Most people oppose violence and recognize property. I’m no libertarian and I agree with both of those principals. So do the Democrats and the Republicans.
Many libertarians want to present themselves as something different. They want to say a political viewpoint that is unique. Saying “We want to loosen regulations and tighten property laws” doesn’t really sing (especially when it’s pretty close to the current Republican Party platform). So they present their platform as “We won’t have any laws except those against violence.” Now I’ll grant you that would be something different. But as I’ve pointed out, it doesn’t actually represent what the libertarians want.
While you’re working on that, here’s another one. Are there speed limits in a libertarian society? Do people have the unabridged freedom to drive as fast as they want? Or can their freedom to drive fast be trampled on by the majority?
Grin! Easy answer: you can drive as fast as you want on your own property. If I happen to own the road, then I can set the speed limit. I can charge a toll for passage, or deny passage entirely. I can let green cars go for free, but blue cars have to pay $10,000…in gold…or else they have to turn back. Freedom!
Would a libertarian society have “public roads?” I’ve heard both yes and no, but the more common answer is no. Private roads, private speed limits.
Otherwise, you end up with groups owning property, and having to vote on the rules. This essentially leads to the re-invention of conventional government. If the entire membership of the SDMB chipped in and bought a ten-mile length of road…my goodness, board meetings to decide policy would be interesting!
Sure, it’s nobody else’s business how fast you drive… until you hurt or kill someone with your reckless driving; then you’ll have a grieving next of kin or six lining up at your door to challenge you to a duel. If you felt they had no right to challenge you, you could demand neutral arbitration; but if a mutually agreed upon judge said “Yep, you were a stupid jerkass”, then it would be time to make reparations, either in gold or in blood.
Now many would object to this scenario on the grounds that the world would never run out of stupid jerkasses, and therefore only prior restraint can limit malfeasance to a socially acceptable level. That’s debatable; but libertarians presume that along with maximum personal freedom comes maximum personal responsibility. One would hope that in a society where stupid, selfish arrogant pricks get called out for pissing off too many people, a certain amount of social reenforcement would be in place after a few generations.
There’s a few problems with the logic here. It’s assuming everyone will agree on the distinction between what was reckless and what was just a tragic accident. And that people will agree that having a family member killed can be recompensed by killing the person who did it. And that the life of a person who has family and friends who will seek vengeance is somehow worth more than the life of socially isolated orphan. And that when two people shoot at each other in a duel, the outcome will be determined by who has right on their side. And that only people who are willing and able to engage in duels deserve justice. And that two people who disagree on a life and death issue will be able to agree on a judge to settle their disagreement. And that after the original death and first duel, the matter will be closed rather than continued by someone who now wants vengeance against the duelist who killed their family member - and who will in turn be challenged if they win their duel and so on. And that intelligent people will look at this clusterfuck and not say, “What the fuck? This is supposed to make more sense than just putting up a speed limit sign?”
In the absence of central authority, it’s precisely the question of how to deal with bitter, potentially deadly disagreements. Let’s assume that I’m perfectly faultless but Nutty McPsycho decides to pursue a vendetta against me:
Clearly, McPsycho believes something ought to be done about me- what exactly? Recompense? Being “taught a lesson” by some measure of suffering on my part? My life? IOW, McPsycho wants something that in our society would be meted out by the state. Here, it’s up to him to see it happen.
Well if no one cares that I ran someone off the road, that’s the end of it, isn’t it? Or maybe McPsycho isn’t a relative, he’s a do-gooder paladin (or a fanatic crank, depending on your point of view) who has taken it upon himself to administer “justice”.
Justice or right would have nothing to do with it; it would be two people who for different reasons each think the other needs killing. And ultimately it would be a matter of pure selection. If I am in the habit of aggravating too many people with my driving, I am going to be dueled to death. Conversely, if McPsycho has a perpetual chip on his shoulder and picks fights constantly, he isn’t going to live a long time. It’s an admittedly amoral system, because no central authority- not even a majority vote- is allowed to dictate to society at large what’s right or wrong. This is because a no-coercion society would ultimately have to be founded on a radical precept: no one has any right to punish others for doing what you think is wrong. If you object to something so strenuously that you’d rather be dead than accept it, than you put your own life on the line.
So how does a society without central authority keep from devolving into a Hobbesian war of all against all? There would have to be a generally accepted custom of how to handle deadly disagreements. I picture it as an informal set of rules for distinguishing murder, which is retributable, from the outcome of a duel, which is not. Maybe something like this:
Someone claims I’ve done wrong, and I don’t or won’t offer them satisfaction. Unless they’re willing to flat-out murder me and take the consequences (see below), then they challenge me to a duel. To be “proper” a challenge has to be made publicly in front of neutral witnesses. I have three choices:
(a.) I decide to take him up on it. We duel, one (well, or maybe both of us) dies. Everyone agrees that it was completely voluntary on both sides. Any grieving survivors however hurt admit that it was our choice.
(b.) I simply refuse to acknowledge the challenge, and literally turn my back on him. Maybe I’m a pacifist willing to die rather than fight. If he shoots me in the back then it’s murder. I’ve sacrificed my life but left a legacy that anyone else who wishes to has cause to challenge him to a duel.
(c.) I don’t think this crank has any claim against me, and I resent having him threaten my life. I declare “I seek judgment”. By custom, this means that we pick a person whom we mutually believe to be fair to adjudicate the dispute. Maybe there are professional adjudicators. The adjudicator hears us out and tries to offer a solution short of death. If there is none, the adjudicator declares one party the aggrieved and the other the aggressor. At this point the loser has to decide if they’re willing to risk retribution. If the adjudicator decided against McPsycho and he kills me anyway, then others can avenge me. If the decision was against me, McPsycho killing me is held to be the outcome of a proper duel (having asked for and received judgement, option B. is no longer valid). In practice almost all formal duel challenges would be to force adjudication, with comparatively few ending in death.
Is this a perfect system? Hell no, and I never claimed to have one. For one thing murder is murder and only the voluntary participation of both parties in the code duello makes it possible. And I’m sure there would have to be ways of gaming the system, and scenarios where injustice would prevail; but that’s the case no matter what, since any system has logical loopholes and people can be bastards. It’s simply one example of how a society without central authority might organize itself.
But what does a duel prove? The outcome is based more on who’s a better shot than one who was right.
Al Smith drives too fast and has an accident that kills Bob Jones. So Bob’s brother Carl challenges Al to a duel. Turns out that’s a bad idea because Al’s a good shot and kills Carl. Is the Jones family really going to say that now that Al has killed Bob and Carl that they figure the issue is over? More likely if they were mad enough to challenge Al over Bob’s death, the second death is just going to make them madder.
But maybe they realize dueling Al is a bad idea. And a week later, somebody shoots Al in the back. Nobody steps forward to claim credit or take the blame. But Al’s brother Don is sure it was Ed Jones but Ed denies it (usually with a smirk). Is Don allowed to challenge Ed to a duel based on his belief that Ed killed his brother?
And here’s an even bigger problem about dueling and libertarianism. Libertarians will tell you that their system is better because your rights would be unlimited by any government authority.
But let’s say I have an unpopular opinion and I go around telling people about it. Obviously my idea is going to offend a lot of people. And that means I’ll end up getting challenged to a lot of duels and the law of averages says I’m going to lose one sooner or later and end up dead.
So how really free are you to express unpopular ideas in a society where you get killed for expressing unpopular ideas? And killing is just the most extreme example. You can also be fired from your job, kicked out of your apartment, told you’re banned from businesses, etc for having an unpopular opinion.
It seems like a common problem in libertarian systems - you have rights that are unlimited in theory but are actually quite limited in practice. Often far more limited than they would be in a non-libertarian system. You can do whatever you want in a libertarian society as long as you’re the most powerful person around. But if you’re not the most powerful person around, then you’re better off just doing whatever the most powerful person says.
My above posts are based on musings I’ve had on the subject but don’t claim to be a perfectly thought-out theory. I don’t have a Grand Theory of how to create A Perfect Libertarian Utopia. I do believe that a prerequisite of one, if one is possible at all, would have to be abandoning the age-old idea that being certain that something is morally wrong is a mandate for you to punish others for violating that standard. Which more or less led to the start of the thread.
The idea of duelling if wholly voluntary isn’t hopelessly insane. Where it tends to break down, though, is when the challenged party declines to participate, and his social circles take that as evidence of his being in the wrong.
If someone feels obliged to participate, for fear of being labeled a coward, or for fear that people will presume he must be in the wrong (else he would defend his point) then…that is a form of coercion!
The problem with professional adjudicators is much the same problem with professional expert witnesses: there will always be economic pressure upon them to side with the parties that have the most money. If a particular adjudicator became known as a “hero of the little guy,” he can kiss goodbye any chance of being hired by rich patrons and earning lots of money. Meanwhile, another guy, known as “the millionaire’s champion” will be living the good life and pulling down a lot of income.
But there’s a strong theme of that in libertarian ideology. A majoritarian won’t claim that something is morally right or wrong just because he thinks it is - he’s saying moral standards require the consensus of millions of people. But a libertarian will argue (as has been argued in this thread) that it doesn’t matter what those millions of people say. He’ll claim that as an individual he has the moral authority to overrule their decision and declare what is right or wrong.
But there’s room for both. The U.S. Constitution has anti-majoritan protections built in. A libertarian society could do the same. (Some might even argue that the limitations in the Bill of Rights are of a “libertarian” nature.)
The big-L Libertarian wants far more of these kinds of limitations, and I think this is where the theory breaks down in any kind of practice. Their ideal begins to resemble the U.S. under the Confederation, where government is too weak to maintain order.
But those anti-majoritarian measures were enacted by majorities and could, in theory, be repealed by majorities.
I actually agree with many of the individual items in the libertarian platform. It’s the ideology I strongly disagree with. If they just restricted themselves to saying things like "we want to legalize marijuana" they’d have my support. But when they start saying things like “we want a system of government where making marijuana illegal is not allowed” it gets creepy. You realize the solution they’re proposing is worse than the problem.
[voice of Inigo Montoyez]You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
I’m not a libertarian, but when I want to understand Libertarian fundamentals, I usually go to its greatest spokesperson, Ayn Rand. Hopefully they’ve refined ideas since Rand, but her work is definitely a great starting point. If you’re interested in what it means, read her essays collected in a work entitled “The Virtue of Selfishness”. I recently found most of the articles available free on the web. Highly recommended reading, whether you’re a libertarian or not.
The first tenet is that the government must be the sole arbiter of coercive force.
The second tenet is that the government should use as little force as possible to maintain an orderly society, where people can get down to business without interference from evildoers. The third is that the government shouldn’t do anything BUT be the sole arbiter of force, as much as possible: anything that can be done by private enterprise should be. That’s where I depart; I believe that public education is critical, even though it “could” be done by private enterprise. (That’s not my only departure, just my first.)
I doubt Rand itemized these tenets in this order, and no doubt I’m doing a bit of violence to them too, due to not having recently studied it. But I think it’s close enough for government work.
Anyway, it’s pointless to argue against something until you’ve taken the first steps to educate yourself about it. The characterizations above about libertarians have nothing to do with what actual libertarians believe.
Or, of course, the system could just break down into violence and lawlessness. No system can work without a very significant part of the populace wanting it to.
Agreed. There’s too much “magical thinking” behind a lot of Libertarian thought. They imagine that a Utopia can be attained, if we’d all agree to only their (relatively minor) reforms. But it ends up being like a “Let’s kill all the lawyers” approach to reducing excessive litigation. Their ideas would create a power vacuum, into which something (very likely unpleasant) would come creeping.
Rand denounced libertarianism and did not consider herself a libertarian. Which makes it difficult to see her as its spokesperson or a source for its fundamentals.
Granted, those of us on the outside can look at libertariansim and objectivism and hold the opinion that they’re sibling rivals.
Never mind, I found some myself. Thanks for fighting my ignorance.
Regardless, I believe the characterizations above are strawmen. Note that when Rand criticized libertarians, she called them “hippies”, which clearly means she was talking about something different than today’s libertarian movement and people like Ron Paul.
However, if libertarians take foreign non-intervention as an axiom rather than a derived tenet, that definitely separates them from Rand and objectivists.
To me it appears more like Calvin and Luther arguing over whether or not God was present in the Eucharist. It seemed like a really important issue to them but some of us are thinking they’re both missing the much more fundamental issue of whether God exists at all. They’re arguing over trivial differences in an invalid belief system. And I feel the same way about libertarians and objectivists - the minor differences between the two ideologies are overshadowed by the fact that neither system would ever work.
