The Practical Libertarian rides again. Ask me.

Right. Inspired by this comment here I’m breaking out the Practical Libertarian banner again.

To wit: I self identify libertarian. But at the same time I have been seriously exposed to the methods and madness of the American political system, the American electorate, and the American people (those last two not really being the same thing.

So, desiderata (quoted from the old thread):

“I believe that there is something fundamental in human nature that human beings build societies. And these societies develop societal standards and insist that members abide within these standards. While there’s room for the more adventurous to move outside those standard and attempt to bring about change it’s foolish to think that one can attempt to bring about wholesale change in all aspects of society at once.”

In short, I’m not one of the more dogmatic libertarians. I believe that more liberty is, by it’s nature, better than less but that there’s something wired into humans and their social nature that makes complete liberty anathema to them.

And, frankly, the national party (and most libertarians) piss me off miserably. Their intellectual approach to political issues makes it clear that they wish to be right more than they wish to win.

So ask away. Given how my own political views evolve over time (and I hope yours do, too) some of my answers are liable to be different than the last time.

Something I asked in the last thread, but never got an answer on:

In a Libertarian society, how would corporations be different then they are now? If you’re just shooting for “gradual change that may reasonably have a chance of succeeding” what, if anything, would you try to change about corporations?

What would the economic situation of the average Libertarian family be? Can they afford health care, food, shelther, schooling and the other basics of life?

Would there be anything preventing monopolies from forming along the lines of the Robber Barons?

What would the laws be in Libertaria and how would they be enforced?

How would the government fund its self?

Are there intellectual property rights i.e. trademarks/copyrights/patents?

Does the government enforce contracts?

I look forward to following this thread.

I would be grateful if you could have a look at the thread I just started, and give me your point of view on the issue I raise there, either here or in that thread.

Basically it’s about how far the police can go in “initiating force” against somebody who is a suspect in a criminal case or a defendant in a civil case, but who has not yet been convicted. Think of things like searching a person’s house, taking their fingerprints or DNA samples without their consent, jailing suspects to prevent them from tampering with evidence, subpoenaing third parties who are not themselves accused of wrongdoing, jury duty, etc.

If you were running the show, would the police and the court system have pretty much the same kind of powers they have now? More? Less?

Before I start answering questions (soon, I promise) I want to make something clearer than I apparently have.

I am NOT arguing for any sort of a complete change in society that would lead to a complete libertarian mode of societal organization. To even strive for such a thing is the very epitome of why I call most other libertarians ‘impractical’.

Working within existing American society is what I attempt to argue. We won’t replace the federal and state governments any time soon therefore to bring about maximum liberty we need to play the ball as it lies.

Keep the questions coming. And make Poly ask one. Darn observers!

Is the current U.S. model close to what you have in mind?

friend jonathon chance,
[/quote]
Working within existing American society is what I attempt to argue. We won’t replace the federal and state governments any time soon therefore to bring about maximum liberty we need to play the ball as it lies.
[/quote]

how would one define “maximum liberty?”

lh

Very good. That’s been my biggest problem with pure (or big L) libertarianism. Doesn’t work outside of a vacuum.

Corporatism. What does that mean to you? And why should we not fear it, any more than big (ie, authoritarian) government. That’s my biggie with the (big L) Libertarian platform as it stands now.

Also (if you can indulge me) what do you think of the current neocon agenda of the current US admin. What is the pure libertarian position in re the neocon agenda?

One of the more basic questions: how can we defend a present situation of property rights when there is no widely accepted account of how people can come to acquire material property? Given that most material wealth can trace back its roots to coercion and bloodshed, isn’t defending property rights in any simple sense merely just a lucky break for whomever happens to be on top at the moment, by hook or by crook?

If **Jonathon **will pardon me for butting in on this one…

Firstly, I doubt any two people would agree on what the neocon “agenda” is. It would be better if you listed specific policies, rather than relying on generalities that mean different things to different people.

Assuming the main thing you’re talking about is the Iraq war, pure libertarians are extremely isolationist in terms of military foreign policy. You’d be hard pressed to find a libertarian who supported the invasion of Iraq.

This is actually about where I am (i.e., libertarian but amenable to the government providing basic needs (food, shelter) for everyone).

  1. Do you think the right to free speech should ever be curtailed? If so, under what circumstances?

  2. How do you feel about American foreign policy? Are you troubled by the imperialistic tendencies of the past 30 years?

  3. What kind of drug policy do you favor?

  4. Do you support gun regulation?

  5. Since you admit to deviating from strict libertarianism (as I do), do you think there are any specific beliefs that stray so far from it that a person who holds them could no longer claim to be a libertarian? If so, what are the dealbreakers?

That’s all I got for now. I take it, since this is in GD, we can ask follow-ups?

I can answer these.

For strict libertarianism:

  1. Corporations should not exist. Period.

  2. The pure libertarian position is that it’s entirely antithetical to libertarian beliefs. (For a good libertarian (/paleocon) news and opinion source, I suggest antiwar.com.)

Damn you, John. :stuck_out_tongue:

Does that mean that there should be not be limited liability ownership?

Yikes!

Disclaimer: I am a corporate guy by background but currently an unemployed entrepreneur trying to get my own firm off the ground.

I have, actually, no set problem with the issue of ‘corporatism’, per se. Where my concern comes in is on the muscle the corporations can bring to bear.

In short, there is too likely a temptation on the part of large corporations to believe that they supersede the rights of the people effected by their actions.

My solution:

  1. Hold them strictly accountacle for external damage they cause, up to and including the forfeiture of incorporated status. This could include environmental and competitive damage, monopolistic behavior (preventing innovation through the elimination of rivals early in their growth), etc.

  2. But more than that…it is easy for a person working for or running a corporation to transfer what would normally be tribal or religious belief to the corporation. It is something much larger and more powerful than the individual. To make sure the directors and such are aware that they remain human I’d advocate that when a corporation trespasses against societal norms (in whatever fashion) not only is the corporation brought to trial but so are the individuals who made the decision that led to the trespass. Make sure people are aware that more than their corporate standing is on the line when they make decisions.

  3. Oh, and if I was all powerful I would limit (strictly) the number of boards an individual could be on. Possibly to one. Alternately I would like to see some algorithm that limits the number of interlocking boards.

Precisely.

It’s unlibertarian because it absolves the owner of responsibility, an important tenet of libertarianism. With regard to the environment, for instance, in a strict libertarian state, a person who has a grievance against a company should be able to seek damages (and receive them, if he can prove culpability).

Somehow I knew you’d reply to this. :slight_smile:

I can’t forget that you claimed, on this website, to not know what corporatism meant. Maybe you should do more research on that? I really don’t mean to be snarky about this, but I do think you are tossing libertarian principles overboard when or if you overlook the agenda of the neocons, and/or the agenda of the corporatists.

Really, I think it’s up to you to defend libertarianism against these ideas, rather than the claim you try to make here.

Are you really telling me you have no idea what the neocon agenda is, or what* corporatism* means? That admission would entail a completely different thread outlining those principles and ideas. If that is what it takes, then so be it - maybe I am assuming too much when I reply to posters here…

Is that your claim?

I’m a regular reader. :slight_smile:

I’ll add something else, since I think I have a similar philosophy to the OP.

Governments didn’t arise out of some theoretical intellectual theory about pooling labor and/or sharing risk and reward. No, the most basic model of government were gangs of men with horses and bronze weapons who demanded a share of the output of their neighbor’s farms in return for not bashing said neighbor’s heads in. And those gang members taught their children how to hit farmers in the head, and those children taught their children. Of course, most of the time gang members didn’t have to fight farmers…they mostly fought other gang members over the ownership of the farmers. Local gangs were often more tolerable than foreign gangs, since local gangs usually wanted a guaranteed income from working farmers, rather than a one-time looting that murder of all the farmers would provide.

But it did no good for the farmers to rise up and wipe out the gangs. If they got rid of the local gang, then a new gang was sure to attempt to move in. Or the fighters who wiped out the local gang would set themselves up as a new gang. And so on and so on, read any history book.

Concepts of taxation, private property, and duty to the state come from this tradition. Sure, nowadays we use the taxes our ancestors had to pay to their feudal overlords for things that, in theory, are supposed to benefit us. But the idea that we owe the state a portion of our earnings…just for the privilege of not getting our heads bashed in…comes from this. Sure, those taxes can be used to pay for public goods. But why are we obligated to provide anything?

Now, to step back a bit. Our current system of liberal democracy evolved out of this feudal state. It succeeds pretty damn well, all things considered. And I think the evolution is a big part of that success. We didn’t redesign society from first principles…we threw out things that were unfair and replaced them with things that were less unfair. Things that just grow often function better than things that are designed. Spontaneous order is very often stronger than imposed order.

Things like property rights or political rights don’t spring up from first principles…they are tools that enable societies to function better. A society with no political rights will fail. A society with no property rights will fail in a different way. A society unable to resist agression from outside gangs of men with horses and bronze weapons will become the slaves of those men.

So even though there literally millions of things that can be improved in our social/political/economic system, I don’t advocate radical transformation of society like most libertarians seem to. We have a global society today that is more fair, more just, more safe, more free, more interesting, and provides more wealth for more people than any other society in history. Complaining that we live under tyranny seems to miss the point. Yes, things could be better. But lets not lose sight of the fact that our society today WORKS, to a greater or lesser extent. And we got to this point from bipedal apes roaming the african savannas to hunter-gatherers to neolithic farmers to bronze age serfs to medieval peasants to renaissance subjects to industrial age citizens. I wouldn’t trade my place in today’s world with anyone from the past.

We are not living under tyranny today in the US, we are not slaves. Any so-called libertarian who claims that we are slaves or sliding into slavery, but somehow we are all too stupid to realize it is just blowing smoke. If most people really are too stupid to tell the difference between freedom and slavery then liberal democracy won’t work, and authoritarianism really will turn out to be the correct theory of government after all.

OK, this one (and I’ll stop answering individually soon) again seems to be approaching this from the ‘Libertaria’ POV that I find painfully naive. Remember! It won’t happen!

  1. I believe, for political reasons, that a certain amount of safety net is both A) desired by most people for the poor and B) necessary for the establishment of a stable society. So there will be some form of safety net because the citizens of a ‘more’ libertarian minded society will vote to put one in place. I believe that the average family would be able to function and provide for itself without selling kidneys to do so.

  2. As mentioned above, monopolies are in their very nature damaging to liberty when they grow so large as to begin establishing their own regulations and behavior patterns. Those patterns tend to be ones that promote the corporation as an entity above the needs of the employees and people outside the corporation. It would be easy to say ‘no corporation shall be above size X’ but that wouldn’t work. So hold them strictly accountable to societal laws and desires and make sure there is little incentive on the part of the people in the corporation to hold greater loyalty there than to society as a whole.

  3. Again, I see a misunderstanding of where I’m going with this. I’ll dodge this one. You can get back to me with a re-phrase.

  4. The government of the United States currently funds itself through taxes and fees. I see no means by which to change this practice…as a practical matter. Taxes will continue for the foreseeable future (and beyond, I feel certain). The question then becomes not HOW to raise money but what to do with it and how MUCH to do with it.

  5. Intellectual property rights should certainly be respected and enforced. I would, however, limit them from the apparently pattern in the US of extension whenever threatened to a set time to exist then the public domain comes into play. Copyright and intellectual property enhances innovations, yes, perpetual ownership leads to those innovators stagnating and not continuing to create.

  6. Of course the government enforces contracts. It would do so through arbitration (I know that’s a libertarian buzz-word). Contract’s written, contract should be enforced. If there’s a dispute there needs to be someone who can settle the dispute. That could be the courts or, more likely, an arbiter agreed upon by both sides in the dispute.

ahem

Those wishing to argue neocon and suchlike would do well to get their own damn thread.

Capiche?