I am a libertarian. That does not mean that I am immoral.
You have made the common mistake of assuming that just because Libertarianism disagrees with your economic/political/society structure philosophies that it means that it is an immoral/evil philosophy. You have also compounded your problem by veiling yourself with a prejudicial view of libertarians in general.
That is incorrect. Libertarian philosophy in no way ignores that there is and will be a society and government. It also does not ignore the fact that there will be social ills and a need for members of that society to try and eliminate and/or mitigate these ills no matter what system of government that society has agreed to/forced to accept in their social contract.
We just think there are better ways to go about solving those problems than the social programs/economies/governments in place around the world today.
Specifically, if individuals around the world were provided a coercion free environment to pursue their personal needs and wants then the overall ills in society would be much lower than in any other system in place today.
Despite the potential humor of your hypothetical, it highlights an important aspect of Hayek’s theory of spontaneous order. One need only consider the hypothetical counter-suits to resolve the hypothetical complaint. Sue me for breathing, and you expose yourself to liability.
There are several issues where over 80% agree:
1)The proper role of government is finite, but much smaller than at present.
2)All men by their nature have a right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.
3)“Would you cross the lawn and help the child?”
4)You should enter the owner’s residence against the owner’s wishes.
5)My political beliefs are based on my rational, philosophical analysis.
I was more surprised by the differences between 1988 and 1998 and the un-anarchist responses.
At the risk of both hijacking the thread, and exposing misconceptions on my own part, I would offer the following comments based on my laymans understanding of vaccination:
[ol]
[li]Vaccinations do not confer an effective immune response for 100% of people to whom they are given[/li][li]Even an effective immune response may not be 100% certain to defeat infection[/li][li]Vaccinated people may therefore lack some or any immunity to the disease for which they have been vaccinated[/li][li]For such individuals the only 100% effective preventive measure is to avoid contact with the disease-causeing organism[/li][li]In circumstances where the entire population is vaccinated, the proportion of people infected may drop so low that the probability of someone vulnerable to infection contacting the disease-causing organism approaches zero[/li][/ol]
So you could have a situation where I am vaccinated, but have no effective immune response and though I would be almost perfectly safe if 100% of the population had been vaccinated, the fact that say, 20% of the population are libertarians who have chosen not be vaccinated causes me to become infected and suffer some unpleasant outcome. My personal health and wealth have been damaged by the actions of those who have chosen not to be vaccinated, even though I did everything possible to protect myself and others.
This is why avoiding vaccination is often regarded as anti-social. An excellent example is polio, which would probably have been extinct in the wild by now if only everyone who was offered a vaccination had accepted it.
I personally am in favour of mandatory vaccination - I am curious as to how a true Libertarian would handle situations like, e.g. smallpox and polio, where there are immense benefits to society as a whole and individuals in the future from curtailing people’s right to say no to vaccinations.
Fair enough, but I don’t know why you presuppose that libertarians would choose not to be vaccinated, which is what I take from your “…the fact that say, 20% of the population are libertarians who have chosen not be vaccinated…”. It does not follow that just because I do not want to be forced to do X against my will, that I will choose not to do X. To paraphrase Captain Kirk talking to the apparition of Apollo, yeah this is a nice place and everything, but if you force us to stay here against our will, it’s still prison.
Also, there is a fallacy of amphiboly in your listing, which consists of four negations of 100% certainties, followed by one affirmation of near zero. There’s no reason to switch perspectives and call the remaining negation of 100% certainty by some other name. It’s like saying, he’s probably not Tom, he’s probably not John, he’s probably not Larry, and he’s probably not Frank, but the odds that he’s Monte are slim. You have not proved that he must be Monte.
Finally, with respect to the question about “how a true Libertarian would handle” vaccinations, I would hope that he would handle it responsibly. But forcing others to be vaccinated might well lead to unintended consequences that cause suffering of a different kind. Suppose, for example, that you kill a certain number of people who are allergic to the shot, or develop infections from the shot, or simply do not respond to the immunity. Suppose you commit simple human errors, and give out vaccinations of the wrong kind, or put them in the hands of certain incompetent and unscrupulous people who either administer them incorrectly or steal them to sell in a black market. Moreover, how do you solve the tactical and logistical problems of getting vaccinations to the roaming homeless population or the insulated rural Appalachian poor, or Indians on reservations? A central plan to force vaccinations might be marginally successful in a small principality, but seems rather daunting in a society that is spread across two oceans in noncontiguos landmasses, populated by extraordinarily mobile and displaced people. And that’s not even to mention criminals and illegal aliens who might have a high incentive not to surface and show themselves.
It is a weakness of any Libertarian argument that it does not have the precedence of actual law to support itself. However, that does not mean that Libertarian philosophy does not have the tools to answer such questions, it is more the fault of the participants of the con side of the argument to not recognize and consider the answers. In essence, many people fail to consider what Libertarian philosophy is saying and then just claim it is deficient.
The fallacious claims of harm done by one person to another is one such argument the con side uses, that Libertarian philosophy does have answers for, but is failed to be considered on its merits by the other side.
It is the disease that is causing the harm in your example above.
If someone chooses to not get vaccinated they are only accepting the basic risk of infection that every person of similar environmental situations ALL share. We all start out sharing the same relative risk. When getting vaccinated you improve your risk but do not eliminate it. If they do not get vaccinated it does not make your base risk, which everyone shares, any higher.
If you choose to have contact with other people, including those you might suspect have not been vaccinated, then you are accepting the risk of possibly becoming infected. If you then become infected it is from the risky behavior you chose to participate in. You cannot live without risk and you cannot blame the rest of the population for a risk that you contribute to as well (vaccinations are not and will most likely never be 100% effective.)
If someone who is infected and knows they are infected, and then through blatant disregard for other people or through a conscious effort to infect people, then infects a person, they would be responsible for the harm they caused.
So, this would effectively be the hows and whys of our current system. For the most part, a Libertarian society would function legally almost exactly how the current USA legal system of determining harm through cause works. We have even seen recently examples of nearly the same situation where people with AIDS who don’t know it cannot be prosecuted for causing harm, while those that do know it and try and infect people are then prosecuted for the harm they cause.
Lets assume we have a case that had enough percieved merit to actually go to court, but at trial is determined the plaintiff brought the suit with no actual claims of damage and did it with malice.
A counter suit would be justified. The defendant of first case wins the counter suit.
And, you thought I was talking about Libertarian society. Nope. That is exactly how our civil courts work now.
The legal system in a Libertarian society would not be that different than the USA’s right now. The main difference would be the Laws of the courts.
[/quote=Wikipedia]
As a result, they(Libertarians) oppose criminalization of victimless acts (or as the ancient common law maxim says: Volenti non fit injuria --to the willing person, no legal wrong is done).
[/QUOTE] cite
I personally think that our court system is pretty good. I think one problem is the sparse use of solid logical/scientific reasoning involved in our current courts accepting civil suits. I can only hope that in ours or the mythical utopian society of Libertaria this will be improved upon. It is the Laws that I have the most problem with, at least in the context of our discussion.
Do you think the USA’s court system is bad now and would not work in a Libertarian society?
My apologies for a very poor choice of words. No slight against libertarians was intended.I was attempting to convey that for whatever reason, a proportion of the population exercise the right to not be vaccinated which they would be granted in a libertarian society (as indeed they are in most places today). In the Nigeria polio situation I believe it was a mixture of religion and fear of negative consequences from suspected additions to the vaccine.
I’m sorry, I’m new at this sort of thing. What exactly is the issue? Point 5 was an attempt to explicate the ‘herd immunity’ phenomenon which underpins the ability of mass vaccination to eradicate disease from populations (even if some people are medically unable to take the vaccine or benefit from it fully) provided the proportion of free riders is kept extremely low. Is the point not germane?
Most certainly, and in the Polio example I’m not sure how one could have forced large numbers of Nigerian citizens to take jabs they didn’t want. The WHO don’t have the resources for an invasion. However, it is a fact that in the polio eradication programme neither logistics, allergic reactions, administration or anything else were a problem. Polio currently exists as a disease in the wild, and every case that has occurred anywhere in the world for the last few years has been traced back to the area of Northern Nigeria where there was widespread refusal to take the safe, effective and free vaccine that was offered. It is generally accepted that if those vaccinations were accepted, polio would have been eradicated. Smallpox was also eradicated in exactly the same way, overcoming the issues listed. On a smaller scale, drug-resitant TB is now endemic in my neighbourhood due to the presence of large numbers of non-vaccinated people. Compulsory vaccination would eliminate it and this could easily be achieved even by the bumblers running the UK National Health Service.
Yes, and if you are driving dangerously then it is your vehicle that kills me. I fail to see your point - sorry.
Every person not vaccinated incrementally increases the risk of disease, see above. Similarly, if we are all camping together in a dry forest and almost everyone chooses not to light a fire except for a handful of people, our risk of fire is now higher than it was before.
So my choices are to either withdraw from society or expose myself to the increased risk brought about by those thoughless enough not have been vaccinated. If we find the risk posed by the camp fires of the few unacceptable we must all abandon our camping trips and leave the forest or risk burning? I have to say I am feeling a little hard done by here.
Well and good.
Apologies if I seem contentious on this issue, but it is one which I feel is not handled well currently - it poses problems relating to coercion versus public benefit under whatever you wish to call the current philosophy prevalent in the UK, and I am curious how it could be handled effectively without resorting to goons and bureacrats bullying people.
I think it was intended to illustrate that even one of the ‘fringe’ philosophies (such as Communism or Libertarianism) can be successfully applied to running a large polity. Whether Kerala proves that Communism works or just that it can be less dysfunctional than poorly run Capitalism is probably a good subject for another debate.
There are plenty. Of course, they pollute much less, perhaps using fuels other than fossils. They and their neighbors and consumers have reached mutually agreeable levels of pollution and contamination — more in some localities, less in others. The flaw in your implication is the notion that people cannot come to a consensus on these sorts of things without a central planner imposing it upon them.
Certainly, it is germane if that’s the point you wish to make.
I don’t think anyone is disagreeing that vaccinations are, generally speaking, a wonderful thing. Yet you are dwelling extensively on just how wonderful they are.
I believe that the issue, particularly for this thread, is not how great vaccinations are, but whether there is an ethical basis for forcing people to be vaccinated against their will. The only hint of an ethical principle that I have heard from the authoriarians is the equivalent of “forcing them to be vaccinated will protect me.” Interestingly, it is often the cry of authoritarians that libertarians are selfish and concerned only about themselves.
There are an awful lot of things that you can do to protect yourself from exposure to societal risk. Left authoritarian and Right authoritarian schemes abound. You may, for example, want to elimnate the risk of AIDS. One of you may think the better central plan is to use condoms; the other to abstain from promiscuous sex. And typically, neither of you thinks the other plan makes good sense, while both of you think that your own plan is the best thing for us all.
As I see it, the breakdown begins when the problem is hypostatized, and the central planner decides to treat the amalgum of people as some sort of stew, the goal being that the whole pot taste good. (Good in the opinion of the planner, of course.) His recipe sees individuals as ingredients for his culinary masterpiece. He himself will of course fare well because, quite naturally, his plan will adjust matters so that he is satisfied.
But what happens once you have established that risklessness is the ethical consideration above all others? Sooner or later, some planner with power will inevitably see something about you that is a risk to him and his. Perhaps your expressing your opinion is a danger to his plan. Good luck to you in explaining to him why you’d just as soon make your own decisions for yourself.
Coming up with ethical reasons for coercion is generally going to be a bit of a stretch, but I would have thought that vaccination could be one such case, hence my dwelling on it.
Having an immunized population is something like a public good, if I remember my economics classes correctly. It significantly reduces the risk of the relevant infectious disease for all members of society, and frees up resources that would otherwise be used for treatment. Given that the ‘I’ is every single member of society, surely an argument can be made that those who are unhappy with the notion of vaccination should suck it up and take it for the team?
Besides, what is wrong with self-interest? Are Libertarians all motivated by a selfless desire to optimise society even at cost to themselves? Coercing someone into doing something for my own benefit or preventing coercion for the sake of protecting my own freedom from the hypothetical central planner, it’s still all about me.
I personally have a strong preference for people not taking a dump in the middle of the pavement. This preference is shared by many of my fellow citizens. Are we authoritarians for coercing those who do not share our views into relieving themselves elsewhere?
I’m probably missing something basic, but as far as I can see there will always be a proportion of humanity who are jerks, who wish to behave in a way that imposes significant negative externalties on their fellow citizens. Without a mechanism for coercing them into compliance with the wishes of the rest of society, how do you achieve a reasonable quality of life?
Where is this central planner coming from? Is he a strawman or a representation of the various interest groups that would drive the agenda in a reasonably functional polity?
Similarly to Pochacco, the impression I get is that current society has developed by empirically solving problems as they arise, giving rise to a hotch-potch of mutually contradictory laws, rules and regulations that don’t really have any overarching principles and are often significantly flawed, but which sort of works. Libertarianism seems to be coming from the other direction and designing an ideal society that is intellectually coherent, but which would collapse as soon as it comes into contact with the reality of an imperfect world.
Which, assuming that jerkishness cannot be bred out of the human race, won’t be the case after the first generation. What happens then? Is it still a libertarian society if one frustrated Marxist is forcibly prevented from socializing the means of production? How does one deal with a plutocrat who has amassed sufficient wealth to be able to bend others to their will (perhaps Widow Smith from earlier, since she seems to have deeper pockets than MegaMart)? How does one tell the difference between a Libertarian society and a democracy dominated by very selfish citizens?
But you really haven’t been dwelling on why coercion is justified, but rather why vaccinations are so wonderful. Surely you did not mean to argue that the achievement of something wonderful justifies coercion. Kim Jung Il has achieved a practically crimeless society by the use of coercion. And yet, who will argue that the wonderfulness of never being mugged or robbed is mitigated by the fact that one is a slave to the state?
Absolutely. And I would join you in arguing exactly that. There is, however, a fundamental ethical difference between (1) arguing that you should suck it up and take it for the team, and (2) putting a gun to your head and telling you that you will take it for the team or be confined behind bars. One is a plea from deontic logic; the other is a threat.
Has there ever been a tyrant who did not rationalize his coercion by some appeal to the common good? Elimination of disease is hardly the only thing that would free up resources that would otherwise benefit society. If the problem indeed is the disease, then it becomes at some point difficult to argue why the elimination of diseased people would not benefit society. Or disabled people. Or retarded people. Or people who are somehow otherwise undesirable in the eyes of the central planner. You may say that a line should be drawn such that the elimination of people per se is off-limits, but then you have to amend your argument. It is no longer about the disease or the disability or the retardation, or even about the good of society as a whole; rather, it is about your personal ethical limits. You may well find yourself having to take up an argument of noncoercion, to which your detractors might well reply, “Why may we take a man’s liberty, but not his life? If we have bent his consent, then his life has been ours anyway.”
Yes, indeed. But whether I murder you or rescue you, it is all about you — yet the ethical difference between the two is rather marked. Forcing someone to accomodate me against their will is the ethical equivalent of something between assault and rape, but resisting coercion is self defense.
I too prefer that people do not take a dump in the middle of the pavement. For that matter, I prefer that they do not take a dump in the middle of my front yard. One difference between the two is that, due to my rights of ownership, I may enforce that they do not take a dump in my front yard. Another, no less important difference, is that I may not enforce that they do not take a dump in your front yard.
Now, I could posit a hypothetical “problem” in which I say that your allowing people to take dumps in your front yard hurts my property values. That, of course, would ignore quite many qualifications, such as the fact that you are no more likely than I to invite people to shit in your yard. And the fact that, were we to subscribe to a cooptional contract, we could enforce that there be no shitters in any yard in our whole neighborhood. As property owners, we may collectivize our rights.
It is clear, then, that all ethical entitlement with respect to the exercise of rights is the ownership of property. This is, in fact, the liberal view. As Ludwig von Mises wrote in Classical Liberalism: “The program of liberalism, therefore, if condensed into a single word, would have to read: property, that is, private ownership of the means of production… All the other demands of liberalism result from his fundamental demand.”
Thus, whether a man may take a dump in the middle of the pavement depends entirely on the whims of the pavement owner. If that owner is government, then its own laws will determine who may or may not take such dumps. One then must trust the ethics and benevolence of one’s governers.
That was the exact argument of the Confederate states, who in their declarations of secession, reiterated the necessity of conscripting negroes into slavery for the purpose of maintaining the quality of life to which they believed they were entitled.
"We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.
That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights [emphasis in the original]; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states."
A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union, February 2, 1861
It seems to me that, for your defense of coercion to secure your quality of life, you would have to place the importance and significance of your life above the lives of men who did not wish to be coerced by you. The same sort of worldview has been used to justify everything from the Holocaust to the Trail of Tears — it is necessary to exercise coercion in order to protect our quality of life.
For an in depth understanding of the praxeology of central planning, see this book:
Briefly, the central planner is the person or persons who devise and implement plans that are applied across the whole population. The general effectiveness of a central plan is directly proportional to the homogeneity of the population which it controls. For example, a central plan for education might likely be less effective in either rural Wyoming or South Central Los Angeles or both, depending on which demographic’s perceived needs were given greater consideration. Likewise, a central plan to vaccinate the US might have drastically different effectiveness with an elderly woman in Queens versus a moonshiner in Snail Hollow, Tennessee.
I believe that that impression is mistaken, but I can understand how it came about. Sure, within the confines of all these neat little hypotheticals, answers are derived from libertarian principles. But as GreyMatters has been pointing out, there need be no functional difference between an authoritarian and a libertarian United States, other than the ethical basis upon which laws are based. One model bases laws on the principle of political expedience, while the other bases them on the principle of noncoercion. Though you might argue that political expedience is superior in terms of lasting longer due to the power of politicians, you are forgetting that without their power, their expedience is moot. If you must compare one to the other, then do not compare pure expedience to quasi-noncoercion. So long as they themselves are free to coerce, there is nothing at all libertarian about what they are doing.
Easy. Wherever men freely and volitionally give or withhold their consent to be governed, there is libertarianism. Everywhere else, there is authoritarianism. If your government has drawn lines on a map, and has declared that those lines, rather than the consent of the people within them, legitimize their governance, then your government is authoritarian and tyrannical.
That means that all it takes is one whacko that wants to return society to the stone age to end industry. After all it is all but impossible to have any sort of industry or manufacturing without out putting some polutants into the envrioment. I disagree that believing the entire world can not come to a consensus on the enviromental pollution is a flaw in my argument. Even if say, 5,999,999,999 of the people in the world come to agreement that all will come apart when the 1 person not in that group sues.
