And yes, I realize that some Libertarians do not want to disband the police. But let’s face facts - if you support a government with traditional police powers, you’re not a real Libertarian. You’re a traditional majoritarian who happens to agree with Libertarians on some issues. Libertarians like this might as well join the Democrats or the Republicans.
Unfortunately, this isn’t a selling point for me, as the majority of offenders will be people with few to no assets. There’s always forced labor, I suppose. Of course, in our new libertarian society where it is legal to sell your body, could ‘restitution’ take the form of forced prostitution? Of course, as it is repayment, it’s not an *initiation * of force, which is a crucial distinction.
My biggest beefs toward Libertarianism as a political movement (rather than individual philosophies that can be co-opted into larger liberal/ conservative movements) are:
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the economic implications of treating the body as any other type of asset, and the implications for the very poor, women, and children
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ignoring the geopolitical ramifications of such a shift (i.e. invasion by other states)
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a refusal to see that the government is not the only body that can force people to do things - that economic consequences are as real as incarceration
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not accounting for the amount of time and effort saved by individuals due to faith in market offerings (a direct result of government oversight) and services provided directly by government
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a crazy concept of ‘force’ that doesn’t really fit any plain meaning I’ve seen
Like most pure ideologies, I could see this working on a small scale, but it if survived more than 2 generations (with contact with other societies) I’d be surprised.
Thank you. The LP isn’t calling for a complete and total discard of all laws and societal norms, just as some of us have tried to point out.
Really? Where on the LP website or supporting material did you get this notion? I think maybe a more accurate statement would be “some libertarians do want to disband the police”, but I don’t know that this is true as I’ve never met one that did.
Even The Probability Broach and Forge of the Elders have some form of law enforcement, and that guy is about as extreme (especially in his fiction) as it gets. So let’s face facts rather than make up accusations. There are enough untested and probably unworkable ideas raised by the party without throwing in others that they aren’t suggesting. (I’ll renounce my pseudo libertarianism if you can show me where the Libertarian Party is calling for the total disbanding of all police forces).
Libertarians might as well join the Dems or Pubs? That makes even less sense. If my two biggest issues are abortion and gun rights, which party should I join? If the only platform the LP ran on was reduction of law enforcement, they’d be irrelevant (or even more irrelevant, if that’s possible).
I really don’t care this much, I’m not even registered Libertarian, but the blizzard closed work so I’ve got nothing but time.
I think I pretty much agree with Bobotheoptimist. I’m not sure why the free market is almost always automatically associated with libertarianism. I suppose it’s because the vast majority of libertarians espouse a free market, but that’s probably just a coincidence of the undistributed middle. Although libertarianism is compatible with capitalism, it is also compatible with communism or any other economic system for that matter.
The only thing libertarianism really requires in order to be recognizable as libertarianism is voluntary human relations. If a tree is known by its fruit, then libertarianism is known by free and volitional consent. Whether that’s a good or bad thing, I’m not really here to argue. I think it’s fair to say that I’m just about the worst spokesperson for libertarianism this board has ever seen. I’ve argued it so poorly, in fact, that my name tagged to a post can make a preemptive bad impression on some readers. Oh, shit. It’s a Lib post in a libertarianism thread. Get me a vomit bucket while I read it.
No one is to blame for my rep but me. Still, whatever the case may be in that regard, the philosophy itself should be argued on its merits. Anarchy. Capitalism. Robber Baronism. Anarchosyndicalism. Libertopia. Even Libertaria. These are all strawman philosophical topics that might make for a good discussion on their own. But libertarianism itself does not live or die by those discussions.
You see, even there you are wrong, I was going to welcome you back and wonder if you are feeling better, but how to reply to a preemptive dissing?
Oh well, it is the holidays, welcome back Liberal. And I hope you are feeling better.
:rolleyes:
Welcome back, Liberal.
The point of this thread is “What would a Libertarian America be like?” So I think the issue is what the Libertarian Utopia would be rather than what platform is the Libertarian Party of America trying to get elected on. Let’s face it; ideals get watered down for electability. (While I disagree with Liberal’s political ideas, I respect him for the fact that he’s never tried to water them down or conceal them.)
I have read several versions of what a Libertarian Utopia would be like - it’s a not uncommon theme in science fiction. And these authors don’t stop at “we’d have more guns and drugs”. They all pretty much agree that one of the central principles of these utopias is that laws aren’t valid without the universal consent of all citizens. There’s no governmental coercion - only voluntary agreements. And I don’t see how you can reconcile traditional police powers with that principle.
I’m not sure there’s a difference in the power. Just because there’s no coercion doesn’t mean there’s no force. A policeman who protects me with my consent should in theory be no less powerful than a policeman who protects me against my will.
I think I’ve seen a ghost!
A minor problem if you’re the party being protected. But consider the point of view of the person being arrested - it’s very unlikely he consented to his arrest. In a majoritarian society, this isn’t an issue - consent was supplied by the will of the majority. But in an ideal libertarian society, nobody is supposed to be subjected to government coercion or force without their own individual consent.
I think there might be small but important differences, Little Nemo, in how we interpret the noncoercion principle. I am by no means the standard bearer, but my interpretation is that coercion is one particular type of force, characterized by initiation. Some examples may be admittedly grayer than others, but to illustrate the point, let me give an example that is fairly clear-cut, at least to me. You’re standing around minding your own business when a man walks up to you and puts his hand in your pocket. You grab his wrist to pull his hand out.
The force he used was coercion because until he put his hands on you, there was nothing forceful between you going on. Your force was fundamentally different. It was different in purpose and intent, not to mention different in sequence. The force you used was responsive in nature, designed to thwart the force that was initiated. Now, however gray some examples may become, this is what I mean by coercion versus other types of force, like defensive and retaliatory. With defensive force, you might stop him from grabbing your wallet. With retaliatory force, you might retrieve your wallet from him if defensive force failed or came too late. In either case, you are merely responding to a force that came out of basically nowhere — an initial force, or coercion.
The point of view of the person arrested is, I think, pretty much the same either way. Oddball circumstances aside, I think it’s fair to say that most people don’t want to be arrested despite whatever consent they (or the majority by proxy) might have given. But as far as that issue is concerned, it is my opinion that the same rights apply to the accused as to the accuser. As I see it, a false accusation that leads to an application of force is itself initial and therefore coercive.
You might ask related questions, such as who determines what is and what isn’t a false arrest and so forth, and those are legitimate discussions, but they leave behind the original point itself which moved me to respond: namely, that not all force is coercive. That was in response to the perfectly correct assertion that there is “no government coercion”. The only point I was making is that while that is true, it is not to be construed that that implies that there is no government force of any kind. A libertarian police department ought always to use force when it is necessary to secure your rights. Basically, they should respond on your behalf when called upon to do so, using the force that you yourself might be incapable of.
How to implement it? Don’t know. That’s a wide open question because there are practically infinitely many possible implementation schemes, including the present one. I would not be bothered at all by a majoritarian system that was dedicated to the security of my rights and property.
The difficulty I’ve always had with your position, Liberal, is that you seem to assume the premise that every area can be clearly defined as coercion/non-coercion and that everyone will agree on these decisions. Such a premise makes the response to coercion easier.
But I question the premise. I feel there are going to be a lot of situation where people will honestly differ in their opinions of whether an action was coercion or not. And if they disagree, they will often run into situations where they disagree about who was the first to use coercion. And the system will break down on these disagreements.
I know from our past discussions that you feel these disagreements can be resolved by impartial mediation. But as I’ve said in the past, I feel it’s unlikely that two parties that are in disagreement about the original issue are unlikely to reach an agreement on what would constitute an impartial mediation.
Whatever impressions I’ve left to the contrary notwithstanding, I readily confess that not every area, scenario, or circumstance is black and white. In fact, probably most are gray. And any scheme, including a libertarian one, will have to deal with these.
For me, it’s a matter of which ethical principle I trust more than another. I simply prefer that the implementation or outcome — whatever they may be — is derived from asking the sorts of questions libertarianism demands. Who started it? Was the response measured appropriately? Were any rights or property violated? What is necessary to make the victim whole?
I simply prefer the application of the NP as opposed to the application of statute searching or political expediency. I just don’t want justice hanging simply because of a loophole a smart lawyer could find. Or because of an election coming in the fall. Or anything like that.
I do realize that if someone hits me with a car, my suffering is just as great under libertarianism as it is under totalitarianism. I just think that the guy who hit me should make me whole, even if he had an unhappy childhood, can hire an expensive lawyer, and plays golf with the local sheriff. And I want to have avenues open to pursue justice against all those parties involved in aggressing me — including the judge. I don’t like the indemnity enjoyed by government agents, and I don’t really know of any good recourse against it other than the ability to charge complicit conspirators with the same coercion as the driver.
Why the big upraor over legalizing drugs? Think about the cost of drugs-illegal drugs are expensive, because criminals take big risks importing a selling them. So we legalize-and all of a sudden, an addict’s daily fix costs $5.00 instead of $100.00-is this such a bad thing? The addict can now afford his addiction without resort to crime. that alone is enough to justify legalization.
Tell me, Liberal, Sam, et al.: Would this speculative scenario qualify as a vision for a Libertarian future? (Since it involves no really big governments remaining in existence by 2025.)
You wouldn’t. You would create the conditions under which the fundaloonies would.
What distinguishes this view of Libertarianism from Anarchism?
There’s more than one side to that story:
Can’t find a cite, but I recall from an American history course in college that the original purpose of compulsory-elementar-education laws was not to educate the children, but to provide an enforcement mechanism for the child-labor laws – i.e., make the parents send the kids to school, to make sure they’re not sending them to factories. This was actually challenged in a Supreme Court case, ostensibly brought by a father who insisted the government had no business telling him he couldn’t realize labor value out of his children.