Okay. You made me laugh my ass off today. Thanks for that story. Your overall argument against the purest form of libertarianism wasn’t lost on me, but I would disagree that these details would need to be ironed out in every contract.
In our current society, we lease property, allow rights of ways, and other forms of access. It is implied that you have a right to breathe, for example, when you lease a piece of land. It’s also fairly understood that if I allow friends or neighbors to cut across my backyard to walk to another location that it is implicit in our contract that they cannot jerk off to my daughter or any other guests lounging in said back yard.
We have centuries of case law determining what is reasonable. In your example, it is clear to any reasonable person that you negotiated access to the pizza place across the back yard. Even though the terms weren’t specified, you can breathe while walking, and you would refrain from spanking it on your traverse.
Now, let’s say that as you were walking, you lit up a cigarette and the owner complained. That would be a legitimate point of contention that reasonable people argue about. He didn’t tell you his no smoking policy beforehand, so was it reasonable for you to light up? That would be a good question for the courts. Breathing and masturbation are not.
But the key point is that in our society (and pretty much every functional society that’s ever existed) we have community standards over what’s reasonable. And dissenters may grumble about society’s standards but they have to go along with them. You can’t masturbate in public because it upsets other people.
But libertarianism, if it means anything at all, rejects this idea. It says individual liberty has priority over what the majority wants. So it doesn’t matter if the majority object to you masturbating; you have the right to reject their views and do what you please.
And this just doesn’t work. You can’t have a functional society where every individual has first priority - the math won’t add up. That’s why libertarianism will never exist outside of theory. But every time the rest of us try to point out this problem to libertarians, they just complain we’re being unfair to them.
My understand of libertarianism is that an individual has a right to do what he wants SO LONG AS his freedoms don’t interfere with freedoms of another.
Again, there are different flavors of libertarianism, but I don’t think that it is inconsistent with the general tenets of that philosophy to say that a 7 year old girl’s right to be free from watching a 50 year old man masturbating in public is greater than his right to masturbate in public.
Now, that same 7 year old’s freedom to not hear criticism of President Obama is NOT outweighed by the same 50 year old man’s right to free speech is criticizing the President.
I fully agree that the strict libertarian idea of do whatever in the hell you want is absurd and cannot happen in a society. But I think that the people who advocate that (no disrespect to the OP) have let their general philosophy get in the way of common sense.
Maybe if you’re the quick-draw champion of the West, able to snap off a head shot in a tenth of a second while your opponent is still clearing his holster; but realistically chances are excellent that even a dying opponent can shoot you. And if some Dead-Eye Dick with thirty notches on the grip of his gun goes around bullying people, someone will probably shoot him in the back the first chance they can do it unseen.
The legislature? Courts? But in a society with libertarian ideals these legislators and judges would have an individual’s freedom placed higher on the pole. Things like outlawing drug possession on private property and seat belt laws would never pass muster.
If someone thinks that a man’s freedom to masturbate in the middle of Times Square is an inalienable right, he can elect candidates to the legislature or a Governor/President who will appoint justices who will agree with his interpretation of fundamental rights.
Does libertarianism mean I couldn’t call the cops on someone who’s being a nuisance, say after the third time I ask you to stop jerking off to my daughter? Even in our current sorry, collectivist semi-tyranny we have freedom of speech, yet I can still stop someone from standing under my window and screaming “Asshole!” at 3 AM. Perhaps you could walk through the yard of your other neighbor, the lonesome divorcee. If you masturbate for her, she might even spring for the pizza.
If libertarian laws are being enacted by legislatures and enforced by courts then libertarian laws are just ordinary laws. Libertarians just call them something different because they want to sound cool.
Are you actually insinuating that Libertarians are so stupid they think that the moronic things they say sound cool? That’s really harsh dude. Yes it’s true, but it’s really, really harsh. Couldn’t we just call them ‘special’ instead?
IANA Libertarian, but I don’t think that “libertarian laws” would be functionally different from conservative, liberal, Democrat, or Republican laws. They would follow the same structure as current law, but with an eye toward individual freedom. I don’t think that they advocate scrapping the Constitution and starting over.
Even a law that provided that the government sell the public roads to Acme Corp. would still be done under the current structure. What did you have in mind that would be so radically different that would make them not enforced by courts or enacted by a legislature?
And, otherwise, if libertarian legislatures and libertarian courts never blunder or succumb to corruption or become foolishly emotional, and never pass “bad” laws – then they violate nearly every precept we know of human nature.
The whole “divided government” thing seems to be the best solution anyone has ever devised. (Maybe even the only solution.)
Exactly what? “An individual has a right to do what he wants SO LONG AS his freedoms don’t interfere with freedoms of another” doesn’t answer the question that’s been asked. It’s just a nice-sounding slogan. Every political system sounds great when you read the bumper sticker version of it.
You don’t need to imagine a libertarian society to answer this. There are already instances of this sort of thing. There is already private property that has no public access and requires crossing over someone else’s property to get to public roads.
The way it works is you don’t buy the property in the first place without an easement. Similarly, you wouldn’t buy property in Libertopia without existing contracts that made sure you could get to where you wanted to (and made sure that no one could pull some bullshit like buying a 1-inch strip of land around your property and holding you hostage).
Your overall argument against the purest form of libertarianism wasn’t lost on me, but I would disagree that these details would need to be ironed out in every contract.