Help from Libertarians/Anarchists
POSTED BY: Geezer
UPDATED: Friday, January 18, 2008 14:04
VIEWED: 12974
PAGE 10 of 18
Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:
Interesting. I started this thread to ask the libertarian and anarchist folks a couple of questions I'd come up with based on my recent reading. What I got was mostly the non-anarchist and non-libertarian folks coming up with extreme worst-case scenarios that distort or ignore most of the liberterian/anarchist philosophy I've read so far. Makes me wonder what's got them so scared of people being souvreign individuals. Do they think that everyone but them is not fit to make their own decisions?
"Keep the Shiny side up"
Worse case scenarios that happen all the time. Crimes are committed that require investigation, fugitives do run across state boarders, people do rob places despite the fact that there are armed guards. The idea that you can do away with professional law enforcement as long as everyone packs heat is a gun nut pipe-dream. The idea that in the absence of government and with no other controls the power vacuum won't be filled by someone be it the local tyranny of a street gang or the national one of some dictatorship is naive.
Reading CTS's little missive I found myself humming John Lennon's "Imagine" because it's the same kind of wishful thinking that unfortunately falls foul of the weakness of human nature. Except I like John Lennon's version better, not only does his dream not involve me strapping on a "piece" every morning but the tune is catchier.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:
Do they think that everyone but them is not fit to make their own decisions?
It's the fundamental premise of modern political theory.
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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I just think the mental disconnect is too wide to bridge here, to begin with, and a hefty dose of fear of the unknown and "you can't survive without us" conditioning from the status quo made this discussion as it stands unviable from the start.
Case in point, this article.
http://www.strike-the-root.com/71/fontana/fontana17.html
See who nods and smiles.
See who screams in horror.
The chasm between those two thought processes is wider than any bridge I can build, alas.
On the other hand, anyone who has ever, when trying to explain the adult world to a child been told to their very face by same - "That's ridiculous!" knows where that gap can be bridged, and where I work at bridging it, and why.
And I leave one final question to nibble at the edges of folks consciousness for a while.
If the status quo is so much better than what could be - why is everyone so damn miserable ?
-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it
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Frem,
You're actually an anarchist, not some wussy anarcho-libertarian like me. Double check for me--did I say something wrong, misrepresent anarchism in some way? Maybe I misconceptualized some aspect of anarchism, self-defense, crime, whatever? Anyway, correct me if I was. Maybe I didn't do an adequate job explaining it all.
I think at the heart of it, it is the view of human nature that separates anarchists from government-needin' folk. I believe most people will mind their own businesses if they weren't placed in an artificial, rationalized position of power over others. What I find in arguments that oppose anarchism is a general fear of human nature; the exception is those few humans they choose to vote for.
I loved that article you sent. It hits home, because I have 3 kids that I want to raise to never learn to obey. Yet, of course, I find myself getting mad that they don't obey *me*--haha. Power is infinitely seductive.
Fletch, I talked to my husband last night about this thread. He said when he was in Rwanda at the beginning of the genocide in 1994 (after the president was assassinated), he escaped the country with the help of black marketeers. They had no guns to sell for $100 or for any price. Weapons would have been handy at that time, but there were none to be had. He hasn't seen that situation anywhere in his travels in Africa, where guns were available for anywhere near $100. That doesn't mean your friends were wrong in their part of the world, but it is certainly not true in the parts where my husband's been (mostly east and central Africa).
--------------------------
What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer.
--Bertrand Russell
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Quote:
Originally posted by Fletch2:
The idea that you can do away with professional law enforcement as long as everyone packs heat is a gun nut pipe-dream.
Who says you do away with professional law enforcement? Libertarian theory just says it'd be PRIVATE professional law enforcement. Of course, I'm still looking for examples of how that works at the day to day level, but there are already private security companies that work nationwide, Brinks comes to mind.
"Keep the Shiny side up"
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While Anarchy and Libertarianism are often mentioned simultaneously, they do seem to be worlds apart. There is probably a smaller gap between Conservative Republicans and Liberal Democrats then there is between Anarchists and Libertarians, and I’ve never thought of them as being the same thing, so it’s puzzled me from the beginning of this thread that they would be used almost interchangeably.
However, what I’m seeing here is not a discussion on Libertarianism, but Anarchy. Libertarianism, from what I understand, don’t believe in no government, just minimal government. In a lot ways the Libertarians are the old laissez-faire Republicans. But Anarchy is an extremist philosophy that has never produced a livable society. On the large scale, it lapses into dueling warlords, common in failed states, or totalitarianism, such the Marxist regimes. Given human nature it is simply not a workable solution. And although CTS should be commended for her efforts in presenting the tenants of Anarchy as she understands them, there has been nothing presented here that would suggest to me that Anarchy is any kind of stable situation.
So it seems these terms have got to be decouple. There are lot of people on this board, I suspect, including myself, who could find a lot of common ground with Libertarians. In fact, I’m frequently accused of being one, but I don't think I can find any common ground with Anarchist.
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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Quote:Actually, as I understand it, libertarian theory generally supports law enforcement as one of the few legitimate functions of government. Libertarians in America generally support the full extent and power of government granted by the Constitution.
Originally posted by Geezer:
Libertarian theory just says it'd be PRIVATE professional law enforcement.
"Anarcho-libertarians" are folks who dream of anarchy, but are willing to compromise and settle for minimal government. That means law enforcement, military and courts. Personally, I'd throw in public roads as well. I fall into this category, so am not a true-blue anarchist. However, I have studied anarchism for many years, so I don't mind opining about it.
Anarchists, of course, don't want any type of government at all.
I think it is important to make these distinctions so that people don't mistake the Libertarian Party as some sort of platform that wants to do away with public roads and police forces.
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Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes what'er it touches; and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame,
A mechanized automaton.
--Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab
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CTS ?
That's the beauty of Anarchy, it's as individual as people, so forgive me a bit if I chuckled at you trying to explain it to them - you got the gist of it, sure, but HOW do you explain "Green" to a person with no eyes ?
S'why I mostly don't bother, and if I explained it, or expressed it, it would be as different than your expression of it as two snowflakes in a blizzard, the devil isn't in the details, it's in the concept.
And Retta's a dollbaby, some more of her work here.
She lives up here nearby, just so you know - MI seems to have quite a few of us...
http://www.strike-the-root.com/archive/fontana.html
The other occasional author you'd get a bang out of is Underground Panther in the Sky, but she's gone DEEP underground now... still, you might find bits and pieces of her work lingering...
Geeze makes a good point, and one I am fond of coming at sideways as well.
If police weren't a Government sponsored and protected monopoly, they might actually have some incentive, and eventually.. actual ABILITY, to DO THEIR JOB, gee, what a surprise that would be, actually doing the job they were paid to, instead of exploiting and abusing the folks being forced by Government to write their paycheck, hmmm.
"But Anarchy is an extremist philosophy that has never produced a livable society. On the large scale, it lapses into dueling warlords, common in failed states, or totalitarianism, such the Marxist regimes. Given human nature it is simply not a workable solution."
I call BS - no Anarchist collective has ever been allowed to survive long enough by the Governments fearful of their peons wising up, TO make that statement one way or the other, and the places you are referring to, are the deterius OF Government, the eventual direct result of such a thing, when it finally implodes under the weight of it's own abuses and extortions.
You are taking the end result of Government and blaming Anarchy for it, and you expect anyone to buy that line of tripe ?
All you have to sell me is a false front over the gibbering fear that perhaps some day you might have to take some damn responsibility for your own life and make your own decisions in an environment that isn't FDA approved, USDA inspected, FBI controlled "Safe" without big daddy government there to order your life for you and protect you, despite the fact that said so-called safety is an illusion at best when the primary threat to your life, property and rights is in fact agents of that self-same Government you think is protecting you.
Does it really fucking matter to the dead guy whether the thug who murdered him had a badge or a rap sheet ?
I've bit my tongue a while here, but you've been begging for that mockery since the start.
-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it
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Oh yeah, almost forgot this bit...
One thing I do feel, is that mankind isn't really.. "ready" for it, we're not grown up enough, you see.
Physically, we're evolved, opposable thumbs, nice large brains with solid cases...
Intellectually, we're getting there, and quickly, but some days that worries me cause...
Emotionally and Socially, we're stunted, crippled, primitive... have bigger club, take your stuff, and all the bullshit that goes with it, and our current system actively opposes and discourages any maturity and evolution on that front, leaving us Socio-Emotive imbeciles incapable of functioning WITHOUT those structures to cling to.
That's one reason I am hostile to most religion, although religion itself is far less to blame than Government and those who use and abuse it's power knowing that once mankind evolves enough socially and emotionally, finishes growing up, the structures that give them such power over others, in fact they themselves, as primitive throwbacks... will be cast aside.
But no, that day ain't here yet, I do not believe it is - that don't stop me from layin the groundwork though, the foundations upon which future generations can build, and if they're built on the wreckage of the established order and it's cronies, so much the better, at least they'll be of SOME use.
-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it
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Hello,
I am prepared to advocate "The Least Amount of Government We Can Get Away With" which I must admit is quite a lot more than most Libertarians think.
"Anarchy" existed. In our own history, in the Wild West, there were areas of minimal government controls and there were private interests who became powerful enough to ignore laws and take what they wanted.
In popular Western dramas, a lone hero or small group rides into town, destroys the vast army that the local land baron/rancher/mine owner/railroad baron controls. They free the people and ride on.
In real life, such a scenario would be difficult and rare. In real life, the powerful land owner/business owner really does control the town and the fate of the people in it. No one is powerful enough to stop them. Unions might form, and then the bad guys call the Pinkertons, and there's a big fight where lots of people die.
And in our world, it gets negative media attention and the government steps in (hopefully.)
But in the Anarchy, there is no one to step in, and the baron, if powerful enough, is unstoppable.
A true Anarchy only works, as far as I can see, in a small village environment where no one is richer or more powerful than anyone else. Once someone starts a successful business venture, they begin to outstrip the power of their neighbors, and only their own conscience can stop them from becoming a de-facto totalitarian state.
WHAT DO I BELIEVE IN? I DIFFER FROM ANARCHISTS.
I believe in a Police Force whose job it is to protect everyone's freedoms.
I believe in a Military whose job it is to protect us from other governments.
I believe in a court system with a minimal law-set whose job it is to enforce everyone's freedoms.
(HERE I DIFFER FROM MOST LIBERTARIAN FOLKS)
I believe in a school regulatory system which defines minimum standards of education that all schools are certified against. (I believe that we'll become a nation of morons if we ferret out education to the lowest-bidder private business owner whose concern is the bottom line and not necessarily educating children. With a certification board, you'll know if your kids are attending a school that hasn't met minimum standards.)
I believe in a medical regulatory system that certifies medical facilities in a similar fashion.
I believe in a Public Works department that employs people for the construction and maintenance of 'common' resources like roads, water supply, garbage, etc.)
I believe most of this can be funded with a nominal flat sales tax fixed in the low percentiles by constitutional amendment.
--Anthony
"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner
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