Let’s discuss the primacy of property rights in a wholly libertarian society. It seems to me as if the rights of a citizen in a country without a commons are necessarily predicated to some degree on the ownership of property–especially when it comes to such small niceties as freedom of speech, expression, and assembly. To put it succinctly: What rights, practically speaking, do the homeless have in Chocolatebunnyland Libertaria? Specifically, isn’t the exercise of these rights–for anybody–dependent upon the consent of the appropriate private land owner?
Gee, here in America, I own no land, and yet I both own property and have rights. Imagine that. You would think such a think is impossible. :rolleyes:
Oh, and let’s address the corollary question as well. What rights do they have here in America, where they have unfettered access (snort) to the “commons,” dispensation of which is dependent upon the consent of anywhere from several thousand to 300 million land owners?
Crap, one more, just to demonstrate how completely flawed your initial premise is: Why are you assuming there is no commons in a wholly Libertarian country? Do we know for a fact that no person has bought a large piece of land (coughNatureConservancycough) and maybe made it available for all to use?
Perhaps in the place of misplaced sarcasm, you might deal with the rights of those who do not own property and the differentiation of those rights among those who own more or less property.
Then you might, if you are feeling ambitious, lay aside the straw man response to commons and grapple with the issue of reasonable rights of assembly in the commons.
And after that you might, demonstrating that the original premise was not in fact flawed, grapple with the historical inadequacy of private efforts to provide commons per the Nature Conservancy. (Why are these discussion so often falsely either or propistions?)
I daresay that he has done exactly that. He (and I) have no real property whatsoever, and yet retain rights in the U.S. Why is it so silly to believe that the same might be true in another context.
Straw man? I think you misspelled “responding to the OP.” As to the right of assembly, presumably one of the greedy libertarians would jump at the chance to lease his land to protesters. I would. Hell, if I liked the issue enough, I might even do it cheap – say, for the cost of cleanup. (Damn messy protesters. grumble grumble)
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And after that you might, demonstrating that the original premise was not in fact flawed, grapple with the historical inadequacy of private efforts to provide commons per the Nature Conservancy. (Why are these discussion so often falsely either or propistions?)
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I forget. Did the deforesting of Europe occur under a libertarian or Statest context? Was it libertarians or Statists that allowed Exxon to use a single-hull tanker in the shoals? I can never remember these things.
Wow. Well, Gad and Collounsbury, looks like we’re supposed to instinctually understand how freedom of assembly will work in Libertaria. That’s a pity. While I think I understand it and could probably offer a dry description, I could certainly use some instruction on the matter from someone who actually supports the libertarian… er, context.
It would be refreshing to see a non-defensive and unsarcastic explanation, rather than Phil’s observation that, “Gee, it’s clear how these rights are exercised in the US under a non-libertarian system.” It would be wonderful to see the question of the relative adequacy of private efforts to establish nature conservatories addressed with something less insulting and evasive than “well the environment’s been damaged extensively under ‘statism’, hasn’t it?”
Gadarene asked:
pldennison responded:
Phil, that response sure looks like “Yes, Gad; the exercise of those rights in Libertaria would be completely dependent upon the consent of the appropriate private land owner.” I don’t think that’s correct, but that’s certainly how your response makes it seem. You want to provide something more substantial, or should our understanding be that Gadarene is entirely correct in his supposition?
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Just like in the United States of America, the rights of the homeless in the not-at-all-condescending-or-mocking-which-is-why-I-hate-these-fucking-discussions “Chocolatebunnyland Libertaria” are exactly the same as the rights of everyone else: The right to make all decisions with respect to their property which includes anything that they rightfully own, including their own bodies and minds, and the right to freely enter into agreements with others.
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Just like in the United States of America, when and where the rights of expression, assembly and speech may be exercised and to what extent are dependent upon the permissions of the property owners, private, public or other.
Does that answer the question sufficiently?
Look, I said a month ago, to Kimstu, that I was no longer going to participate nicely in threads which are designed specifically to mock my ethics or the ethics of others who think the way I do. I’m sure that IRL Gadarene is a reaaaaaaally nice guy, but I’m not going to sit here and see another thread started with another fundamentally flawed premise to the effect of, “Gosh, the homeless have it made here, but wouldn’t they be miserable in a libertarian context?”
I mean, really, nobody has started a thread on a libertarian topic in several weeks now; what on Earth would prompt this topic now? Do you or Gadarene really expect someone to say, “Well, unlike the United States, where the homeless are clearly able to speak, assemble and express wherever they want, in a libertarian context, they would be rounded up and dumped in Ghana”?
Hey, you’ve already got me to admit that, in today’s America, in which people view the federal and state government as The Great Problem Solver and Hey, Maybe If We Just Raise Taxes A Little More Everything Will Be Perfect, nobody wants to be free to make decisions with respect to their property nor to freely consent to be governed. So, instead of worrying about how imaginary homeless people would be treated in an imaginary land, the hypothetical workings of which you stubbornly refuse to understand, why not spend time worrying about how to improve their lot here? Oh, that’s right–the homeless here don’t have to worry about property owners like, say, the government depriving them of their rights to due process and assembly and speech.
And that is all I have to say about that.
pldennison: So, instead of worrying about how imaginary homeless people would be treated in an imaginary land, the hypothetical workings of which you stubbornly refuse to understand, why not spend time worrying about how to improve their lot here?
I couldn’t agree more. Does this mean that from now on we can debate real-life problems of social welfare and personal liberty without libertarians jumping in to point out that all of these problems could be solved in a hypothetical Libertaria? Hallelujah.
Thank you, yes it does.
Gad, you were correct. -Which enables me to say with zero sarcasm thank the IPU for eminent domain.
BTW, I’m also curious as to what prompted the OP.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it looks like you just admitted the USA is already a libertarian country.
One way to improve things, though, would be to make sure that those who own more property than others do not have more rights than others. At the public library, I once met a woman who believed that since she paid more property taxes than average, she was entitled to more library rights and privileges than those who paid less or none. (She wanted to use a computer for more than her allotted time.) In my mind, I called her “Unclear On The Concept,” and ignored her complaining as best I could, which was difficult at the time since she was right next to me. Fortunately, Library Security asked her to leave for disturbing the peace.
No, I think Gadarene said, “Homeless people are miserable here, but they’d be even worse off in Libertaria.”
No, it’s more like Hey, Maybe If We Spend Taxes A Little More Wisely, Things Will Be Better. I know some politicians keep asking for more money, but the majority of the people believe in the second philosophy, IMHO.
Disclaimer: I have Libertarian leanings, but I’m not sure I can fully accept the notion that there is NO public property.
That said, I can understand plDennison’s frustration. You can always come up with extreme examples to discredit any political system. I could start a thread asking, 'What if 80% of the people in a democracy decided they wanted to KILL the other 20%? What’s stopping them?" Answer - nothing. With that kind of majority, you could pass any law you wanted. But is it a reasonable concern?
In this specific case, I would point out that there are charitable people in the world, who would like to help others. If those people could keep everything they earn instead of giving 30% of it to the government, they could engage in more charity. Likewise, if the government wasn’t in the charity business, the average person would perceive a greater need to be involved. I could offer evidence that charity would expand greatly by pointing out that private charitable spending increased greatly in the Reagan years when there was a perceived need for it, and in other years when taxes were lowered.
Thus, homeless people would no doubt find all sorts of sanctuary on the properties of churches, The Salvation Army, the Red Cross, and countless other organizations that would exist if the lack of government charity created a vacuum.
I’d also point out that it is in the interest of private property owners to have ‘public’ areas. Shop owners still need public sidewalks out front so that customers can get to their store, and they would have an interest in maximizing access. So even if they owned those sidewalks rather than the government owning them, they would enter contractual agreements with other store owners to let people pass, and they would still have some tolerance towards loiterers and perhaps even homeless people. And it’s not like there’s a lot of tolerance for them today - Go try and sleep on the ground in front of Saks’ 5th Avenue and see how long you are allowed on that ‘public’ property.
The difficulty Libertarians have in arguing this is that they start from the assumption that people can and should regulate their own affairs. That makes it hard to answer questions coming from people who start with the premise that charity requires a plan, usually centrally administered. A perfectly valid response from a Libertarian when asked, “How would the homeless be cared for” is, “I don’t know, but the system that I believe in would work for them as well.”
This may sound like a leap of faith, but it’s not. If you asked me 30 years ago, “If the government stopped delivering packages, how would packages get delivered?” I couldn’t have told you then that a company might spring up that could actually use giant fleets of aircraft and trucks, all converging on a central hub in the middle of the country, that could deliver packages overnight for eight bucks. But I would have felt comfortable advocating that the government get out of the express package business, because I have tons of empirical evidence that, given a free market and a demand, someone will step up and fill that demand almost certainly better than the government can.
Assuming the nature of humans doesn’t change, there will be plenty of us that want to make sure people don’t starve on our streets. That creates a marketable ‘need’. Perhaps corporations would find it a very cheap way to gain public favor by providing shelters. (Ronald McDonald House does something like that now). Perhaps zoning laws (which are viable in a Libertarian society) would put a percentage of their infrastructure taxes aside to build homeless shelters, for the very selfish reason of keeping the homeless out of their areas. Or perhaps another solution would come across that none of us has thought of. That’s the thing about the free market - it’s endlessly inventive.
Yeah, Phil, how dare you hijack this thread about real-life problems into conjecture about a hypothetical Libertaria! Oh, wait, that’s what the OP was asking about. It seems to me that there are threads bringing up problems with the hypothetical Libertaria more often than anyone on either side really wants to discuss libertarian solutions in the real world.
Point taken, water, but actually that’s always been one of my biggest beefs with many libertarians here—not you, as it happens—namely, that they don’t like to give us solutions that fit into the existing “real world”. Instead of proposing ways that current systems could be usefully “libertarianized” on a practical scale that doesn’t require the outright abolition of something like income taxes or eminent domain, they rail about the government thugs and the erosion of liberty and taxation is theft and statists are collectivist drudges and on and on and on. Then we get sidetracked into debating whether the hypothetical libertarian alternative could really work on its own (which I think is what Gadarene was trying to address here), and lose sight of the real-world issue altogether.
I would actually be thrilled to see more practical experimentation with libertarian solutions, but I want it done on the libertarians’ own dime before we change laws to remove public support. (You notice we didn’t yank the government out of the parcel delivery business while waiting for someone to come up with a market solution in Sam’s example.) As I always say, you need a working libertarian society before you can put in a libertarian government, otherwise the powerless are simply going to get screwed.
But since, as you point out, this thread is in fact completely about the hypothetical libertarian alternative, what about this primacy of property rights business? I’m not as focused as Gad is on the issue of how the homeless can exercise their rights if they don’t control any property to exercise them on: I agree that that’s not solely a libertarian problem. But what about the universality of ownership that it generates? If owning things is the central right and the foundation of all other rights, is it possible for there to be something that remains un-owned? I happen to think that non-ownership (of wild animals, of wilderness, etc.) is a great ideal, and that in fact the best thing about “public property” is that in a property-obsessed society, it’s the closest we can get to that ideal. I think there’s something very valuable in the notion that certain things should not be at the unrestricted control of anybody, ever. But the libertarian primacy of property rights seems to have as a corollary that everything is at the unrestricted control of the first person who can seize it, up to infringement of another person’s rights. Is that a good thing? Is there any way around it?
I think that many libertarians tend to think about things as idealists. There is nothing wrong with this, as far as I can tell. I also think that the libertarians here tend to be somewhat more restrained and articulate than elsewhere, which is of course a good thing, and probably partly due to us having quality opposition.
Personally, I’d enjoy the chance to debate actual problems in this country and how a more libertarian approach would be better. I did this a little bit in -spoke’s thread about suburban sprawl, discussing how protecting property owners from overly prohibitive zoning regulations would accomplish a result he wanted to accomplish with more regulation. However, I and the other libertarians here have only so much energy and time, so we tend to end up discussing abstract theory more often.
Incidentally, I am still trying to work out my own hypothetical liertarian government for us all to look at and, presumedly, debate. Hopefully, I can answer some questions the rest of you have about what this hypothetical society would be like, so that we can develop some common ground to discuss. If I hadn’t already overextended myself with regard to debating libertarianism, I’d offer (as I think the sole libertarian here that would prefer to discuss practical issues in this world) to debate libertarian solutions to current issues with you.
In answer to your last question, I believe that libertarian theory generally makes allowances for certain entities that are impossible to own (such as the water in a river or the sky). These are referred to, I believe, as free-access commons. This is how polluting the air can be seen as a tort against society as a whole. Since shouting your message from the middle of the sky or a boat in a river is rather impractical, this doesn’t really help with Gad’s original concern.
Personally, I think the issue is really only one that becomes a large issue if all public property were immediately given over to private owners. Were a gradual (over several years) transition to take place, society would have the chance to accomodate the demand for places where people can exercise their right to express themselves. The internet, for example, is one way to get ideas across without any property.
I suppose that at the most basic level, some property owner is going to have to allow his/her/its property to be used for there to be any expression of ideas, but I think that all property owners constitute a diverse enough group that this is far from impossible. It is even possible that sometimes this arrangement will offer more freedom to to the people wishing to express their ideas. The owner of some roads may have more lenient standards of the sort of protest he allows on his roads than the current government has with their roads.
- Just like in the United States of America, the rights of the homeless in the not-at-all-condescending-or-mocking-which-is-why-I-hate-these-fucking-discussions “Chocolatebunnyland Libertaria” are exactly the same as the rights of everyone else: >>
Jeez, Phil, when did you become a Libertarian? This is like, totally new for you.
<< The right to make all decisions with respect to their property which includes anything that they rightfully own, including their own bodies and minds, and the right to freely enter into agreements with others. >>
So, in Libertopia (Our motto: "All the Freedom you can buy!) people who don’t have so much can’t bargain with others so good, so they really don’t have much in the way of rights.
<< 2. Just like in the United States of America, when and where the rights of expression, assembly and speech may be exercised and to what extent are dependent upon the permissions of the property owners, private, public or other. >>
Well, of course that’s not really true, Phil. Where you and I live, a person can’t be fired for being black or Jewish, or at least that person has some recourse through the courts. They might even be able to bully their employer into not firing them for being ugly, and good thing, too, I say, since capital will always be more mobile than labor.
<< Does that answer the question sufficiently? >>
This is like…was this a gradual thing, Phil, or a sudden epiphany? I recall you defending the NEA, or was it the NBA?, to Wilson some time ago…
<< Look, I said a month ago, to Kimstu, that I was no longer going to participate nicely in threads which are designed specifically to mock my ethics or the ethics of others who think the way I do. >>
Oh, that’ll hold 'em off.
<< I’m sure that IRL Gadarene is a reaaaaaaally nice guy, but I’m not going to sit here and see another thread started with another fundamentally flawed premise to the effect of, “Gosh, the homeless have it made here, but wouldn’t they be miserable in a libertarian context?” >>
Well, or “it’s funny how, in these worlds laissez faire capitalists posit, there are no poor people, or greedy people.”
All this talk of how the state is going to wither, well, that reminds me of something else that didn’t quite come off, huh?
<< I mean, really, nobody has started a thread on a libertarian topic in several weeks now; what on Earth would prompt this topic now? Do you or Gadarene really expect someone to say, “Well, unlike the United States, where the homeless are clearly able to speak, assemble and express wherever they want, in a libertarian context, they would be rounded up and dumped in Ghana”? >>
Well, long before that, your Libertarian context would lose a humiliating war to Spain, and most of you would wind up homeless, and unable to speak the language anyway, and don’t come crying to us “statists” then.
<< Hey, you’ve already got me to admit that, in today’s America, in which people view the federal and state government as The Great Problem Solver >>
The government does a pretty good job. It sure solved Communism and Fascism, created tremendous amounts of wealth including the middle class as we know it through public education and whatnot. GI Bill, VA Loan, good things. Rebuilt Europe after World War II, uh… If you want to point to one whatever or the other thing, I’m going to point out any given major product recall or liability lawsuit, except you’ll just lib your fingers in your ears and say “If people didn’t want coffee that gave you third degree burns McDonald’s wouldn’t sell it! Statist! Statist Thug!”
>and Hey, Maybe If We Just Raise Taxes A Little More Everything Will Be Perfect, nobody wants to be free to make decisions with respect to their property nor to freely consent to be governed. >>
Well, thanks for settling the question, “Can Phil make bizarre, hysterical mischaracterizations?”
> So, instead of worrying about how imaginary homeless people would be treated in an imaginary land, the hypothetical workings of which you stubbornly refuse to understand, why not spend time worrying about how to improve their lot here? Oh, that’s right–the homeless here don’t have to worry about property owners like, say, the government depriving them of their rights to due process and assembly and speech. >>
I am pretty sure the homeless have roughly the same rights to due process you do, or at least they would if you washed them off and cleaned them up a little.
Anyway, getting back to the OP, you’d probably wind up trading one government for four or five insurance companies, three banks, and whatever local bully squads anyone wanted to hire, and everyone would have all the freedom they could buy.
I think.
I am relatively new to the libertarian ideas but they appeal to me. I have a few questions about it though. One specifically about matters of land ownership. As I understand it, in Libertaria all transportation avenues would be privately owned. Suppose you wanted to travel somewhere across the country and you were not allowed on the roadways and all property around you was private. How could you go anywhere. I suppose you could get thrown in jail for tresspasing. =)
Also a question on Ambulances and fire trucks… I know this has been asked before but I haven’t really seen a reasonable answer. Since the fire department/hospitals would be a pay for service type of deal what if your neighbors house catches fire and he didn’t pay for fire service? Do they put out the fire to protect your house? Or if a motorist with no hospital service was in an accident would we just leave him lying there?
Too much wrong to deal with all of the post, but this stands out:
And had the government not taxed people and spent their money on these “good things”, I suppose the wealth would have never existed in the first place. You can’t compute the benefit to society realistically without taking into account the loss to society of whatever the money would have been spent on. The government certainly could be considered to have created wealth if you assume that the money the government spent to do so was simply summoned into existence out of nowhere. Unfortunately, this is not the case, as people tend to notice around April 15th.
Major product recalls and liability lawsuits are both things that would happen in a libertarian context. We aren’t anarchists. If serving someone a dangerously hot cup of coffee is not in some sense initiating force on them, then passing a dangerous product off under the assumption that it is safe certainly counts as fraud. Likewise with tires that come apart under highway driving conditions.
I am relatively new to the libertarian ideas >>
Huh. Well, I would hope you’d at least glance through:
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html
Before you make any rash decisions.
<< but they appeal to me. >>
How unfortunate.
> I have a few questions about it though. One specifically about matters of land ownership. As I understand it, in Libertaria all transportation avenues would be privately owned.
Basically everything would be privately owned, and what few services the government provided, mostly property protection, would be outsourced to contractors. Or not. One of the troubles with libertarianism is the word represents no cohesive, coherent philosophy.
> Suppose you wanted to travel somewhere across the country and you were not allowed on the roadways and all property around you was private. How could you go anywhere. I suppose you could get thrown in jail for tresspasing. >>
People who owned property would be perfectly happy to charge you a toll for traveling on it, and because all the roads were in competition for travelers, they’d all be perfectly maintained, attractively decorated, a wide range of services along them, and all at a lower cost than you’re paying in taxes of one sort of another now. Also, monkeys would fly out of my butt.>>
<< Also a question on Ambulances and fire trucks… I know this has been asked before but I haven’t really seen a reasonable answer.>>
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but that’s usually the safe way to bet.
> Since the fire department/hospitals would be a pay for service type of deal what if your neighbors house catches fire and he didn’t pay for fire service? >>
Well, his house burns down.
>Do they put out the fire to protect your house? >>
Maybe, and then you could sue him to recover the cost, or perhaps your neighborhood sells franchieses or has some (horrors!) taxation to cover public goods like that.
Wait, I forgot. Houses don’t burn down in Liberlot.
> Or if a motorist with no hospital service was in an accident would we just leave him lying there?
If he cared so so much, he’d buy insurance. Also, since people aren’t brought to their knees by progressive taxation, their native charity will come forward and, um…you know, they’ll sell him a splint. By allowing people to sell bandages and splints, you see, you’ll increase the supply of splints and bandages, because there’s obviously a demand, and if it weren’t for Bill Clinton no one would ever get sick. I know this to be true because David Friedman said so.
In short there’s simply not, a more productive spot
For freedom and well-being than…here…in…liber-lot!
Gee, for someone with no idea whatsoever about what libertarians actually believe or say (at least here), you certainly have formed some strong opinions about them. Unfortunately you’ve set up so many strawmen that blowing them all over will actually take more effort then I have any inclination of wasting on you.