Libertarian question.

There are 2 main schools of libertarianism:

1) The deontological school. This school generally favors liberty over authority on the basis of a philosophy of fundamental rights. It tends to be closely tied to the non-aggression principle (don't initiate force) and the concept of negative rights (the right to be free of force) over positive rights (the belief in the right to someone else's labor). This is the belief of the Libertarian Party.

2) The consequentialist school. This school generally favors liberty over authority on a utilitarian basis, claiming that fewer restrictions provide for the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

It is quite difficult to justify a right to counsel under #1, and I would like to again acknowledge that this school is where I lean and that this challenge is a significant one. Under #2, it is fairly easy to justify a right to counsel.

 

Just want to jump in and say that, while this is generally a fair criticism, there is a branch of libertarianism that seeks to place more restrictions around capital than around labor. Henry George taught that the value garnered from capital, particularly natural resources, is chiefly about restricting access to those resources (enabled to do so by the State), and that such restrictions were a public debt that the capital owners owe to the public in the form of higher taxes on those resources rather than on labor.

 

I have read about Georgism before and the land tax that they advocate. I think it is a good idea, but I think Georgists view it too much as a Panacea, which I don't believe it to be.

 

A totally fair criticism, just wanted to point out another take on the state/capital/labor balance.

 

Non-responsive. I was asking about legal aide for those who are indigent and cannot afford a lawyer.

 

Why don't we hear lawyers and politicians advocating for universal, single payer legal representation for all legal and civil claims?

 

Government creates it's own capital, and consolidates capital through granted privelege to select entities, both contrary to libertarianism.
You're all wet.

 

Trying to drag some coherence from the incoherence... Are you implying that because government creates money that it creates "its own capital"? If so, you need to look up a definition of capital.

Secondly, the bold part is exactly what I am talking about. Powerful capitalist entities use their power and influence to capture government power. It is not like government "selects entities" out of a hat and chooses to favor them. No, capital uses its influence, money, and power to capture government. Government then works in their best interests. Which is exactly what I said before. Saying that is contrary to libertarianism is exactly why libertarianism is not to be taken seriously. Reality is contrary to libertarianism, as libertarianism fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between capital and government.

 

Its capital is power purchased through spending

This has what to do with libertarianism?

 

Just because something is not the intention of a political movement, doesn't mean that political movement doesn't/wouldn't produce that effect. For example, no Marxists are in principle, in favor of mass killing, gulags, etc. However, in almost every instance where marxist revolution has taken place, that kind of thing has occurred. It is a feature of the system.

Similarly, interventionist government is an inevitable feature of the "free-market" capitalist system. I put free-market in quotes, because of course its not really a free market in theoretical terms. However, that is specifically because that is an impossibility. Reducing limits on business leads to greater concentration of power in the hands of business. Business then uses its power to capture government. It then uses that influence over government to further concentrate its power and defend and promote their ability to accumulate even more power and money. Hence the flaw/feature in the system, which ensures libertarianism cannot lead to limited government.

 

What a shame. When I write responses to statists, I have little expectation of rationality, logic, objectivity, or anything but appeals to authority, consequences, bandwagons, and outright strawmen.

You wrote a patronizing response steeped in personal opinion, and I wrote one in exactly the same tone and opposite to yours. If mine fails, so does yours.

Your first failure is to call me a conservative. I am not, in any way, shape or form. You have far more in common with conservatives, politically, than I do. You can start with the fact that your responses was a conservative screed calling it necessary to conserve the power of the state and maintain the status quo in the face of the dangers of liberty. I am the radical, for I would end the political status quo and replace it with nothing, and you are the conservative for you fear change if it means "too much" freedom.

Pot. Meet kettle.

Oh? What would you limit it to? From your other posts on this forum, I gather that "limited" government means, to you, "all those entitlements, forced morals, and forced preferences that I want, but none of what those opposed to me want." Just like conservatives.

The fundamental principle of libertarianism is that no individual has the right to rule over another. Not in the name of outcomes. Not in the name of efficiency. Not in the name of morals, preferences, or values. The fundamental flaw of your statism is that govenment power is limited. There is no objective limit to government authority for it controls justice and decided what is and what is not just.

I don't need to do anything, and I don't presume the right to have power over justice in order to limit the power of others. Speak for yourself, not for me.

No, it doesn't. You have no evidence, logical or otherwise, that it does so. It's simply opinion, the same sort of opinion upon which you claim the right to violently interfere with your fellow humans so that they conform to that opinion.

 

Good god!! This is another cascade of straw men, personal attacks, and nonsense. What have you learned about my beliefs from my posts at this forum, considering I haven't posted here more than a few dozen times in years?

My original post was entirely coherent and had nothing in common with what you said in response. You completely changed the context and my critique was legitimate, while yours was meaningless and an attack against something NO ONE believes.

Next you say "The fundamental principle of libertarianism is that no individual has the right to rule over another." You assert that as a first principle, but your methods of achieving that principle very significantly relate to removing limitations on capitalists, businesses, etc. Those people, almost without exception, use their power to increase government in order to protect and promote their ability to seek profit. Of course you can argue that this ubiquitous feature of capitalism is simply a coincidence and that there is incredible amounts of correlation there, but no causation. However, I don't think such an argument would be particularly compelling. So again, if your goal is individual liberty, "free market" capitalism is anti-thetical to that.

 

What does that have to do with "no individual has the right to rule over another"?
By that definition the government does not have the right to increase and therefore cannot grant privelege, promoting anybody's ability to seek profit.

It is those that grant government the power to extend privelege that cause this "promotion of ability to seek profit". Libertarian principles zero to do with it.
You grant government power over you, then opine that it ends badly. Very schizophrenic thought

 

Voluntary taxation? That is a contradiction of terms.

 

I find this to be common with libertarians. They just reject everything that doesn't fit the party line. On the surface libertarianism sounds fine, but once you start trying to apply it to the real world, it falls apart. Like here, who pays for public defenders. Roads are another thing that don't seem to fit in the libertarian world, or parks.

 

It was a thought related to your thread. Sorry I interfered with it. Feel free to put me on your ignore list.

 

I find this to be common with statists. They are ignorant about libertarianism and yet make all sorts of proclamations about it. Libertarianism is a philosophy, not a party. There is a Libertarian Party, and it has a party line which is close to the libertarian philosophy, but also has various statements about how current governemnt should operate.

The libertarian principle is simple. It's wrong to use violence (initiate aggression) against peaceful people in order to advance an economic or social agenda.

I reject anything that requires violence against peaceful people. You don't. You are fine with violence against peaceful people when it would help force those people to conform to your morals and preferences. Not that you would use the violence, of course. That would be wrong. Instead, you call upon the police powers of the state to violently enforce your ideology.

If being peaceful and holding to principle means "toeing the line", then call me a line toer.

Once you realize that you can't shove your morals down the throats of others and must find peaceful solutions to complex problems, the statist goes back to groveling before government authority and begging for entitlements.

Critical thinking and imagination are other things that don't seem to fit the statist world.

 

Given Left-Libertarianism dominates in the non-American world, it does make sense to refer to the Party. Also we know the ideology is hypocritical. Take the minimum wage. We know that it reduces underpayment and ensures greater mutually beneficial exchange. The American libertarian, mind you, demands that such mutually beneficial exchange shouldn't happen.

 

You started off with personal attacks, and then whine when they come back to you? It's so typical. "Hey Mr. LIbertarian, your ideology is fundamentally flaw. But don't call my belief in government authority fundamentally flawed, that's just mean!"

"Hey, calling my statism fundamentally flawed means you are incoherent!! Wait, why did you throw the same thoughts back at me!!!"

If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen. You attacked first and I gave back to you what you gave me.

It was not logical, and therefore not coherent. It wasn't consistent in that you made several unsupported assertions, hyperbole, and appeals to consequence.Your opening line was essentially a strawman, in that it must be that libertarians believe that all people are essentially good, yada yada. We don't, so there must be another reason why we adhere to the principle of peace in politics.

You just think it was legitimate and not a hodge-podge of platitudes.

You truly believe that all libertarians hold that every human being is "essentially fair", "essentially good", and "essentially rational"? On what basis?

You make the assumption that all libertarians are capitalist. Are you aware that libertarianism is political philosophy and capitalism is an economic system? The two are exclusive, though one might be for the other, in most cases capitalists are not libertarian. Libertarians come in a variety of flavors, though it seems that the free market would encourage capitalism to some extent.

I suppose I should have simply educated you rather than responded to your arrogant platitudes, but I am not always perfect in my responses and I like to throw platitudes and challenges back to platitudes and challenges. Some, like you, take that personally.

Remove limitations on what peaceful people do. Like most statists, you want government to do things for you, and not do things for people you are opposed to. In the end, you get a leviathan that exists for itself.
If I had a first priority, it would be to end the war on drugs which are essentially totalitarian policies.

And libertarians want to shrink government to the point that it has no power to help capitalists or anyone else get favors, so how are you coherent when you claim libertarians want to increase power by limiting power?

How is a free market free when some wield power over others?

 

Libertarianism is a philosophy, and it political-statist representations in the US are very small and most insignificant.

Libertarian philosophy does not stand up well to critical thinking principles.

 

Dominates what? The left-libertarian world outside the US (or even in the US) couldn't dominate a small village You'd fall apart into a battle over who is going to do all the work while you idle about explaining the importance of government giving you benefits but not being too authoritarian. At least the authoritarian left is consistent.

Why? I'm not even sure that half of the libertarians that I know are members of a local, state, or the national party (They are all separate). Many who were members quit over the increasing growth of the conservative influence in the parties and many don't want to be involved with government, at all. Political involvement means associating with and often compromising with the organized criminal gang that is the state.

I realize that's not a problem for "left-libertarians." You are only libertarian to the extent that you can get things for free without having to resort to violence, but will happily embrace the worst authoritarianism if the flow of benefits requires it. You can't separate the individual from the state because you believe, fundamentally, that you are the rightful state and that violence for your cause against peaceful people is justified by the superiority of your morals and preferences.

It's not hypocritical at all, since you still fail to understand the fundamental principle of American libertarianism. That is that it's wrong to initiate aggression for economic or social reasons. It's true that some government policies may, on net, benefit people. It's also true that government policies are backed by violence against peaceful people, and therefore despite the end being good, the means are not justified by it.
Then there is the more practical problem that even while some govenment action may be beneficial, most are not. And, it's the nature of politics to be compromising, such that you will not get government that benefits you without benefiting those who are in opposition to you. For example, you want minimum wage of $x. You have a group of politicians who agree, and you promote policy in the form of a bill. In order to get a majority to support your bill, you must then compromise. One influential legislator will support your cause, but you must then support his demands for more police militarization and harsher drug controls. Are you willing to go along? Another politician wants restrictions on abortion. Another wants more military funding.

You think that politics is us vs. them, but it's not. It's us compromising with them to get the government we want and they get the government they want. In the end, you get a leviathan that isn't what anyone wants but you still imagine that it can be made into a font of goodness and righteousness if you just elect the right people.

Government is inherently corrupt and has no objectively legitimate source of authority. Perhaps left-libertarians believe otherwise; but they aren't libertarians, they are just sheep begging to be sheared in the hopes they'll get something in return.

 

This is a neat example of how innocent American Libertarians are. You demonstrate zero appreciation of anarchist analysis. You are indeed 'just a party' (and its really just an effort to make the right wing look more exotic).

There's zero understanding of political economy.

You want to change government policy. You want to force a result which destroys mutually beneficial exchange. And then you have the hypocrisy to crow over non-violence...

 

That government as a philosophy should not have rights that citizens do not possess is foolishness.

 

If you don't want libertarian answers why do you ask questions?

 

I'm pretty sure that "statist" is one of those things, as defined by libertarians, is something that does not exist in reality. Maybe in an authoritarian state, like North Korea, your arguments would make sense, but not in the US.

A major part of the libertarian philosophy grew out of the writings of Enlightenment authors. There was a school of philosophic thought that began with the premise that man in the wild, was a solitary creature. And that society was collections of individuals coming together. And from there, they built their philosophies. The major problem with this, is that solitary man is an illusion. All of the studies of ancient people show that man was always a social creature. People have always existed in groups. We are genetically predispositioned to need human interaction. A person who does not interact with other humans, goes insane.

Most of the rules of society are there to regulate social dynamics, to prevent the powerful from running roughshod over the weaker.

Government isn't some outside force put in place for the sole purpose of controlling you. That sounds like paranoid talk. The government is really the people. Our government is a government of the people. Sure there are wealthy individuals that corrupt the system from time to time, but for the most part, we are self governed.

And of course, if the government is removed, people aren't going to magically be nice and orderly towards each other. If that was the natural order of things, governments would have never arisen.

In fine libertarian fashion, rather than address the issue of roads and parks, you resorted to accuse those who don't agree with you as lacking "Critical thinking and imagination". It isn't lack of thinking that caused me to reject libertarianism, it was applying critical thinking and imagination that led me to see how untenable libertarianism is.

If the state (the people) has no authority to build, maintain, and regulate roads, then how do we get roads?