WTF??? 
Unless you mean there WILL be some, when we are sufficienty “advanced” as a species. Hmm, let me look in the ol’ Oxford under “eliteist”…
See, this demonstrates that you simply aren’t bothering to read what people write. In that case, I will draw you large, colorful pictures, complete with duckies and bunnies.
Let’s use two puppets for this demonstration. We’ll call them “Frick” and “Frack.”
The DATE: June, 1969. The PLACE: A room, somewhere.
FRICK: A Libertarian context for government is entirely practical.
FRACK: No it isn’t! A Libertarian system would suck!
FRICK: Well, Libertarianism isn’t a “system,” it’s a context, and can inform nearly any system, including democracy. In any case, it is practical.
FRACK (eyes beginning to glaze over in orgasmic, victorious excitement): [ If it’s so practical, show me all the Libertarian countries on a map!
FRICK: Hmm. Frack, is it practical to send human beings to land in a ship on the moon?
FRACK: Well, of course it is!
FRICK: Great. Can you please name me all the men who have stepped foot on the moon?
FRACK: Ummm . . . well . . . that is . . . [drools all over self]
FRICK: Well, if it’s so practical, surely you can name their names, right?
FRACK: [drools]
FRICK: Oh, so what you’re saying is the fact that it has never happened has no actual bearing on its practicality?
FRACK: [drools, mumbles non-sequiturs about Oxford English Dictionary and elitism]
Any questions?
Tell me, is it “practical” to believe in the Tooth fairy?
So, just because there is NOT any Libertarian nation, nor has there ever been any Libertarian Nations, nor can you describe how a Libertarian Nation would be run, nor can any 2 Libertarians even agree on wht that means; that is no reason for me to say it is “impractical”? Okaaayy :rolleyes:
Why do you feel the need to resort to personal attacks?
Um, Phil, we’re not asking you to name the future participants in this hypothetical Libertaria, nor the specific text of specific contracts. Please forgive people, however, for wanting to know more about the day-to-day functionality of a libertarian society than simply, “It will be up to each peaceful, honest citizen to decide how he wishes to spend his time and money, and the only provenance of government is ensuring freedom from non-coercion.” Surely you see that there are some ambiguities contained in a sentiment like that, at least as regards the comparative practicality of such a society for the poor or the indigent. It’s perfectly reasonable, too, for critics of libertarianism to use present and past societies as bases of comparison–to say, for instance, that as there is little evidence of widespread charity in aid of our educational system today (and, in fact, the trend seems more toward self-interest at the expense of community, as I noted in my Gated Communities thread), then how can you reasonably expect a sudden groundswell of altruism to deal with the millions of children whose parents won’t be able to afford basic services when placed in a libertarian context? We’re not asking for the names of those future altruists; just a reasonable explanation of your expectation that such altruism will exist–or, if it possibly won’t, your rationalization of the inevitable existence of such a tremendous underclass in any large-scale libertarian society.
Thanks, gad, nice post, he was starting to tick me off.
…First Arnold now you. I’m getting humbled.
Here I am strutting my stuff trying to fight the good fight in (seemingly) miles worth of posts and then you and Arnold walk on stage and say in 10 lines what I couldn’t manage in 1,000 (give or take a few hundred).
Very nice post. People may or may not take issue but it’s a nice example of saying a lot in an economy of words.
Ahhh well…I’ll try to improve my posting skills.
::Jeff leaves to wipe the brown stuff off his nose::
See, it was your posts that paved the way for my concise summation, Jeff. You’ve been fighting the good fight from the beginning of the thread, and any compliments you send my way are gonna be reflected right back to you. It’s funny, though–the points we’re making here are at the heart of the efficacy of any political system or social context, and for libertarianism they seem to stand out in stark relief. I just don’t understand why the two sides in any libertarian debate can never even agree, or so it seems, on the simple terms of the debate.
For what it’s worth, I’ve found all your posts on this topic to be articulate, well-phrased, and to the point. I’ve followed your argument quite well.
Apologies for the three consecutive posts.
Wouldn’t you know it, though, that after the gracious compliments by Daniel and Jeff on the clearness of my post, I find a mistake that’s fairly egregious?
In the sentence containing my summation of libertarian philosophy, the clause which begins, “the only provenance of government is ensuring…” should of course end with the phrase “freedom from coercion.” Not “freedom from non-coercion.” That’s, um, a totally different and fairly inane thing.
Sorry 'bout that. Phbt.
Gadarene
Thank you for your rational and respectful tone. You are indeed an example to others. We have said repeatedly that a libertarian government doesn’t solve your problems, except the problem of having other people dump their problems onto you. It merely provides for you a context free of coercion so that you, by your own wits and volition, may solve whatever problems you have. You may also seek out charity, if you believe that will solve your problems. Nothing prevents you from seeking out associations with people who share your problem so that, together, you can muster whatever necessary resources you believe you need. It only prevents you from deciding for other people what they need, and deciding who shall provide it.
We can’t give you any such assurance. We can’t tell you how other people will react in a context of peace and honesty. We can only tell you how we ourselves might react. We would strive to live and prosper. It is entirely possible that others might not.
Context is everything. The argument could reasonably be made that one of the reasons there is already a tremendous underclass (c.f. Appalachia and other unheralded pockets of gruesome poverty) is the assurance that wealth will be pillaged by people who keep a cut for themselves, their massive buildings, and their huge staffs, and then doled out in portions that will sustain (barely) those who might otherwise starve.
It stands to reason that, given a clear and unambiguous understanding that they will suffer or enjoy the consequences of their actions, people might not do things like take on more than they can handle.
Yes, the principle is Ockhamly uncomplicated: people who are peaceful and honest ought to be allowed to pursue their own happiness in their own way. And the purpose of libertarian government is to assure them that freedom.
But in the end, I am asking you simply why their lives should be disturbed for the sake of someone they did not harm. I’m not asking why you think they should be charitable. I myself am charitable, and I am a Libertarian. Charity is a moral obligation, not a civic one, and must be settled between a person and her God or conscience. I am asking why you think they should be forced to be charitable in accordance with arbitrary, complex, and incomprehensible standards established by The State, wherein their charity is siphoned by polticians who make a living off of it.
Daniel:
Oh, let’s see, maybe because I return like for like? Starting on page 1 of this thread, we have seen the following, unprovoked, from you:
“Look, Oh wise and certain libertarians . . .”
“In other words, I don’t want to be baffled with bullshit anymore”
"Look,liberatarians, I’ve got my guns on, I’m in the middle of the street, and I’m calling you out. . . Come out with them sixguns blazing, or admit “yer a lily-livered polecat”. (Note: When someone does come out with sixguns blazing, Daniel suddenly becomes a shrinking violet.)
You’re not interested in a discussion, Daniel, you’re interested in somehow proving that (a) since not all Libertarians agree on how it should work, it can’t work (a critique as easily levelled at any other context or system), and (b) since it’s never happened, it never can happen. You simply toss straw man after straw man and refuse to agree on commonly-defined words like “initiate,” “retaliate,” “coerce” and “volunteer.” Have fun playing with yourself, Daniel.
Kimstu:
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I make no such assumption. I don’t think there are clear-cut distinctions at all. What I do think is that only the people who perform Bad Guy actions should be punished. Everyone else should be left alone to govern their own affairs as they so fit. Only those actions which forcibly or fraudulently suborn one man’s will to another’s should be punishable. THose people who do not do that should be left alone. Simple as that.
Take, for example, something that occurred in Shaker Heights, an affluent Cleveland suburb, last year. A longtime resident found himself in big trouble. It seems that, rather than have a great big green Chemlawn, he decided it was more ecologically sound to have some diverse plant life in his yard. He had some fruit bearing trees, some bushes, and other foliage. All of it was well-tended and kept; it was not a disaster area, it was more like a tiny botanical garden.
Well, his neighbors didn’t like that. It was ugly, and an eyesore, and they wanted everyone to have a vast, flat, green lawn. (To the best of my knowledge, there was no homeowner’s association involved.) So what did they do? They sicced the government on him! They all ganged up, and got their mayor to force the man to either have the lawn everyone else wanted, or have his property confiscated or altered against his wishes. In a Libertarian context, this would be unthinkable. What was this man’s crime? Making an ecological decision involving his own property.
Gadarene:
That’s the best I can do, Gad. Frankly, thought experiments are not my strong point. All I can do is offer either my own interpretations of specific hypothetical problems posed to me, or offer counterexamples when given a proposition that someone claims is “inevitable” under a Libertarian context.
Too many people seem to think that I, or others, are arguing from a position that Libertarianism will solve every problem and make the planet into Big Rock Candy Mountain. I’m not. No “-ism” will do any such thing. (Except maybe humanism, but that’s my personal prejudice. 
) If people are going to pose questions with an aggressive, “How will Libertarians solve this? Huh? Huh?” stance, all I can answer is either “By giving people the freedom to come up with inventive solutions that they can voluntarily participate in,” or, alternatively, “American capitalism and democracy haven’t solved that problem, either, and I can’t predict the future, but I can tell you that people in a Libertarian context would have more freedom to seek solutions.”
All I can answer to that is that, all other things being equal, the poor and indigent would have both more options and more freedom, as well as the responsibility to make intelligent, informed decisions. “The poor” are not a permanent caste, at least not in this country. I posted, in another thread, some surprising figures on income mobility. You would be surprised at how briefly, even in our current often-misguided system, the average poor person remains poor. Given more freedom, that mobility could increase in both frequency and speed.
I expect no such groundswell or lack of it–I cannot predict the future with any accuracy whatsoever, for myself, let alone for strangers. I have to question your assumption , though, that the poor in a Libertarian context would not be able to afford basic services. Without the morass of federal, state and local regulations and a perpetual, self-justifying bureaucracy, basic services could very well be cheaper. Especially if there are competing entities offering some of those services, and if there is no entity dipping in to your pocket every week for large portions of your income. Further, nobody has said that the government would not, when you contract for their governance, use a sliding scale based on your ability to pay.
I very much miss SingleDad, who made a point that has stuck with me. Once, in an argument over a hypothetical, he made a remark something like this, “Well, since we’re just supposin’, let’s suppose I can whip your ass.” (The point being, of course, that hypotheticals are good-for-the-goose / good-for-the-gander type situations where, if you insist on positing the possibility of X, the other person ought to be allowed to posit Not X, or even Y.)
From my earliest days of libertarian apologetics, I have seen people like Gadarene and then, well, other people. They are so easy to distinguish. The former approach you as though you are not an idiot who pulled his philosophy out of a Cracker Jack box. The latter presume you to be a heretic, intent on pulling out from under them their rug.
The Gadarenes ask questions about principle, as they are capable of making their own extrapolations into arbitrary hypotheticals. The Others ask you to look into your crystal ball and make hypothetical predictions, because those produce straw men that they can whack at with their screaming rants. The Gadarenes read the links provided, rather than insist that you republish the centuries of libertarian thought since Lao Tzu and Aristotle. The Others never click the links, but insist instead that you lead them by the nose.
The Gadarenes do not offer up red herrings when their questions have been answered. They do not take a stance that, simply because they disagree, you are naive and pitiful. They give you the benefit of the doubt that you have researched the vast libraries that can be found by anyone willing to simply click a link. They don’t act indignant when you talk about private roads, but merely ask you to link them to some support on the matter.
The Others, on the other hand, wail at you with a self-righteous condescension like street evangelists convinced that you simply haven’t thought things through. Their tone is disrespectful and contentious (and is usually returned in kind). They refuse to examine the points you are actually making, and instead blow on the soapy film of their contempt as bubbles of red herrings and straw men billow out.
I conceived the hypothetical Libertaria just for such people. With it, they can bellow and scream all they want, but Libertaria is my own vision. And if they posit morons who can’t think their way out of a paper bag (despite that they trust those same morons to elect and appoint their bureaucrats), I can simply say, “Well, we don’t have any of those. They all died of their own foolishness.” And if they posit that there are meanies who can’t help themselves as they delight in tortuous treatment of their neighbors, I can simply say, “Well, upon the very first tortuous treatment, our government eliminated them.” They hate it because it presents a gander for their goose.
Thanks, SingleDad.
Hey, Lib:
You don’t agree with me, and as such are naive and pitiful. Want a red herring? grin
(Seriously, thanks for the considered reply, guys. I’ll tackle your points by this evening, depending on how quickly I can get my work done today. And I miss SingleDad too.)
I will give you the Libertarian answer then - people in the USA are not forced to be charitable. By living in the USA you implicitly accept the contract that you will be governed by its laws. Therefore, you have freely consented to whatever coercion the government “imposes” on you. You may severe your contract with this government at any time by leaving its borders.
I will say, however, that I was just reiterating the arguments that Jeff_42 had made earlier in the thread, and that Kimstu has made in prior threads; I hope you count them among the “Gadarenes” of this world, as well.
Phil replied to me:
[Kimstu:]Libertarians, as RTFirefly remarked about gun-control opponents on another thread, tend to assume very clear distinctions between Good Guys and Bad Guys. There are the peaceful and honest, who need no control or guidance, and the non-peaceful non-honest, who deserve no consideration or trust.
*I can’t speak for anyone else, but I make no such assumption. I don’t think there are clear-cut distinctions at all. What I do think is that only the people who perform Bad Guy actions should be punished. Everyone else should be left alone to govern their own affairs as they s[ee] fit. *
I understand that Phil, I didn’t mean to imply that you believed some people are “born bad” and others “born good” and they’re in immutably separate categories. I just meant that the Libertarian distinction between the “bad actors” and the “good actors” at any given time is oversimplistic: the only social responsibility is to protect the good actors from the bad actors, forcing a perpetual “us-vs.-them” mentality (although it’s understood that some of the “uses” might later become “thems” and vice versa). I think societies work better when there’s an underlying assumption of mutual responsibility and obligation connecting everybody, that is, when at the most fundamental level we’re all “us”.
*Take, for example, something that occurred in Shaker Heights, an affluent Cleveland suburb, last year. A longtime resident found himself in big trouble. It seems that, rather than have a great big green Chemlawn, he decided it was more ecologically sound to have some diverse plant life in his yard. He had some fruit bearing trees, some bushes, and other foliage. All of it was well-tended and kept; it was not a disaster area, it was more like a tiny botanical garden.
Well, his neighbors didn’t like that. It was ugly, and an eyesore, and they wanted everyone to have a vast, flat, green lawn. (To the best of my knowledge, there was no homeowner’s association involved.) So what did they do? They sicced the government on him! They all ganged up, and got their mayor to force the man to either have the lawn everyone else wanted, or have his property confiscated or altered against his wishes. *
Sounds appalling, but do you have a cite for it so that I’m sure I understand the details? It seems so improbable that a city could force a citizen to do something like this *in the absence of any legal justification for it at all, and I’m sure that if they did then he could make a hell of a case against them.
*In a Libertarian context, this would be unthinkable. *
Well, no: it would be unthinkable only in a context of Libertarians who’d all signed the same government contract with no restrictions on lawn care. If this man were living peacefully and honestly in a Libertarian neighborhood but hadn’t signed up for governance, then his Chemlawn-junta neighbors could do anything they chose to his property and he’d have no legal recourse whatsoever. In that case, he could only do what this Cleveland man will have to do if his neighbors’ high-handed action turns out to be really unassailable: namely, move.
Two more general thoughts on Libertarian political philosophy:
-
Replacing tax-funded services with private charity: I just want to note that insofar as we have any reliable evidence about the feasibility of this, it’s not very encouraging. Robert Putnam’s book Bowling Alone: the Decline of Social Capital in the US discusses trends in a number of social-capital indicators, including charitable giving. In the 60’s, when the top tax rate was around 70%, Americans on average gave $1 to charity for every $1 they spent on leisure and entertainment: now that the top rate is under 45%, Americans are donating about sixty cents for every $2 they spend on leisure and entertainment. Of course, this correlation isn’t focused enough to exclude alternative interpretations: maybe we all have so much more money now (although real wages have not risen that much for most people) that we can more than double our personal spending while still giving more to charity, for example. But on the face of it, the numbers at least suggest strongly that people do not automatically take advantage of less taxation to increase their charitable contributions, and I would be very hesitant to adopt a Libertarian government that assumed they would.
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The whole Libertarian approach to discussing Libertarianism is wrong. No, calm down, I mean something that is really not quite so hostile as you think.
This whole business about the fundamental importance of leaving people alone: that’ll never sell, not to more than about the 0.5% of the population you’ve already got. Because the fact is, people don’t leave other people alone nor do they want to: humans are social animals and are basically stuck with mutual interaction and interference. Once we grow out of our My Side of the Mountain-type isolationist daydreams sometime in late adolescence, we are (most of us) committed to living in a society and all the conflicts and mutual annoyance that society entails. The fundamental question then becomes not “how can I get everyone else to leave me alone?” but “when is it necessary for us to leave one another alone and what should we be doing together when we’re not?”
So Libertarians come along and say, “Government should leave people alone!” and non-Libertarians respond with a host of questions about then how will we do this and how will we do that and how will we do the other. And the Libertarians respond that that’s up to the individual decisions of peaceful honest people, and everyone else dismisses them as silly utopianists—because they’ve refused to tackle the fundamental social question, “How shall we live together?” Saying “we should answer that question without involving government” isn’t an answer.
In other words, you’ll never get a Libertarian government unless you’ve already got a Libertarian society. If Libertarians really want to be effective instead of just preening themselves on their superior respect for freedom and independence, they should redirect their efforts to rebuilding the sort of social capital that doesn’t involve government and could effectively replace certain aspects of it: volunteer social organizations, private institutions for corporate oversight, non-profit cooperatives, voting to dissolve government institutions whose functions are already successfully handled privately, etc. etc. You can’t just say “take government away and society will work better,” you’ve got to show a society working well enough that people realize that government is redundant. Then, and only then, will you get the, um, well, withering away of the state that Libertarians think is essential.
Sigh. It’s actually kind of a beautiful dream. But you’ll never do it, and you know why? Because you don’t have an answer to “How shall we live together?”, or at least no two of you have the same answer. All you can agree on is that we should stop using government to decide how we’ll live together. And since that leaves the fundamental question of society unanswered, the vast majority of those who have come to a mature acceptance of the centrality of society will ignore you and go on tinkering with government. Wish us luck.
Simulpost, so that Arnold’s name looks conspicuous in its exclusion from my previous post. I like his arguments, too; they’re intelligent and considered. (Never pays to offend a moderator…:D)
Gadarene, thank you for the compliment, but you missed the “Ask the Libertarian” thread! I’m sure I figure prominently amongst those “others” of whom Libertarian speaks, who try to demonstrate that a lack of laws and government to resolve issues will result in a de facto tyranny of the well-to-do over the poor.
Kim
Not really.
We think we should “use government” to make sure each of us has a context of peace and honesty. For some reason, that strikes me as a quite livable context.
But that’s just us. We don’t begrudge you if you want a Nanny.
Arnold
Thank you for being an honest Statist. You are the first I have heard lately who acknowledges who really owns the property in these borders.
No, for the record, I do not lump you with the Others. I view you as an innocent bystander who was mistakenly associated with the pack. My treatment of you in that thread was uncalled for. I believe I had apologized already, but will do so again.