The first question is how a community might be able to counter a situation like this. Who has the overriding freedom here, the armed contingent who are there to “defend freedom” (ostensibly that of one particular family) or the community that does not really want them hanging around?
The second question is what is the ideal (libertarian or otherwise) methodology for public safety and law enforcement? From time to time, we see indications of a public safety agency closing ranks to cover the abuses of their agents. The police basically control their region with minimal offset: if they ruin your car, your apartment, your livelihood, what sort of practical recourse does an average citizen have, given that sometimes the damage cannot satisfactorily be undone?
Is it feasible to have a structure where the police force is not a closed system that invites cronyism and/or selective enforcement? If a community were to have competing public safety organizations, ostensibly to reduce the problems inherent with a monolithic police force, would such a situation be stable, or would it be likely to develop into a sort of “blue war”, a la familia vs. cosa nostra?
What we have is kind of messed up, but on the other hand Mogadishu is not a place to go for a picnic. How do we achieve fair balance?
There is no fundamental reason that a Libertarian society couldn’t have a police force as big, or bigger, than what one sees anywhere in the US today. And there is also no reason it wouldn’t have the same problems we see with the police in the US today. One might argue that there would be fewer crimes, especially drug or prohibited substance crimes, and that might make for fewer corruption opportunities, but I not sure how strong that case would be.
Fairly strong. Prohibiting drugs creates a goldmine for corruption:
Lots of cash sitting around (since the drug dealers can’t use banks) to steal.
Drugs are fungible, so they can be taken, then planted as needed, to take down dealers that won’t pay graft, to punish people who disrespect the officer, to pad arrest stats, etc.
Since drugs are a victimless crime and are used by a lot of people, meaning you can find drug crime where you look for it, choosing to focus on areas dominated by certain races allows the police to basically wage war on a minority population.
The same things happened under Prohibition, and it’s no coincidence. The single best thing we as a nation could do to reduce police corruption is to legalize drugs.
Some drugs, yes. Marijuana, I’m all for. Crack, not so much. Some drugs are so dangerous and/or so addictive that we really don’t want them to be legal. I’d be in favor of legalizing drugs based on objective criteria.
The libertarian perspective would flow from the non-aggression principle, meaning that as long as the armed group isn’t using force on anyone, force shouldn’t be used against them. If they are indeed running roadblocks and denying access to public areas to people who don’t reside in them, then that’s an impermissable use of force by them.
While some libertarians endorse private police, I personally think it’d be a disaster. The problem is one of transparency and accountability, and having a given group police directly working for a select group of citizens would make those problems worse, not better. You’d absolutely end up with essentially gang wars.
But it does reach to the larger question of “domestic tranquility”, which is to say, in the libertarian ideal, what are the legal constraints? If “your” heroin use leads to me having to deal with a lifeless or severely crippled body, one person’s freedom has ended up imposing on that of one or more others’. What is the optimal balance between liberty and prophylaxis?
A lot of laws appear to be an undue imposition. We have seatbelt and helmet laws because carnage is icky and annoying, and we seem to be unable to restrain recklessness and stupidity. Your freedom to be comfortable in your vehicle is superseded by the freedom of that other guy to drive like a maniac, and the freedom of EMTs and the state to not be burdened by the most extreme costs of mania and inattention.
So, if the libertarian ideal is to minimize legal constraints in order to maximize freedom, how do we decide upon which side to fall (whose freedom is more important)? Clearly, the police are important in this issue, because they have some degree of discretion when it comes to enforcing impositions on one person or the other’s freedom. Laws can be meaningless if they are routinely ignored.
Being squicked out by a corpse isn’t an imposition on your freedom by the dead guy. Further, much of the death attributed to illegal drug use is a result of inconsistent purities, and drugs being cut with unsafe additives. This is, again, the result of the drugs being illegal.
Lastly, if the plan is to restrict freedom for the sake of public health, the place to start would be nutrition and obesity, not heroin.
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A lot of laws appear to be an undue imposition. We have seatbelt and helmet laws because carnage is icky and annoying, and we seem to be unable to restrain recklessness and stupidity. Your freedom to be comfortable in your vehicle is superseded by the freedom of that other guy to drive like a maniac, and the freedom of EMTs and the state to not be burdened by the most extreme costs of mania and inattention.
So, if the libertarian ideal is to minimize legal constraints in order to maximize freedom, how do we decide upon which side to fall (whose freedom is more important)? Clearly, the police are important in this issue, because they have some degree of discretion when it comes to enforcing impositions on one person or the other’s freedom. Laws can be meaningless if they are routinely ignored.
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I reckon we vote for candidates that support our particular views on the subject, and come to some kind of a compromise. There’s no tablet handed down from on high, here, just individual judgment.
Well, technically, it’s a result of there being no legal oversight on the production, because the production is illegal to begin with. Most libertarians advocate very limited (if any) government interference in business, so I’m not sure exactly how much safer legal heroin in Libertopia would be compared to illegal heroin in the real world.
That’s what I meant. There’s no inspection, certification, no liability for a bad batch, no recourse beyond street violence.
For one, the distributor of an unsafe batch would be legally liable for it. For two, businesses offering third-party certification could inspect and certify “brands” and distributors of the product, as they do now with other, legal, products.
Not if they’re up front about it, right? “Crapshoot brand Heroin! Sure, it’s 25% rat poison, but it’s 50% cheaper! Your call, junkies!”
You can argue that if someone’s stupid enough to take that risk, then that’s their problem, and society shouldn’t protect them from themselves. That still leaves us with the problem of who cleans up the bodies.
Since dealers can do that now without a disclaimer, why do you think they don’t? Or, why do you think it’s not common enough to warrant a comment like:
Not sure there would be more bodies, but it would be the same people who do that in a non-Libertarian society.
