Libertarian, you ain’t gonna believe this (I don’t) but I’m allegedly a … libertarian (a left-leaning one though, so I guess it’s not all bad news). 
I must be spending too much time here on the Straight Dope.
Pantom:
Left-leaning libertarian is a very common ideological position. Bill Maher is one such.
I know this comes from spending too much time puttering around in my backyard (during the day) and spending my evenings watching old classics like North by Northwest, and my nights here on the Straight Dope, but…
Who’s Bill Maher? (I do know who Salma Hayak is, though. Do I get a point for that?)
He’s the host of what is currently ABC’s (and used to be Comedy Central’s) Politically Incorrect. He once said, “America doesn’t have two political parties. It has identical cousins, played by Patty Duke.”
I thought this thread had wound down after my last friendly exchange with Lib. Seems I was hasty. Anyway:
And I believe my point was that the prerequisite of a context of peace and honesty is completely unrealistic. Ditto for this:
I described public property as a precondition.
If A is a precondition to B, that’s not equivalent to A==>B.
It’s equivalent to ‘not A’ ==> ‘not B’.
Use of public property is not unfettered even in a democracy. But at least in a democracy in which public property exists, there are means for rights for all - rich or poor, landed or not, having lived their lives to an appropriately prudent standard or not - to be protected and expanded.
They’re doing a lot of stifling of speech - by denying paid access to the airwaves to those with unpopular points of view, by SLAPPs (strategic lawsuits against public participation), and other means.
I certainly feel I have reason to believe that putting the means of communication in the hands of those who have something to lose from open discourse is a bad idea.
[quote]
Driving competitors out of business makes a hell of a lot more sense than attempting to make destitute random uninvolved people who could even potentially be customers. When society is poor, business suffers as well. A business will be more successful if it’s competing against fewer other businesses, but accrues no benefit from driving a business in a different market out of business.
OTOH, there seems to be a great deal of demand for individual tracks, but perhaps not in the traditional ‘single’ form. If you’ve got a 5-CD turntable, do you want to have to change all the CDs every 5 songs? I sure don’t.
If you’re going to artificially define a commodity in a way to reduce demand for it, you can of course define a commodity with low demand. The point here is, the record companies have been taking advantage of the scarcity of sellers of their product to avoid giving consumers better choices: the way things are, offering fewer, more inferior choices is better for their bottom line as a group.
But that would never happen in Libertaria. :rolleyes:
The point wasn’t to tug at your heartstrings. I was countering Libertarian’s apparent claim that the only route to being exploited would be through stupidity and a profligate lifestyle.
Does Libertaria define an age of majority? Of course not; it’s a ‘context’ in which peaceful, honest landowners can establish whatever rules they want for the use of their land. If I’m a landowner and I equate birth and majority on my land, then on my land it is so.
If they’re on my land and have nowhere else to go - no adjacent landowner will allow them on their property under any conditions - then they will, without ‘coercion’, be required to accept whatever conditions I offer for their continued presence on my land, simply because that’s the best offer that they have to choose from.
Laws, schmaws. In a society with public property, one has the option of sleeping on the street. Not a great option, but far superior to being dictated to by the only landowner who will tolerate you on his property under any conditions.
My point exactly. We’re depending on the kindness of strangers. Which is why I can guarantee that Satan, Melin, DITWD, and Kyber, among others, will not weigh in on this discussion.
It’s nice of the CR to offer their private property, but their doing so is not the same as our having free speech.
Well, Jeremy and I are not the same person, but since you called out my user name…
Well, shoot, if you can be a “fledgling democracy” for two hundred years, at least you could give us twenty or thirty years to find out. Is that why you hate libertarianism, because it’s, in your view, completely unrealistic? Do you hate also eradication of hunger? Universal quality health care? Is there any reason not to close down your fledgling democracy and its baggage, i.e., the completely unrealistic ideals to which it aspires?
Huh? (A ==>B ) ==> ((Not B ==> Not A) And (Not(Not A ==> Not B))).
What the heck does that mean? Are you saying that The State will recognize a gay marriage if it takes place in the middle of the street?
The largest private land owner in the U.S. is Ted Turner, isn’t it?
Exploited? I don’t think I’ve ever used that word, have I? Secure a man’s freedom from the coercion and fraud of others, and I’d say he has a good chance to succeed.
[shaking head with resigned half-grin…]
Yeah, the arbitr…, excuse me, magical age of 18 (or 21, or 17, or 14, or 16, or 15, depending on what state and for what purpose) is the way to go, despite that some people are more mature at 15 than some others are at 50. That’s the thinnest thread you’ve hung onto yet, RT.
You mean like kids in South Central LA?
Not a great option indeed!
youthinformation.com advises people not to sleep on the street because they are “in danger of rape, physical violence, poor health and possible arrest, amongst other things.” Plus, you run into all those nasty little city ordinances, like this on from the City of Tybee Island, Georgia (Google will give you thousands of these): “It shall be unlawful for any person to camp or sleep on the streets, beaches, parks, parking lots or other public areas, whether in automobiles, trucks, campers, recreational vehicles or other vehicle, or in equipment designed and intended for the purpose of camping. Such activity may be permitted in public areas specifically set aside and designated for that purpose. Any Person suspected of such activity may be charged with a misdemeanor and fined in accordance with Section 1-1-8. (ORD. 2000-24; 9/14/2000)”
Why should they? They broke the rules. They were banned. Further, the “among others” include site vandals, trolls, harrassers, and other jerks. If they want to behave this way, let them start their own site and discuss all they want to. Hell, there are free sites and free software out there, so you can’t even do your appeal to pity on their behalf.
How many people here are posting from prison? Where’s their free speech? Oh, you mean they broke some rules? Yeah, yada yada yada.
This thing oughtta be moved to GD. It’s getting downright serious.
Anyway, I do have some major differences with you libertarians, which don’t get brought out in short quizzes like the one on that website. In order of priority, they are:
1 - Unions. I’m reasonably certain that combinations like these would be considered a bad thing by most libertarians.
2 - Universal health care. As this would have to be a government program of some sort, this is a pretty big area of disagreement, I would think.
3 - This one’s fundamental, and is what RTFirefly has I think been trying to get at: if we reduce the role of government, we do accomplish some good things, like eliminating, one hopes, the drug war, eliminating zoning restrictions, which I think are a waste of time and merely stifle economic growth, and eliminating such weird experiments in social engineering as rent control. As much as I part company with my liberal peers on at least some of these issues, the reason why I quoted George W up there (the original one, not the current incarnation) is that the Constitution was founded on a principle that libertarians and extreme leftists both don’t get: the diffusion of power so that no one gets to have a monopoly on it, or even a dangerous plurality. Right now the main disagreement, most ordinary people would say, is between Big Government and Big Corporations. But at least they manage to keep each other somewhat in check. Eliminate Big Government, and we’re left at the mercy of the Big Corporations, who will be able to party with no one to hold them back.
For most of us, this is not a good thing.
(1) Libertarianism does not oppose voluntary collective bargaining. In fact, it is an excellent tactic for workers peacefully to protect their own interests. What we do oppose, however, is any special interest legislation that will force people to join unions, or that will force businesses to negotiate with them. Let people decide for themselves with whom they will interact.
(2) We do not oppose universal health care, so long as its participants are voluntary. What we oppose is seizing your earnings against your will, giving a cut to the polticians and bureaucrats for their “expenses”, and giving me the rest.
(3) Here is the great misconception about libertarianism, namely, that we favor “small” government. A government needs to be however large a government needs to be in order to secure the rights of its citizens. Whatever size it might attain, the security of rights ought to be its goal.
“It is to secure our rights that we resort to government at all.” — Thomas Jefferson to Francois D’Ivernois, 1795.
The purpose of a government is to exert force, either as a response to force previously initiated or as a prophylactic against imminent force. What we oppose is initial force by government or any other entity. As Will Smith’s character in Men in Black said to the giant cockroach, “Don’t start nuttin’, won’t be nuttin’.”
It is not the size of government that we are concerned with, but rather the scope of it. It needs to be as big as it needs to be to maintain a context of peace and honesty. But it does not need to be any bigger than that. In other words, if it is successfully protecting you from the coercion and fraud of all other people, it doesn’t need to expand.
As to Big Business and Big Government keeping each other in check, this is, well, sorry, but ludicrous.
From Open Secrets:
It is the combination of Big Business wealth and Big Government power that forces poor people out of their homes to make way for new factories. Mister Tycoon and Senator Fatcat enjoy a symbiotic relationship.
Eminent Domain, Asset Forfeiture, and other legislative tactics and strategies insure that shots will be called by those with the most political clout. By contrast, a libertarian government has no legislative powers over and above suppression of coercion and fraud. It cannot “condemn” Widow Smith’s property and send her away. It has no powers of eminent domain.
That still doesn’t make 19th century Argentina a reliable model for what to expect from libertarianism.
You also tried to pin on Libertarian the claim that the denial of a single reasonable right is grounds to abandon our system of government. To put it simply, you set up a straw man, and knocked it down. We’re all aware you consider public property to be a precondition for rights.
This is true only if the public desires its property to be used for such. Also, you have only claimed that the right to stand around and protest depends on public property. To claim that freedom of the press cannot exist without the ability to make mimeographs in a public park is absurd.
More importantly, though, is the fact that public property is, in practice, not really any more of a haven for free speech than private property. Every publication, every website, every dinner conversation, every church, exists due to private property.
How does one limit access to that portion of the airwaves one does not own?
The government alone has the ability to control all the means of communication in this country, to the extent that such is possible. And it has much to lose from open discourse. How in Libertaria does any entity control all the means of communication? I suppose it could buy all the property in the country, but without emminent domain, that’s rather difficult.
If people want a single track, they can download it on Napster, record it off the radio, copy it from a friend’s CD, etc. If the record companies believed they could make money by releasing songs this way, they’d do it. Still, this is a far cry from being randomly capricious towards consumers just because you can.
Not a claim that I’ve ever made. The only restriction I’d have on the music industry is that Britney Spears music would count as force if one did not consent to listen to it beforehand.
And I was countering your apparent claim that libertarianism is flawed if bad things can still happen.
My body is my own private property. If you object to something I am doing on your property, you may remove me from your property, using whatever force is necessary to do so (and no more). Unlike our society, the laws in Libertaria are not dependant solely on where I happen to be standing. The question of what a landowner can do with a person on his property for peaceful and honest purposes becomes a question of externalities, which really can’t be solved now.
Hmmm… I think vagrancy laws would be more likely than there existing only one landowner who will allow you to rent a place to live, and even then only as a serf.
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Unions: Great sounding theory, but in practice what I want to know is this: how, without the NLRB to run and certify elections to determine if a union is the will of the majority of the workers at a worksite, would you ever get a fair election on the question? How, without laws that prevent, however feebly, an employer from firing and/or blacklisting a pro-union worker, would an organizing effort ever get off the ground?
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A universal health care system that’s voluntary is something of a contradiction, wouldn’t you say? In insurance, the larger the pool, the more you get to spread out the risk, and the cheaper the insurance is. Obviously, the largest pool possible is the entire nation, which is why so many of us think it makes eminent sense to have universal health care. Libertarians, however, are obliged to oppose this on the ideological, as opposed to the practical, ground that this amounts to government coercion.
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Government pollution, labor and consumer protection laws are all vigorously opposed by corporations, and are the reason they give all that money. They wouldn’t be giving that money if the government regulation were ineffective. QED.
Well, if the feeble laws you speak of weren’t there, maybe the workers would need some other motivation like, oh, I dunno, their own self-interest. But wait, is this one of those scenarios where the employer is a brilliant but evil man with an IQ of 150 who owns all the water on earth, while the employees are dull-headed drones who can’t think their way out of a paper bag?
What’s with the majority thing? The union isn’t formed by vote, but by consent. I don’t know why, given a normal situation, you would need to certify anything, especially from a team of bureaucrats whose interest it is to keep labor tension going strong and therefore their own bureaucratic jobs. A strike by a few key workers can bring a factory to its knees.
Also, since they work in Libertaria, they are free to go work elsewhere, and will profit handsomely since employers will have to compete fairly for labor. Or is this one of those scenarios where they are isolated in a desert from the rest of civilizaton with only one factory in town and ten brain cells shared among all of them so that they can’t move elsewhere or start their own competing business right where they are?
Oh, I get it, a “from each according to his ability” thing… universal health care North Korean style. What’s good for the masses is good for the individuals.
Anyway, you’re wrong about the risk pool; at least, you’re misleading about it. You posit a pool representing health that is a neat bell curve. Life ain’t like that. The ones at the bottom are the ones who require the most expense. If you are in the minority of healthy people, compare private insurance rates to the rates of your insurance at work where you have a risk pool. You’ll be astounded at the savings you’ll get by insuring yourself. The insurer has to cover the sickest feeblist one and the healthy people have to pay for it.
Your observation about ideological opposition is high-ground hypocrasy at its finest. You, too, oppose certain things on an ideological basis. You would not like it, for example, if the majority of people determined that gang rape is okay. You simply rationalize that dipping into other peoples’ pockets is acceptable so long as it is done by someone else, namely, someone who has morphed magically into an uberhuman, like a congressman or something.
Boy, you don’t know much about economics, do you? They wouldn’t be giving all that money if they weren’t getting what they’re paying for. QED.
Boy, you don’t know much about induction, do you?[sup]X[/sup] 
Let’s examine: “They [corporations] wouldn’t be giving all that money if they weren’t getting what they’re paying for. QED.”
Assuming that’s a correct statement of fact, then we must ask for what exactly they’re paying. Since we have only one explicit proposition here, let’s go with pantom’s hypothesis for the moment, that they’re paying for vigorous opposition to governmental regulation. So; why do the corporations want what they’re paying for? I think the simple answer would be that it’s because they feel less regulation is better for them. Why do they feel that less regulation is better? One reason might be a committment to libertarian ideals, but I would wager that they’re primarily driven by something more defensible to stock holders, like higher EBITs due to fewer regulatory compliance issues and fewer fines. And if they’re spending money to avoid those issues and fines, then the prospective regulations against which they’re lobbying must have the potential to cost them much more than they’re shelling out to lobbyists and campaign contributions. Therefore, they must feel that such regulation is effective, at least insofar as it forces the corporations to spend money they would not otherwise have spent on such things as plant safety, environmental concerns and fair labor practices.
Now, Lib, if I’m entirely off-base here, please enlighten me. Do you disagree with pantom’s assertion that corporations are opposed, in general terms, to gov’t regulation? If not, can you show that my reasoning is faulty in some fundamental way, or show where my conclusion is incomplete or insufficient? (Certainly you must feel that it is, but I’d like to see your reasons for believing corporations, in the absence of government intervention, would be as concerned with the issues pantom listed as they appear to be now.)
[sup]X[/sup][sub]Kidding Lib, mostly. I know you understand formal logic far better than I, but I wanted to show you that you’re not cute when you cop a superior attitude…[/sub]
xenophon41 covered #3 nicely (thank you), and I’ll let #1 stand, since the law is currently on my side on that one.
So on to #2.
I know this is going to be hard, but I’m going to try to get you down to the level of practical reality. Listen up:
Prior to the Hillary debacle, businesses were beginning to line up behind universal health care. Health expenses were, as usual, rocketing, and they were getting tired of having to pay that expense.
They knew, as I said, that the larger the pool, the cheaper the insurance. If you’re healthy and you self-insure, as you said, I presume by saving against the day you become sick, you’ll be in for a surprise when you come up out of open-heart surgery, should you be so unlucky as to suddenly need it, and are presented with a bill for 150k. Living your life in the hopes of dying in your sleep while in the meantime avoiding all accidents and illnesses will only work for a very lucky very few people.
Meantime, out in the real world, my last two jobs involved working first for a small company that employed, at the time, around 500 people, and then for a larger company that employs people measured in the tens of thousands. The health insurance was cheaper at the larger company, for the obvious reason. It was also better, which meant I was getting more and paying (as my employer was also paying) less. BTW, the smaller company self-insured.
The finance guy at the smaller company, who used to visit with us programmers from time to time because he considered us the only rational people in the whole freakin’ company, wanted a government plan, precisely because he was spending an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out how to hold down the insurance cost and still provide a benefit that would be worth something to the majority of the employees.
Prior to the Hillary debacle, the AMA ran a scathing editorial in JAMA that excoriated the USA for being one of only two industrialized countries without a national health insurance plan. Their self-interest, you ask? That the insurance bureaucracy was getting in the way (and probably cutting into doctors’ profits) and raising costs without in any way contributing to the delivery of health care.
IBM was behind it. A sure sign that the Hillary thing was going down was when IBM withdrew its support, after she presented her proposal.
On practical grounds, national health insurance makes all kinds of sense. What we need is for someone to come up with a plan that can fly, presented by someone who knows that politics is the art of compromise and the possible. Instead, it was crafted and presented by an ideologue with zero political experience.
Which goes to show you how far you’ll get if you let ideology lead you by the nose. Doesn’t matter which variety it is, any of them will fail in the marketplace of ideas in an open democracy, where the acid test is simple: will it work?
Xeno:
I do not agree with Pantom’s blanket assertion that corporations are “paying for vigorous opposition to governmental regulation”, as you put it.
If libertarianism offered corporations what they wanted, you might expect that the Libertarian Party would be a heavily financed dynamic political party rather than the broke joke that it is. Corporations rather like playing the regulation and legislation game, the object of which is to effect such regulations and legislation as benefits your corporation. It becomes a pissing contest between cherry pickers. With millions and millions of laws, regulations, and executive orders on the federal, state, and local level, as well as a bureaucracy so thick you could trap neutrinos with it, corporations can posture and elbow their way into just about any position they please, in direct proportion to their wealth and influence. Look, for example, at how the tobacco executives are “suffering”. Their punishment for fraud? They had to make their consumers pay a very hefty fine.
The politicians profit either way. Favor gun control? You’ll get money from Hangun Control, Inc. and other PACs. Oppose gun control? You’ll get money from the NRA, the NSSF, and others. Favor abortion? You’ll get money from National Abortion Rights Action League, Planned Parenthood, and others. Oppose abortion? You’ll get money from Susan B Anthony List, Right to Life, et al. What about general interest, rather than single issue, items like transporation? Well if you’re a Republican, you’ll get 47% of Northwest Airlines contributions. If you’re a democrat, you get the rest. And so on and so on.
Pantom:
The law is on your side? If I’d known we were debating law, I would have already withdrawn. I thought we were debating ethics.
With respect to your insurance anectdotes, I don’t know what point you’re making except that Hillary turns everything she touches to shit.
Regarding what’s practical, what’s practical depends entirely on what you’re practicing. If you’re practicing a majoritarian totalitarianism, then national health insurance, and other Marxist agendas, are practical. If, on the other hand, you’re practicing voluntary human relations in a context of nonaggression, then libertarianism is the only practical way to proceed.
OK, that’s it. You guys been squatting on my thread long enough. You want libertarianism? You got it. I started this thread, therefore I reserve the right to do with it as I please, and since you guys aren’t doing anything Pitworthy, more GD-type stuff, I’m sending an e-mail to John Corrado.
OUT! The lot of you!
What, no squatter’s rights??
Hey, Olent! Sometimes I think about socialism when I masturbate. Does that count?
Only if it counts that I think about libertarianism sometimes while I’m taking a shit.
What’s that? Most of you want to stay on this thread? EEK! Majoritarian totalitarianism! Must… save… thread… from tyranny of majority!
Well, as a small r republican, I’m loathe to interefere with the wishes of the majority. On the other hand, as a Big R Republican, I have to bend my will to the wishes of my largest campaign contributers, namely Olentzero, who is more likely to buy me a beer than Libertarian (mostly by virtue of location, admittedly).
So. I’m gonna give y’all 24 hours to clear out of this thread. If you’d like to continue this conversation, please start a GD thread, and then come back to this thread to post a link. Tomorrow morning, I’ll close this thread.
Yours,
John
Wow, this political influence thing is kind of fun! 
[sub]Psst, John… close this puppy today and I’ll make it a six-pack, your choice.[/sub]