So, what the heck is libertarianism?

POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Saturday, September 7, 2024 21:57
VIEWED: 19122
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SIGNYM

Friday, August 9, 2013 7:00 PM

I read Robert Sarvis' campaign site. Sounds like a great guy, very sincere, but also proposing mnay things which have been shown NOT to work in the past.

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Virginia needs open-minded, economically literate leadership, not culture wars and class wars. Here's my plan for Virginia:

Empower parents by championing school choice.

Charter schools don't do any better than public, and because they don't have to take EVERYbody, they get to "cherry pick" the best students. You'd think they'd do better than that.

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Provide tax relief and job growth through tax reform.

Cutting taxes does not make the economy grow. Unless he gets more specific, I can't evaluate any further.

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Protect gun rights

Umm...what rights does he feel are being intruded on? I would be more impressed if he said "privacy rights" and "economic rights"

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AND Recognize gay marriages.

good

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Reform our drug laws to reduce violence, rebuild communities, restore civil liberties, and save money.

If he means "decriminalize drug posession and put people in therapy rather than jail", or even just "decriminalize pot" that'd be great! But he's talking political-ese, so ... what does he really mean?.

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By protecting personal & economic freedom, we can make Virginia the envy of the world, with a growing economy that adds jobs and raises incomes, and a system of laws providing equality and justice for all.

There is no politician of ANY stripe who will say that s/he wants to impose on personal freedoms and tank the economy. The question is whether or not the steps being proposed are sufficient, or at least not counterproductive.

My response to this candidate is like my response to MANY libertarian candidates... about 50/50. There are some things I agree with 100%, and some things I disagree with 100%. The parts I disagree with are so fundamental, I could never see myself voting libertarian when the Green Party is on the ticket. And if it was a choice between libertarian and democrat, I'd have to look long and hard at each one's record, because there are some democrats who are head and shoulders above some libertarians, and vice versa.

I think I've figured out at least YOUR stripe of libertarianism, geezer. I appreciate the education. However, I won't convince you to change and you certainly won't convince ME to change, so unless you feel that you have an amazingly compelling point to make, I prolly won't be responding much more to this thread. But thanks again for the valuable insights.

MAGONSDAUGHTER

Friday, August 9, 2013 10:20 PM

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Originally posted by Geezer:
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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
I find the water issue an interesting one, coming from somewhere where fresh water can be scarce.

One of the issues that has arisen is around river water usuage and who gets to take water out of the system. If one person upriver decides to use river water for rice farming and pulls out enough water from the system, the farmers and towns dwellers and city folk further down the system don't have enough water to survive. The river system needs to be managed as a whole, not through individual land owners doing entirely what they want.

I'd suppose that a lot of that management currently involves litigation. I'd also suppose that this wouldn't change much in my Propertarian, Minarchist Libertarian society.

Not currently, as water is largely owned by state government, who also operate service provision. You get bickering between the states and large water users, but not litigation.

The issue with litigation is that it generally ends up being vastly more favourable for those who are wealthier, who have more money to fund legal processes further. I can see that under your proposed system, you'd get more litigation and more injustice rather than less. Is that a concern, or is justice and fairness not really significant issues for libertarianism. Or am I missing something that would make a difference?

The concept of invididuals owning water seems incredibly problematic to me, when water systems are usually enormous, and usuage is going to impact on so many people, not to mention whole eco systems which can be damaged. Would your system have any laws around what people can and can't do with 'their' water? ie would there be limits?

NEWOLDBROWNCOAT

Friday, August 9, 2013 10:40 PM

Sig, I surely hope this guy in Virginia wins and implements his LIBERTARIAN, stand on your own, self-reliant platform.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_taxation_and_spending_by_state

Wikipedia lists VA as 48th out of 52 (DC, Puerto Rico, and 50 states) in net tax revenue, at -$6239 per capita. The sooner they stand on their own, the less tax burden there will be on us out here in California.

Until then, he's just whining about his freedom while he's sucking on the big old Federal tit

1KIKI

Saturday, August 10, 2013 3:17 AM

Also, by 2024 I hope to have outlived you. Let's see ... by 2024 I'll be ... yes, statistically very doable. - kiki,

Since you wish me dead, I'm dead to you, and will no longer respond to your posts. - geezer

That’s just Geezer's inability to read. Again.

I didn't wish anything bad for him, merely that I wished something good for myself - that I would outlive him.

But out of curiosity I threw this against his precious NAP:

Did I CAUSE him HARM? No.
Did I CREDIBLY pose a threat, as in, do I have the means to do him harm by knowing where he lives, for example? No.
Did I threaten to DO anything bad to him in any way? No.
Did I SAY I wished him dead? No.

All I did was say I hoped to outlive him, and (given our relative sexes and ages) that it was statistically do-able.

All without violating his NAP. I guess he doesn't like it when people follow his dicta for utopia.

SIGNYM

Saturday, August 10, 2013 5:35 AM

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I guess he doesn't like it when people follow his dicta for utopia.

Well, he'd better get used to it, people tend to do that. (Altho I really think that he was just trying to distract from all of those annoying questions that you asked!)

GEEZER

Saturday, August 10, 2013 4:19 PM

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
You went all the way to another thread to drag in ONE line (which BTW doesn't seem all THAT terrible to me?) and failed to address the significant points that KIKI brought up? (Also OBC, FREM, MAGONS, and KWICKO all brought up relevant points which you didn't address.)

I guess calumny is in the eye of the insulted.

As to not directly answering every question from you, KIKI, Magons, NOBC, Frem, Mike, and others ask, I don't have the time. Sometimes I try to roll up several sets of similar questions in one overall answer, but apparently everyone wants individual attention. I also note that I've asked folks a lot of questions that remain unanswered.

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Let's go to biodiversity... It's "owned" (insofar as land is owned) by patchwork of interests - farmers, business owners, homeowners- which divide up the land and shores in lines that are as arbitrary to nature as the political lines in Africa are to the tribes. I imagine the same for geezerland's oceans- invisible fences cutting willy-nilly across fish breeding grounds, kelp forests, coral reefs, petroleum reserves etc.

Could be. I'd expect that at the start, there'd be a good bit of litigation about who owned what, what parts of it that actually moved around (fish, e.g.) they owned, what would classify as damage to someone elses' property, etc.

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No single person "owns" it, but everybody benefits from it. BTW- You asked for proof about the benefits of biodiversity. Really??? It's not obvious to you?

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Here we describe a long-term study of grasslands, which shows that primary productivity in more diverse plant communities is more resistant to, and recovers more fully from, a major drought. The curvilinear relationship we observe suggests that each additional species lost from our grasslands had a progressively greater impact on drought resistance. Our results support the diversity–stability hypothes

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v367/n6461/abs/367363a0.html

So a biodiverse grassland is more resistant to drought. This benefits everybody? What about the folks who eat the corn or grain grown on the former grassland that's now an agricultural monoculture?

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Lets look at clearcutting. Ideally, trees should be harvested individually to reduce fuel load but still keep the soil intact. The benfits are that mudslides are mitigated, and there is no washed-down soil from cleared land, which makes stream turbid reduces fish stocks. So the benefits of NOT clearcutting accrues to people downslope or downstream, but the costs accrue to the landowner. However, it only takes one owner in the drainage system to ruin the streams for everyone, and only one owner upslope to cause mudslides.
http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/
2008674714_glenomaslides27m.html

So the owner of the property upstream damages your property? As noted ad nauseum, he'd have to restore it.

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Wetlands slow down floods, filter nutrients out of the water before it flows into the river (and thence to estuaries, bays, deltas, and the ocean), absorb carbon, and recharge aquifers. Protecting and reconstructing wetlands would require that many farmers set aside land around each ditch, stream, creek, and river to form a contiguous and "working" whole, and agree to forgo pesticides, tilling practices, and excess fertilizers which will poison the system downstream. Again, one holdout can ruin a large part of the system.

And again, you damage my property, you have to fix it. Most reasonable folks would understand that if the alternative is doing simple stuff like leaving natural strips around watercourses, it'd be cheaper to do so. The unreasonable would pay.

This would be a good spot to note that "would pay" applies to the individual, or individuals, that damage your property. The corporation is not responsible. The people wh

GEEZER

Saturday, August 10, 2013 4:36 PM

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Charter schools don't do any better than public, and because they don't have to take EVERYbody, they get to "cherry pick" the best students. You'd think they'd do better than that.

Briefly on this point.

Don't know about everywhere, but when D.C. tried school vouchers, the cost per pupil of the public schools was between $16,000 and $30,000 per student, depending on who you ask, and the public schools had all their physical facilities already built. The vouchers averaged $7,500 and charters had to obtain property, furniture, equipment, etc. Seems like a stacked deck.

"When your heart breaks, you choose what to fill the cracks with. Love or hate. But hate won't ever heal. Only love can do that."

1KIKI

Sunday, August 11, 2013 4:48 PM

Well, it wasn't a wish for him to be dead.

"I guess calumny is in the eye of the insulted."

calumny, definition: A false statement maliciously made to injure another's reputation. 2. The utterance of maliciously false statements; slander.

And it's not calumny, either.

SIGNYM

Sunday, August 11, 2013 4:56 PM

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Regarding libertarian's "fancy words": unsolicited actions, right to self-determination and the principle of self-ownership, independence, political freedom, right of voluntary association, and freedom from aggression and harm for EVERYONE ... that only works when individuals are pretty much independent from each other... when they own sufficient PROPERTY to meet their own needs.-signy

Cites? Proofs? Just askin'.-geezer

Are you effing kidding me??? It's just logic that leads to that conclusion.

Examining three of those "rights:

The "right" to self-determination is only meaningful when you have many options to choose from. But if you have no resources and you're left with the choice of work for a wages that will let you starve slowly, or don't work and starve faster you will probably choose to starve more slowly. It may be "voluntary" but is it REALLY "self-determination"?

Choosing the next word, "independence", the "right" to independence only applies when you do not "depend" on anyone or anything... in other words, when you're so well-off that you can live self-sufficiently, without societal input such as trade, roads etc.

You demonstrated this point yourself, in your discussion about "freedom of association"... you are "free" to choose working with people you dislike, when the other option is to not work. Let me extend this - You are "free" to work with people who demand sex as a job requirement, when the other option is "no job at all".

It's the same with every "right" that libertarianism supposedly grants - those rights are empty for the poor because they can't exercise them, and pointless if already acquired through wealth. Let me repeat that: Every "right" that libertarianism grants is a "right" that the wealthy already have, and a "right" which the poor do not have and never will have under your system. There is no floor below which the poor cannot fall. So, OOC, since people "own" themselves... can they "sell" themselves into slavery? Or does libertarianism require that people only rent themselves out by the hour?

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Fancy words like "Emancipation" seem to work somewhat when most everyone believes in them. Folks have died for words like that.

So libertarianism is a religion, just like socialism and uptopianism, which can't be explained to the majority of the people as to how it will benefit them. And you're hoping that enough people will be bamboozled into believing your religion so they will vote for a system that benefits you and people like you (ie the well-off), but not them. Got it.

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So what's your ethical component for this? As noted, Libertarianism's (pretty much all flavors) is unsolicited actions, right to self-determination and the principle of self-ownership, independence, political freedom, right of voluntary association, and freedom from aggression and harm for EVERYONE.

As I pointed out earlier, those "rights" are meaningless without the capacity to enforce them. But as written, libertarianism does not enforce rights for the non-propertied.

In all of your detailed explanations about resolving property disputes, none of your posts address the concerns of the un-propertied: those who own nothing except their bodies. There is no inalienable right to life, such as the right to clean water, clear air, and the right to a job. Therefore, in your system, non-propertied individuals are "free" to starve to death, while the complacent and well-protected property-owners wash their hands with the cleanser of non-involement, and the state smiles down benevolently.

Also, in libertarianism, it's all about individual property. But many problems can't be solved by your system. We live on a planet that doesn&

GEEZER

Monday, August 12, 2013 1:08 PM

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Again, I will not convince you, and you will not convince me. I think libertarianism is morally abhorrent, but I've learned a lot about libertarianism, and I appreciate your responses.

Okay. Let's call it.

"When your heart breaks, you choose what to fill the cracks with. Love or hate. But hate won't ever heal. Only love can do that."

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