
Libertarianism
- Woodbutcher
- Stray Cat
- Posts: 8315
- Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2009 12:54 pm
- About me: Still crazy after all these years.
- Location: Northern Muskeg, The Great White North
- Contact:
Libertarianism
I'm interested in the premise of individual freedom to choose my course through life according to what I see is the best approach, avoiding harm to others to the best of my ability, and helping others along without giving some a free ride. Too often there are people who expect special consideration. What controls does a Libertarian society put in existence to give equal justice to all without prejudice? What about healthcare to all? I think a lot of our money is wasted on needless expense by people with fictitious complaints. Who would decide the need? I have many questions and would appreciate some reading resources as well. I have an open mind on this. I do not troll. Seth? CES? Laklak? Opposing viewpoints also sought. But keep things factual. 

If women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy.-Red Green
"Yo". Rocky
"Never been worried about what other people see when they look at me". Gawdzilla
"No friends currently defined." Friends & Foes.
"Yo". Rocky
"Never been worried about what other people see when they look at me". Gawdzilla
"No friends currently defined." Friends & Foes.
- Tero
- Just saying
- Posts: 51446
- Joined: Sun Jul 04, 2010 9:50 pm
- About me: 8-34-20
- Location: USA
- Contact:
Re: Libertarianism
You need a libertarian dictator to run things. Jesse Ventura is available.
- Gawdzilla Sama
- Stabsobermaschinist
- Posts: 151265
- Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2009 12:24 am
- About me: My posts are related to the thread in the same way Gliese 651b is related to your mother's underwear drawer.
- Location: Sitting next to Ayaan in Domus Draconis, and communicating via PMs.
- Contact:
Re: Libertarianism
What would the military look like in a libertarian world?
- Gallstones
- Supreme Absolute And Exclusive Ruler Of The World
- Posts: 8888
- Joined: Wed Feb 24, 2010 12:56 am
- About me: A fleck on a flake on a speck.
Re: Libertarianism
All volunteer as it is now.Gawdzilla wrote:What would the military look like in a libertarian world?
I have a feeling that
there will be those who
would be enthusiastic about
being in the military.
Even then.
But here’s the thing about rights. They’re not actually supposed to be voted on. That’s why they’re called rights. ~Rachel Maddow August 2010
The Second Amendment forms a fourth branch of government (an armed citizenry) in case the government goes mad. ~Larry Nutter
The Second Amendment forms a fourth branch of government (an armed citizenry) in case the government goes mad. ~Larry Nutter
- Warren Dew
- Posts: 3781
- Joined: Thu Aug 19, 2010 1:41 pm
- Location: Somerville, MA, USA
- Contact:
Re: Libertarianism
Hey, how come I'm not on that list?Woodbutcher wrote:Seth? CES? Laklak?
Justice from a libertarian standpoint does not include entitlement. Everyone is free to make their own way through life without harming others, but there is no guarantee that they will succeed. You do not have a right to anything, including health care, at others' expense.
With respect to complaints that may or may not be fictitious, each person would decide for himself whether to seek treatment, and from whom; those from whom treatment is requested would decide whether to provide it, and for what price.
Most doctors are more than happy to provide treatment for free when they can if they think it's necessary and the patient unable to pay; that might be the practical answer to your question.
- Robert_S
- Cookie Monster
- Posts: 13416
- Joined: Tue Feb 23, 2010 5:47 am
- About me: Too young to die of boredom, too old to grow up.
- Location: Illinois
- Contact:
Re: Libertarianism
CES is not a Libertarian IIRC.
What I've found with a few discussions I've had lately is this self-satisfaction that people express with their proffessed open mindedness. In realty it ammounts to wilful ignorance and intellectual cowardice as they are choosing to not form any sort of opinion on a particular topic. Basically "I don't know and I'm not going to look at any evidence because I'm quite happy on this fence."
-Mr P
The Net is best considered analogous to communication with disincarnate intelligences. As any neophyte would tell you. Do not invoke that which you have no facility to banish.
Audley Strange
-Mr P
The Net is best considered analogous to communication with disincarnate intelligences. As any neophyte would tell you. Do not invoke that which you have no facility to banish.
Audley Strange
- Xamonas Chegwé
- Bouncer
- Posts: 50939
- Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2009 3:23 pm
- About me: I have prehensile eyebrows.
I speak 9 languages fluently, one of which other people can also speak.
When backed into a corner, I fit perfectly - having a right-angled arse. - Location: Nottingham UK
- Contact:
Re: Libertarianism
Until there is an epidemic - one that stands to decimate the workforce, a queue of hundreds with the complaint - most without means - and the doctor has hungry mouths to feed back home...Warren Dew wrote:Hey, how come I'm not on that list?Woodbutcher wrote:Seth? CES? Laklak?
Justice from a libertarian standpoint does not include entitlement. Everyone is free to make their own way through life without harming others, but there is no guarantee that they will succeed. You do not have a right to anything, including health care, at others' expense.
With respect to complaints that may or may not be fictitious, each person would decide for himself whether to seek treatment, and from whom; those from whom treatment is requested would decide whether to provide it, and for what price.
Most doctors are more than happy to provide treatment for free when they can if they think it's necessary and the patient unable to pay; that might be the practical answer to your question.
The truth of libertarianism is that those without the means to pay will get fucked EVERY time if there is a limited amount of time/resources available to the provider of any service - however egalitarian they might LIKE to be! Relying on those with the means to "do what's right" is a fool's paradise!
Don't get me wrong, I am NOT advocating communism, or even socialism - but I do hold that there are times where government funding needs to be used for the good of the community - and, like it or not, that requires taxes, a pool of available-when-necessary cash and SOME level of social welfare!
A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.
Salman Rushdie
You talk to God, you're religious. God talks to you, you're psychotic.
House MD
Who needs a meaning anyway, I'd settle anyday for a very fine view.
Sandy Denny
This is the wrong forum for bluffing
Paco
Yes, yes. But first I need to show you this venomous fish!
Calilasseia
I think we should do whatever Pawiz wants.
Twoflower
Bella squats momentarily then waddles on still peeing, like a horse
Millefleur
Salman Rushdie
You talk to God, you're religious. God talks to you, you're psychotic.
House MD
Who needs a meaning anyway, I'd settle anyday for a very fine view.
Sandy Denny
This is the wrong forum for bluffing

Paco
Yes, yes. But first I need to show you this venomous fish!
Calilasseia
I think we should do whatever Pawiz wants.
Twoflower
Bella squats momentarily then waddles on still peeing, like a horse
Millefleur
- Warren Dew
- Posts: 3781
- Joined: Thu Aug 19, 2010 1:41 pm
- Location: Somerville, MA, USA
- Contact:
Re: Libertarianism
In that situation, when there is a shortage of doctors, some will go without treatment no matter what the system. Treating based on ability to pay - even assuming that all the doctors always go with the highest bidders, which I would question - would still be no more unreasonable than any other system of choosing whom to treat and whom not to treat.Xamonas Chegwé wrote:Until there is an epidemic - one that stands to decimate the workforce, a queue of hundreds with the complaint - most without means - and the doctor has hungry mouths to feed back home...
- Xamonas Chegwé
- Bouncer
- Posts: 50939
- Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2009 3:23 pm
- About me: I have prehensile eyebrows.
I speak 9 languages fluently, one of which other people can also speak.
When backed into a corner, I fit perfectly - having a right-angled arse. - Location: Nottingham UK
- Contact:
Re: Libertarianism
I disagree. A system such as the NHS in the UK would ensure that vaccination/treatment was made to as many as possible, irrespective of means. A system where doctors treat those that can pay and then, if they have free time and sufficient altruism, treat as many of those others as they feel they ought to, is useless in a major epidemic situation. In fact, in ALL societies, regardless of ideology, governments tend to step in with emergency measures at such times.Warren Dew wrote:In that situation, when there is a shortage of doctors, some will go without treatment no matter what the system. Treating based on ability to pay - even assuming that all the doctors always go with the highest bidders, which I would question - would still be no more unreasonable than any other system of choosing whom to treat and whom not to treat.Xamonas Chegwé wrote:Until there is an epidemic - one that stands to decimate the workforce, a queue of hundreds with the complaint - most without means - and the doctor has hungry mouths to feed back home...
A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.
Salman Rushdie
You talk to God, you're religious. God talks to you, you're psychotic.
House MD
Who needs a meaning anyway, I'd settle anyday for a very fine view.
Sandy Denny
This is the wrong forum for bluffing
Paco
Yes, yes. But first I need to show you this venomous fish!
Calilasseia
I think we should do whatever Pawiz wants.
Twoflower
Bella squats momentarily then waddles on still peeing, like a horse
Millefleur
Salman Rushdie
You talk to God, you're religious. God talks to you, you're psychotic.
House MD
Who needs a meaning anyway, I'd settle anyday for a very fine view.
Sandy Denny
This is the wrong forum for bluffing

Paco
Yes, yes. But first I need to show you this venomous fish!
Calilasseia
I think we should do whatever Pawiz wants.
Twoflower
Bella squats momentarily then waddles on still peeing, like a horse
Millefleur
- Gawdzilla Sama
- Stabsobermaschinist
- Posts: 151265
- Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2009 12:24 am
- About me: My posts are related to the thread in the same way Gliese 651b is related to your mother's underwear drawer.
- Location: Sitting next to Ayaan in Domus Draconis, and communicating via PMs.
- Contact:
Re: Libertarianism
Where would the funding come from?Gallstones wrote:All volunteer as it is now.Gawdzilla wrote:What would the military look like in a libertarian world?
I have a feeling that
there will be those who
would be enthusiastic about
being in the military.
Even then.
- Clinton Huxley
- 19th century monkeybitch.
- Posts: 23739
- Joined: Mon Mar 02, 2009 4:34 pm
- Contact:
Re: Libertarianism
Timely - article by George Monbiot in the Guardian the other day. I'd broadly agree with it. The "freedom" pushee by libertarian policy groups is the freedom of big business and the rich to exploit the poor, without let or hindrance.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... oppression
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... oppression
Freedom: who could object? Yet this word is now used to justify a thousand forms of exploitation. Throughout the rightwing press and blogosphere, among thinktanks and governments, the word excuses every assault on the lives of the poor, every form of inequality and intrusion to which the 1% subject us. How did libertarianism, once a noble impulse, become synonymous with injustice?
In the name of freedom – freedom from regulation – the banks were permitted to wreck the economy. In the name of freedom, taxes for the super-rich are cut. In the name of freedom, companies lobby to drop the minimum wage and raise working hours. In the same cause, US insurers lobby Congress to thwart effective public healthcare; the government rips up our planning laws; big business trashes the biosphere. This is the freedom of the powerful to exploit the weak, the rich to exploit the poor.
Rightwing libertarianism recognises few legitimate constraints on the power to act, regardless of the impact on the lives of others. In the UK it is forcefully promoted by groups like the TaxPayers' Alliance, the Adam Smith Institute, the Institute of Economic Affairs, and Policy Exchange. Their concept of freedom looks to me like nothing but a justification for greed.
So why have we been been so slow to challenge this concept of liberty? I believe that one of the reasons is as follows. The great political conflict of our age – between neocons and the millionaires and corporations they support on one side, and social justice campaigners and environmentalists on the other – has been mischaracterised as a clash between negative and positive freedoms. These freedoms were most clearly defined by Isaiah Berlin in his essay of 1958, Two Concepts of Liberty. It is a work of beauty: reading it is like listening to a gloriously crafted piece of music. I will try not to mangle it too badly.
Put briefly and crudely, negative freedom is the freedom to be or to act without interference from other people. Positive freedom is freedom from inhibition: it's the power gained by transcending social or psychological constraints. Berlin explained how positive freedom had been abused by tyrannies, particularly by the Soviet Union. It portrayed its brutal governance as the empowerment of the people, who could achieve a higher freedom by subordinating themselves to a collective single will.
Rightwing libertarians claim that greens and social justice campaigners are closet communists trying to resurrect Soviet conceptions of positive freedom. In reality, the battle mostly consists of a clash between negative freedoms.
As Berlin noted: "No man's activity is so completely private as never to obstruct the lives of others in any way. 'Freedom for the pike is death for the minnows'." So, he argued, some people's freedom must sometimes be curtailed "to secure the freedom of others". In other words, your freedom to swing your fist ends where my nose begins. The negative freedom not to have our noses punched is the freedom that green and social justice campaigns, exemplified by the Occupy movement, exist to defend.
Berlin also shows that freedom can intrude on other values, such as justice, equality or human happiness. "If the liberty of myself or my class or nation depends on the misery of a number of other human beings, the system which promotes this is unjust and immoral." It follows that the state should impose legal restraints on freedoms that interfere with other people's freedoms – or on freedoms which conflict with justice and humanity.
These conflicts of negative freedom were summarised in one of the greatest poems of the 19th century, which could be seen as the founding document of British environmentalism. In The Fallen Elm, John Clare describes the felling of the tree he loved, presumably by his landlord, that grew beside his home. "Self-interest saw thee stand in freedom's ways / So thy old shadow must a tyrant be. / Thou'st heard the knave, abusing those in power, / Bawl freedom loud and then oppress the free."
The landlord was exercising his freedom to cut the tree down. In doing so, he was intruding on Clare's freedom to delight in the tree, whose existence enhanced his life. The landlord justifies this destruction by characterising the tree as an impediment to freedom – his freedom, which he conflates with the general liberty of humankind. Without the involvement of the state (which today might take the form of a tree preservation order) the powerful man could trample the pleasures of the powerless man. Clare then compares the felling of the tree with further intrusions on his liberty. "Such was thy ruin, music-making elm; / The right of freedom was to injure thine: / As thou wert served, so would they overwhelm / In freedom's name the little that is mine."
But rightwing libertarians do not recognise this conflict. They speak, like Clare's landlord, as if the same freedom affects everybody in the same way. They assert their freedom to pollute, exploit, even – among the gun nuts – to kill, as if these were fundamental human rights. They characterise any attempt to restrain them as tyranny. They refuse to see that there is a clash between the freedom of the pike and the freedom of the minnow.
Last week, on an internet radio channel called The Fifth Column, I debated climate change with Claire Fox of the Institute of Ideas, one of the rightwing libertarian groups that rose from the ashes of the Revolutionary Communist party. Fox is a feared interrogator on the BBC show The Moral Maze. Yet when I asked her a simple question – "do you accept that some people's freedoms intrude upon other people's freedoms?" – I saw an ideology shatter like a windscreen. I used the example of a Romanian lead-smelting plant I had visited in 2000, whose freedom to pollute is shortening the lives of its neighbours. Surely the plant should be regulated in order to enhance the negative freedoms – freedom from pollution, freedom from poisoning – of its neighbours? She tried several times to answer it, but nothing coherent emerged which would not send her crashing through the mirror of her philosophy.
Modern libertarianism is the disguise adopted by those who wish to exploit without restraint. It pretends that only the state intrudes on our liberties. It ignores the role of banks, corporations and the rich in making us less free. It denies the need for the state to curb them in order to protect the freedoms of weaker people. This bastardised, one-eyed philosophy is a con trick, whose promoters attempt to wrongfoot justice by pitching it against liberty. By this means they have turned "freedom" into an instrument of oppression.
"I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled"
AND MERRY XMAS TO ONE AND All!
http://25kv.co.uk/date_counter.php?date ... 20counting!!![/img-sig]
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled"
AND MERRY XMAS TO ONE AND All!
- Gawdzilla Sama
- Stabsobermaschinist
- Posts: 151265
- Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2009 12:24 am
- About me: My posts are related to the thread in the same way Gliese 651b is related to your mother's underwear drawer.
- Location: Sitting next to Ayaan in Domus Draconis, and communicating via PMs.
- Contact:
Re: Libertarianism
Good find. I would call such behavior "Sethical"
- Warren Dew
- Posts: 3781
- Joined: Thu Aug 19, 2010 1:41 pm
- Location: Somerville, MA, USA
- Contact:
Re: Libertarianism
That amounts to giving preference to people who show up at the office first, rather than to people with money. Sorry, but I don't view a system which penalizes people who don't happen to be morning people as morally superior to a system that penalizes people who don't happen to have money.Xamonas Chegwé wrote:I disagree. A system such as the NHS in the UK would ensure that vaccination/treatment was made to as many as possible, irrespective of means.Warren Dew wrote:In that situation, when there is a shortage of doctors, some will go without treatment no matter what the system. Treating based on ability to pay - even assuming that all the doctors always go with the highest bidders, which I would question - would still be no more unreasonable than any other system of choosing whom to treat and whom not to treat.Xamonas Chegwé wrote:Until there is an epidemic - one that stands to decimate the workforce, a queue of hundreds with the complaint - most without means - and the doctor has hungry mouths to feed back home...
- Gawdzilla Sama
- Stabsobermaschinist
- Posts: 151265
- Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2009 12:24 am
- About me: My posts are related to the thread in the same way Gliese 651b is related to your mother's underwear drawer.
- Location: Sitting next to Ayaan in Domus Draconis, and communicating via PMs.
- Contact:
Re: Libertarianism
What national systems would not be funded under libertarian isolationism?
Who is online
Users browsing this forum: Bing [Bot], NineBerry and 26 guests