You can’t? So all those things like speed limits and drug laws and zoning regulations and public indecency laws and hunting regulations and penal codes are all just advisory? You can just ignore all that stuff and live your life the way you want to?
I think libertarians generally misconceive of what they call “morality” or “moralism.” They pat themselves on the back for not wanting to legislate their moral beliefs. But of course the fundamental axiom of libertarianism–that you shouldn’t directly interfere with other people’s lives–is itself a moral axiom like any other, and they want to legislate it. It is not right to think that it’s “moralism” to advocate wealth redistribution but not “moralism” not to.
Libertarians, in my view, basically make way too big a deal out of the difference between direct and indirect causation. They care too much about whether poor people being poor is “their responsibility,” as if the mere fact that they didn’t kick them out on the street means there’s nothing wrong with ignoring their plight.
With regard to abortion, there’s nothing less moralistic about allowing abortion than there is about banning it. If you think such and such “should” be done, you have a moral belief.
. . . or get a new job, or start your own business, etc. etc.
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Nonsense. Without the government stopping them corporations will organize themselves, imposing blacklists and price fixing and all the rest. Someone who disobeys will be punished by every corporation because it is in their collective self interest. It is only in libertarian fantasy that corporations compete according to some Darwinian Platonic ideal, never cooperating with each other to twist the system for their own benefit.
That’s propagandize, not “educate”. I don’t believe the nonsense libertarians spout any more than I do that of Communists or religions.
Tha part has always rang weak to me as to how Libertopia/Randstan/Anarchia is going to prevent the have-mores from driving the have-less into servitude, unless again, actual regulations are enforced by a government against collusion and monopoly.
OTOH, the notion that “freedom” is to be insulated from ill consequences no matter what is just as unrealistic.
I think people misconceive what Libertarianism is. Most people not of the socially conservative stripe talk about not legislating morality. Just look at the OP. Who still, btw, has not defined what “moralism” is. Libertarians are no more likely to “pat themselves on the back” about this than are social liberals. I think that they, like social liberals, will commonly use “morality” in a narrower, colloquial sense. We hear it from social liberals all the time: Don’t legislate morality.
Nonsense. You are assuming that every corporation would believe every other corporation regarding the merits of a person placed on a blacklist. But it wouldn’t work that way. Some corporations would put good employees on the blacklist so that they wouldn’t be hired by competitors, and the fact that the competitors would realize this renders a blacklist useless on the first place. You are too caught up in trying to portray corporations and lkbertarians as evil to see this simple flaw in tour scenario.
Corporations only taking the short-term view, not wanting to rock the boat? Yeah, that’d never happen.
Occasionally an earth-shaker like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs will come along, but I expect some people will starve in the meantime.
You realize this is the same line of thought an authoritarian evangelical would take against libertarianism when it came to gay marriage laws? Their opinion is that gay marriage is a bad thing, so they won’t “stand by while bad things are happening”. Now. Who is to decide what the bad things are, that gets a little tricky doesn’t it?
Your policy of " stopping the bad things" would work for the majority that currently held power. What if you had guys like Rick Santorum in charge? They would be trying to stop things they view as “bad” all the time.
Yes, they would. I never claimed democracy is perfect. Mistakes are made. But those mistakes are generally recognized with time and fixed.
Real world systems aren’t perfect. But they do work in the real world. The only systems that claim perfect results are imaginary ones that have never been tested in the real world and therefore never had to prove their claims.
We live in a real world not a hypothetical one. So I’d rather have a political system that generally works in a real world rather than a political system that works perfectly in a hypothetical world.
You make a good point that both liberals and conservatives (and those in between) want to enforce their moral values. They just disagree on what moral values should be enforced.
Which I think is the definition of moralism - it’s when people want to enforce a moral value even on to the people who don’t share that moral value.
Libertarians, broadly speaking, have the principle that it’s wrong to force other people to live by your moral values or by the moral values of society in general. So in that sense there is a real divide between libertarianism and moralism.
A big problem is that many libertarians actually live by a principle that’s more like “it’s wrong to force other people to live by your moral values - except when it’s a moral value I feel really strongly about.”
To bring us back to Ron Paul, for example, he’s strongly pro-life and would restrict abortions. It’s hard to see this as anything other than him trying to enforce his moral values on other people, many of whom do not share those values. Paul argues (unconvincingly in my opinion) that his pro-life views are compatible with his libertarian views. I’d argue that his pro-life views are an exception to his libertarian views.
Yes, hypocrisy knows no political boundaries.
IANAL, but from talking to those who are, I think that is one issue that it’s hard to get consensus on. Many Libertarians are pro-life and many are pro-choice. It all boils down, as it does for everyone, to when you think a human life begins.
Both major political parties have pro-choice and pro-life members, so I don’t see it as any big deal that Libertarians do, too.
But libertarians think that using force is a bad thing, and we aren’t just standing by doing nothing, we are trying to stop that bad thing. So, sounds like libertarians are hero’s in your analogy.
It’s the hypocrisy issue. Parties like the Democrats and the Republicans openly acknowledge that they legislate morality. So it’s no hypocrisy for them to legislate on abortions.
But Libertarians are supposedly based on the principle of not legislating your morality on to other people. So they’re open to accusations of hypocrisy when they legislate their moral values on abortion into law.
Libertarian ideology is based on not initiating force. For people who consider abortion murder, abortion is definitely “initiating force”. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
I’m not even sure what you’re trying to say here.
You say that libertarians won’t use force. But you also say that libertarians are trying to stop bad things. How? By asking people nicely to stop? Are you claiming Jimmy Carter as your role model now?
I said I support using force to make people stop doing really bad things. So why should my heroes be people who aren’t willing to do that?
And for people who don’t consider abortion murder, abortion isn’t initiating force. So the moral decision being forced on other people is the belief that abortion is murder. Not everyone shares that moral belief.
No; they have the principle that it’s wrong for the government to force moral values on people. They’ve no problems with non-government organizations or individuals forcing people to do what they want, and they do consider it a legitimate government function to crack down on any of the common people who raise their hands against their “betters”. The function of the police in a libertarian society is to keep the lower classes properly submissive to their masters.
They make speeches about “not initiating force”, true - but that’s that’s because they’ve removed all recourse for the common people but force.
Semantics. “Non-coercion” is a statement about morality. You’re getting hung on the descriptive vs normative definition of the term “morality”.
I don’t know about Republicans, but when Democrats say they don’t legislate morality (and they most certainly do say this), they are talking about descriptive morality. Your personal moral code. But both Democrats and Libertarians legislate normative morality. It’s just that Libertarians have a smaller set of what constitutes their normative morality than Democrats do.
A Democrat will say that racial discrimination in the workplace is objectively wrong. He will also say that murder, theft, fraud and rape are objectively wrong.
A Libertarian will agree with the 2nd sentence but not the first.
Nope.
What you are missing is that a “bad thing” is in the eye of the beholder. By trying to stop people from forcing others to do things, I’m trying to stop bad things from happening. So, I’m not like the guy who walks by and sees bad things and does nothing, I’m trying to stop the bad things (ie, the use of force to get others to do what you want them to do).