Limping along, not working ideally, but working, here in the real world. Which is more than can be said for Libertarianism, a system that, to my knowledge, has never ever worked anywhere for any length of time. Besides, pointing out the flaws (IMO, fatal flaws) in one system is not the same as claiming that another system is perfect.
This strikes me as over-simplistic, in that in order to determine how few “parts” you need in your “system,” you have to first decide what tasks your “system” is going to be expected to perform. How much government do you need to raise and maintain an army? Not much. How much government do you need to maintain a postal system, a civil defense system, hospitals, schools, social welfare, AND an army? A lot more. Which, actually, is another of my criticisms of Libertarianism – there’s no consensus as to how much government is too much. Though, to be fair, there’s no such consensus in the Republican or Democratic parties, either.
Then start a new one and post a link. There are tax lawyers who get paid $500 an hour that do not know what you think can be found on the IRS web site.
Which nut cases are you talking about? I don’t think Larouche was ever associated with Libertarians, everything I can find only mentions him as a Democrat. I searched for this a few years ago, after an acquaintance told me she thought Larouche was a Libertarian, and I still have not come across why people think this. By the way, I’ve voted LP in every presidential election since 1980.
I’ll give you that Howard Stern is a nut case, but his run under the LP was atypical to say the least. The party you should be questioning about nut cases is the reform party. Lenora Fulani? Pat Buchanan? Donald Trump? Jesse Ventura? And Ross Perot? They’ve got 'em coming out their ears, and you ask about nuts in the LP !?!
No matter your beliefs, there will be some group or part of a group that rips apart those beliefs and makes them their own. This happens not only in the Libertarian party but happens in the Rebublican and Democratic parties and other parties. There is a bonafide “Socialist Democrat” organization. OH and don’t forget religious organizations.
Little Nemo:
The government in a Libertarian society protects its citizens from foreign aggression, the difference is it doesn’t actively seek out war as in Korea, Vietnam, etc. The thing that the government isn’t allowed to do is outlined in The Constitution. In addition, if you read the Declaration of Independance then you will have a clear idea of the reasons that the States felt it was neccesary to succeed from England. Many of the same reasons that people are disgusted with the government today.
As for your other comments, this confuses me, but I must comment on them regardless.
Private business…hello, if it’s private than how does that apply to the government?
Government - private business, they should not be mutually exclusive.
Libertarians totally believe that you should be able to worship or not. If I want to worship my dog as God then so be in in the Libertarian world.
YOUR (and damnit mine, but I am trying to change this) government is creating these criminal organizations. If things such as drugs and prostitution were legal, it would be safe to engage in those activities. The criminal element as you would define is based on the laws prohibiting these. Look at history, look at prohibition. A serial killer is rarely a part of a criminal organization, rather a loner with a lot of problems.
Different ethic groups? What’s the problem with that? Most of what I see are self inflicted discrimination. If you want to be thought as a human, then get out of the labels.
A strong government is not a good government unless it’s sole purpose is to guarantee the rights provided by natural laws and The Constitution. Outside of that if it involves excess taxes, moral legislation, social legislation, etc. then where does the term freedom come into place?
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Originally posted by Scylla:
If you’ve opted out you don’t have to file or pay.
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Scylla, if you’re going to make a claim as outrageous as this, you better be prepared to back it up.
Please post a link to the IRS website where this is stated or post a link to a court case where this has been determined or make the case for yourself somewhere in this forum.
“I speak in the capacity of being number three on the present list of pre-candidates of the Democratic nomination in year 2000.”
“If you’re going to privatize a firm, you’re going to steal from it. That’s what “privatization” means. It used to be called, in the Eighteenth Century and the Seventeenth Century, “privateering.” That’s when people get a legal license to go out and loot.”
“Whenever you hear the world (sic) “privatization,” you scream “Thief! Catch thief! Stop, thief!””
I guess you could interpret his remarks as libertarian — if you complicate them enough.
I was writing and reading Federal Income Tax, and thinking Social Security tax.
Allow me to plead temporary insanity based on the fact that it was late, and I must have had a short circuit in the brain to post such an asinine assertion.
I can only relate my error to that same feeling I get when I spend half an hour looking for my car keys only to realize they are in my hand, or staring at the open refrigerator looking for the ketchup when it’s right in front of me.
It’s unreasonable to saddle any group - even the Libertarians - with Lyndon Larouche. He’s not just out in left field; he’s in some dumpster outside the entire ballpark.
Jodi:
True, but even Republicans and Democrats have a certain level of agreement, with themselves and each other, on the system through which consensus is reached (to the extent that it ever is).
Since libertarianism pretty much assumes that there will be no issues of consequence to legislate in a libertarian system of government (Lib, Sam, techchick - correct me if I’m wrong here), it seems necessary to have the consensus reached in advance.
Techchick:
Ask a Rwandan.
What, no private organization ever violates the NP? Hello yourself. There was a story a few years ago of - what was it, a textile factory? - in CA which basically held its workers in a state of slavery. In the absence of a strong central government, the easier it is for private outfits to do things like this on their own.
Personally, in a system where the military and cops are privately employed, I see warlords, by a multiplicity of paths. Cops and soldiers might decide it was silly to work for someone else when they could grab the power themselves. Militia groups, such as we have now, might well use their arms caches for conquest (including conquest of more weapons). Extreme religious groups might follow their lead. As the world got more chaotic, rich people would first hire private security/armies, then some of them would turn to conquest as the best option. Or their security chiefs would bump them off and become warlords on their own.
Eventually a real nation would invade, and put an end to the chaos. But it’s a trip worth avoiding.
People are going to try to coerce one another; it’s our sinful nature, or whatever, but it’s gonna happen. I prefer being coerced out of a relatively modest chunk of my income to the worse depravities that can occur, absent a strong government that is at least technically controlled by the people.
Tell me what a Libertarian government would have done in the following situations.
Henry Ford was a noted anti-semite. He attempted (successfully for the most part) to make sure that no Jews worked for his company. Suppose he had also told all of the companies that had contracts with him they had to fire their Jews or lose his business?
For the better part of three generations millions of black Americans did not vote. They were generally afraid to because any black who attempted to vote was subject to violence from anonymous whites. The local police and courts had no interest in protecting their rights because they were part of the white majority dominated government.
In the 1930’s Germany, Japan, and Italy, started on an open plan of conquest. They were seeking to take control of as much territory as they were able to. They came very close to defeating every power in Europe and Asia which could resist them and if they had they would have been able to overrun all of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and South and Central America. They undoubtedly would also have been interested in the territory of the United States at some point.
During the early years of this century many workers wanted to join together in organizations to collectively work together for better working conditions. Their employers did not want to see them succeed and hired strong arm men to intimidate anyone who attempted to form a union.
Prior to the 1950’s it could take weeks or even months to drive across the United States. In the 1950’s a system of national highways were built which drastically lowered the amount of time and effort transportation required, thereby directly or indirectly raising the living standard of virtually everyone in the nation.
In the 19th century, it was general practice for the majority of children to leave school around the age of ten so they could begin working. Obviously this shortened education limited their present and future employment opportunities.
During the 20th century a number of previously major diseases such as smallpox, measles, polio, yellow fever, syphilis, and others have been eliminated or vastly reduced by wide scale public health programs.
Prior to the 1960’s, thousands if not millions of Americans had died or developed serious health problems because of toxic wastes in their living environment. Companies which were producing this waste could not afford to unilaterally stop because they would then lose business to competitors who chose to not clean up their wastes.
John D. Rockefeller created the Standard Oil Company and built a monopoly by using his control of a large majority of oil production to eliminate any competition. He would lower prices below costs until his competitors went bankrupt and then buy up their assets below market value. He would then raise prices far above his costs in order to build his assets back up for the next confrontation with a potential rival.
In addition to controlling activities like gambling, drugs, and prostitution, organized crime has a long history of collecting for “protection”. Legitimate business owners are required to hand over a share of their profits to local criminals in order to insure these criminals do not target them more directly.
Lib, you are proposing a simple solution to a great many complicated problems. Precious few people agree that it could possible work, in fact all the evidence (near Laissez-faire economy of early-industrial America)we have suggests that it would NOT work. Also, your ‘simple’ solution is dependent on the complete impossibility of a nation made up of peaceful, honest citizens.
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Henry Ford was a noted anti-semite. He attempted (successfully for the most part) to make sure that no Jews worked for his company. Suppose he had also told all of the companies that had contracts with him they had to fire their Jews or lose his business?
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Libertarians would argue that he should have the right to hire or fire whoever he wants, for whatever reason. However, he is subject to checks and balances from the marketplace - if the public hates his policies, it won’t buy as many of his products. Distributors may not deal with him, etc.
In the absence of a federal government to protect the rights of the minorities, I think you’d find that the public would be more inclined to ‘vote’ with its dollars in ethical matters like this.
A libertarian government would protect the blacks from physical violence just as the current government does. Most libertarians believe it’s correct for the state to maintain police forces and law courts, and you’d still have laws against embezzlement, fraud, extortion, etc.
Note that the plight of the blacks until very recently was made worse by the government, which sanctioned a lot of discriminatory activity.
Nothing would have been much different with respect to WWII under a libertarian government. Libertarian governments keep armies, and respond to threats on their sovereignity.
A libertarian government would not allow employers to use physical force against employees who wish to collectively bargain. However, the employer would maintain the right to fire those employees, and there would be no legal mandate that a person has to join a union in order to practice a trade or work for a company.
If you ask me, a good balance of power is met when workers can unionize and bargain collectively, AND the employer can fire them for doing so. The employer is constrained by the possibility of losing his entire workforce, and the union is constrained by the possibility that unreasonable demands will be met with termination. That’s what would happen in a libertarian society. In the current one, some unions are out of control because they enjoy government-granted privileges and protections that the employers don’t have.
As for strongarming, I’d argue that unions under today’s system do FAR more strong-arming and violence than the employers ever did. In countries where unions enjoy even more protections from the government the problem of violence is worse.
This is a tough one, and some libertarians believe that there is some place for government to maintain an infrastructure or handle situations of market failure, as in pollution controls. I tend to be in that camp.
This had little if anything to with government, and had more to do with the wealth and structure of society. As a society evolves and progresses such that education is rewarded, then more people will get an education. When a society becomes wealthy enough that poor people can afford to live without the labor of their kids, then they’ll keep their kids in school.
This can be seen by the number of high school graduates and university graduates we have today. There is no law that says you have to go to university, yet the number of graduates is much, much higher than it used to be.
If a Libertarian society is more prosperous, then the kids in that society will be better educated than ours.
Yeah, and drug companies now spend an average of 170 million dollars and ten years getting a drug approved by the FDA. Which has had a chilling effect on drug research. And new drugs kept off the market by the FDA can result in the deaths of thousands or hundreds of thousands. Beta Blockers were witheld by the FDA for years after other countries were using them regularly, and estimates were that something like 50,000 people a year could have been saved if they were available. If a private company made an error that killed 150,000 people, you’d see it as a complete condemnation of capitalism. The government kills them through inaction, and it’s not even in the news.
Polluting the environment of property that is not your own is a violation of the non-coercion principle. So Libertarians believe that something should be done about that. However, this is one of those areas that may actually unweildy for the private market to handle, so some Libertarians believe that environmental regulations are permissible.
Greatly exaggerated. The only areas where non-competitive monopolies have managed to thrive are in areas where the government grants the monopoly (look at the railroads in the 1800’s), or where a monopoly is held because a company owns all or most of the resources in question. (Standard Oil then, DeBeers diamonds and Canada Nickel today). But even then, these companies have to submit to market forces. Canada Nickel owns something like 95% of the world’s nickel deposits. So how come nickel isn’t priced higher than gold? Answer: Because there are alternatives to nickel, and high prices would spur exploration and production of other nickel sources, reducing Canada Nic
It’s interesting, then, that there was an attempt to ratify a Child Labor amendment, to the U.S. Constitution, in the 1930s. Only a few states had ratified it; but then in the late 30s Congress passed, and FDR signed, the Fair Labor Standards Act, regulating labor by underage persons in interstate commerce. When the courts upheld this law the Amendment became a dead issue.
Probably ANY kind of government would be obligated to keep kids out of sweatshops.
What do Libertarians say about sweatshops using foreign labor, working under conditions that violate the 13th Amendment?
Though you’re just a bit less Austrian than I like for myself, let me just say that I love you.
Cooper:
Selling snake oil under the pretense of selling medicine is economic fraud. It is not necessary to delay the sale of life saving drugs in order to prosecute fraud. Besides, plenty of snake oil gets through the FDA.
The government generally took a hands off policy towards discrimination in the 19th century. Do you think Jews (or blacks or Asians or women or gays or American Indians) were more of less discriminated against then? The sad truth is most people, as individuals, don’t care about the discrimination of any group they don’t belong to. And I don’t feel a political party can claim to espouse personal liberty while it allows the members of minority groups to be oppressed.
It’s true that small local governments tolerated, and even encouraged, this discrimination. It was a strong national government that finally stepped into local affairs and ended it.
And I would post a similar response on my latter comments about organized crime. It theoretically was within the power of local governments to fight this problem, but in actuality no serious efforts were made until big government intervened.
But a libertarian administration in that period would not have sent any aid to Britain, France, China, or the Soviet Union, and certainly wouldn’t have intervened on their behalf. WWII would certainly have been different if all of these countries had therefore been defeated. A libertarian administration wouldn’t have taken any action against the Axis until their troops were crossing the border and by then it would probably have been impossible to defeat them.
I’d disagree with you that unions are now more of a problem than management, but that’s a whole other issue. As I stated in other parts of this post, you can argue all you want that individuals have theoretical rights, but the reality is they were only able to exercise these rights when the government protected them. Many employees found, and in some cases are still finding, that their theoretical rights to organize are meaningless in the face of the power which their employer wields. And in a libertarian state where the police and military are on the employer’s payroll, I don’t see that situation changing in favor of the workers.
I think you put the cart before the horse on this one. Children stopped working and public education became mandatory because of government regulations and then society became more prosperous. Child labor laws and mandatory school laws were very controversial when they were enacted and many people derided them as unnecessary government intervention.
I’ll agree with you that the government probably overregulates medicine but I feel it’s a matter of degree. In general, I feel the government serves a vital role in acting as an impartial judge of the effectiveness of new drugs and I can’t foresee how any private agency could fulfill that role.
But what I was talking about in my original post was not new drugs but public health in general. Can you explain how any private company or other group would have a sufficient vested interest in preventing or eradicating diseases in a libertarian society. Obviously, it’s in my interest to not get infected with tuberculosis, for example, but how can I compel my fellow citizens to get treated for the disease if they don’t wish to? Who pays for vaccinations in a libertarian society?
I don’t think my example was greatly exaggerated, but regardless you have to concede my plan is one many businessmen would
Y’know, Sam, you’re a hell of a lot better at explaining the practicalities of Libertarianism that the Chief Libertarian Cheerleader on the Board, who appears to be unable to respond with anything except meaningless rhetoric. So I will address my follow-up questions to you. You say:
But sometimes the checks and balances don’t work. For example, in the South at the turn of the century, blacks generally did not have the ability to afford decent medical care. Because they could not marshall enough economic clout to pay for decent medical services, there was no incentive for white doctors to treat them as well as white patients. The upshot was that white doctors (and white hospitals) refused to treat blacks of any economic stata, so that a black person had no practical ability to purchase quality medical care, regardless of whether he or she had the economic ability to do so. Market forces alone will not prevent the marginalization of large segments of a population, precisely because once such people are marginalized, they are no longer a market force.
But even American history does not bear this out, does it?
See, this is my problem: I see no great agreement about what laws are okay under the Libertarian principle and which laws are not. You say extortion is not; is intimidation? Because that was how whites kept blacks away from the polls. There was no force used until afterwards, if you as a black person had the presumption to vote. Then force is used against you, sure, but your lynched body is left as a warning to your neighbors, and no force needs to be used against them to get them to stay away from the polls in droves.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about here. Do you have examples?
But at what point does a Libertarian government recognize a threat to its sovereignty? When the army is at its very boarder? Or when the army is at the boarder of its nearest neighbor? Or when the army is at the boarder of its closest ally? The problem is that Hitler arguably threatened the sovereignty of England (and the United States) the minute it became evident he was pursuing continental conquest. So when does a threat to sovereignty arise? And, again, who decides?
Which again takes me back to my fundamental question: who decides what services are okay and what services are not? How does society as a whole determine this?
And, yes, evidence to the contrary, I do know how to spell “border.”
My post was in many respects duplicative of Nemo’s, who posted at the same time. A response to either post, if you don’t have time to respond to both, would be appreciated.
