I think you’ve just described every person on the planet that’s not in a persistent vegetative state.
In any case, I also agree that anyone’s opinion that’s different from mine is wrong. And everyone’s opinion different from yours is also wrong. What’s the Venn diagram for that look like?
They tried, but it didn’t turn out well.
Because I see no reason to assume that one will appear, when they had thousands of years to do so before government stepped in to do the job. Nor do I see any reason why they’d do anywhere near as good a job as the government if they DID exist.
And we end up with a warped rating system. And people don’t die because of the ESRB pushing it’s ratings. And they don’t require the kind of expertise an FDA does. And they don’t have the power to forbid; a “purely voluntary” non-government version of the FDA would just result in mass death, from all the useless or outright poisonous “medicine” that they’d be unable to stop. That’s WHY the FDA exists.
No, it’s simple realism. Given the choice of libertarianism and death, or something else and life, most people will choose life. And given the chance to inflict itself on society, mass death and mass suffering is what you’d get from libertarianism.
If you’re talking about the so-called Weimar Republic, that was a joke, and doomed to failure. Germany had been ruled by a monarchy prior to that, and had only been unified under a central monarch for less than 100 years.
Germany as a whole did not have much experience with actual democracy.
And socialism/progressivism/communism/collectivism/DerTrihsism is not predatory?!
You see, that’s the beauty of all these “isms” … you can apply any metaphor to any of them.
Libertarianism is predatory. Socialism is predatory.
Libertarianism is a demon. Socialism is a demon.
Let’s say that 1000 times so we all sound like raving lunatics.
So if you say democracy doesn’t work if the people have no prior experience with it, and can only be achieved by a gradual change in culture, then why can’t a minarchist government be achieved by a gradual change in culture? I’m certainly not saying that we should get rid of most of these government institutions tomorrow; that would be chaos, since they are tightly integrated into the national culture and economy.
Der Trihs, tell me why you would buy a drug that has not been rated. And I’m not saying that contract law would be out the window; if a company or person agrees in writing to do something, they have to do it or face the consequences. Enforcing contracts between people would be one of the major functions of the government in a minarchist society.
**
haymarketmartyr, (gee, way to hide your ideology there) how would you prefer me to argue? Accepting your a priori views?
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
In a world with trillion dollar deficits and trillion dollar stimulus packages, it is naive at best to not think that we will return to the world of 1810 where the federal government only does a handful of enumerated things,*** if it is capable of doing anything at all.***
Oh, and don’t confuse Libertarianism with the Libertarian party. I think anyone who votes Libertarian is an idiot. The U.S. is a first-past-the-post-voting country, and anyone who ignores that fact is not going to win an election, ever. The first goal of any “capital L” Libertarian should be to change that fact.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
ETA: jtgain, what makes you think that just because we’re playing with bigger numbers that the fundamental issues have to be different? This is the worst kind of appeal to novelty that always comes up in any thread about Libertarianism.
[underline is mine]
The “so-called” part of your sentence is exactly the point I was trying to make.
The rest of your analysis simply hindsight analysis that reinforces the “so-called” adjective.
Today, people often label the USA as a “democracy” with pride as if it’s some kind of immutable law-of-gravity that prevents bureaucrats from eroding your freedoms. The label “democracy” is more reliable to describe a country’s past behavior rather than dictate its future actions.
If the USA transformed from a “democracy” to a “so-called democracy”, would citizens even recognize the mutation? What would be the tell-tale signs? If the TV is still working and potato chips & beer are still available on the shelves, what would provoke him to notice that he’s been neutered? Does a patient that’s been lobotomized know he’s the victim of a lobotomy?
That’s not what I meant. Germany was never a democracy, is what I’m saying, at least if you mean prior to the Nazis taking over. The Weimar government was a farce. I’m not saying that one couldn’t BECOME a democracy.
Ruminator was saying that people will give up democracy for safety. They weren’t giving up a free, democratic republic for safety, because they had never had one in the first place. (I hope this doesn’t sound like a “true Scotsman” defense, because I don’t mean it that way. More like, the Weimar government was unstable and doomed from the start)
You just described Hong Kong. An island with no natural resources, and nothing to attract anyone to it other than it was a place where you could go and start a business and live your life without interference from the government. Hong Kong has very little business regulation, very low taxes, and in general very little interference in private affairs. When it was run by the British, the governor of Hong Kong took an explicitly Laissez-Faire approach to governance.
The result was an explosion of wealth and an area which has the highest per-capita GDP in Asia. It started as a sweat-shop island filled with immigrants and refugees from China who had no particular skills or education, and built itself into a world economic powerhouse.
The problem Libertarians have is that people today think that complex social and economic structures must be planned. Absent a central government to plan and regulate things, they think there would be anarchy. But in fact, all capitalist economies are largely examples of spontaneous organization. Even in the social democracies, the vast majority of transactions are essentially free, and the vast amount of social organization is spontaneous and unpredictable. So much so that the best investors in the world cannot manage returns of more than 10-15% on their money in the market because the direction and flow of money and resources is so unpredictable and seemingly chaotic.
It’s a tough sell in the modern world when someone asks you what your solution is to a problem, and the necessary answer is, “I have no idea, but I’m confident that one will be found.” But this is largely true. Capitalism is nothing less than a never-ending series of solutions to problems that people have. I need a stronger metal for my frame. I need a cheaper way to mold plastic items. I need a way to get my products across the country fast and cheap. I need to connect with my customers and find out what they need. I need a vehicle that can get me around for 10 years without costing more than a small fraction of my income.
Billions of problems, creating demand for goods and services, and billions of solutions. Society morphs and adapts to changing demand. Whole cities are created, and others decline. Industrial standards arise and are eventually outdated. Industries rise and fall to meet the changing needs of the people.
Almost none of this happens because a central planner dictated it. It happens because free people make choices on how to spend their money, and because the price system and the market exist to transmit their desires to the people who need to know them, and to transmit the availability of solutions back.
There are preconditions to this all working, and that’s where government has a role. Capitalism can’t exist without a civil society, which means maintenance of the peace, some regulation of capital markets, regulations to ensure that information is available to those who need it, etc. If government does that, and no more, society will find pareto-optimal paths to economic solutions.
Sometimes the optimal economic solutions do not match the social desires of some segments of the population. Thus the clamor for more government. But when government overrides the functioning of the market for social outcomes, it always do so in a way that reduces overall societal wealth. Go too far, and you have a country where everyon is equal - equally poor.
Reality check: Look around the world at all the countries where things in general go as well as or better than in the U.S. One thing you won’t find in any of them is minimal government.
Did you look at Sam Stone’s post? And don’t confuse minimal government with corrupt government and tribal government. While Somalia, for example, doesn’t have a government, you better believe that the individual warlords govern by very intrusive tyranny.
But to echo what Sam Stone said, most statists don’t believe in the free market. The free market always provides the optimal solution to any economic problem, as long as a government prevents people from taking other peoples’ lives or property. That’s what the free market is for, and that’s what it does. There is no humanly possible way to plan an economy that works better than the free market. And it brought unprecedented economic, social, and lifestyle improvment: Adam Smith is truly the greatest humanitarian the world has ever known.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
I think you’re getting close here.
What I think the hard-core Libertarian platform lacks is (1) an appreciation of cycle-times of feedback loops for decision-making, and (2) the severity of a risk of a wrong decision on the public at large.
Let me try and explain.
I don’t think the lawn-mowing industry should be regulated. There shouldn’t be laws and regulations passed to certify lawn mowers, ensure lawn-mowers are tested and licensed, and public oversight committees empowered to provide remedy and sanction to wayward lawn mowers.
Why? Because a bad decision on a lawn mower, or a lawn mowing service, isn’t that big of a deal to the public. It doesn’t pose a risk of downfall of the empire, or a collapse of the ecosystem, or anything like that. You mow your lawn dozens of times each year. The cycle time for decision-making is short. The costs aren’t going to bankrupt anybody. There are plenty of other people employing lawn mowers, or lawn mowing services, that provide millions of data points for you to examine and review and make your own decision accordingly on lawn mowers. It’s a straightforward matter for a Consumer Reports, or a competing company, to buy a few lawn mowers and test them for safety, performance and reliability and for you (if you want) to read up on their reviews and decide for yourself.
In short, lots of data, lots of fairly short feedback loops, and lots of room for corrective action possible to remedy decisions and mitigate risks. And the control for decision-making is entirely within your hands. That’s the best part.
How about funding a private, standing army to defend our borders, paid for by voluntary means? I think that’s probably at the other end of the spectrum. If you become a large, wealthy, prosperous country and fund an inadequate army, you’ll get run over by a barbarous nation and become slaves. And then it’s too late to say ‘Whoops, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea’. The severity of a wrong decision is pretty much the whole ballgame.
Whether people realize it or not, I think that is one of the core reasons most Americans oppose the hard-core Libertarian platform of privatizing ALL public lands for instance. Yellowstone? The Grand Canyon? In private hands? Maybe. But what happens if a private party screws it up? Can we re-order another one, like hiring a different lawn mowing service? Not likely. And there is really no one to hold accountable for the decision, especially if the private party exposes itself to counterparty risk or goes bankrupt. You have to place very low value on the existence of such natural areas, or assume the risk of a bad decision is extremely low, to put comfort in the idea of placing them in private hands.
So in my opinion, the philosophy starts to break down for those things that have ‘one shot’ failures with public externalities, very long cycle times for feedback loops and massive and/or unrecoverable severity.
Pristine, unique wilderness. The lost generation of an entire under-educated populace that makes our nation completely uncompetitive. Huge infrastructure projects that would take 10-20 years to get through the courts w.r.t. property rights issues and eminent domain. Our total dependence on unstable foreign dictatorships for 60% of our energy inputs.
But certifying the safety of aspirin? Deciding whether it’s OK for a label on a bottle of beer to have a cartoon skeleton on it, or not? Running a railroad? Tilting the balance of private negotiations at a steel mill in favor of the union?
In my mind, those aren’t even close calls. There is no justifiable reason why the government should take your money by force and use it to fund such endeavors.
One of the problem the real world has with “Libertarians” is their incessant use of strawmen. :rolleyes:
“People” :rolleyes: in general, in our democracies, do NOT think the economy and society must be “planned”. The general attitude is that they very often must be regulated. You really do need to understand the difference.
But if you make a chart of world standards of living, and another chart ranking countries by economic freedom, you’ll usually find that the wealthiest countries, the ones that have the best overall standards of living, are the ones where the government interferes least.
And even in those countries with larger governments than the U.S., the vast bulk of transactions are STILL free. The vast amount of social organization is STILL controlled by the free market. And it works.
The United States has historically had the smallest federal government of any of the world’s major economic powers. And it has had the highest standard of living. And if you define poverty globablly, and not just in relation to the richest in America, you’ll find that the U.S. also has the smallest percentage of its people living in true poverty. For all the hand-wringing about the middle class not gaining in the past few years in America, it should be noticed that the middle class in America would be considered wealthy in most other places in the world, including in other Western Democracies.
The ‘poverty line’ in the U.S. is currently about TWICE the world average income. The poor in America generally have air conditioning, cable TV, computers with good internet connections, and often a family car or even two. Is there a huge gap between the rich and poor? Absolutely. But that’s not because the poor in America are starving to death - it’s because the rich are incredibly wealthy.
I’m not so sure you yourself understand the difference between “regulated” and “planned.”
I’m also not so sure you understand the general psyche of the “people” that you claim to speak for.
Look at all the various threads on this board and others about how there are “no jobs” and “government/Obama should implement public works” and “govt should send out big stimulus checks.”
These type of pleas are not related to regulation, they are related to planning. When people suggest that “Obama should do this or that to create jobs,” that’s planning. Is it Soviet-style “command-&-control” planning? No – but that’s not a reason to restrict the word “planning” to that model.
People want both more “planning” and more “regulation.” Who are these “people” that you talk about that don’t think economy+society must be “planned?”
Vos
you ask me how I do want you to argue. Here it is:
Do NOT sound as if you have just come down from the Libertarian Mountain and spoke with Von Mises himself and He has just given you the Truth carved into tablets writ by his fiery hand.
Why is it that so many libertarians have to sound so completely condescending when they are preaching to the rest of us? It is like there is no doubt or subtlety at all in your philosophy or mental state. You are 100% sure of everything because you know the Truth in all its starkness and brutal reality. Anyone who does not agree with you is simply someone who has to be looked down upon and preached to until either their ears bleed or they scream “uncle” and go to a libertarian meeting.
That is the tone I get over and over and over again in these discussions with libertarians on countless websites.
Oh - another thing - ditch the Latin. Speak english. Unless of course you are trying to sound like an irritating combination of phony intellectually superior and prissy. Then it comes across just as planned.
Yet that’s the sense in which Sam using it in the sermon I was responding to.:rolleyes:
The same “people” whose name your fellow “Lib” Sam invoked in the post I was responding to. :rolleyes:Except that I’m doing it ironically, to point out yet another example of your habit of lumpenization. Which, btw, is yet another problem the real world has with self-proclaimed “Libertarians”. It is, to be sure, almost unavoidable when preaching a prescriptive ideology of any stripe, but that’s part of the disconnect between the real world and demagogic ideologuism.
Well, I’m certainly not going to stop using big words or the occasional Latin phrase out of some kind of attempt to sound “down-to-earth”. I mean, I don’t use them when they’re out of place, but I’m not going to stop just because it’s possible to get the same thought across through simpler writing. And if I sound condescending or too sure of my own beliefs, it’s frankly because I’m amazed how, looking at the history of the world, seeing the rise of capitalism, and watching the fall of socialism, anyone could believe that central economic planning and regulation works, let alone works better than the free market. The very phrase “the president needs to create jobs” is just so wrongheaded I don’t know where to start. And no, I don’t think any other societal philosophy is better in any meaningful way. Sure, there are better or worse ways to work towards Libertarianism, and I’m open-minded about that, but not about the end goal itself.
And to echo Sam Stone, socialism tries to redistribute a limited amount of wealth between the rich and the poor so that everyone has the same amount. Capitalism tries (or rather, sets back and lets the free market) to let people trade freely among themselves, knowing that this will result in the greatest amount of growth and therefore increase in the standard of living. Would you rather have a society in which everyone makes $20,000 a year, or one where the rich make billions and the poor make $20,000 a year? I’ll take the latter.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
ETA: ElvisL1ves, but all economic planning is a variation on the same theme: that the free market somehow can’t handle itself.