Minimum wage laws may make the recipient more ‘free’, but they do so at the expense of making the employer less free.
Economic ‘rights’ do not exist, because you can not have a ‘right’ to something that someone else created, without stomping on the other persons rights. Libertarians explicitly denounced these kinds of ‘rights’, and certainly don’t consider people who believe in regulation as a method of enforcing equality to qualify as Libertarians in any form.
Libertarianism is defined primarily as the belief that society is self-organizing, that government is too big, and that holding a gun to someone’s head for the ‘greater good’ is evil.
Libertarians do not believe in national health care, Social Security, or welfare.
Libertarians do not believe there should be a Department of Education, an FDA, an OSHA, or any number of other government agencies.
Libertarians believe that the free market is more efficient and more JUST than government regulation, and that the market should be the primary organizing force of society, because the market represents the aggregate sum of freely-made decisions of the citizenry.
Libertarians specifically denounce the notion that ‘coercion’ can be defined as not getting something you can’t afford, or not being able to have the job you want.
Given these nearly universally-held beliefs of Libertarians, a ‘left-libertarian’ is pretty much an oxymoron.
In my experience, those on the left who claim to be ‘socially liberal but fiscally conservative - just like Libertarians!’ have a very narrow sense of what it means to be both fiscally conservative and socially liberal. I suspect that they think it means they’re against deficit spending, but support drug legalization and gay marriage and abortion and oppose blue laws and forced religion in schools. But while Libertarians agree with those statements, they make up only a tiny part of what Libertarians believe. For instance, ‘socially liberal’ to a Libertarian also means no affirmative action, no Americans with Disabilities Act, no public television or NEA, or any of the thousands of regulations that were put in place by both liberals AND conservatives. ‘Fiscal conservatism’ doesn’t just mean balanced budgets, but very low taxes, no wage and price controls, no business subsidies OR taxes, no capital gains taxes, no minimum wages or trade tariffs, no taxes intended to ‘encourage’ behaviour such as sin taxes, no CAFE standards for cars, etc.
If you don’t believe in those things, then calling yourself a ‘left libertarian’ would be like me calling Al Gore a Marxist because he and Karl could both sport a bitchin’ beard.
Anyway, there’s no point in continuing this anymore, since John doesn’t want to debate it – I don’t think it is a hijack, as it goes fundamentally to what constitutes ‘left’ and ‘right’, but whatever – and Sam’s post deserves its own OP.
I will say that I reject the notion that there aren’t any left-libertarians. Whether it’s “liberty” or not, I believe in attempting to maximize each individual’s freedom of choice. A man with a million dollars and a larder full of goodies has more freedom of choice than a man with no money and no food. A man who earns a living wage has more freedom of choice than a man who doesn’t make subsistence wages. Of course, I believe that freedom of choice, while a normative good, is necessarily balanced against others’ freedoms…a living wage, for example, ain’t always practical, possible, or (unfortunately) desirable.
I’ll also say, Sam, that every one of your “Libertarians believe/don’t believe” is far more accurate with a “Some” at the beginning, even if you leave left-libertarians out of it. And I find it ludicrous, Sam, that you would paint with so broad a brush as to purport to speak for all libertarians. But you can start a new thread if you want to debate that; I’d be happy to participate, as I have so many times in the past.
Which is an assumption on your part. I have no idea if such studies exist, but since the media is overwhelmingly Liberal, I do not expect to find one in which the base assumption behind each questions comes from a conservative mindset.
Nonsense. I know Liberals who think we can solve our energy problem by banning SUVs, and who in fact think that our energy problems stem from the fact that we’re in love with SUVs. Energy policy is pretty important.
I know Liberals who think Three-Mile-Island was an ecological disaster, and used that as an excuse to tie the nuclear industry in regulatory knots. We now run a risk of catastrophic global warming, but the only feasible solution we have today has been taken off the table by Liberals who don’t have a clue.
As for the war, I know liberals, some of whom are on this board, who think that the ‘war on terror’ is a fiction, that Islamist terror is not a big problem, and that the proper solution is to arrest people as they try to commit acts of terror and throw them in jail. And yet they have the temerity to point at us supporters of the war in Iraq and say we are the ones who are naive (and I’m not going to engage in debate on this point. I stay out of Iraq debates on this board because they are useless and generate far more heat than light. So you can take this as my unsupported opinion if you’d like).
I just had a look at some of those findings again, and it seems to me to be pretty biased. For example it considers it a ‘misperception’ to believe that there was some relationship between al-Qaida and Saddam. But we know there was at least one - Zarqawi. So it’s accurate to say that there is evidence that there was at least some cooperation between Iraq and al-Qaida. But 7% of those questioned said there was NO contact at all, which is wrong. But I’ll bet 100% of those opposed the war. Likewise with weapons of mass destruction - the study highlights (correctly) that a fair number of people erroneously think that WMD have been found in Iraq, and that the majority of those who believe that supported the war. On the other hand, it didn’t see fit to ask people who opposed the war whether the world intelligence community’s consensus was that Iraq DID have WMD before the war, and how much do you want to bet that their answers would have been just as wrong?
Also, it should be pointed out that some of these questions have not been answered yet. We do not know of any link between Iraq and 9/11, but we do have some pretty substantial ties to Iraq and the first WTC bombing, which would have killed even more people except for dumb luck. So for those who only casually follow the news, assuming a Saddam involvement isn’t exactly outlandish. Likewise, we have not found the WMD we thought were there, and I’ve come to accept that they weren’t there before the war. But others still maintain that they were trucked out of Iraq into the Bekka Valley or into Syria, and this is still a (remote) possibility. It’s also possible that they were there, and that Saddam had them destroyed immediately before the invasion to remove the cassus belli for war and turn world opinion against the U.S. - thus making his planned insurgency more likely to succeed.
Sorry, I don’t buy it. The lefties on this board had no trouble swallowing a lot of anti-war propaganda that was at least as ignorant. You know, the brutal Afghan winter, Afghanistan - the place where empires go to die, the hundreds of thousands that would die of starvation in Iraq, the flooded plains after Saddam blows his dams, the imminent ‘quagmire’ talk caused by the 4th ID stopping for gas on their way to a rout of Baghdad, the rise of the angry ‘Arab Street’… Also the credulous acceptance of the claims of former prisoners at Guantanamo, the belief that there was widespread support for the insurgency from the population of Iraq at large, etc.
Really? So Michael Moore spouts nothing but fact, huh? Remember the Jenin ‘Massacre’? The left on this board swallowed up the Palestinian’s propaganda without a moment’s thought. MoveOn is a paragon of truth, right? How many members of the left on this board have engaged in all kinds of conspiratorial talk about the war on terror and its origins?
Look, this is not a ‘the right is stupid, the left is smart’ thing. All this PIPA report shows is the totally obvious fact that people tend to believe what they want to hear, and tend to fit the information they hear into a preconceived framework. This poll happened to highlight the misconceptions of the pro-war crowd, but it could be equally applied to any other biased group, probably with the same results. How many regular NPR listeners do you think would get the real facts about nuclear power wrong? How many of Michael Moore’s readers have a perception of American corporations as greedy organizations that exist to rape the environment and fleece their employees? How many people on the left are in total denial about the miserable conditions in Castro’s Cuba?
I said I didn’t know, because I hadn’t read it in-depth.
That may be a noble sentiment, but it’s not Libertarianism. In fact, that’s pretty much good old socialism (“From each according to his ability, to each according to their need”). By your definition, as long as there is any inequality of wealth, there is inequality of ‘freedom of choice’, and therefore a requirement for more redistribution of that wealth by force.
That is the antithesis of Libertarianism. It’s not a suble difference, and it’s not a trivial difference. It is a fundamental difference in core philosophy.
Here is what Libertarians believe: People within society should be allowed to go about their own business, so long as they are not physically coercing anyone else. They can make what they want, do what they want, offer employment to whoever they want at whatever wage they are willing to negotiate. If people agree to work with them, and the result is profit, that is just fine. If some people do a better job than others, and therefore attain more wealth, that is also fine. No one has a claim on the labor of anyone else. We work together when we both freely choose to do so. If we feel we have been wronged in a private negotiation or injured by someone else, we have tort and criminal law to protect us. and fairly adjudicate our disputes. To maintain our status as a sovereign nation and secure these rights, we do need a military. To support the judiciary we do need police. This is the framework under which a free market can operate, so other than those necessary functions the government simply has no say in the affairs of men.
The notion that a collective in society should have the right to dictate to free people how they must behave, the conditions under which they can not contract with other people, and how much of their own labor they must give to the collective at the point of a gun is simply anathema to Libertarians.
Well, I just used the brush I’m happy to paint with. There are core values that underline a philosophy. Libertarians disagree on many things. Some believe the war in Iraq is wrong, some believe it was right. Some believe the police force should be privatized, and some don’t. Somme advocate more environmental regulation than others. But at the core, they generally believe in the princples above.
I’m probably one of the few people at SDMB that actually deserves the term “Leftist.” And I’m certainly not in denial about the miserable conditions in Cuba. What we may disagree about are the causes. But I won’t argue that with you.
Sam, from my POV, the media is not liberal. It is drivel. It does not cover important stories in depth – despite the fact that there is more time devoted to the news than ever before.
A few huge media conglomerates own and manage the news. We hear an awful lot about Michael Jackson and the run-a-way bride. Whatever became of Ken Lay? What happened to the Supreme Court order from last June saying that detainees could not be held without being charged? Why are G. Gordon Liddy and Chuck Colson commentators?
Please explain to me how day to day news coverage is liberal rather than centrist.
Speaking of temerity, DUMBASS, but your statement:
is quite errorenous. First off, you’re basing one of the justifications for the war off of something that occured post facto? I mean, you’re not that stupid are you? THERE WAS NO LINK BETWEEN SADDAM AND AL-QAIDA BEFORE THE WAR! Your own spin factory can’t even prove it. That’s why we Liberals (from the Latin word for FREEDOM) think you are stupid because even though you are confronted with the facts you continue to support a regime and a war that is costing our country more than you can possibly know. Saddam was a** secular Baathist politican** or your typical ME strongman. Bin-Laden was a right-wing religious kook who didn’t like him. Besides, most of the insurgents in Iraq now are Saddam loyalists. Al-Qaida wasn’t the center of mainstream Islamic political thought until the Bush adminstration put them there.
Oh and by the way, take a look at the Downing Street memo. Uh, HELLO, SMOKING GUN… YOOHOO! OVER HERE STUPID!
How dare you speak that way to Sam, dipshit? You’d better spend a little time getting to know people around here before you go and start talking like that to your betters! :dubious:
You know what that message could have used a little more of? It could have used a little more bold face type, perhaps with a smidge more capitalization.
I was going to bother replying in depth (I still might if I get the time) but really this comment is just such a non sequitur in the context of what I’m saying that I don’t think you get where I’m coming from at all, and I don’t know if it’s therefore worth expanding.
Sure, many people believed the Jenin massacre when it was first reported. It was on the news, and I believed it. Just as I believed Secretary Powell when he insisted that we were in imminent danger of Saddam’s WMDs.
However, I (and most people who actually make an effort to stay informed) unbelieved it when creditable information was reported that it was a hoax. I guess your question would be more compelling had you asked " who still believes in the Jenin massacre?" I think you would be disappointed by the answer.
If, by “conspiratorial talk,” you mean “fixing the facts to fit the policy” then I think this strawman is better suited on your side of the aisle.
“maximize” may have been an inapt word choice. I believe that there’s a minimum level of freedom of choice which should, insofar as possible, be afforded everyone. A floor, but no ceiling. There’s nothing remotely socialist about that.
Hogwash. I know a number of people who self-identify as libertarian – right-libertarian, that is – who nevertheless see some role for OSHA or recognize that coercion is less easily defined than you want to think it is.
Exclamation points. That post was really short of exclamation points.
That said, holding up Zarqawi as proof that al-Qaida and Hussein were working together is tenuous at best.
It’s unfortunate that your first offering of the rebuttal includes the bleating conservative whine of the myth of the liberal media. “Don’t hold us accountable! It’s unfair because of the LIBERAL MEDIA!” Or as your brethren might say: “LIBERALMEDIALIBERALMEDIALIBERALMEDIA.” Try having some guts to have your propositions stand or fall on their own merit instead of pre-empting your failure with the trite and false fallback of the right. Furthermore, it is quite silly to claim that there are no conservative resources out there to put together such a study. Was the PIPA Study produced by PBS, in conjunction with Dan Rather and Michael Moore?
I suspect that this is not even true, and at best, hyperbole. Argue with the truth, please.
Well, it wasn’t a particularly good day for Central Pennsylvania.
So 1)Nuclear power is the only feasible solution to global warming? and 2) It doesn’t exist anymore because of the damn liberals? What do you mean, “Taken off the table?”
So, I’ll just take a dump in the punch bowl, but I would appreciate it if you didn’t question me on the matter. Nice. At least you didn’t try to weasel out by blaming the liberal media.
No, there was no cooperation between Iraq and al-Qaida.
I’ll bet that the Queen of England shits Cracker Jacks!
Got a cite for that?
Nope. The final report of the Iraq Survey Group has been out for over a month. Surely you aren’t ignorant of it.
Nope. No evidence supporting any such wild ass assertion has ever been found.
fucking nonsense. Most of these things are predictions, not knowledge of facts or beliefs about a president’s position on key matters.
Exactly. Now you understand.
Again, the Queen of England probably shits Cracker Jacks.
Probably far fewer than Fox News listeners would.
Is this a fact to be verified or an opinion?
Oh yes, we all think it’s paradise, and want to move there tomorrow.
And Starving Artist, chiding someone for speaking poorly to their betters? What a fucking lick-spittle dumbass thing to say. And not only because it is patently false.
Not really. I just didn’t want to debate the definition of “coercion” with EvilCaptor. We’ve done it before, and it got nowhere-- his definition is so outside the mainstream that he has essentionally created a new word.
I actually do want to understand your definition of left/right libertarians. As I asked earlier, what specific economic and tax policies do you advocate? Are there any published members of the left-libertarian group? Where does someone like Milton Friedman fall on the left/right axis of libertarianism? What are the key differences between a left-libertarian and a Democrat?
[QUOTE=John Mace]
Not really. I just didn’t want to debate the definition of “coercion” with EvilCaptor. We’ve done it before, and it got nowhere-- his definition is so outside the mainstream that he has essentionally created a new word.
[QUOTE]
Although I would take exception to John’s characterization of my definition of “coercion” it’s true we’ve pretty thoroughly been over that ground and shouldn’t get involved with it here.
And those 7% are right and you are wrong. While the Administration kept pointing to Zarqawi as a member of al Qaida, the U.S. intelligence forces said he was not. Now, he is clearly a like-minded terrorist and since we opened the Iraqi borders to permit al Qaida to enter the country, Zarqawi has clearly linked up with al Qaida and may be now considered to have “joined” with them. But a statment that Hussein’s Baathist regime had no involvement with al Qaida is the correct statement.
IIRC (and I really really hope I do), our erstwhile eponymous Libertarian, Liberal also classifies fraud as coercion. Would you agree or not, John Mace?
Sorry, I disagree. A millionaire is free to do more things than a destitute person. That’s a simple fact. If your definition of freedom does not include “being free to do what you want”, then I submit that it is a non-standard definition. The fact that they may have more “opportunity” does not negate the fact that they have more freedom.
I disagree. (And BTW, that’s a big problem I have with the Libertarian party; the philosophy seems to be based on the idea of a utopian society that could only exist in an Econ 101 textbook, but that never has, and never will, exist in reality.) I’m familiar with the Libertarian argument that boils down to “If you don’t like it you can quit”, but that just doesn’t work in real life. The reason it doesn’t work is that it makes 2 erroneous assumptions: (1) That businesses, as entities, are going to be naturally benevolent, and (2) That an unlimited amount of opportunity exists for every segment of society. Those two things are just plain untrue. Of course, people who live in ivory towers and have never talked to someone who lives in the ghetto aren’t going to realize this. The truth is that there are many, many people whose opportunities are extremely limited, and in the real world, people are taken advantage of.
Besides, it’s still coercion if an employer asks an employee to do something illegal under threat of termination. Whether or not the employee could find another job is immaterial. As already pointed out, you seem to think the only kind of coercion that exists is physical violence. I strongly disagree with that.
Well that’s a strawman, don’t you think? You took my argument, substituted your own different argument, and then knocked it down. C’mon, man…
Having said that, what a business owner is obligated to do, and what he uses as a threat to intimidate employees, are 2 seperate questions.
