The “criminal element” includes most of us at one time or another.
But, you knew that.
If you guys would like to be enlightened about serious Libertarian thought, I have just the thing for you. In 1980, Milton and Rose Friedman produced a series on PBS called Free to Choose, based on their best-selling book. The original 1980 series, plus the 1990 update hosted by Arnold Schwarzenegger, is now available for free on the web in streaming video.
I really hope the participants in this thread will watch this, so you can have a better understanding of the arguments. In addition, after each episode in the series there is a debate between thinkers on the left and the right, so you get a balanced viewpoint. Highly recommended.
Watch it here: Free To Choose.
Because that would destroy the public schools. Private schools will alway do better, because they can pick and choose their students; it’s not competition when the playing field is massively slanted. Widespread voucher schools would also result in large numbers of people being rendered unemployable, since they’d end up going to “schools” that exist only to grab the voucher money, and provide no actual education. Every time they go to a job interview, they’ll be told, "Sorry, as a matter of policy we hire no one who was ‘educated’ at School X’ " Or they’ll go to schools designed to teach fascism or fundamentalism, instead of actual education.
No, they are not “pro personal liberty”. They are anti-government, but don’t care in the slightest if it’s private organizations or individuals doing the oppressing. They’d oppose a state religion, but wouldn’t care if a corporation required all its’ employees to go to fundie churches and for all its’ female employees to provide sex for high ranked male employees.
Because the fundies are the ones who’s take up the slack if public education vanished. You might not intend to replace public schools with indoctrination centers, but that’s what would happen.
More likely they join the party and take over. The Libertarian mentality would be very attractive to criminals.
I don’t recall the specific story or author, but I recall a short story in Analog - part of a series called Darwin’s Children, where a poor woman starved to death in a libertarian lunar colony. Thing is, that was portrayed as a good thing. I stopped reading that series, since it’s no fun to read a series when you want to murder the “heros”.
And I’m of the belief that fewer would give to any sort of charity, given the cold selfish amorality that is the heart of the libertarian viewpoint.
Global politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If the United States ceased to be a world power, other nations would step into the role. East Asia would become a Chinese sphere of influence - without the promise of American support, countries like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philipines, etc would come to “understandings” with Beijing. (And yes, I realize we don’t have formal defense treaties with all of these countries - but we do unofficially support them.) Relatively pro-western regimes in the Middle East like the Saudis and Mubarak’s would probably fall to more extreme regimes like Iran’s. Barring a Russian resurgence, there would probably be no major changes in Europe. Latin America, Africa, and India would also probably not experience any major changes.
That is one of the problems that actually would be solved under a libertarian regime (a lot fewer laws, with the remaining ones focused on obvious evils that any rational and civilized person wouldn’t choose to do anyway).
Let’s assume you do legalize drugs. Do you not think that some people would drug themselves to incapacity, just as they do now? What do you do with them? Are private rehab shelters going to magically spring up overnight? And how will these users buy the drugs? If they are otherwise unemployable, they will turn to crime just as they do now. There aren’t that many people whose “only crime” was possession of crack, most of them commit crimes to support their habit, which would not change in some crackpot libertarian utopia. Legalizing drugs would not significantly affect the crime rate, in spite of the pseudo statistics spouted by the libertarians.
They’re going to be shooting back. In fact, being criminals, they might even be unsportsmanlike and shoot first. They might also forgo the individual liberty of the libertarian lifestyle and decide to band together as well. And now, depending on local conditions, you’ve got the equivalent of the Mafia, the Hell’s Angels, or the VietCong living in your neighbourhood.
Please give me an example of a “communist” state which was not from the beginning under siege by outside powers far stronger than itself and allowed to develop peacefully.
There has never been one.
And functioning as its government, for lack of effective competition in that sphere.
Wow, what a load of unsubstantiated hyperbole. Seems to me that some people have a near-pathological fear of the libertarian ideas that reflects an innate distrust of anything but their own agenda. I like some of the ideas of the LP, and some of the Dems, and even (once upon a time) some from the Repubs, but I guess I’m in the minority in thinking that no one person or party has a monopoly on good ideas.
And criminals taking over a libertarian country? Give me a break! That’s one of the most unlikely outcomes I’ve seen in this thread.
As I suggested earlier, there might be a short increase in violence but that would be followed by a dramatic and long-lived decrease. (made up numbers follow) 80% of the armed and authorized population cowering in fear from the ~10% that would be actively hurting folk? The whole point is that people would start taking care of themselves, and assumes that most people have better things to do than try to screw with someone else.
If all laws were repealed right now, how many of you would start shooting or raping? I sure wouldn’t, not because the government threatens me but because I’m not that kind of person. I don’t think most people are, or there wouldn’t be enough cops in the world to keep anyone safe at any time.
My opinion is that the LP assumes that most people are decent, caring folk and that a small percent are total asswipes. The major parties seem to believe that everyone is an asswipe except for the highly intelligent epitomes of morality serving in government.
A pure Libertarian state wouldn’t work any better than a pure Democratic or pure Republican state would, I feel. But if it was possible to create one out of the blue, the people would reach equilibrium and have fairly normal lives, I think. People, unless they are under a fairly oppressive government or harsh conditions, tend to carry on.
Maybe I’m an optimist or something.
Even so, I think you might find a Libertarian society more unforgiving, in practical terms, than what we’ve got now. At present a youthful indiscretion can get you a record that follows you around and makes things more difficult for you for the rest of your life. But that’s still preferable to being shot in the street by an armed citizen just because you wanted his car stereo.
You’d have a culture where everyone was the enemy of everyone if you repealed laws against violence; the classic war of all aganst all. My “made up numbers” : 90% of the population would be cowering in fear from each other, and the 10% who aren’t would be the ones too crazy to care. That’s what you see in places where the government collapses.
Change the environment, you change people’s behavior. Most people aren’t violent, but then most people feel fairly safe, and are aware of the consequences. Living in a society where the only defense against murder is to kill first, we’d see an orgy of violence as people killed each other because they thought they were threatened, or out of panic, or because they could. The end result would be the death of most of the population and the end of organised society, assuming people were magically prevented from reinstating laws aganist murder and such.
No, I’m assuming that when you structure a society so that the violent and ruthless have a massive advantage, that they will take advantage of it. I also assume that in desperate situations people do things they would not otherwise do. I also assume that people who have no recourse but violence are much more likely to use violence, and eliminating non-violent recourses is a major feature of libertarianism. They may or may not intend that, but that’s what a massive government reduction amounts to.
You’re an optimist. Pre-government societies are societies where the number one cause of death is murder, where all the benefits of society flow to he who kills the most. That’s what you are speaking of recreating.
I don’t think that even L. Neil Smith claims that libertarianism will cause people to develop psychic mind-reading powers.
Oh, did you mean shot while attempting to break in to somebody’s car?
The Soviet Empire satellites after WWII were not “under seige” from anyone other than the (firmly communist) Soviet Union itself.
What do I win?
Er, the “What would an Anarchist America be like?” thread is… well, nowhere. If that’s what you want to talk about, by all means start that thread rather than spamming this one with irrelevancies.
Not going to debate point by point, but the fundamental flaw I see is that Libertarianism is not the same as a collapsed government. I didn’t think I had to say this yet again, but libertarianism is not the same as anarchy. Libertarians would still have laws against murder, theft, assault, etc. and a functioning police force, judges, and prisons, they just hope that they would be able to scale back these institutions. Allowing people to protect their own property or lives is not the same as repealing all laws, for crying out loud. There would be recourse other than violence, but even now the police have no responsibility to protect the individual.
From the website “In addition, Libertarians would do more than just punish criminals. We would also make them pay restitution to their victims for the damage they’ve caused, including property loss, medical costs, pain, and suffering.”
“Punish criminals”. That’s the government punishing them, not the mob.
“Libertarians would dramatically reduce the number of these early releases (from prison)”. They suggest making more room in prisons by releasing non-violent drug offenders.
Whether or not one believes that the war on drugs causes prison overcrowding, the LP clearly does not advocate the mob rules mentality that some are accusing.
Libertarianism is not anarchy.
How does this differ from current law? You injure someone, you have to pay these things (though Fred Goldman might beg to differ). I don’t see where this is a new fangled notion.
The difference is one of emphasis – the current system tends to focus on punishment and pay little attention to restitution (when’s the last time you saw a DA running for re-election based on how much money he forced criminals to fork over to their victims?)
I would say that there are three different hypothetical states under discussion here; a more-Libertarian America, a Libertarian America, and a ‘Libertopia’ that no longer bears any resembelance to America. I personally would say that while adopting certain parts of the Libertarian platform would be a good idea, this is only incidentally true. That is to say, I think that curbing the power of the FDA is a good thing, not because the FDA represents an intrusion into the individual’s right to self-medicate if he so chooses, but because the FDA as it stands sucks horrible ass on many issues.
My personal position in a nutshell is that an unrestricted move towards any party’s platform without a line-by-line analysis of ‘Is this working?’ and the acceptance that one can advance pieces of agenda from diametrically-opposed political spectrums if the pieces you advance are the ones that work will result in government that ranges from bad to absent or tyrannical. So, in a nutshell, if we go all-out libertarian, it would be bad. If we go Libertarian but for the things that we concede obviously wouldn’t work, that’s better. If we say “This is testably and provably a good idea. Let’s do it.”, and don’t care overmuch which party is endorsing it, that’s best.
But the fact is that some people are criminals by nature and will go out and prey on other people. Most people solve this problem by creating a government service whose function is to stop these criminals.
Libertarians, on the other hand, argue against a government having police powers over its citizens. They feel the citizens themselves should enforce their own laws. It’s an idea that sounds nice in theory but think about its actual application. Let’s say I live in Libertaria and I hear that my neighbour was killed by robbers last night: what exactly am I supposed to do at that point? Ignore the whole thing because it’s none of my business? Cordon off his house and look for clues? Round up the usual suspects? Bring up the possibility of forming a committee to conduct an investigation at the next block issues meeting? Budget some extra money for payments to the local protection agencies? Form a lynch mob and go hang somebody we figure is guilty?
Meanwhile the criminals have moved on and are planning their next robbery, secure in the knowledge that the numbers of law-abiding citizens are meaningless as long as they stay unorganized.