Libertarian Party: Your Thoughts?

[FoolKiller]

You lucky bastard ...

http://aaeblog.com/2009/07/24/walte...ray-rothbard-or-forty-acres-of-bad-arguments/

I thought you'd get a laugh out of that.

The bigger issue with Rothbard's principle is that it is often only applied when discussing slavery. While there are probably a number of instances to track down descendants of owners to the descendants of slaves the argument rarely steps outside those bounds. If we apply it to Native Americans then every single European descendant in the Americas should give up all their property. Anyone defending slavery reparations needs to recognize that if we follow that line of thought to its ultimate conclusion that the only thing descendants of slaves will get is a ticket to their ancestors' homeland, same as the descendants of slave owners.

 

[Danoff]

From my reading, it seems that libertarians of all stripes agree that the fundamental right is the right to self, however the right to property that follows from this is much less clear.

Not at all.

I have already made the point that property rights cannot be considered in isolation from how the property was obtained &/or apportioned in the first place.

Agreed.

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

This is the logical application of a lack of "initiatory coercion". To attempt justify seizing the results of someone's labor mixed with unowned natural resources is to attempt to justify slavery.

Oh... and all of the logic that leads up to this principle absolutely precludes slavery.

I'm not going to deny you that despite the fact that many of the natives here were nomads and did not work the land, some of them did. And those natives had their lands stolen from them before they (in the vast majority of cases) were killed. That is an injustice, but there is nothing that any of us can do about it. All we can do now is to adhere to a system of rights that ensures such a thing is not permissible again. It is impossible to make reparations to dead people. It is just as impossible for you to claim that I have benefited in any way from that injustice.

 

[DK]

If the principle of the original occupants getting land that was taken from them returned to them were applied to everything, I guess there would be a hell of a lot of border changes, and even some borders being completely eliminated (yes, Republic of Ireland-Northern Ireland border, I'm referring to you) as the original occupants would have to be given their land back - in this case, the prospect of a united Ireland, which has been a dream for centuries, may be realistic. I just hope I'm not putting myself in the same camp as nationalist paramilitaries for saying this.

 

[Danoff]

...plus there's the issue of what all those dead people are going to do with the land.

 

[Famine]

If the principle of the original occupants getting land that was taken from them returned to them were applied to everything, I guess there would be a hell of a lot of border changes, and even some borders being completely eliminated (yes, Republic of Ireland-Northern Ireland border, I'm referring to you) as the original occupants would have to be given their land back - in this case, the prospect of a united Ireland, which has been a dream for centuries, may be realistic. I just hope I'm not putting myself in the same camp as nationalist paramilitaries for saying this.

The question is how original you get. Where do you stop? Back to before the last occupation? What about the one before that? Or before that? Ireland in particular should be interesting, since a lot of Irish Gaels fled to Scotland when the Brython Welsh fled to Ireland when the Brython English were driven Westwards by the Romans - much of what makes Irish people today is Welsh in origin, whereas much of what made Ireland then is now Scottish. Should Ireland be handed back to the Scots, while Wales is given to the Irish and the Welsh evicted back to England?

Foolkiller's point is well received - and I hinted at it earlier. If you keep undoing previous unjust land occupations, we'll all end up living round Lake Victoria - and with 6bn of us now, it might get a wee bit crowded compared to 200,000 years since.

 

[DK]

Wow, Famine, I guess I've got to do a bit of research before I make some comments. I actually never knew all that stuff about us (the Irish) having to emigrate to Scotland. Just one question remains: where would the English go?

 

[Biggles]

And despite yet another invitation for you to use logic to prove logic wrong, you run away and say it's "simplistic". Surely if it's "simplistic" you'll have no problem defeating it with simple logic, no?

This is really starting to get depressing.

You need to demonstrate, with logic, that this £10 note I'm holding, given to me by a friend for a service I recently provided but asked no recompense is not mine to give to someone else for a service they provide.

I have no idea why you keep on going on about either your 5 Pound, or your 10 Pound note. Do you have a logical argument to make about your 10 Pound note? I had thought there was a wider philosophical discussion at stake:

the entire philosophy of libertarianism is logical

but honestly, at this point, I have no idea what you believe in, other than your right to your 10 Pound note.

Again, I quote Murray Rothbard described as "an American intellectual, individualist anarchist, author, and economist of the Austrian School who helped define modern libertarianism":

... in the United States the slaves gained their freedom, it is true, but the land, the plantations that they had tilled and therefore deserved to own under the homestead principle, remained in the hands of their former masters. Furthermore, no reparations were granted the slaves for their oppression out of the hides of their masters. Hence the abolition of slavery remained unfinished, and the seeds of a new revolt have remained to intensify to the present day. Hence, the great importance of the shift in Negro demands from greater welfare handouts to "reparations", reparationsfor the years of slavery and exploitation and for the failure to grant the Negroes their land, the failure to heed the Radical abolitionist's call for "40 acres and a mule" to the former slaves. In many cases, moreover, the old plantations and the heirs and descendants of the former slaves can be identified, and the reparations can become highly specific indeed.

Okay, that slavery stuff is all ancient history. Elsewhere Rothbard says:

What of the myriad of corporations which are integral parts of the military-industrial complex, which not only get over half or sometimes virtually all their revenue from the government but also participate in mass murder? What are their credentials to "private" property? Surely less than zero. As eager lobbyists for these contracts and subsidies, as co-founders of the garrison state, they deserve confiscation and reversion of their property to the genuine private sector as rapidly as possible. To say that their "private" property must be respected is to say that the property stolen by the horsethief and the murdered must be "respected"...

Dow Chemical, for example, has been heavily criticized for making napalm for the U.S. military machine. The percentage of its sales coming from napalm is undoubtedly small, so that on a percentage basis the company may not seem very guilty; but napalm is and can only be an instrument of mass murder, and therefore Dow Chemical is heavily up to its neck in being an accessory and hence a co-partner in the mass murder in Vietnam. No percentage of sales, however small, can absolve its guilt.

He finishes:

Alan Milchman, in the days when he was a brilliant young libertarian activist, first pointed out that libertarians had misled themselves by making their main dichotomy "government" vs. "private" with the former bad and the latter good. Government, he pointed out, is after all not a mystical entity but a group of individuals, "private" individuals if you will, acting in the manner of an organized criminal gang. But this means that there may also be "private" criminals as well as people directly affiliated with the government. What we libertarians object to, then, is not government per se but crime, what we object to is unjust or criminal property titles; what we are for is not "private" property per se but just, innocent, non-criminal private property. It is justice vs. injustice, innocence vs. criminality that must be our major libertarian focus.

Leaving your 10 Pound note out of it for a minute, can I ask you, do you agree or disagree with Rothbard? Is he a libertarian? Is what he is saying, in your opinion, correct. Is it logical?

 

[Danoff]

Leaving your 10 Pound note out of it for a minute, can I ask you, do you agree or disagree with Rothbard? Is he a libertarian? Is what he is saying, in your opinion, correct. Is it logical?

I agree with some things Rothbard has said (though very little in what you quoted), and disagree with others. He loses logic in a big way - especially the napalm example where he effectively (or I should say ineffectively) convicts the gun maker of the crimes committed by the gun owner. Less logic and more finger pointing in the general direction of perceived wrongdoing.

 

[Famine]

Wow, Famine, I guess I've got to do a bit of research before I make some comments. I actually never knew all that stuff about us (the Irish) having to emigrate to Scotland. Just one question remains: where would the English go?

Good question. The answer would be "what English?"

A lot of what makes up present-day England comes from Scandinavia and North Europe - Normans from France originated in Scandinavia (Norman = Norseman), Jutes from Denmark, Vikings, Angles from Angeln (in Germany near the Baltic Sea) and, of course, the Saxons from Saxony (also Germany). During the Anglo-Saxon/Jute migrations in the 5th century, Britons were displaced into Northern England, Wales, Cornwall and North France - Brittany (ever wonder where the name came from?) - as the settlers came from the east and south-east. The Breton language spoken in Cornwall and Brittany is closer to English in the 5th Century than the English we speak today which has been mixed with other Germanic languages (French, Dutch, German, Swedish, Norwegian).

So if we go back 300-600 years, the Irish get booted out to Wales, the Scots get Ireland back and the Welsh get thrown back into England - Glyndwr is still recent memory for some. Go back nearer 1,500 years and we'd need to kick some Spaniards and French back to Cornwall and Wales and throw everyone out of East Anglia and any county that ends in -sex (Sussex, Middlesex, Essex) back to Germany and Norway. 2,000 years and you start to run in to the Roman invasion. Before that, the Belgae. Before that, the Beakers. Before that, Britain was settled by Neolithic farmers as early as 10,000 years ago. Prior to that... ask Joey_D - he's GTP's Indiana Jones. James May's genome - and he's more English than warm ale and incest - showed him to be 98% indeterminate European, 2% Asian and with a typical profile of someone originating in southern Germany...

And that's the problem with historic reparations - both logistical and logical. No matter how far back you go, someone took something off someone else. Even if we go back as far as the rise of Homo sapiens in Ethiopia 150,000 years since, there'll be someone who stole a cow, or a bit of land, or a wife or even just a fishing spot. The entire world's population would be concentrated in East Africa with nothing and the rest of the planet would be uninhabited, but at least all past wrongs for which none of us are responsible will have been righted...

I have no idea why you keep on going on about either your 5 Pound, or your 10 Pound note. Do you have a logical argument to make about your 10 Pound note?

I mentioned £5 (no form) once to enquire if there was really any difference to you between £5 I'd earned and £5 bequeathed to me, then asked you, once, to demonstrate with logic that a £10 note given to me for services rendered is not mine to spend due to historic wrongdoings meaning the £10 wasn't originally theirs to give. Hardly "going on about".

You haven't addressed either point yet, save to say, as usual, that they are too simplistic for you to bother with.

I had thought there was a wider philosophical discussion at stake.

There is. The question was why the historic wrongdoings you keep "going on about" should mean there's a difference between £5 I earned and £5 I have been bequeathed, and why £10 given to me for services rendered is not mine to spend.

As noted to driftking above, I'm English. This means that some of my ancestors have, at some point, profited from the slave trade, killed people currently living in Ireland, Wales, France, Belgium, Germany and Norway (as well as being Welsh, French, Belgic, Germanic and Norse). Nothing I own besides that generated by my own endeavour has a blood-free origin - and yet that which I earn is similarly dishonest, since my personality and knowledge is a direct result of the endeavours of my parents, and theirs of their parents, and theirs of their parents - and so on. Eventually everything about me today is a result of the crimes of my ancestors. The same applies to you and everyone else.

So the questions remain. Why, logically, is £5 I earned different to £5 I've been bequeathed? Why, logically, is £10 given to me really the property of someone my ancestors screwed over? Why, logically, would James May not be entitled to live in the house he bought on the land it is and where would he be entitled to live and own land if not that which he has bought?

but honestly, at this point, I have no idea what you believe in, other than your right to your 10 Pound note.

I haven't said I have a right to a £10 note. I've asked you to demonstrate with logic why I haven't got that right.

I keep asking you to show how Libertarian principles arrived at through logic are not logical, by using logic. You keep ignoring it - literally. You don't even respond to the request, you just gloss over it and jump into another diatribe about simplistic analogies you can't be bothered to discuss.

Murray Rothbard [...] do you agree or disagree with Rothbard? Is he a libertarian? Is what he is saying, in your opinion, correct. Is it logical?

Libertarians often disagree within themselves.

And I agree with danoff.

I agree with some things Rothbard has said (though very little in what you quoted), and disagree with others. He loses logic in a big way - especially the napalm example where he effectively (or I should say ineffectively) convicts the gun maker of the crimes committed by the gun owner. Less logic and more finger pointing in the general direction of perceived wrongdoing.

 

[LeMansAid]

Is this the best pre-existing place to talk about libertarianism in general?

I've been thinking a lot about whether or not I agree with having any laws based on risk. The conversation between @TenEightyOne and @Famine about drink driving appears to fall in to this category.

I'm happy to continue the conversation here TEO.

Edit: Background - https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/thre...t-anti-incest-laws.250350/page-4#post-9916700

 

[prisonermonkeys]

I'll happily describe myself as libertarian, though not to extremes (and not when it comes to fiscal policy). While conservatism has its place, I have often found it to be out-dated and unwilling to accept new ideas. And I have never been comfortable with the idea of a natural hierarchy in society, usually because it favours people who had the good fortune to be born into the right family. Maybe it's because I live in a country where political ideology gets exaggerated and it's becoming more and more about personality and less and less about policy.

 

[Keef]

Since libertarianism is basically a religion that must mean libertarians are gods amongst men.

 

[prisonermonkeys]

I think you mean "gods and goddesses and gender-neutral deities among people".

 

[Famine]

I think you mean "gods and goddesses and gender-neutral deities among people".

That's so cis-male of you. What about non-binary gender-fluid trans-female intersex deities?

 

[LMSCorvetteGT2]

I saw biggles and then a flash back that made me cringe occurred, I feel safe now again.

 

[Dotini]

I'm libertarian, having worked in Ron Paul's campaign, representing my precinct at the district caucus. However, It took some patience to put up with some of those Republicans who voted for Gingrich, Santorum or Romney. I've not voted for either major party in well over 20 years.

I'm socially liberal, financially conservative, and despise the blundering foreign policies the US has followed for decades.

 

[Danoff]

I've been thinking a lot about whether or not I agree with having any laws based on risk. The conversation between @TenEightyOne and @Famine about drink driving appears to fall in to this category.

I'm happy to continue the conversation here TEO.

Edit: Background - https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/thre...t-anti-incest-laws.250350/page-4#post-9916700

This is a big part of libertarianism. You have the right to the freedom to screw up. You don't have the right to be free of the consequences of that screw up.

 

[KSaiyu]

I've wondered this for a while now: Can a nurse be a libertarian? Not just any nurse, but a good one.

 

[Danoff]

I've wondered this for a while now: Can a nurse be a libertarian? Not just any nurse, but a good one.

Yes. Now to explain I need to know what you think is incompatible between being a nurse and being a libertarian.

 

[KSaiyu]

A good nurse has to work for the benefit of others. Some of them will literally put their patients above their personal/social life because of the demands of the job. As far as I'm aware people don't have a right to expect a certain standard of care but a good nurse would ignore that and give the best possible care above the requirements of, what I imagine to be a libertarian society based on rights would agree on.

 

[Danoff]

A good nurse has to work for the benefit of others. Some of them will literally put their patients above their personal/social life because of the demands of the job. As far as I'm aware people don't have a right to expect a certain standard of care but a good nurse would ignore that and give the best possible care above the requirements of, what I imagine to be a libertarian society based on rights would agree on.

In a libertarian society, anyone is of course are of course free to work for the benefit of others... nurses included. Charity is not somehow forbidden.

 

[Rhykus Finlay]

Mmm, on a personal level, I think libertarianism is a good thing, what we should be. Then again, look who's talking.

But not in business or politics. Can those things really handle any big changes to their systems?

 

[Famine]

A good nurse has to work for the benefit of others. Some of them will literally put their patients above their personal/social life because of the demands of the job. As far as I'm aware people don't have a right to expect a certain standard of care but a good nurse would ignore that and give the best possible care above the requirements of, what I imagine to be a libertarian society based on rights would agree on.

A Libertarian would point out that a person is free to sell their labour for as much or as little as they wish - including nothing. There is nothing unlibertarian about a nurse (or anyone) doing what they can above and beyond what they must. In fact it's an wholly Libertarian attitude to do so.

 

[LeMansAid]

Charity is not somehow forbidden.

Certainly not. Very, very, very not, as we discovered.

This is a big part of libertarianism. You have the right to the freedom to screw up. You don't have the right to be free of the consequences of that screw up.

And certainly the victims will not be free of the consequences as well. That's where it gets me. Some punk thinks he's a better driver at high speed than he really is and bang, my sister's dead. Some punk thinks he handles alcohol better than he really does and bang, my sister's dead.

 

[Danoff]

And certainly the victims will not be free of the consequences as well. That's where it gets me. Some punk thinks he's a better driver at high speed than he really is and bang, my sister's dead. Some punk thinks he handles alcohol better than he really does and bang, my sister's dead.

It's easy to imagine people using all of the freedom they have to do stupid things, but to be honest I don't think that punk is swayed by what the law says. Generally speaking people behave the way they do not because the law says what it does (studies show the speed limit is a great example), but rather based on their own sense of what is right.

 

[KSaiyu]

In a libertarian society, anyone is of course are of course free to work for the benefit of others... nurses included. Charity is not somehow forbidden.

Perhaps, but would a truly libertarian society create such individuals in successive generations.

 

[Famine]

Perhaps, but would a truly libertarian society create such individuals in successive generations.

Why would it not?

 

[KSaiyu]

Because they would have to be different from the norm. In such a society abortion would be on demand, public schools would recieve less funding, and there would be no universal healthcare. Terminally ill or elderly patients could start to be seen as a drain on funds and time, and a tiny minority could be pressured to end their lives via assisted suicide by caregivers or family. Gun control would be non-existent and everyone would be left to sink or swim with only the strongest surviving.

I possibly see the beginnings of this in current nursing students where the land they have emigrated from is a useful predicter in the care and compassion they bring to their placements before they're even qualified to work in the NHS.

 

[Famine]

Because they would have to be different from the norm.

Why? Are you suggesting that a Libertarian society would be characterised by selfishness? If so, why?

 

[KSaiyu]

I think the norm would shift more to "self" than it is at present.