[QUOTE=Metacom]
The coffee was good. I’d been drinking Smith’s Bold Roast for the last 2 years, and it had never let me down. The same smooth taste, unchanging day after day. My first sip of the morning hit my stomach like a shell full of birdshot.
[/QUOTE]
Metacom, can you provide a cite for some “normal” Libertarians that are opposed to trademark law?
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
If the Communist Party achieved that, I would not, based on history, call the results “chaos.” Quite the contrary. 
[/QUOTE]
Are you serious? I don’t follow this board enough to know your sense of humor. If it’s a joke, sorry for missing it. If you’re serious please give an example of a Communist state where life was anything but chaotic for the masses. North Korea? USSR? Cuba? Not bad if you’re a member of the elite, but hell if you’re out of power.
[QUOTE=threemae]
Metacom, can you provide a cite for some “normal” Libertarians that are opposed to trademark law?
[/QUOTE]
I don’t know of any, which is why the coffee was always good. My stomach was hurting from the bad meat. My, how I wish there was an FDA!
Oh yeah, back to the OP. We’d have full employment, tremendous prosperity and charitable giving would far outstrip the needs of the unfortunate few.
The problem that most of the posters may have is that you’ve never had a civil conversation with a real libertarian, nor have you ever taken an hour to read some mainsttream libertarian websites - things like CATO, The Manhattan Institute. I know more libertarians than you do and I’ve never heard anyone suggest privatizing all roads and public parks. This might be fun for intellectual discussion, but not much more.
I once had the following discussion with a leftist friend about buying a house in a town with no zoning restrictions.
Leftist: If you buy a house there someone can open a pig farm next door to you.
Plan B: How many pig farms have been created in residential areas there in the last 50 years?
End of conversation.
Almost forgot…Families would be much more important. If you live in a nanny state why have children? The government takes care of all your needs. And you have a situation like in Western Europe where the population is not reproducing and countries are being taken over by groups that have no respect for women’s rights, homosexual rights, freedom of speech, etc.
In a libertarian US… high birth rates, continuation of western civilization.
[QUOTE=Plan B]
Are you serious? I don’t follow this board enough to know your sense of humor. If it’s a joke, sorry for missing it. If you’re serious please give an example of a Communist state where life was anything but chaotic for the masses. North Korea? USSR? Cuba? Not bad if you’re a member of the elite, but hell if you’re out of power.
[/QUOTE]
He said orderly, not nice. The Soviet Union was very orderly.
[QUOTE=Plan B]
full employment, tremendous prosperity
[/QUOTE]
What makes you think that ? Why would libertarianism increase employment at all ?
As for prosperity, that’s ridiculous. Without government restraint, the corporations and the wealthy will crush everyone else. You’d work for what you are given, under any conditions, for any number of hours, because the alternative would be death by starvation. If that’s just barely enough to survive, too bad - and if the boss thinks you’re attractive, bend over the desk and pull down your dress, because the alternative is death. And you’ll still die anyway, from ecological collapse, or poisoned food, or bad medicine, or no medicine, or poisoned water, or general chaos and violence.
[QUOTE=Plan B]
charitable giving would far outstrip the needs of the unfortunate few.
[/QUOTE]
Most people would be far too impoverished to help the unfortunate many.
[QUOTE=Plan B]
Leftist: If you buy a house there someone can open a pig farm next door to you.
Plan B: How many pig farms have been created in residential areas there in the last 50 years?
[/QUOTE]
At least one, some years ago in my home county; someone found a loophole in the zoning laws in his town. No zoning laws mean no need for loopholes; people would put unpleasant or dangerous things everywhere.
[QUOTE=Plan B]
In a libertarian US… high birth rates, continuation of western civilization.
[/QUOTE]
High birth rates, because the desperate and oppressed tend to high birth rates, to go along with the high death rates. And the “western civilization” in question would be an abomination; a society with only two groups; monsters and victims, demons and the damned.
[QUOTE=Plan B]
Almost forgot…Families would be much more important. If you live in a nanny state why have children? The government takes care of all your needs.
[/QUOTE]
Families wouldn’t be important at all; people would be doing the Libertarian thing and looking out for #1, and to hell with their families or anyone else.
[QUOTE=Plan B]
And you have a situation like in Western Europe where the population is not reproducing and countries are being taken over by groups that have no respect for women’s rights, homosexual rights, freedom of speech, etc.
[/QUOTE]
< sniff sniff > Is that racism I smell ? You worried about the Brown Peril ? And if there’s any place being taken over by people who “have no respect for women’s rights, homosexual rights, freedom of speech, etc”, it’s America, not Europe - and the people who feel that way are white Christian Americans, not e-vuul foreigners.
And no, I don’t like libertarianism. I regard it as vile, stupid and evil.
Wow, all I see in this thread are fields of straw men, and a whole bunch of posters going through them with a scythe.
None of you appear to actually understand any of the Libertarian arguments for reduced government, so this thread has devolved into nothing more than a giant collection of extreme what-ifs and anti-Libertarian scare stories.
If this board existed in a Parallel Libertarian universe, and someone opened a thread titled, “What would a government-regulated America look like?” I imagine we’d see equivalent horror stories of government run amok, equally implausible.
Let’s consider some of the effects of the first logical restructuring of government if a reasonably electable Libertarian party took office:
You’d save 80 billion per year by abolishing the Department of Education. Net effect on education? Probably positive. My grandmother got a better education in a one-room school than kids get today from state education.
There would be a rollback of numerous regulations. Not all of them, or even a majority of them. But enough to stimulate the economy to the tune of perhaps 200-500 billion dollars a year.
The drug war would end, which would end a very immoral system which incarcerates millions for engaging in activities that harm no one else. The legal system would have a huge burden lifted from it, which would save oodles of money and allow prosecutors, judges, and lawyers to focus their efforts on violent crime and other neglected legal issues.
Pork would come to a near end, as legislators would lose the power to funnel money to their home states. This would not only save hundreds of billions of dollars, but it would lead to a better class of politician - fewer career pols, more citizens who do a term and then go back to private life where they can make more money. It would also stop them from wasting all their time in office chasing pork, and allow them to spend more time things like reading the Patriot act before signing it or learning that al-Qaida is primarily a Sunni organization before taking over the House Intelligence Committee.
The FDA would be severely curtailed, leading to a boom in research spending on drugs and health care, and giving people more choice in what drugs they would like to take.
Farmers would actually have to earn a living.
The price of many staple goods would decrease due to the elimination of things like shipping tariffs set up to ‘protect’ milk producers.
Gradually, free-market alternatives to government services would begin to emerge as the need arose. If the elimination of the FDA led to a spate of food poisonings, restaurants and stores would turn to private agencies for certification. Those agencies in turn would have only their reputations as a marketable value, so they would have a strong vested interest in seeing to it that their inspections are thorough, and that their subscribers stick to their safety plans. Intermediaries would gain power - organizations that stand between producers and consumers and certify products. The difference is that they would be open to competition and therefore would be more innovative and efficient than government, and people would ultimately have the freedom to ignore them if they chose.
People might start to learn to be self-reliant again, instead of relying on the nanny state to protect them. Rather than assuming every product they buy is safe and works as advertised, they might actually make intelligent choices by either researching themselves or relying on trusted intermediaries. This might result in goods that are even safer and better than they are today.
We’d all be more free to chart our own courses through life without worrying about the heavy hand of a government bureaucrat controlling what we can buy, sell, eat, drink, smoke, play with, take when we’re ill, or be buried in.
We’d claw back at least a couple of months of our lives each year which we currently spend working to pay the cost of big government.
It would be a perfect America.
[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
He said orderly, not nice. The Soviet Union was very orderly.
[/QUOTE]
You obviously have more time on your hands than I do. Or different values. No way I’d ever argue with that many points from one poster at one time. So I’ll only respond to the first point.
In what way is it orderly for workers to sneak out of work to spend all day on line to buy some third rate commodities which the average American welfare recipient could pick up for a song at Walmarts? Sounds chaotic and awful to me. Kind of like any market becomes when the government thinks they can do better than free markets by regulating. Or how is it orderly when you can’t decide what city you’re going to live in?
That is, unless you are part of the elite. They had a nice, orderly life for many years.
[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
2. There would be a rollback of numerous regulations. Not all of them, or even a majority of them. But enough to stimulate the economy to the tune of perhaps 200-500 billion dollars a year.
[/quote]
Or cause economic collapse, as no one sane will willingly buy American products or services. With no regulations, they’ll be too shoddy, too unreliable, too dangerous. Plus there will be increased pollution, death from industrial accidents from unregulated, unsafe machines, car crashes from poorly built cars, collapsing buildings, burning chemical plants, and so on.
[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
5. The FDA would be severely curtailed, leading to a boom in research spending on drugs and health care, and giving people more choice in what drugs they would like to take.
[/quote]
Leading to massive death and suffering from untested or outright fake medicine.
[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
7. The price of many staple goods would decrease due to the elimination of things like shipping tariffs set up to ‘protect’ milk producers.
[/quote]
It would go up, due to unreliable and expensive transportation. Replacing government roads with private toll roads would make it hard and expensive to ship anything anywhere.
[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
8. Gradually, free-market alternatives to government services would begin to emerge as the need arose.
[/quote]
Never happen. Society had millenia to try that solution, and it never happened. Government stepped it because they are the only solution. Without government the poor will die or be enslaved. Without government, the environment will be destroyed. Without public education, millions will have none at all. Without government regulation, monopolies will dominate commerce, there will be little distinction between “worker” and “slave”, and shoddy or lethal products will be the norm.
[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
If the elimination of the FDA led to a spate of food poisonings, restaurants and stores would turn to private agencies for certification. Those agencies in turn would have only their reputations as a marketable value, so they would have a strong vested interest in seeing to it that their inspections are thorough, and that their subscribers stick to their safety plans.
[/quote]
Garbage. The restaurants would just set up a fake group that would give fake certifications. When they were discredited, a new fake “private agency” would be set up, and the cycle would be repeated. They wouldn’t care about their reputation, becasue the restaurants would be the ones paying their wages.
[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
The difference is that they would be open to competition and therefore would be more innovative and efficient than government, and people would ultimately have the freedom to ignore them if they chose.
[/quote]
No, because there would be almost nothing but monopolies. People would work for whomever dominates their region, and buy what they are told to buy.
[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
9. People might start to learn to be self-reliant again, instead of relying on the nanny state to protect them.
[/quote]
And get crushed. An individual has no chance against a much larger group - like a corporation.
[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
Rather than assuming every product they buy is safe and works as advertised, they might actually make intelligent choices by either researching themselves or relying on trusted intermediaries.
[/quote]
Impossible. There won’t be any trusted intermediaries, they’ll all be shills. People can’t decide for themselves because no one is a polymath who can judge the safety and effectiveness of everything, nor do they have the resources to test everything they use. The whole reason Americans are taught to admire self reliance is because it makes them easy victims.
[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
10. We’d all be more free to chart our own courses through life without worrying about the heavy hand of a government bureaucrat controlling what we can buy, sell, eat, drink, smoke, play with, take when we’re ill, or be buried in.
[/quote]
No,We’d be serfs or slaves, for all intents and puposes. Exchanging the light hand of a democratically elected goverment for the iron grip of a corporate autocrat is a fool’s bargain.
[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
11. We’d claw back at least a couple of months of our lives each year which we currently spend working to pay the cost of big government.
[/QUOTE]
We’d be paid far less than we are now, and we’d never be free of our corporate masters. Every hour of every day would be warped towards their profit.
[QUOTE=Plan B]
In what way is it orderly for workers to sneak out of work to spend all day on line to buy some third rate commodities which the average American welfare recipient could pick up for a song at Walmarts? Sounds chaotic and awful to me.
[/quote]
They stood in lines, didn’t they ? That’s orderly.
[QUOTE=Plan B]
Or how is it orderly when you can’t decide what city you’re going to live in?
[/QUOTE]
That’s as orderly as it gets. it’s just not a very pleasant order.
[QUOTE=Bobotheoptimist]
Well, yeah… But -
Based on history? Much like libertarianism, isn’t communism more of an ideal than an achievable goal? I don’t know of any true Communist countries, much less any that had only one party, were in existence for any appreciable period, and answered to no one but themselves. Corrupt Marxists we had in abundance.
[/QUOTE]
Certainly, but I was basing my comment on Actually Existing Socialism, that is, on the societies Communist parties have actually built when they came to power, as opposed to any particular ideal communist or socialist vision of the good society. Communist states, so defined, have had a lot of problems . . . but social chaos was not one of them. But in a Libertarian state there is a serious possibility it would be.
[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
And a lot of kids would get no education at all, or get education by schools set up by the local fundamentalists or neonazis. American madrasas, like I said. Nor do I believe that a one room school gave your grandmother much of an education.
[/quote]
Ah, I remember it well. In 1978, before the Department of Education was formed, you couldn’t see for all the Madrassas cluttering our society.
So is it your contention that products are only generally made to minimum government legal specifications? That cars only meet minimal government safety standards? Does that give you a vague realization that perhaps government regulations aren’t the only force driving quality and safety?
Right. Like all the massive death and suffering that occurs today with unregulated drugs. There are many different forces that drive food and drug safety, only one of which is the government.
What, cities and states aren’t allowed to build roads? And you can’t imagine a fee system that was totally unobtrusive, such as a GPS navigation system tied to the cellphone network, reporting at various intervals how much money your vehicle owes to the various road stakeholders, and subsequent micro-debits are deducted from your account? Or a system where you buy road credits when you buy gasoline, and road owners have agreements that determine how much each road owner gets based on average traffic patterns?
Can you imagine the benefit of universal toll roads? I can tell you the major one - it would cure traffic jams, or at least substantially reduce them. Road use could be priced based on peak usage, creating economic incentives for traffic utilization to spread out across the day, minimizing peak usage. I could also see the economic incentive that in areas where the road infrastruture is stressed, prices would increase and it would drive the development of new roads or push people into mass transit.
Far from being less efficient, the highway system would become far more efficient. When the market is allowed to work, supply and demand work themselves out.
I don’t think you have a clue what really drives economies and organizes society. We began to universally educate our children when we became wealthy enough to afford it. Child labor ended when children no longer needed to work to survive. Cleaner environments track increased wealth and technological sophistication - not the size of government. The Soviet Union was heavily regulated and an environmental disaster. Free Hong Kong was a lot cleaner than the Communist mainland.
And would they get funding from fake banks? Put reviews in fake newspapers? Hide from fake tort lawyers?
Again, you don’t understand what drives the market. Restaurants and food stores have found that it’s far more profitable to provide quality products and service, build a reputation, and reap the benefits of being in demand, than to just fleece the public for temporary gain. It’s that whole invisible hand thing, you know?
Right. Because we all know that every big company that has ever lost market share to small companies lost it because government made them. Far from everything devolving to monopolies, what actually happens in the market is that as companies grow larger, they start to suffer from internal inefficiencies and inertia and start being vulnerable to smaller, more agile competitors. This is especially true in the internet age.
So is it your contention that Consumer Reports is a shill? How about the IIHS or UL? If they’re not shills, how come? There’s no law against shilling. You don’t suppose that it could be that when you become a shill in the internet age people pick up on that really fast and stop listening to you? That so long as honesty is profitable, intermediaries will find it in their interest to be honest?
Let me rephrase that - how about replacing the iron fist of government, which will ultimately imprison or kill me if I refuse to do its bidding, with a natural system of free exchange among individuals making their own choices?
Language can be used like a bludgeon in either direction.
So everyone makes minimum wage? If not, how come? Government sure doesn’t mandate it.
A great idea. A court system based on the premise that one side in a criminal case is “right” before the trial starts and protects the interests of that side. I guess you better hope you never get falsely accused of a crime in Libertaria.
The fact that the exact opposite is happening in the real world doesn’t faze your certainty a bit does it?
And thousands of independant organizations and individuals are all going to agree to get together and set up and use a standardized system because of what? Magic? Because I can’t think of any more likely answer. History has shown what happens in the real world in these situations - companies all try to run their own competing system and fight against each other. Consumers bear the brunt of the problem. And the only way these problems have ever been untangled and universal standards created is when the government steps in and mandates them.
I didn’t realize the Stone family was wealthy. Lucky for your grandmother. The historical reality has been that only the children of the wealthy were educated and poor people went from generation to generation without going to school. (Up until recently pretty much everybody was poor and a small handful were rich - there was no middle class. Another historical reality whose implications you might want to think about.) Play this game for a few decades and you revert to a system of aristocrats and serfs.
I dunno, it depends on how far you want to take the idea of “Libertarian”. If you want to define the term using the unworkable, not practical extremes, then I’ll say the same as I did in the green party thread: Hell on earth.
OTOH, if you want to look at a more practical, realistic application of libertarian ideals in a real world context, then I’d say Sam Stone has pretty much nailed it. I’m always curious when I run up against the nanny government proponents: What the hell are you so afraid of? Set up a more or less level playing field and have at it. Sure, some people will fail while others succeed, but while failure might be a negative personal outcome for those that fail, for society as a whole the process itself is beneficial. People succeeding is what drives any society forward. Establish a bare minimum social safety net so that those who fail aren’t starving or enslaved, and then let the individual build on that. We need a system that guarantees equality of opportunity, not one that strives to impose equality of results.
[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
I didn’t realize the Stone family was wealthy. Lucky for your grandmother. The historical reality has been that only the children of the wealthy were educated and poor people went from generation to generation without going to school. (Up until recently pretty much everybody was poor and a small handful were rich - there was no middle class. Another historical reality whose implications you might want to think about.) Play this game for a few decades and you revert to a system of aristocrats and serfs.
[/QUOTE]
I can’t speak for all Libertarians, but I and the vast majority of actual Libertarians that I know are very much in favor of public schooling as the basis for equality of opportunity. They also want to pursue improvements in public schools by making them accountable to market forces via vouchers, etc. I’ve never understood the irrational fear of vouchers and private schools, especially private schools that are accessible to people that are unable to afford them right now within the American left.
Also, Der Trihs, Libertarians are, you know, pro personal liberty. On religious grounds as well. There’s a huge intersection with the ACLU. So explain to me exactly why American public education would be transformed into “madrassas.” Keep in mind that Libertarians are social liberals. Pro-choice and all of that. Why would we transform the nations schools into religious indoctrination centers if a third of us are atheists?
Libertarianism is just as much about protecting individual rights against coercion from any party as it is about reducing taxes. And when people speak of involving victims in court proceedings, the point is an option for the victims to be involved in the jurisprudence that is partly about helping them, not forcing victims to be re-victimized if they don’t want to be involved in a trial. If there isn’t a victim, there isn’t really a crime in an American libertarian state. Who’s being victimized by college kids smoking pot, exactly?
[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
The fact that the exact opposite is happening in the real world doesn’t faze your certainty a bit does it?
You believe that there is less consumer choice today because of monopolization of industry? Or that there are excess profits being made because of monopolization? Do you have a cite for that?
You can’t? Look around you. Everywhere you look, you will see organization and structure due to standardization - almost none of it driven by government. Everything down to the thickness of your wallboard, the zillions of various protocols involved in the computer you’re using, standard heights and sizes for desks and chairs, Product packaging that fits on standard pegboard hooks, the numerous standards for drill bits, screw heads, switch plate colors, you name it. Where there is a need for standardization, the free market supplies standards. VHS, Redbook, MPEG standards… All these standardized systems set up, without the help of government. It must be magic!
I’d say Redbook audio is pretty much a universal standard, wouldn’t you? How about ISO 2001? RS-232? Cat-5 cabling? Standard railway guages? A few weeks ago I replaced the taps in my kitchen sink. WHat do you know, the holes all lined up and everything fit perfectly, even though I didn’t even bother to check the brand of my sink.
Of course there’s a shakedown period in whcih competing standards fight for market share. This is a good thing. It allows consumers to decide. I remember when the French government set up Minitel, and all the lefties were all a-twitter about how the enlightened French had leapfrogged us because they allowed government to control the industry and standardize it. Except then the internet came along and made Minitel obsolete, but the huge investment made the French Government keep riding a dead horse, and France fell far behind and took years to catch up again. And they spent billions on a failed standard, rather than letting the market sort it out.
Very poor people. And why? Because the alternative was starvation. Education was a luxury for the rich simply because the poor needed their children’s labor to help the family survive. As soon as family wealth rose to the point where they could afford to send their kids to school, they voluntarily did so in huge numbers. Towns and rural areas used to band together to build a school house and hire a teacher to teach their children. They didn’t do this because the government told them to - they did it because parents generally want the best for their children. Those who see the state as their nanny tend to forget this.
A cite for the fact that corporations are growing larger? Are you serious? Maybe you’d also like a cite for the fact that night is dark - or maybe you’d stand under a streetlight and claim that you’ve found one place where there’s an exception to the general rule that night is dark so the claim is irrelevant.
Seriously, can you name a major sector of the American economy which hasn’t seen an ongoing trend of a growing percentage of the sector being owned by shrinking group of owners? WalMart, Microsoft, TimeWarner, Cumulus Radio, are all examples of megacorporations that are no longer accountable to the free market because they own such a large share of their market.
Most of the examples you gave were set by the government at one time or another. I suppose it might be called magic but only in the Clarke sense of the word - a term used to describe something when you don’t understand how it happened.
Again, you’re wrong. The majority of children didn’t start going to school until the government started running schools and making it mandatory for all children to go. Up until that point, most parents made the pragmatic decision that they would send their kids off to work as soon as possible so they’d be a source of income for the family.
[QUOTE=Bobotheoptimist]
Er, exactly which facts did they make up?
[/QUOTE]
This appears to be either pulled out of their butts or an extrapolation based on a wrong assumption. Let’s see- half of federal prisoners are in on drug charges, that means that police agencies spend half their budgets fighting drugs, so that means we could double our efforts in other crimes by legalizing drugs.
By who?
They assume a correlation with no evidence of a relationship.
The LP is a party of bad logic and ideas that cannot work and must not be tried.
[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
Can you imagine the benefit of universal toll roads? I can tell you the major one - it would cure traffic jams, or at least substantially reduce them. Road use could be priced based on peak usage, creating economic incentives for traffic utilization to spread out across the day, minimizing peak usage. I could also see the economic incentive that in areas where the road infrastruture is stressed, prices would increase and it would drive the development of new roads or push people into mass transit.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah right. Just who is going to want to maintain 5th Avenue in New York and what are you going to do, put tollbooths at every corner to do so? Thinking that private agencies are going to maintain roads better just because they aren’t getting paid by the government has no basis in fact.
[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
You’d save 80 billion per year by abolishing the Department of Education. Net effect on education? Probably positive. My grandmother got a better education in a one-room school than kids get today from state education.
[/QUOTE]
Bah. All that would happen would be that the underclass would not get educated. Did your grandmother learn calculus, Spanish, chemistry, physics, etc? I rather doubt the one-room schoolhouse offered them.
[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
If the elimination of the FDA led to a spate of food poisonings, restaurants and stores would turn to private agencies for certification.
[/QUOTE]
Again, the naive belief that if someone’s check isn’t signed by the government, then magically they are going to be wonderfully efficient.