Wealth is not finite, matt, and if I want to amass more of it, as long as I do so legally and without harming anyone, you have no moral right to stop me.
Furthermore, nobody has a right to survive, they merely have a right to try.
Well, if we can’t even use it to guarantee that people will not starve to death, what’s the point of going to the trouble of having a civilization?
Let’s go one better–why don’t we guarantee that nobody ever dies of anything, ever? Wouldn’t that be peachy? If we can’t guarantee that nobody ever, ever dies, why have a civilization at all? If we can’t all be 8’4" and play basketball at the NBA level, why have a civilization at all? If we can’t breathe underwater . . .?
You certainly are obviously obsessed with this “right to eat/right not to starve/right to steal my stuff” bullshit. Look, any person on this earth has several choices when it comes to eating:
–Forage/hunt for your own food. In urban areas this is obviously impractical, although not impossible.
–Grow your own food. Also impractical in some areas.
–Trade your labor for food. Fairly practical.
–Trade your labor for some medium of exchange and purchase food. Eminently practical.
–Trade something else of value that you own or create for food or for a medium of exchange.
–Steal from other people, directly or indirectly.
I’m sure there are others I am not even thinking of, but which one is the most ethical? Surely not the stealing.
Your entire philosophy appears to be devoted to Mommy and Daddy Government taking care of everyone. Why even bother to live if you’re simply a ward of the state from cradle to grave? What kind of freedom is that?
I don’t think you’re serious. I shouldn’t have to explain to you that the examples you’ve given are physically impossible. By contrast, we have more than enough money in this society to keep people from starvation.
Is your problem that some people will fall through the cracks? Ooh, that’s a good reason not to try. It’s clearly time to stop addressing this problem and start ignoring it!
Oh, so wants are more important than needs?
It beats the bloody hell out of starving to death because I couldn’t find some corporation who would deign to hire me.
I can’t believe I realized just now how absurd this statement really is.
I’m going to explain this calmly.
*If I’m alive, I’m a lot more free than if I’m dead.
If I’m healthy, I’m a lot more free than if I’m sick.*
Too easy?
Wow. I’m almost afraid to jump in here. 
The Declaration of Independence states that there are certainly unaliable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The government is there to secure these rights.
Now, I don’t believe that a person born in the ghetto has exactly the same access to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” as say, a kid growing up in the north shore suburbs of Chicago. Argue with me if I’m wrong, but the person who was born wealthy has, well, a much, much, much easier path towards these aims than a kid who is worried more about dodging bullets in the street. Doesn’t this child deserve the same liberty from violence as other human beings? If the government is there to secure these rights, than it has an obligation to do something. Was this child created equal? Yes. Did he grow up equal? No. If you believe in the Declaration of Independence shouldn’t it follow that society’s job is to secure these rights and to provide for the common good?
Am I insane to think that as a society we should take care of our fellow citizens? To provide everyone with, God forbid, health care?!? The right to “life?” As far as I understand it, that’s what it means to contribute to the common good. To put the needs of the society over one’s own.
“Mommy and Daddy government” are there to take of everyone. Not just those who happen to be born in the right place at the right time.
waterj2
This paragraph is as disingeneous as the remark that, “The law equally prohibits the rich and the poor from sleeping under bridges.”
Libertarianism is nothing more than a moralistic rationalization of plutocracy. It attempts to propagandize the legitmacy of the choice between starvation and exploitation. Even the most oppressed black slave of the early 19th century had this choice. Since he chose to continue working rather than exercise his freedom to starve, under Libertarian theory he was as “free” as the most brutal white plantation owner. Libertarians are usually careful to express ad hoc evasions and denial of these extreme circumstances, but I have found no rational argument that their theory of value would contradict my analysis.
This is a baldfaced lie. Libertarianism does not allow me the political freedom to choose criminality or coercion. Free means free. Don’t distort its meaning. All political systems are about which freedoms to deny the individual.
No, what my example proves is that Libertarianism is not only completely unable to correct a “bad” situation that arises between rational people, but that it actually defines the scenario I outlined as “good”! Each individual in my scenario is merely exercising his will. Bill & Ted’s neighbors retain their freedom of non-participation (at the cost of death), and thus, by definition, consent to any strictures that Bill & Ted might request.
If you show me an uncorrectable scenario due to another political philosophy, I would certainly consider it strong evidence against that philosophy.
waterj2:
A specious and blatant evasion of a very simple and reasonable problem. To test a political philosophy, I posed a problem that required a political solution. It seems implausibly naive or disingeneously propagandistic to assert that political problems will magically disappear under Libertarianism.
The premise includes rational behavior among the residents. Bill & Ted merely need to point out the problem and rationally support the costs necessary to provide for the future. They will then receive whatever support is deemed acceptable by the population.
This objection hints at the hypocrisy of the hidden elitism inherent within Libertarianism. Stripped to its core, Libertarianism asserts that only an elite is capable of making rational judgements; the mass of people deserve nothing but subsistence, and even that only as they are useful to the elite.
The enslavement of millions of black slaves by hundreds of of thousands of cooperating white slave-owners. The subsistence existence and brutal working conditions imposed on millions of workers in the 19th century (Ayn Rand’s “utopia”) by hundreds of thousands of cooperating factory owners. The exploitation of hundreds of millions of Indians by the cooperating British Raj. The genocide of millions of blacks in the Congo by tens of thousands of Belgian “colonists”. If you think these are Jedi Mind tricks, you need to go back and read some history.
They did and we’re in it.
Not by force or fraud, but your property could easily be taken by disparity of economic need or disparity in the immediacy of that need. Today, Bill and Ted require the deed to your house for today’s ration of water; tomorrow, your furniture and clothes (they will graciously allow you to retain a loincloth); the next day your virgin daughter. They’re not coercing you! You are free to refuse their transaction. Of course, you and your family will die, but Bill and Ted are under no obligation to see to your survival.
Arrant bullshit. Specialization requires a group! It’s ludicrous for me to be sitting by myself in the woods, specializing in, say, weaving.
This is just blatant propaganda; you are presenting your conclusions as fact. I have seen no evidence whatsoever that Libertarianism has the “‘natural’ outcome of allowing people freedom” other than the meaningless freedom of choosing between exploitation or starvation.
I’m growing increasingly weary of people spouting Libertarian propaganda and fraudulently calling it reasoned argument.
Why would the generalists help the exploited specialists? Since they haven’t specialized, they received no benefit from the economy of the specialized. True, they are themselves immune from Bill & Ted’s machinations, but it is an irrational choice for them to expend whatever small surplus they can accrue for no benefit to themselves.
Not being the morons you seem to think they are, Bill & Ted will ask very politely if they may see the inside of your house each day. You are, of course, free to refuse them, with the obvious consequences.
Of course, Bill & Ted own the water; they are merely giving you a license to pass it through your body. A Libertarian condoning theft? The mind boggles.
The problem is that oppressors are as equally ingenious as the oppressed.
And you cannot say that Libertarianism “works”. Again that is unacceptable propaganda. No Libertarian society has ever existed to prove that assertion accurate.
The only even defense against economic exploitation under Libertarian theory is non-specialization. You can only maintain your freedom in practical matters by never depending on another person. Thus Libertarianism is impractical in that it prohibits a rational person from specializing. Q.E.D.
History has shown that economic exploitation is not a “worst case” scenario, but actually rather common, as I have noted above. It is interesting to note that whenever one points out a flaw in Libertarian philosophy, they say that “Libertarianism will just magically (or {heavy sarcasm} naturally {/heavy sarcasm}) make that problem go away.”
But not the tyrrany of the rich.
A definition of rights completely focused on property is differentially beneficial to those with more property. This is such an obvious conclusion that your objection is incomprehensible.
The first two sentences can be established objectively. The third cannot. It is an unsupported assertion. It is the fallacy of shifting the burden of proof. You assert the philosophy, you must convince me of its effectiveness. Merely asserting so is not an argument. Since we’re making unsupported assertions here I will present Dictatorial fascism, which I assert with no proof works far better than Libertarianism. There, I have (quite trivially and sarcastically, of course) met your challenge.
pldennison
Please don’t waste our time with such childish hyperbole.
Oh, I agree. Perhaps some of them should start earning some of it.
No, my problem is that it makes sloth a desirable goal by positing some idiotic “right not to starve to death.” Out of curiosity, what other things do I have the “right” not to die of?
Clearly, you have no interest in answering the question I posed, so I can only assume you support theft by able-bodied people capable of earning a living. How moral.
Hey, it isn’t my fault if you have no skills for which someone is willing to provide you with the common medium of exchange. It might say something about you, though. Who says you have to work for a corporation, anyway?
Well, duh. On the other hand, you’re going to eventually be dead anyway, aren’t you?
So therefore it’s so much better to simply let Daddy Government rock me gently in his arms than dare exert an iota of energy on my own behalf . . . I have a little secret for you, matt–there’s nothing wrong with earning a living.
SingleDad:
Rest assured that, at the time I feel I require your permission to write the posts I want to, I will explicitly ask. You are under no obligation to read nor to reply to any of them.
[hijack] I’m sorry that I don’t really have the time or inclination to embroil myself in the debate here, but I saw this while lurking and couldn’t avoid responding…
How is wealth infinite? By what definition of wealth is that possible? If wealth is infinite, why then does not the finite number of people in existence each have an infinite amount of wealth? [/hijack]
pldennison –
i don’t think anybody is arguing with “what’s wrong with earning a living?” you assume people don’t want to get off welfare. you assume people would rather be slothful than earn a living. you are wrong. there are those in society who do fit your categories, but the people i have seen, worked with, lived with, do not fit these stereotypes. some of my friends have come from the ghettos, and they worked their damned asses off. they have little education due to shitty inner-city schools that have no funding, little vocational training, much less access to these means to a decent job that you may take for granted. so, yeah, they’re stuck in a submarine sandwich shop making a few bucks an hour, no benefits, and they gotta pray to god they don’t get sick, cuz, hell, they don’t deserve health care because they can’t pay for it. they work harder than the rich kids i went to university with. give me a break.
we DO NOT have equal opprotunity in the US. we DO NOT all grow up with the same access to good schools and training. until we have these, you cannot accurately say that so-and-so succeeds because he tried and so-and-so is poor because he’s a lazy sunnovabitch.
SingleDad, pulykamell, wevets - thank you; I was feeling a bit embattled holding up my end of the argument all by myself.
And pldennison - in a society in which the Fed and the Bank of Canada intentionally fix interest rates to keep a certain percentage of the population out of work in order to create an optimum profit margin and to avoid the degradation of the savings of the rich due to the inflation associated with a healthy economy*, you have no call to talk about who is or is not lazy or lacking in skills.
*Cite: McQuaig, Linda. Shooting the Hippo. Toronto: Penguin, 1995.
And it is of course so easy to earn a living when one is sick, starving, uneducated, and living in a society in which people are intentionally kept out of work to make greater profit. Watch out, pl, your elitism is showing.
I coulda sworn you used to be a liberal. What happened?
And the mask debater mounts his trusty steed… Hi Ho Concorde! Away!
<rides off into the sunset>
pulykamell:
First, libertarians agree that all people are born with those rights. Yes, the kid in the ghetto is equally entitled to be free from violence. Libertarianism proposes that the rich be free as well from having their rights infringed on behalf of the poor. No libertarian proposes not protecting the poor from violence. All people should be equally free to pursue happiness. They have no rights with regard to how close they are to actually achieving happiness.
And no you are not insane to think that “as a society we should take care of our fellow citizens.” As a society we should ensure that all of our citizens are free from initiated force and fraud. That is all the taking care that people should need. To provide further care, society would have to use force to get the necessary resources.
SingleDad:
No, but it does allow you the freedom to join a group of people and by agreement among each other govern yourself in ways that would otherwise be criminal or coercive.
Libertarianism does not consider that a good scenario, just a permissable one. And the cost is not necessarily death. If the cost of non-psrticipation explicitly were death, then it would count as force. That is why you cannot make agreements at the point of a gun in a libertarian system. I suppose that at some point, Bill and Ted, if they managed to control the entire supply of water, and having ruled out all possible ways of finding water elsewhere or leaving, may cross the line into initiating force. This would be ridiculously improbable in any large scale society.
I was not evading the problem, I was showing how unlikely it would be for Bill and Ted to completely control the water supply, and why the situation you presented was not as much of a problem as you had made it out to be. To assert that the situation requires a political solution is, according to the principles of Libertarianism, incorrect unless coersion is involved. I was showing technical solutions to the problem as posed. Libertarianism would encourage people to find these technical solutions.
I can’t figure out where the Hell this came from. What I said was that in libertarianism, people tired of living under the harsh de facto dictatorship of Bill and Ted would develop desalination technology faster than a social democracy where everyone can get water from Bill and Ted’s wells at a reasonable price. Libertarianism asserts that everyone should be free to make rational judgements, as long as they do not initiate force or fraud on others.
I’m sorry, I thought we were talking about libertarianism, so I forgot to specify that that’s what I meant. Also, I specified that it would be to the benefit of an individual to not cooperate, so those situations don’t even fit the bill. None of these situations are consistent with libertarian principles. Banning the use of force and fraud makes it much harder for a group of people to oppress another group.
I must have amnesia, as I can’t seem to remember when I freely agreed to be governed by the US. You’d think I’d have saved a document that important.
You specified that Bill and Ted are going to act rationally. How are their best interests served by having the people that presumably provide their every asset aside from water not actually have any property. Everyone, including Bill and Ted, will die if all the farmers are trying to provide food for everyone by harvesting their farms by hand. Clearly Bill and Ted would be better off if they allowed some property to exist.
Yes, if the incredibly implausible scenario you describe ever happened, it would encourage people to generalize. I fail to see how this proves that it always happens. Poverty encourages generalization. Libertarianism does allow poverty to occur. You still need to show how your situation is a reasonable prediction of what would occur under libertarianism before you can generalize to that last step.
I am getting sick of seeing slavery and violence used as examples of the type of exploitation that libertarian principles lead to. Slavery is not a fucking economic measure. In a libertarian society, if I bought another human being and forced him to work, I would rightly go to jail for it. Do you simply not understand the difference between force and economic exploitation. Also, if you trivialize all the arguments that smartass, Gilligan, and myself have made as nothing more than ascribing it to magic, I’m not sure I can continue this debate. Unless you were just engaging in “childish hyperbole”, in which case I’d like to point out a minor inconsistency in your post.
pldennison:
Can I ask that you use that incredible ability you have the next time someone tries to bring up slavery as an example of something that would happen under libertarianism. I could do it myself, but perhaps your ability to shred a ridiculous argument would cause people to actually think before trying again. Oh, and if you should ever feel that you desire my permission to post the way you like, consider it granted.
matt_mcl:
Uh, please leave the Fed out of this, as that just kind of goes to show why the government should not be involved in the economy. Either way, I really don’t think that the choices the Fed faces are to either have full employment, but the rich lose out, or a moderate level of unemployment, but lots of money for the rich. Plus, they want to produce the best results for the most people, as that keeps the politicians in charge in power. They will serve the middle class first, because if the economy sucks for the middle class, they will be out of power.
wevets:
I didn’t say it was infinite. I said it was not finite. Look up “multiplier.”
[qyote]By what definition of wealth is that possible?
[/quote]
By every commonly accepted definition in pretty much every school of economics.
Well, aside from the strawman of “infinite wealth,” which I didn’t say, the current problem is inequity in the global distribution of resources, a problem I propose eliminating in part by having completely open borders worldwide.
pulykamell:
Remind me to introduce you to my mother. And my sister.
I take nothing for granted. I grew up over half my life in a single-parent home in rural Ohio, and I worked my ass off to go to college (incurring several thousands of dollars in debt load along the way), for a time my wife having our only income while I attended school full-time. Between entering school in 1987 and graduating in 1995, I also spent several years in a minimum-wage retail job. Don’t lecture me on sacrifice, OK?
You need to go back and look up matt’s thread about giving free food and shelter to people who explicitly say they don’t want to work for a living. I’m not talking about uncompassionately shoving aside those in need (although I also don’t believe in gunpoint charity), I’m talking about not encouraging sloth because the idea of getting a paycheck offends someone’s sensibilities.
matt_mcl
Why would you imagine I approve of the actions of the Fed? Admittedly, I neither know nor care about the Bank of Canada’s actions. On the other hand, there are negative economic consequences associated with full employment; the key is to keep the unemployed from being the chronically unemployed, and to try and restrain it to a low percentage of the population.
Elitism. Right. See above.
Gadarene: I’m liberal, but I’m not stupid.
SingleDad,
The first few quotes you responded to came from me, not waterj2. This may already have been pointed out as I write this, but just in case.
Re: your comments about slavery. Do you honestly believe that the violent kidnapping of a population, transporting them from their homeland under intolerable conditions, brutally forcinig them to labor, and owning their very lives, are things libertarians approve of? You are more intelligent than that. It is intellectually dishonest of you to claim that libertarians approve of these things when you know otherwise. Since non-libertarians are always so quick to point out that libertarianism has never been implemented, I could easily point out that slavery, as well as every other example of man’s inhumanity to man, has taken place in non-libertarian societies. Should we conclude from this that non-libertarianism is evil, or “doesn’t work”? Of course not.
The problem with “horror stories”, as Smartass calls them, or thought expirements such as Robo-gov, is not that they aren’t useful. But it’s not enough to simply declare that libs are “required” to evaluate them in a certain way - you have to actually show that they do in fact evaluate them that way. If you are going to criticize the philosophy, at least criticize the things the adherents actually believe and state, rather than the things you think they are required to believe and state based on your misunderstanding of it. If I criticized communism by saying “communists believe in common ownership of property; therefore they are forced to believe that everyone in the world must use the same toothbrush”, this would not be evidence of the failure of communism but the failure of me to understand it.
I realize it’s our responsibility and not yours to increase your understanding of our viewpoint. You have presented your views excellently; I believe I fully understand both your conclusions and how you arrive at them. I have simply drawn different ones that I am having difficulty expressing to you. Smartass, waterj2, and pldennison are expressing their views more clearly, but I think the best expression of the philosophy is found on the site once so promoted by our Old Friend: “Everyone should be free to do as they choose, so long as they don’t infringe upon the equal freedom of others.”
What is it about this idea that you believe causes human misery, since causing misery is prohibited by the phrase after the comma? You present some examples of inhumanity, oppression, and exploitation; how do you see them as flowing from this principle? European colonists sailed to Africa, America, and Asia, claimed ownership of the land, and killed any natives who disputed them. Are you saying these were libertarian enterprises? Are you claiming that we think children chained to factory floors during the industrial revolution were making free choices? Believe me, both you and we wish to eliminate human misery. We just have different ideas on how this is best done. This doesn’t make either one of us evil or deluded.
i am not trying to lecture you on sacrifice. i congratulate you, in fact, that you have made the best of your situation. it pleases me that there are people like you out there, and i sincerely mean this.
i grew up in a working-class family on the south side of chicago. my mother is a factory worker, my dad is a machinist. they both immigrated from poland, and managed to succeed in life through hard work and an eastern european mentality towards saving money. i was the only person from my grammar school to move on to a top-tier university. i got a lot of shit for the first 13 years of my life for simply being “smart.” but i ignored it, worked my ass off, and a lot of it was i just had a knack for picking things up quickly. i attended northwestern university, with most of my tuition paid through grants, scholarships and loans. i worked all through college in a coffeeshop, and through luck and skill, managed to find a great career as a photojournalist.
my point here is, i think i have a right to have said what i said, because i have worked hard in my life, and i still come to the conclusion, that in order for there to be any point in having a society and in progressing as a nation, we have a duty to provide for the national welfare, even if that means giving money to people we don’t want to give money to. i don’t believe money is a “right.” i believe my health is. if the choice comes for me to choose whether i pay 0 taxes, and have to totally fend for myself, and pay 40% in taxes, but have school, housing, health, etc taken care of for me, then i choose the latter. i would rather live in a society where everybody’s basic needs are taken care of for the common good, rather than one in which it’s every person for themselves. if that is so, why the point in society in the first place?
listen, i agree with your reasoning, it just seems that we both have different reasons for society existing.
I will not. What it goes to show is that the current government is in business to help the rich, which means three things:
- the government is certainly not social-democratic;
- the government should be made more democratic (that is why you keep seeing protesters in the streets, folks);
- in the meantime, I don’t want to hear any kibitzing about the hordes of lazy poor people who aren’t working because they don’t like to work.
You don’t think that. Ok, that’s fine. Care to tell me why not, and why Linda McQuaig (one of Canada’s finest current economics writers, winner of the National Newspaper Award, having worked for The Globe and Mail, The National Post, The Toronto Star, MacLean’s, and CBC Radio) is a liar from start to finish in the book I cited?
No, to the extent I can currently see, they want to produce the best results for the rich, as that keeps the politicians rolling in dough.
“There is no snobbery like that of those who aspire to the lower classes.” - Judith Martin