No, not really. Libertarianism really has no goal per se, other than suppression of coercion if that can be called a goal. It’s pretty much up to each individual to decide what his own goal is and to pursue it.
I wasn’t familiar with it, and looking it over now I guess what strikes me is the notion of “discovering” the land they claimed. That’s a bit like me taking a wrong turn off the freeway, discovering your house, and claiming it.
With respect to all this (material) equality business, it is a generally accepted axiom among libertarians that freedom and equality are mutually exclusive. If men are free, they will not be equal; and if men are equal, they are not free.
I don’t think anyone posting to the thread expects anything other than the noncoercion principle from a libertarian government, Lib. But I’ll let Gad follow this up.
True enough. Plutaria effectively limits the rights of non-propertied individuals as well. But the questions are whether, as you say, libertarianism would make things worse in terms of inequality of opportunity, and whether in real terms the effects of that inequality of opportunity would outweigh the effects of equality of liberty.
Perhaps we should start a thread on property and the rights derived thereof. We seem to not be talking about the same thing. If we were, Libertaria would analytically reduce to a plutocracy. This seems far from the OP.
The motivations for exchanging property would not change as fundamental rights are derived from porperty already, except in cases like victimless crimes where the state has decided to redistribute happiness ( deliberate joke, let’s not mix our fiscal comments with social ones). I really do have more rights when I own my own property. For example, I would have the right to own a cat, or walk around naked in the halls. The biggest rights we think of when we think of “rights” are basically derived from the union of two propositions: one, you exist, and two, you own yourself (and by extension the products of yourself). This means that we recognize, instantly and universally, that all humans begin with property: themselves.
—Why would it be concerned about who is wealthier than whom?—
Because inequality in power over a society, whether politically or economically, which roughly gravitates towards wealth, is the heart of coercion. No matter how well designed and minimal a state you start with, you either have people filling that power vacuum outside the state, or expanding the state to serve the same end. That’s just the general case often made.
It also has to defend itself from the moral challenges posed against it: i.e. that it holds protection from coercion so pre-eminently over all other values that it seems morally absurd to many people.
I beg to differ on the proposition that “fundamental rights are derived from property already” in all systems, and particularly in the present US political system. In our system, “we” (the People, i.e. “society”) “hold” (that is, we assert through our own decision) that fundamental rights are inalienable from the human condition. These rights, therefore, derive from the social structure, and are predicated on “our” continued acceptance of those Constitutional scribbles Lib so derides.
I guess we must take this slowly then, for clarity’s sake.
erl: with what proposition(s) do you take it I’m disagreeing?
For my part, I believe I’ve disagreed with the general proposition that “fundamental rights derive from property,” and with the specific proposition that this is true “already” in all political systems.
I do not disagree (that is, I agree) with your proposition that I (and by extension all other human individuals) exist.
I do not disagree with, but also do not unreservedly accept, your proposition that I “own” myself. My reservations are concerned with the definition of ownership; that is, I do not have full control over myself, and certainly not over most of the products, intellectual or otherwise, of myself.
I am trying to be clear on this. A right is inalienable means that in no way can that right be transferred or removed from your being. Not even society, no matter how it is structured can take that right, notr can thazt right be transferred to society. This is not to say that the object of the right vcan be subjugated. Certainly although we all have a right to life, it does preclude someone from murdering us.
Okay. I’d respond to this first the way that Apos did:
(emphasis added)
To the extent that libertarianism necessarily begins with existing (unequal) distributions of wealth and property, giving everyone equal liberty entrenches the ability of those with greater scope of rights to engage in coercion. This is true whether the coercion is strong-form (coercive behavior recognized by a libertarian society as such, like force or fraud) or weak-form (behavior that is not classified as coercion in a libertarian context yet nevertheless unquestionably coercive to some degree; it occurs when someone with x amount of property is forced to act in a way that someone with y amount of property would not be). The need to work is a good example. From Robert Hale, 1923:
I digress; the definition and existence of weak-form coercion is probably worth a thread all its own. The point is that coercion is engendered by unequal distributions of property; to the extent that coercion is an unlibertarian concept, and to the extent that these unequal distributions of property are products of an unlibertarian context, the baseline problem arises because, absent a way of normalizing the distributions in a more libertarian way from the beginning, a libertarian society is stuck with the coercion-inducing byproduct of nonlibertarianism.
This is where Johnson v. McIntosh comes in. The case was a dispute over conflicting land titles arising from a regime change–the plaintiff, like many people before the ratification of the Constitution, had acquired his title by dealing directly with representatives of the Indian tribe occupying the land; the plaintiff, on the other hand, was given his title by the United States government some years later. It was the stance of the U.S. government that the only legitimate way of purchasing public land was through the government itself; anyone, therefore, who had purchased land from the Indians–even those who did so before the U.S. government was constituted–had no real title. The Supreme Court upheld this, Justice Marshall articulating what’s quaintly termed the “discovery principle”: that as a matter of public policy legal title is transferred to the government whose subjects have “discovered” and consummated possession of the land. All titles purchased from the Indians and not from the U.S. government were thereby worthless–again, even if the purchase was made before the U.S. government ever made its title claim, or indeed before it even existed.
The United States’ new democratic republic, then, took care of the baseline problem by simply overlaying a new, centralized distribution of property and declaring it legitimate. Had they not done this, people’s possession of title through the Indians would have been tremendously destabilizing for a new regime attempting to consolidate its legitimacy and, more importantly, articulate the ideology of its brand-new constitutional system. I’m suggesting that Libertaria, newly formed, faces a similar problem in dealing with property distributions left over from previous, nonlibertarian societies.
I’m suggesting that those individuals and businesses whose wealth were based upon activities such as governmental corruption and graft that would be eliminated in Libertaria would most likely fade away as that base was swept from underneath them and they were faced with competitors. I view a ‘fair’ status of wealth as being one in which everyone gained the wealth they had legitimately (as defined according to libertarian principles).
I think it would perhaps be more a case of double jeopardy, since as you have suggested he will have been punished twice for the same crime. I’m don’t think that that would necessarily violate libertarianism. I don’t see why the new regime would have any obligation to respect the judgments of the previous one.
That depends on what you mean by equality and freedom. What I mean by equality is having identical means, and what I mean by freedom is the absence of coercion. And so if people have identical means, then they are all thinking and acting alike or else there is redistribution occuring among them. Most people would naturally resist something being taken from them, and so coercion would be necessary to make everyone equal.
Gad wrote:
Libertarianism is not concerned with what you’re calling weak coercion. It is difficult enough to arbitrate ordinary coercion.
A man with a particularly cowardly or fearful character might feel coerced if you look at him with a stern face and say, “Boo!”. Your need to work example sounds like a coercion of circumstance, if anything. He wants to work so he won’t be hungry. But there is nothing in the libertarian philosophy that will transfer a need by one man into an obligation by another.
Taken to extremes, the mere existence of wealth can be called coercive all around. Even the wealthy man is coerced because he has a need to safeguard his wealth.
From your quote:
But the law isn’t a person. How would the law be punished for its “coercion”?
That’s where I keep getting lost. I do not comprehend the notion of normalizing distributions in a libertarian way. I’ve never come upon the concept of libertarianism normalizing distributions. Distributions are the product of an economy, and a libertarian government regulates an economy only in the strictly narrow sense of suppressing coercion.
Libertaria doesn’t govern time itself. If you contract with Libertaria, you cannot say, “Now, go and get my watch back that Billy stole last year.” But now that you are under contract, if Billy tries to steal your watch that you own now, then Libertaria is required to stop him or, failing that, get your watch back for you.
But even now, I’m not sure that I’m talking about what you are.
But the United States is dealing with borders and regimes. Libertaria is not concerned with borders and is not a regime with any legitimacy beyond your consent. Libertaria has no borders, and it has no concern whatsoever with any property other than yours and that of the other people it governs.
The United States has drawn a big circle in the sand, and has said, “Okay, I govern everything inside this line.” Libertaria doesn’t work that way.
xen, “For my part, I believe I’ve disagreed with the general proposition that ‘fundamental rights derive from property,’ and with the specific proposition that this is true ‘already’ in all political systems.” I believe this is also where you have voiced disagreement, but I remain unclear on the source of this disagreement.
Specifically, what rights do you feel you have that do not relate to ownership of (1) yourself, (2) the product of your labor, (3) the effects of the products of your labor?
For example, let us say that you take the phrase to heart: “we” (the People, i.e. “society”) “hold” (that is, we assert through our own decision) that fundamental rights are inalienable from the human condition. But you then do not unreservedly agree that you own yourself. This presents me with a problem of not, then, understanding what human condition you are speaking of that you can have inalienable rights (rights that may not be seperated from your existence) but yet you are not the owner of yourself.
I accept that, but in the following (relevant to the discussion IMHO) sense: a libertarian government regulates an economy only in the strictly narrow sense of suppressing **future, “ordinary”**coercion.
If you are not concerned with what you call “weak coercion” I think you’re on solid ground (although I strongly disagree). If you think from absolutely any arbitrary distribution of anything, libertarian principles should apply in subsequent dealings, then - as long as you can define what are the property rights, you have a system. But that is “Libertaria” saying “Okay, everything until now is declared clean, everything in the future must be clean.”
Huh? Why is it declaring anything? It’s just making contractual agreements with whoever gives consent. The contract doesn’t take effect until both parties sign.
I’m honestly flummoxed here. Let me give you an analogy hopefully to help illustrate my confusion.
You pay a lawyer a retainer, and he agrees to defend you if you go to court. Okay, so why does your lawyer have to declare anything about prior injustices? Why is he responsible for them? What do they have to do with you? Why can’t he just carry out his responsibilities to you?
That has a lot to do with the fact that Libertarians (note the capital L, I’m not talking about ‘people who generally want a smaller government’ here) generally don’t choose to address the ‘how do we get there from here’ issue, which is part of the reason why a lot of people don’t take them seriously. While there’s a lot of abstract talk about how privitized roads might work, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Libertarian address the issue of how to move from state-owned roads to private roads. It’s hard for people to take your idea of societal organization seriously if you can’t tell them how they would move from the current system to your ideal system.
“Libertaria” doesn’t need to govern time itself to prosecure for past offenses. Quite a few formerly Communist countries formed new governments, then prosecuted at least some of the criminals from the prior regime, for example. And Libertaria is going to have to handle some past disputes if it’s going to be at all useful as a government, since there are going to be old, minorly conflicting land deeds to be sorted out that predate Libertaria’s formation and other old issues that any worthwhile court would handle (and I’d note that US courts have no problem handling land title from pre-US days).
That’s not what you’ve said in the past about your ideal Libertaria; you rather specifically stated that if a citizen (or contractee or whatever you call it) of Libertaria initiates force against a non-citizen, that non-citizen has to respond in a manner approved by Libertaria.
I don’t know what could be easier. You get from here to there by hiring someone to secure your rights. Done.
And incidentally, you have a weak understanding of libertarianism. What does it have to do with a “smaller government”? The government should be exactly whatever size is required to do its job. Neither larger nor smaller.
You must not have looked very hard. That’s probably one of the most common topics for everyone from Cato to Free-Market. In fact, go to http://www.free-market.net, look in their catergories for “Scholarly and In-Depth Studies; Privatization”. Here’s one paper on the topic: Roads Without the State.
That’s not the kind of “country” that Libertaria is. It’s not a nation-state. It doesn’t (and can’t) arise through revolution and the establishment of a magistrate to govern everyone who falls within a line it has drawn in the sand. That’s Authoritaria.
So? Why should Libertaria mirror their tyranny?
Why, that’s crazy. Judging by some of the things you’ve said so far, you likely misunderstood. What was the context? What did I say exactly, and in response to what?
deliberate joke, let’s not mix our fiscal comments with social ones). I really do have more rights when I own my own property. For example, I would have the right to own a cat, or walk around naked in the halls. The biggest rights we think of when we think of “rights” are basically derived from the union of two propositions: one, you exist, and two, you own yourself (and by extension the products of yourself). This means that we recognize, instantly and universally, that all humans begin with property: themselves.