Just so we are clear, libertarians believe that the right to own property can be derived from the right to be free. What does it mean, for instance, to be free in action but forced to give up the fruits of those actions.
That last sentence is a very politic way to say that some people keeping the fruits of their labor may lead to situations in which the majority should be allowed to use force to take it from them. That is, just because I lose an election I should be forced to lose my property. Can you recognize how your sentence could be characterized this way?
Agreed. Perhaps we are only coming to a common understanding of each other’s position in this thread. An incredibly valuable thing IMHO.
I may be wrong, but it seems to me that much of libertarianism espouses punishing harm after the fact, not preventing it. Smartass, your lucid description of air pollution vouchers seems to be specifying the amount of pollution acceptable, regulating that as a whole, then using the market to allocate it. I think many non-libertarians support this. Consider the radio spectrum as a similar case. Auctioning the spectrum, which involves the market, doesn’t get away from public (government) ownership of it. I’d say the desire to prevent harm is responsible for most of our regulations. I have no problem with agreeing that we might have gone overboard, but this doesn’t seem different in principle for the sort of libertarianism you are describing.
The stuff I have seen is more in line with - we’ll punish transgressors, and those injured by them should have been smarter. My sense is that Libertarians are against welfare, and assume that private charity will take up the slack, and if it doesn’t tough. In the Libertarian utopia of the early 20th century, the man who would later invent Xerography spent his childhood in chicken coops because his parents had the nerve to be too sick to work. He managed to get through it, being smarter than the average bear, but how many children in his position did not?
Indeed, in this thread I am less interested in Debating, as in appreciating the perspective. Later I can fight over it.
Property rights do not derive from the right to free speech or of religion or free association. The tremendous emphasis on them by liberterians still seems to me to be disproportionate other than to provide a philosophical basis for “I got mine bub and keep your hands off.” Too often liberterians seem to have stopped reading Hillel after the “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” part. (Full quote available upon request.)
And no, I am not attempting to be politically sensitive. Merely precise.
Intervention does not always mean taxation or confiscation. That voucher is a real intervention to achieve a societal good. Mandating driver’s licenses and auto insurance coverage is another. Both these past two might be acceptable to some liberterians as preventing harm but from here we get on thinner ice- Requirements for certain childhood immunizations that depend on herd immunity for optimal efficacy still one more. Various proposals that increase the coverage for the uninsured using private insurance systems coupled with market reforms to accomplish the task (rather than by increasing government run programs) are another (details provided in past threads but I’m always happy to represent if requested).
We decide what is important enough together as a society via elections of representatives and a system designed to prevent the tyranny of the majority. It doesn’t always prevent that tyranny and we do need to continually fight that fight for individual and minority opinion rights. I do not agree with all the choices that we the people have made, but if I and those who are like-minded fail to win the day then we lose and they win and I do need to go along. I may kick and scream as I do, but I must go along.
No, not directly. But they can be derived from the same freedom of thought, belief, and action.
Yes. This is a common misconception. As I said, it is a result of the fact that libertarians tend to assume some of the philosophical underpinings and they do not come up in discussions about political policies.
Well, I tend to see it as if those listening to libertarians assume this. That is, when a libertarian suggests that his property is important to him many people assume he means to ignore the rest of that quote.
Quite so. And I don’t think any libertarians have said that there should be no government.
Indeed. Up to a point.
“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
Consider the perspective of the past few decades, not the past few years. I fully expect we will survive the current wave of interference and heavyhandedness. This too shall pass.
Watch a TV show, a drama from thirty years or more ago. It’s freakin’ painful. The baseline assumptions of who is good, who is bad, and who can do what is somewhat ridiculous from today’s perspective. . Times have changed, times are a changin’. More importantly, people are a-changin’. When all the old folks with bad attitudes are either dead or too afraid of being denied access to the grandkids to spout off their BS the whole of society inches towards social and legal tolerance. Sure, there are young folks with bad attitudes too, but never quite so many as there were before. Or so it seems to me.
Just my long term perspective. Feelin’ a little optimistic for no good reason. YMMV.
Actually, I don’t think we differ to much in what constitutes the good–I am just not ready to say that I am so sure I’m right that we should go ahead and force this definition of right on everyone else. I think some of the stridence you see in posts from other libertarians is deliberate overkill. They try to pound home the “pure” libertarian argument in hopes of moving people a little in that direction. Sort of like adding 20% to your offer price so that you can offer someone a nice discount to buy today.
To some extent, our differences about how far liberty should stretch are moot. No one has given me a country to run, so we’re really just talking theory here. My main political goal would be to try to move the US in a more libertarian direction. If I have understood your post correctly, we’ve got quite a distance we could go before you and I would find any cause to disagree. Knowing that the majority will never become “pure” libertarians, I would be quite happy if the majority felt the way you just described.
In truth, if they made me dictator of USA today, I would want to move toward libertarianism in a stepwise way, not in a sudden violent upheaval.
In other words, I’m not convinced from your post that there is enough disagreement here for there to be much meaningful debate. You are describing the way I thought about things a few years ago–time has made me more comfortable with the “scary” aspects of individual freedom.
If there are others waiting for a reply from me, I’ll try to post something more tomorrow. It got a little late on me when I tried to imagine a Smartass constitution.
