For the record, can you tell us which “ism” you’d like that is not ruthless, amoral, selfish, and suicidal?
Yeah in large part, they did. The last two hundred years have seen more improvement in standard of living than the previous three or four milennia, and more than anything else, the free market is the reason. Pretty awesome track record, that.
People using the current economic crisis to knock the free market make as much sense as people arguing that Global Warming is a fraud because it snowed in April this year…
I never said they wouldn’t have police.
Of course; those would be their fellow libertarians. A society based on ruthlessness is not going to have police that are anything other than thugs in uniform.
Global warming is a fraud. But that’s a topic for another thread, I think.
It’s the reason ? What about the control of the free market, by governments ? And governments themselves. And advances in technology. And the weakening of religion. And the rise of democracy. And probably other things I haven’t thought of at the moment.
There’s no reason to give the free market the kind of credit you are giving it.
Why do you think all those other things happened? Because people had the luxury to pursue them. Subsistence farmers do not; on the other hand farmers working wages for an agricorporation are not tied to the land; they can quit and do something else without starving. And the owners of these and other corporations can use their money to invest in projects that improve the wealth of themselves and mankind by proxy instead of using it to hire knights to go out and oppress the peasants.
Der Trihs, you’re not even trying on the police thing. You have given no legitimate reason why police (who would still be regular human beings, not some kind of demons that you have dreamed up as the citizens of a libertarian society) would not function in a Libertarian society. Bribery, intimidation, beating up unions, etc. would still be illegal, and it would be enforced the same way it is now, with fines and jail time (or maybe a better way, but that’s for the other thread about that).
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
Only because the government makes it possible.
No, such laws would be repealed or ignored. I’m simply postulating that the police would act just like they did in the times you think were so nice. And that they would act in the ways that would be necessary to sustain such a brutal system. And that they’d be the kind of people who would support such a system.
Ruthless, amoral scum, in other words.
I’m given the choice every day. (I used to be a libertarian, so my choices haven’t always been the same.)
The question of “What do we do about the poor?” isn’t a 20th or 21st century invention, nor is “Let them eat cake.”
The idea that any portion of libertarianism is new or never-been-tried is goofy. Of course it’s been tried. But we’re a social species and we can do long division. A burden shared is a burden lessened.
Libertarianism will remain fringe simply because most people have compassion, most people understand envy, and most people want peace and stability. I had these things when I was a libertarian, but I didn’t understand that you can’t get the latter without people, in general, feeling a system is fair and compassionate.
The US has been there, done that, too. Police forces were much like the Mafia in some places, including shakedowns and protection money.
What we got ain’t perfect, but it could be and has been so much worse.
As opposed to Libertarianism? A political system that’s entirely based on theory? My political beliefs may not be perfect but they have some basis in reality. No Libertarian can make the same claim - which is one of the reason I hate debating politics with Libertarians. They want to compare their pie-in-the-sky utopian vision with my real world politics with its admitted flaws. They want to compare apples and unicorns.
Uhhh…yes? That’s the point I was making. The people decided to do something and used the government to do it. The government isn’t some alien invader - it’s us. It does what we tell it to do. And it’s often a more effective tool for carrying out our will than individual action is.
Exactly. My “alarmism”, my “paranoia”, my “ranting” in this thread is nothing more than me expecting the police and the corporations and so on to do what they’ve done in the past, in the times that were more to the libertarians’ liking.
I think we’re talking past each other. Maybe we’re in violent agreement.
What does ‘telling the government to do’ mean to you? Does it mean a 51% majority of the voting public? A supermajority? Are there some basic, inviolate rights that so sancrosact in our Constitution that it doesn’t matter how many people want to do something…they can’t nor shouldn’t? Because those freedoms are fundamental to our beliefs?
If so, can you articulate what those are?
I have to bring this up again. Because of the massive economic growth brought by a Libertarian society, even the ones at the bottom are better off than the ones at the top in a Communist society, unless you view sheer power to oppress others militarily as a benefit.
Why would these laws be repealed or ignored just because the society only runs certain services through the government? You have some strange notion that if society became Libertarian, then people would become some kind of twisted demons, no one would donate to charity like they’re already doing, no one would be a law-abiding police officer like most of them already are, and cats and dogs would start living together. Why would the basic nature of mankind change just because of the label of the economic system?
But that is no argument against Libertarianism. You can’t just say that since some parts of the past were bad that all parts of it are bad. That just doesn’t follow. Tell me why Libertarianism somehow necessitates changing any feature of the justice system from the one we have now.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
Because a culture built on “Every man for himself” is a culture built on “Every man for himself.”
Because the economics you so strongly praised led to conditions where the poor were hopeless and helpless to resist; and when people are helpless to resist, the savage, the brutal, and the predatory will take advantage.
The United States has rejected the 19th century’s economic attitudes with their chattel slavery and robber barons and child labor. You can look back on it from the comfort of 2009 all dewy-eyed with longing, but there’s a reason unions started organizing. There’s a reason income taxes went into effect. There’s a reason we don’t have workhouses and debtor’s prisons, and it ain’t that no one ever thought of it.
Why assume that would happen? It seems more likely to me that the wealthy and powerful would just use the wealth and power they have to acquire a higher percentage of wealth and power. If the wealthy and powerful own 60% of everything in a democratic society, then they’d own 90% of everything in a Libertarian society.
In a democratic society, the power held by a few powerful individuals is balanced by the collective power held by numerous non-powerful individuals. One side’s got the advantage of money and the other side’s got the advantage of numbers. But Libertarians want to reduce the collective power of the masses over individuals. They say that groups should not impose their will on individuals. It sounds nice in theory but the reality is that if you reduce power to an individual basis then it’s powerful individuals who will rule. Some pigs are going to be more equal than others.
Although the gap between rich and poor might grow greater, as Sam Stone said, it wouldn’t be because the poor got poorer; it would be because the rich got richer. I don’t see a problem with this, nor do I see how the poor would somehow revert to 19th century standards of living. That just doesn’t make sense. And Libertarianism in no way implies slavery, child labor, or government-funded robber barons; in fact, it implies the exact opposite of that.
“Every man for himself” is not an evil philosophy. It doesn’t mean that you have to look at nothing past your own nose. Most bankers are in it for the money, not out of some desire to provide people with capital; if they were, banks would not be very effective. And last I heard, things like microloans to poor people in impoverished countries to give them small amounts of capital to run there own businesses have met with great success. You can look out for yourself and help others out at the same time; they are not mutually exclusive. It is foolish and counter-productive to think that they are, and I think that this is one of the fundamental incorrect beliefs that form the foundation of anti-capitalist thought.
Little Nemo, the rich don’t just sit on their money or go take McDuck-style baths all day. They build factories, they hire workers, they lend it out, they invest in infrastructure, they come out with revolutionary new medicines and technologies, and they do all kinds of other things that help people out far more (and far longer) than say, Mother Teresa ever did.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
You’re making a couple of giant leaps here. Both stemming from a premise that Libertarianism <> compassion or caring for the poor. Therefore, libertarianism is bad.
The first leap presumes that if someone can demonstrate that they occupy the Moral High Ground, they are justified in expropriating resources via force from others to ‘do good’; or perhaps, restricting their freedoms.
That’s the same argument religious fundamentalists use in outlawing same-sex marriage, abortion, consumption of alcohol and dancing to rock-and-roll music on Friday nights. It’s for you’re own good. And we know best. We’re trying to save you and the rest of society from ruin and the clutches of Satan, after all.
True libertarianism is agnostic as to the motives of its citizens and the decisions they make about what to do with their property and their lives. I might also add here, just for interest, that the USA blows away supposedly other ‘compassionate’ countries in the OECD in terms of charitable giving on a per capita basis. Europeans love to demonize Americans as ruthless, cold-hearted capitalists who don’t care for the poor…but when it comes to their own pocketbooks the evidence suggests otherwise. I know you probably want a cite here, so I’ll go dig one up.
Conjuring up a demagogue of a libertarian as a mean, miserly Scrooge McDuck stepping on the back of the proletariat as he gets out of his limo is a common strawman. I’d try another line of argument if I were you.
Secondly, the ‘compassion for the poor’ argument is red herring, due to it’s tiny order-of-magnitude in terms of overall government spending. The actual $$ that gets to the hands of the deserving poor in this country is miniscule compared to overall combined federal and state budgets, and the deadweight economic losses from trade restrictions, regulations and so forth.
And stated above, I’m all for subsidies for the deserving poor. Mostly in the form of straight cash, with no strings attached, or vouchers for those who get queasy at the idea of folks wasting taxpayer money at the craps tables or on hookers in Vegas. That’s pennies, at most, out of every tax dollar I send to Washington.
As a general rule, I believe that the government must be answerable to the people. The most effective way to do this has been via regular elections. The people choose their representatives to run the government on a day-to-day basis with the understanding that they can be replaced. This means that the officials who comprise the government cannot afford to take actions that are detrimental to the people because if they do they’ll be voted out of office.
You are right that such a system can be abused. It allows a majority to oppress a minority without consequence. But nobody’s been able to come up with a better system. The only alternative to majority rule is minority rule and all that does is allow the minority to oppress the majority without consequence.
I agree with Churchill, “democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried.”
I agree with this sentiment, too, and I acknowledge that Libertarians do have an obligation to comply with the state WRT taxes and military service if drafter and such, but that doesn’t mean Libertarians can’t work towards implementing their agenda. I think the best practical means of this would be either to push for proportional representation (best plan, IMO) or to try to reclaim the Republican Party from the social conservatives, as it was essentially the party of libertarian economic policies before the great switchover, and it still carries a lot of that background (a bit incompatible with “War on Drugs” and “Defend Our Values with the Government”, but you take what you can get).
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris