a document with thing like enumerated rights.
That’s no answer. Again; what are those enumerated rights going to be? Who decides?
Who decided for every other country? Who wrote the constitution and bill of rights(or equivalent if it exists) for every other country?
I don’t quite understand what exactly everyone is grousing about, here is the platfom of the libertarian party:
Its long though, if you are asking who decides really minute stuff like whether its ok to sell unpastuerized milk, I’d assume some from of representative democracy.
The point that people are trying to make is that they throw around words like “fundamental,” “liberty” and “objective” as if the choices being made have some inherent virtue lacking in modern social-liberal democracy. What it seems to come down to is a small group of people in the name of liberty, objectivity, and fundamentalism seeking ti impose by fiat their particular policy choices which should be left to the democratic process.
What it comes down ti is the fact that the polity might not agree that certain things constitute fundamental rights and the libertarian labeling such policy disagreements as a moral failing.
And that aside from the fact that even enumerated fundamental principles have to be interpreted and the answer, contrary to what libertarians seem to imply, is not always obvious.
But libertarians DO believe things like freedom of speech are fundamental, that is their whole platform. If libertarians were willing to waiver on those fundamental freedoms due to public demand they would no longer be libertarians. Inalienable individual rights are the core of the philosophy.
I didn’t read the platform and skimmed the thread only enough to see that my fundamental question has not been answered.
You say that a “representative democracy” gets to decide “really minute stuff” in Libertopia. Who gets to decide the “really major stuff”, like what’s in the Bill of Rights? Are Amendments allowed? If the answer is that representative democracy also gets to decide really major stuff, let me point out that in the strongest democracies, like France, etc., more than 51% of voters have agreed that health care should be provided to all, financed in part by taxes on the rich. 51% have agreed that government should regulate employee safety, etc. I for one do not see how Libertarianism is compatible with representative democracy, unless the assumption is that (as is partly the case in U.S.A.) lower-class voters are disenfrachised or somehow coaxed to vote ignorantly against their own interests.
“Libertarians” like to appeal to pot smokers. That’s just a facade to attract votes. In fact, Libertarianism is all about Greed-is-God Dog-eat-Dog Capitalism.
I don’t even at this point understand what the discussion is about, if you really think libertarianism is anathema to democracy you don’t understand at all what it is about. Every single good thing offered about the philosophy in this thread is just shrugged off with saying it is bait and switch to get party members, what libertarianism is really about is fascism and baby raping and grinding the poor into dog food.
I don’t think taxpayer supported health care would be impossible under libertarianism at all.
The “really major stuff” like the constitution and bill of rights would have to be crafted in the usual way, in fact the US constition is probably a pretty good guide to what one would look like with tweaks of course. Who decided these rights were self evident anyway, did anyone vote on them? Goddamn fascists.
Please tell me what political system this would NOT apply to.
I’m not trying to be coy or play “gotcha.” I really want to understand the Liubertarian model. The platform contains
" We call for the repeal of the income tax, the abolishment of the Internal Revenue Service and all federal programs and services not required under the U.S. Constitution."
Rightly or wrongly, it is logical for the 70% least wealthy to vote to tax the 30% most wealthy. (Or make it 90%/10%, whatever.) Do libertarians anticipate that the 70% will be wise enough to see that their self-interest is to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of the wealthiest 30% ? My question is straightforward, if poorly phrased, and I’ve never heard the libertarian answer.
Another Doper started a libertarian thread in which he eventually explained that he approved of good government regulations but disapproved of bad ones. Now that’s a libertarian platform we can all get behind!
The rest of us say that it’s the other way around. Libertarians are the ones who keep insisting that principles are fundamental and therefore if all individuals agree to these principles there is no need for government to enforce them, interpret them, or mediate between groups who disagree about them.
And the rest of us keep noting the language used by libertarians in this very thread. They make much about being masters of their own property but say nothing about renters. They talk about running their lives without impinging on others as if that is anything other than fantasy. They breathlessly claims that rights are fundamental, which means they can never change even when society does.
The Constitution was put in place without a Bill of Rights. That happened in part because many of the framers thought that they were rights too fundamental to need to be written in. The people did not think that. They wanted the written protection. They wound up with a jumble of rights (freedom of assembly), prohibitions (no quartering of troops), and glittering generalities (9 & 10) that were of meaning to that exact time and place and so open-ended that no two people in the country agree on how they are to be applied in the everyday world. That’s why the Court system with enforcing power, again, something that is not valued in a libertarian world, has risen to become a dominant player in the game.
“The Founding Fathers said” is a clause that should stop anyone from reading farther. The Founding Fathers disagreed with one another about everything at the time of writing the Constitution, and they went back and forth in their beliefs later depending upon whether they were in power and had to actually accomplish something or out of power and free to scoff. The entirety of the Constitutional Convention was a series of compromises and kicking cans down the road to be dealt with later. The entirety of American history is the compromises of dealing with those compromises by trying to interpret what rights might be and how they are to be applied at the edges, the thorniest cases. There have been enormous successes and horrifying failures in doing so. What there has never been for a single second is agreement.
Representative democracy backed by court enforcement is an answer to the problem of getting a billion competing interests to suffer each other’s infringing presence. Mutual agreement is not an answer. It can’t happen under any circumstances. And - fundamentally - representative democracy with court enforcement is incompatible with a system depending on universal agreement and free market enforcement. They are two different worlds. Libertarianism fails not because it is bad policy. It fails because it is bad thinking. Nothing in this thread provides the tiniest bit of evidence to the contrary.