In the case of imminent domain (assuming a libertarian government would have it) I don’t see how it would be more prone to corruption any more than a socialist government.
A libertarian government is all about protecting its citizens. In your example above what was it that tipped the scales for workers?
Are there no workhouses? Can’t they get jobs? Perhaps the problem is that the government stopped letting them work in the mines!
One of the problems when we push responsibility onto the government is that it takes it off of the individual. So parents have children without thinking about what happens if they die. Nothing is stopping them from having a will and plan in place.
Consider this: The Problem With Choice in a Free Society We have Medicare and SS and so we don’t have to take care of our parents. It becomes a bit of a cycle.
I honestly cannot tell if this is sacrasm or not. I’m going to be charitable and assume it is.
Agreed. In a perfect world every parent would have savings and life insurance and a will. And then no children would be left destitute when their parents plane crashes. But we do not live in that world, and defining public policy as if we did leads to lots of hurting children.
My point is that there are some jobs that we, as a society, have always considered a burden to be shared by the community. Caring for orphans, educating children, caring for the sick and elderly. And the best way, in my opinion, to organize such community efforts is through a government invested by the people with the power to fulfill these obligations.
I vaguely read that thread back when it first popped up, and on skimming I think Sam Stone has some reasonable points - you cannot expect a pure Libertarian system to be acceptable to the population, because there are certain classes of people that we, as a moral species, just will not throw to the wolves. He does gloss over how bad conditions could get for the elderly pre-SS, but perhaps people were more generous in the Great White North.
:rolleyes: No, I’m just pointing out the blindingly obvious.
Nonsense; they’d allow slavery - in practice if not in name. There wouldn’t be anything to stop the wealthy and powerful from imposing slavelike conditions on their workers, there’d be no government help they could appeal to. And if they turned to the last refuge of the desperate, violence, then and only then would the government intervene; against them, for daring to raise a hand against their betters.
Exactly we have history to show just how ruthless the corporations and wealthy behave without the government to stop them, and to demonstrate just how silly it is to pretend that non-government forces can’t engage in tyranny.
OK, John Mace (or any other libertarian), let’s hear some examples of contexts where the government is over-intrusive, which would not be the case in a libertarian society, and I’ll argue for how those laws are just enforcing people’s rights to not be oppressed.
Q: Has libertarianism ever been successfully implemented anywhere?
A: LIBERTARIANISM IS TEH EEEEEEEEEEVIL!!!
Yet another thread asking a perfectly valid question about libertarianism, derailed by posters who can’t discuss the subject on its own merits combined with people who still think libertarianism = anarchism.
More like another thread on libertarianism full of people who insist that everyone talk about libertarianism as if it would work as advertised, and not as history shows it would.
Uh, no. The problem is taking care of orphans. The question is: which method does this best.
The reason that there are government programs to help orphans is exactly because there is such a vacuum. No one is preventing, or suggests preventing, private charity. I’m not aware that there ever were laws preventing private charity in the West. (There could be in Communist countries for all I know.) However, the drive for government to step in came exactly because the job was too big for private charities.
In the mid-60s CBS News discovered that people were going hungry all over America. There were plenty of charities back then. Government, through food stamps. allayed the problem.
What would you do if despite your expectations you find that private charities are not doing the job?
Sure. Many governments were run by and for the powerful. It is not like someone who is against libertarianism must be for every other type of government.
In fact, before government got involved religion probably did the best job at helping the poor, since they could collect money not using guns but using fear of damnation.
Not saying it would be. John seemed to think that corruption in the lat 19th century somehow meant that we weren’t operating under more or less libertarian principles.
Now, in a true socialist economy there would be fewer businessmen with lots of money to bribe politicians, but I’m sure those wanting favors would find another way.
Cite, please.
So your examples are 1) from another century and 2) from one of the most authoritarian places on earth. :dubious:
More to the point, people getting themselves in massive debt they cannot pay off is not only a problem for libertarians – it happens now, and in some cases the government helpsit happen. That’s what bankruptcy is for.
It has been proven more effective? You sure about that? In the states I’ve lived in, there are pretty commonly headlines about state agencies massively mishandling cases, placing children with known abusers, etc. Why here’s one, just today. And another. And another. That’s one day’s worth of news – this is the best of all possible systems? Ever talk to someone who spent their childhood under DCFS care?
For many of us, minimal government is less of a moral imperative and more of a practical cost-benefit analysis. My first vote for president was Jesse Jackson in the 1988 democratic primary. But I worked for years in homeless shelters and with other charities and nonprofits, and it was there that I saw first hand how inefficient, ineffective and even counterproductive much well-intentioned help was-- especially government-funded and run ones.
Given the dramatically lessened tax burdens people would have under a more libertarian government, and the massive cost efficiencies private charities have over government ones, I would strongly suspect that with the amount of money actually spent on orphans would go up, not down.
Other current government functions would wither if it were left up to voluntary funding – I strongly suspect that most people would be unwilling to pay for 11 carrier groups, or for corporate welfare – but charities would do fine.
Except that it’s never been tried. No country has ever set out to be Libertarian. That’s the one and only answer to the OP.
You can talk about countries that were relatively more libertarian than others, but none has come close to being one, either by accident or on purpose.
So that would be a big NO to your observation.
Blue laws: any laws pertaining to alcohol production, consumption, distribution and sale.
Why can’t I have a still to make my own alcohol? Why can’t I sell it on Sundays?
Marriage: why is the government involved? Who cares if it’s men, women, or turtle?
Why can’t I grow, smoke, or sell marijuana?
So I need to ask, why do you suppose so many parents can’t be arsed to estate plan even just a little?
The question shouldn’t be “how do we get orphanages?” You should be asking, “why do we need orphanages?”
Even in a socialist system the population may decide (vote) it doesn’t give a shit about orphaned children. There is nothing magical and good about socialism that instantly provides for the needy. As already pointed out above many governments really suck at dealing with orphanages.
It’s a messy cycle, but the problem with having a safety-net is that is that it encourages bad behavior. I’m a big fan of rock climbing, but I won’t go higher than 6’ without a rope. The presence of safety equipment means I’ll go as high as I can.
So in a system without orphanages, why would there be parents without an estate plan? Why are there suddenly so many kids that we need a government program to take care of them?
Der Trihs made a big deal about ruthless selfishness, what’s more selfish than failing to look after your own kids? And that’s where we end up.
Would driving while drunk be against the law?
You might blind a bunch of people?
I assume that women who divorce get no money and there is no child support, right?
That’s hardly a libertarian-only position.
Hold on just a second there, partner. That’s not what you originally said:
“Being oppress” is not the same as “protecting property rights”. And what about the whole “laws that benefit me are good; laws that benefit other people are bad” thingy?
As a libertarian-leaning person, I support plenty of laws that absolutely are against my own personal interest. It would benefit me to have only white males be able to vote or own property. And for something not so extreme, it would benefit me to keep the mortgage deduction in the tax code. It would benefit me to place a home building moratorium in my town (I’ve got mine, you can live in Riverside, or in my case, Manteca).
Libertarianism requires perfect informed consent. It also requires perfectly rational decisions by the populace.
Libertarians believe more than anything else that the laws of unintended consequences can only ever happen to economic systems where intervention occurs; or that the only unintended consequences of Libertarianism will be good ones.
They believe in a utopianist worldview, the same type that led Communism to its doom. And they are in denial that theirs is a utopianist belief system.
What does that have to do with whether or not I can sell alcohol on Sunday? How does that law protect anyone?
Why is the drinking age 21? What does that have to do with highway funding?
Is that why the law is there? Or because the government wants tax revenue from alcohol sales?
Why was there Prohibition?
Nothing stops two or more people from entering into a financial arrangement. Businesses do this all the time. And how does any of this have to do with same sex marriage?
Nope. Care to tell me who is protected from the current marijuana laws? Is it perhaps people with a vested interest in alcohol and tobacco sales that use the government to protect them? Or busy bodies trying to tell other people how to live their lives?
I’m not in agreement with religious laws like that. I was asking because I wanted more insight in the kind of world you think would be awesome.
I think the drinking age is 21 because drunk 18 year olds were killing a lot of people on the highways. Again I was asking about your views of how things would work in a libertarian society.
I think safety laws for consumables are a good idea. Obviously more people would die, but probably not a lot more, so how many deaths would it take before the government would get involved? Would a libertarian country enact Prohibition if the populace wanted to?
So you think that marriages should have whatever contracts the people want? If nothing is spelled out in the contract about custody of children, who gets them?
I’m sure it’s primarily busybodies. The loons on the right hold back every scrap of social progress they can.