Libertarianism

[Beatsong]

You still don't get it. My exercise of my rights may be regulated to prevent me from initiating force or fraud on another, but government may not visit upon me the consequences of someone else's bad behavior.

If you drive drunk and kill someone, society cannot legitimately seize MY car on the theory that if I don't have a car I can't drive drunk.

Actually if someone else drives drunk and kills someone society as a whole can decide cars are too dangerous and seize all of them.
Havent done it on cars as the utility has been decided to be too high , but society makes similar decisions like that all the time.

Not legitimately it can't.

Yes it can. You need to buy a dictionary and learn that "legitimate" doesn't mean "that which Seth likes".

Of course given enough power and a weak enough citizenry, "government" (read: despots and tyrants) CAN do just about anything, like kill 100 million people in the name of Communism as Mao and Stalin did.

Of course. And given enough power and weak neighbours, an individual can to just about anything too. Governments are just groups of individuals working together, so there is no difference of principle. And fortunately, you've established for us that power IS legitimacy: ie, if an individual can exercise the power to obtain and defend a piece of property, that makes it "legitimately" his.

Oh hang on, maybe you're about to change your mind again...

That doesn't mean it's a legitimate or moral act on the part of the society.

AAAAND there we go!

[JimC]

actually expending time doing something. Inheriting wealth isn't work. And shifting money to the bank account of some lobbyist or politician isn't work.

Making profits simply by shifting money around inside the financial system isn't real work. It may require a lot of skill and nerve to do it successfully, but at heart, it is a parasitic exploitation of the productive labour of others, including true, visionary entrepreneurs. If you have a great idea about a new way to make widgets, and start up a business to make and sell them, good luck to you...

[pErvinalia]

Marxist.

[JimC]

Marxist.

If I really was, I wouldn't have included my last sentence, which would certainly get me shot by the People's Commissars...

[pErvinalia]

It's all part of the Global Marxist Collective Syndicate Allinskyites' plan to cover their tracks. Me and Seth are onto you!

[Pappa]

There's no problem in a general sense with what you describe here. I'm more or less a social democrat, so that makes me still a capitalist of sorts. The question comes down to the level of regulation and redistribution of wealth. I'd be happy for all these things you list to happen, as long as their was appropriate levels of regulation and redistribution. The problem with libertarianism is that it strips regulations away and considers redistribution of wealth an evil/immoral act.

That's because forcible redistribution of wealth is an evil and immoral act. What argument do you have that morally supports you, or your minions in government, deciding that you can better decide how to dispose of my labor and capital than I can? What argument do you have that supports the immoral and evil practice of enslaving person A and confiscating the fruits of his labor to the service of persons Z through T, with whom person A has absolutely no relationship and to whom person A has no moral, ethical or legal obligation of support?

In short, why am I obliged to fork over the fruits of my labor for your use and enjoyment? Lets see if for once you can formulate a well-reasoned and logical argument that addresses the root evil of collectivism, which is the proposition that the individual owes to the collective more by way of labor than is required to compensate the collective for his individual use of the resources and benefits of society.

I've never yet met a single socialist who even dares to address this core fault of socialism. Do you have the balls to give it a shot? For once.

Seth, I've seen you use this argument many times. I've never managed to form a sensible rebuttal, and as much as I find it uncomfortable to do so, I'm left having to agree with you.

[Svartalf]

Leaving the poor to starve is less immoral than forcible redistribution?

I'll grant that evergetical use of their own money by the wealthy out of their own free will to help the less favored would be a lot more laudable, but since that's not happening (or at least nowhere the scale needed, nor targeting the most needy people), something has to be done, and funds levied to enable this effort.

[MrJonno]

Leaving the poor to starve is less immoral than forcible redistribution?

I'll grant that evergetical use of their own money by the wealthy out of their own free will to help the less favored would be a lot more laudable, but since that's not happening (or at least nowhere the scale needed, nor targeting the most needy people), something has to be done, and funds levied to enable this effort.

You can ask nicely so a person has a choice to let them starve or not

Generally I consider protecting human life trumphs all over concerns.

If someone needs to to an hospital in 15 minutes or they will die, is it morally acceptable to steal a car to do so. I would hope most civilized people wouldnt have any great difficulties on that one. Not sure what the law says on that but in the UK not prosecuting as its not in the public interest would come into play

[JimC]

There's no problem in a general sense with what you describe here. I'm more or less a social democrat, so that makes me still a capitalist of sorts. The question comes down to the level of regulation and redistribution of wealth. I'd be happy for all these things you list to happen, as long as their was appropriate levels of regulation and redistribution. The problem with libertarianism is that it strips regulations away and considers redistribution of wealth an evil/immoral act.

That's because forcible redistribution of wealth is an evil and immoral act. What argument do you have that morally supports you, or your minions in government, deciding that you can better decide how to dispose of my labor and capital than I can? What argument do you have that supports the immoral and evil practice of enslaving person A and confiscating the fruits of his labor to the service of persons Z through T, with whom person A has absolutely no relationship and to whom person A has no moral, ethical or legal obligation of support?

In short, why am I obliged to fork over the fruits of my labor for your use and enjoyment? Lets see if for once you can formulate a well-reasoned and logical argument that addresses the root evil of collectivism, which is the proposition that the individual owes to the collective more by way of labor than is required to compensate the collective for his individual use of the resources and benefits of society.

I've never yet met a single socialist who even dares to address this core fault of socialism. Do you have the balls to give it a shot? For once.

Seth, I've seen you use this argument many times. I've never managed to form a sensible rebuttal, and as much as I find it uncomfortable to do so, I'm left having to agree with you.

I rebut it thusly:

Humans have never existed as a collection of isolated individuals. Humans, and all our hominid ancestors have been tribal for the whole of our evolutionary history. Such primate social groupings are very different to social insects, where it may be said that evolution has achieved a natural "marxism" by dint of the evolutionary genetics of kin selection. Not so humans; a rebuttal of the extreme individualism of libertarianism is also a rebuttal of the collectivist excesses of true marxism.

Human groups have a complex interplay between individual selfishness and allegiance to the collective. We compete within the group for mates, for example, but we co-operate and work for the group for many survival oriented goals, not least our competitive interactions with other human tribes. Reciprocal altruism plays a large part in the way we work together; one feature of this is how carefully we watch others for signs of shirking, and how individual acts of courage (and sharing) gain great kudos, aiding within-group status, no small reward indeed...

A modern, complex society has accrued a vast array of new cultural features, to be sure, but it is built on the foundation of the evolutionary heritage we all share. Taxation can be seen as a systematic way of ensuring that all contribute to the welfare of a much enlarged tribe. One can argue with the amounts - clearly, some examples of taxation are going to be regarded as excessive, others as too little. Similarly, the use to which these shared resources are put will be argued over extensively (as an aside, I think there are probably too many examples of individuals who shirk effort, and are parasitic on the tribe; not as many as Seth thinks, but far too many nonetheless...)

Taxation in general, and some form of collective sharing of at least part of the resources of the tribe, is just as valid a part of human society as individual effort, and personal striving for status and wealth; the latter is a vital driver of progress and enterprise, and overly collectivist societies dismiss it at their peril.

[Tero]

The fault with capitalism lies in owning land. Tribal societies or individuals did not own land "forever." You had to fight to keep it. You were entitled to use it to the extent you fought for it. We did not evolve with capitalism.

[JimC]

The fault with capitalism lies in owning land. Tribal societies or individuals did not own land "forever." You had to fight to keep it. You were entitled to use it to the extent you fought for it. We did not evolve with capitalism.

Certainly settled societies and property ownership introduced major changes and stresses into human culture, and represented a significant change in environment from the hunter-gather lifestyle that was with us for the majority of our evolutionary trajectory.

But when the tribe became a village, the need to share and collectively work together did not vanish, it just developed new twists.

[Seth]

At present you are right, but in the past I have had far greater than average wealth. I've lived on both sides of the divide. I have no desire to play childish bullying games. I believe in a more pure form of democracy where peoples' votes, not their wallets matter to public policy.

You do realize that money is equal to speech don't you?

Well, in a fashion it can be. But the point is - how is that fair in a supposed democracy of 1 person = 1 vote? Why should someone with a billion dollars have 10,000 times the effective votes of someone with $100,000? The amount of money you have shouldn't give you more influence over the political process. The political process in a democracy is supposed to be governed by the principle of 1 person = 1 vote.

The amount of money one spends on a campaign doesn't give the donor more than one vote per person, it merely persuades more people to vote as the donor is suggesting they vote.

Your complaint assumes that voters are idiots and the only thing they consider is how glitzy the ad is and how often they see it.

BAZINGA! "Rational actor" guff, right there! Actually, if you understood human psychology, you would know that people don't take decisions that are wholly rational, and they ARE terribly influenced by all sorts of environmental variables.

As I said, Libertarianism is a science denying ideology.

Where did you get that stupid idea? Libertarianism is silent on science, it's a political and social philosophy, not a science experiment.

Throw in "natural rights" guff, and it's not much different from catholicism.

So what? That doesn't mean that they aren't rational actors, it just means that you disagree with their reasoning. You're not the font of all rational wisdom you know.

As for "natural rights," why shouldn't one hold that position? It's perfectly rational, as I have discussed in detail, if one eschews theism. Just because you don't accept the Organic Rights argument doesn't mean it's unscientific or false. It's entirely scientific in fact because it relies only upon observable natural behavior of living creatures and derives the principles from those observations. You may feel that government grants you rights, which is fine with me, but I don't. Government can't grant something it never had to begin with. Government is not a "thing" it's an activity of human beings (and some other creatures in fact), and as such "government" cannot have "rights" any more than it can have legs or eyes. All government has is powers and authorities granted to it by the human beings who comprise and authorize it to act on their behalf.

And even government is merely a more organized way of mediating disputes over the acquisition and use of resources necessary for survival than the Law of the Jungle, Might Makes Right alternative.

Since man is "of nature," it is therefore true that everything he is, and does, and thinks, is "natural" in its origin, as opposed to, for instance, being "divine" in origin.

So I can't see why you have so much objection to a statement of natural Organic Rights...unless your agenda is to empower government to infringe on those rights that you don't deem worthy of respect, which makes your "government grants rights" argument very easily understood as the reasoning of a despot. That which government gives, government can take away, and my rights, being natural Organic Rights, don't come from government, and therefore government cannot take them away at the public's whims and caprices. To do so is nothing more than "democratic" tyranny of the majority, which is one of the worst sorts of despotism that exists.

So no, "natural rights" are not in the least unscientific, and are far more grounded in science than your assertion that government "creates" rights out of thin air.

Government only protects pre-existing rights. It creates NOTHING. Absolutely nothing at all. All government does is consume and inhibit.

[Seth]

actually expending time doing something. Inheriting wealth isn't work. And shifting money to the bank account of some lobbyist or politician isn't work.

Making profits simply by shifting money around inside the financial system isn't real work. It may require a lot of skill and nerve to do it successfully, but at heart, it is a parasitic exploitation of the productive labour of others, including true, visionary entrepreneurs. If you have a great idea about a new way to make widgets, and start up a business to make and sell them, good luck to you...

How so? Without that capital, the visionary entrepreneur cannot bring his vision to fruition because most visionary entrepreneurs don't have enough money to make it happen. This is where the venture capitalist comes in. He examines the visionary idea and decides whether he can make a profit or not by investing his capital, thereby placing it at risk of loss.

Every "shifting of money around inside the financial system" involves a risk of loss. That's what "investment" means. And that risk of loss is certainly due a reward in the form of interest payments on the use of that capital by others.

Your argument highlights Marx's critical rational failure; the assumption that capital risk alone is not "real work," and that taking that risk with one's capital is somehow "parasitic exploitation of the productive labour of others." It's not. It's what makes the productive labor of others possible in the first place.

Go watch "Shark Tank" sometime to see how it works. Visionary entrepreneurs walk into a room with five venture capitalists and pitch their business model. If the Sharks like it, they can offer a capital investment deal. If they don't, the "contestant" walks out with nothing. To get capital financing to expand a business, you have to show the Sharks that they can make a profit by investing in your business. What the hell is wrong with that? How are the Sharks, who have put aside capital to risk "exploiting" anybody at all? They are giving entrepreneurs with really good ideas the chance to take their products or services from the small time to the big time and some of them end up making millions of dollars because of the capital investment made by one or more Sharks.

Why shouldn't the Sharks demand a percentage of ownership and/or royalty as a return on their investment? Their investment makes the success of the business possible doesn't it? That's as much "real labor" as anything some union dweeb does on the assembly line, if not more so. For without the venture capitalist, the union dweeb's job probably would not exist in the first place because the company they work for could not have hired them without venture capital to move the business up the ladder of economic success.

Just because they don't sweat on the assembly line doesn't mean they aren't doing work, or that they aren't sweating. They are. They are sweating the complete loss of their investment if the business fails, something that NO wage-earner faces because by law they get their paychecks regardless of whether or not the owners and investors manage to sell a single widget.

Big risks, big rewards. No risks, small reward.

[Seth]

There's no problem in a general sense with what you describe here. I'm more or less a social democrat, so that makes me still a capitalist of sorts. The question comes down to the level of regulation and redistribution of wealth. I'd be happy for all these things you list to happen, as long as their was appropriate levels of regulation and redistribution. The problem with libertarianism is that it strips regulations away and considers redistribution of wealth an evil/immoral act.

That's because forcible redistribution of wealth is an evil and immoral act. What argument do you have that morally supports you, or your minions in government, deciding that you can better decide how to dispose of my labor and capital than I can? What argument do you have that supports the immoral and evil practice of enslaving person A and confiscating the fruits of his labor to the service of persons Z through T, with whom person A has absolutely no relationship and to whom person A has no moral, ethical or legal obligation of support?

In short, why am I obliged to fork over the fruits of my labor for your use and enjoyment? Lets see if for once you can formulate a well-reasoned and logical argument that addresses the root evil of collectivism, which is the proposition that the individual owes to the collective more by way of labor than is required to compensate the collective for his individual use of the resources and benefits of society.

I've never yet met a single socialist who even dares to address this core fault of socialism. Do you have the balls to give it a shot? For once.

Seth, I've seen you use this argument many times. I've never managed to form a sensible rebuttal, and as much as I find it uncomfortable to do so, I'm left having to agree with you.

I'm shocked and amazed. Thank you for that admission.

[Seth]

There's no problem in a general sense with what you describe here. I'm more or less a social democrat, so that makes me still a capitalist of sorts. The question comes down to the level of regulation and redistribution of wealth. I'd be happy for all these things you list to happen, as long as their was appropriate levels of regulation and redistribution. The problem with libertarianism is that it strips regulations away and considers redistribution of wealth an evil/immoral act.

That's because forcible redistribution of wealth is an evil and immoral act. What argument do you have that morally supports you, or your minions in government, deciding that you can better decide how to dispose of my labor and capital than I can? What argument do you have that supports the immoral and evil practice of enslaving person A and confiscating the fruits of his labor to the service of persons Z through T, with whom person A has absolutely no relationship and to whom person A has no moral, ethical or legal obligation of support?

In short, why am I obliged to fork over the fruits of my labor for your use and enjoyment? Lets see if for once you can formulate a well-reasoned and logical argument that addresses the root evil of collectivism, which is the proposition that the individual owes to the collective more by way of labor than is required to compensate the collective for his individual use of the resources and benefits of society.

I've never yet met a single socialist who even dares to address this core fault of socialism. Do you have the balls to give it a shot? For once.

Seth, I've seen you use this argument many times. I've never managed to form a sensible rebuttal, and as much as I find it uncomfortable to do so, I'm left having to agree with you.

I rebut it thusly:

Humans have never existed as a collection of isolated individuals. Humans, and all our hominid ancestors have been tribal for the whole of our evolutionary history. Such primate social groupings are very different to social insects, where it may be said that evolution has achieved a natural "marxism" by dint of the evolutionary genetics of kin selection. Not so humans; a rebuttal of the extreme individualism of libertarianism is also a rebuttal of the collectivist excesses of true marxism.

Human groups have a complex interplay between individual selfishness and allegiance to the collective. We compete within the group for mates, for example, but we co-operate and work for the group for many survival oriented goals, not least our competitive interactions with other human tribes. Reciprocal altruism plays a large part in the way we work together; one feature of this is how carefully we watch others for signs of shirking, and how individual acts of courage (and sharing) gain great kudos, aiding within-group status, no small reward indeed...

A modern, complex society has accrued a vast array of new cultural features, to be sure, but it is built on the foundation of the evolutionary heritage we all share. Taxation can be seen as a systematic way of ensuring that all contribute to the welfare of a much enlarged tribe. One can argue with the amounts - clearly, some examples of taxation are going to be regarded as excessive, others as too little. Similarly, the use to which these shared resources are put will be argued over extensively (as an aside, I think there are probably too many examples of individuals who shirk effort, and are parasitic on the tribe; not as many as Seth thinks, but far too many nonetheless...)

Taxation in general, and some form of collective sharing of at least part of the resources of the tribe, is just as valid a part of human society as individual effort, and personal striving for status and wealth; the latter is a vital driver of progress and enterprise, and overly collectivist societies dismiss it at their peril.

Cogently put, but you still evade the central question: What is your moral argument for forcing Person A to labor on behalf of Person B against his will?

You are describing behavior, but you are not producing any well-reasoned argument as to the actual question asked. You use the term "reciprocal altruism," and I agree that altruism, charity and rational self-interests are vital and important aspects of a well-formed, sane and mature adult personality. But you must accept that "reciprocal altruism" and "involuntary taxation" are mutually exclusive terms. You cannot force someone to be altruistic, you can only force them into servitude.

As you also suggest, societal approbation or opprobrium are strong motivators towards altruism, charity and rational self-interest, and that is in fact the basis of hard-core fundamental Libertarianism, which uses social pressure and exclusion as motivators towards acceptable community behavior. Core Libertarianism holds that if a member of a community acts in an antisocial fashion, or fails to abide by the contracts and agreements he has made with another, or with the community as a whole, then the appropriate response of the community is not to use force against that person, but rather to simply withdraw the benefits of the community from him. And that means EVERY benefit, right down to refusing to sell him food or anything else, shunning him and ignoring him and refusing to offer him any sort of assistance at all. Essentially the sociopath in a Libertarian community becomes an outcast and a pariah if he refuses to conform to the community standards.

Therefore, if the community votes to impose a tax to build a park, and some members of the community decline to pay the tax, then they can be denied the use of the park, and indeed they can be subjected to public opprobrium, censure and exclusion for being antisocial. True Libertarians use the withdrawal of social intercourse as a powerful weapon against sociopathy. And it's a weapon that is wielded according to the judgment of each INDIVIDUAL in the community, and is forcibly imposed on no one.

Libertarianism acknowledges that most people are rational actors most of the time, and that because we are social creatures, using social pressure to encourage acceptable public behavior and participation in the process, and expenses of the community are a better way to do things than sending out jackbooted thugs to extract the labor and property of people against their will merely because some elected official decides that the government is better situated to make decisions about the desirability of expending someone's labor and property for the benefit of another person.

We prefer to let each person judge for themselves if the recipient of their charity and altruism are worthy or not, based on our presumption that most people are both rational actors most of the time and also that most people have well-formed adult personalities that can assess the rational self-interest in, by way of example, not letting poor people starve to death in the gutters. If for no other reason (like human compassion) as a sanitary measure to prevent disease. We just believe that each individual should make those decisions for themselves and should do what they wish, and donate what they wish, to such efforts on a VOLUNTARY basis.

This has the salutary effect on the poor of requiring them to be humble and thankful for the charity and altruism shown by the members of the community and to view that charity as a hand up, not a hand out, from those who expect the charity to be used to help the poor person become an economic success, or at least be able to provide for himself without being a burden on the community. It also allows members to decide if the person requesting charity is truly in need or if they are just slacking and idling about and are looking for a handout so that they do not have to work or better themselves. That's the fundamental problem with our system today, it doesn't allow the people who are forced to labor on behalf of the dependent class to cut off those whom they feel are taking unfair advantage of their forced labor.

Libertarians are not uncharitable, they simply demand that THEY get to decide to whom and to what extent their labor is dedicated to the service of the poor and unfortunate...and they get to do so on a case-by-case basis where they can refuse to donate their labor to someone who is not worthy of it.

That's rational self-interest on the part of the Libertarian members of the community, because it serves no one particularly well to have starving beggars on the street corners.

Altruism is what happens when people are given the free choice to be or not be altruistic. And by and large the human species has, as you suggest, a strong motive for altruism, and charity, and rational self-interest.

Libertarians believe that the natural charity, altruism and rational self-interest of the rational, well-formed adult personality that exists in all non-sociopathic liberal dependent class nutcases is sufficient to care for those who are truly in need and CANNOT help themselves. And they believe that hunger and privation is a great motivator towards self-reliance and hard work for those who WILL NOT help themselves.