What political ideology are you and why?

[sologdin]

state withers away, and collectivized private capitals with non-democratic decision-making processes take over. yay!

[Ramsay Gimp]

RG--

think of it this way: the literal meaning of "live and let live" is perfectly consistent with some stalinists locking us all up in gulag forever, provided we are not executed. it is accordingly always already a meaningless concept. that's entirely the problem with 'libertarian' ideology: it is expressed in metaphors without precise content. its proponents might therefore enter any discussion of policy and deride everyone as a "collectivist" while maintaining a bizarre third-campist aloofness that is based on nothing but figurative language and clichés without content such as 'liberty,' similar to woaded mel gibson screaming inarticulately about 'freedom,' or something.

Most of the adherents of any political ideology will use vague buzzwords and empty slogans. So why are you singling libertarians out here? There are tomes of published libertarian theory, and they go into detail about both prominent and obscure political issues. Spooner, Mises, Rothbard, Hayek, Hazlitt, etc.

Does Marxist/Socialist thought end at "workers of the world unite!!" ? Obviously no, and libertarian theory likewise does not end at "liberty" or "live and let live"

I doubt slaves would agree with you. (And let's just assume those slaves are on a desert island somewhere with no 'State' involved, just to make the distinction clear here)

Your point being? Libertarians support private slavery?

[Ramsay Gimp]

How do you bring violators of the NAP to justice? How do you stop people from aggression. If taxes are a violation of NAP, how do you protect the NAP?

There are a multitude of different answers. Most libertarians, including myself, choose to endorse a small state that is strictly limited to defending the people and property within its borders. We believe government is a "necessary evil" to enforce the NAP in a judicious manner, but we take the "evil" part seriously

[MerenthaClone]

There are a multitude of different answers. Most libertarians, including myself, choose to endorse a small state that is strictly limited to defending the people and property within its borders. We believe government is a "necessary evil" to enforce the NAP in a judicious manner, but we take the "evil" part seriously

Cool, me too. I just think that defending the people within the borders includes defending them from others within the culture, and for more than their physical lives. Good thing that "defending the people" isn't a vague concept at all and can't be stretched to include basically whatever you want.

[Larry of the Lawn]

There are a multitude of different answers. Most libertarians, including myself, choose to endorse a small state that is strictly limited to defending the people and property within its borders. We believe government is a "necessary evil" to enforce the NAP in a judicious manner, but we take the "evil" part seriously

Thanks for answering. I guess the part that always trips me up then is that it just seems like picking and choosing the stuff that government can or can't do, if that's where you're starting from. So on a practical level, I don't see what actually makes someone a libertarian, if it's all attitude towards government rather than policy decisions. Especially when you get into issues like environmental regulations - by the time someone has come along and poisoned your water and air, the damage is done. But 9 out of 10 libertarians will tell you that, say, the Clean Water Act, is government overreach rather than protecting the property of individuals. It seems like libertarians are only interested in addressing problems after they've happened. I guess that's where the 'initiation of force' argument stops holding any water for me.

[Ramsay Gimp]

Thanks for answering. I guess the part that always trips me up then is that it just seems like picking and choosing the stuff that government can or can't do, if that's where you're starting from. So on a practical level, I don't see what actually makes someone a libertarian, if it's all attitude towards government rather than policy decisions. Especially when you get into issues like environmental regulations - by the time someone has come along and poisoned your water and air, the damage is done. But 9 out of 10 libertarians will tell you that, say, the Clean Water Act, is government overreach rather than protecting the property of individuals. It seems like libertarians are only interested in addressing problems after they've happened. I guess that's where the 'initiation of force' argument stops holding any water for me.

How does anyone choose their first principles? It's all arbitrary once you go back far enough

But if you're actually interested in libertarian responses to pollution I've more links than u could ever read. If u don't wana go in depth I understand, but just know that it's taken seriously by libertarian theorists.

[Larry of the Lawn]

How does anyone choose their first principles? It's all arbitrary once you go back far enough

But if you're actually interested in libertarian responses to pollution I've more links than u could ever read. If u don't wana go in depth I understand, but just know that it's taken seriously by libertarian theorists.

Would definitely be interested in seeing where some actual libertarians are on environmental law, pollution, water rights, etc.

Yeah, any first principles are likely arbitrary, but why use them in the first place, beyond an academic examination of theory? When it comes to practice, I think it's absolutely insane to approach every problem from the same place just in the name of consistency, especially when that consistency is just picking a couple of issues but then declaring that the actual stance "that goverment that governs least governs best." Why doesn't the government that governs best govern best? I understand that these are just platitudes. I mean, I like where the libertarian approach gets us on the War on Drugs and most fourth amendment issues, not so much when it comes to labor, the economy, the environment, education, or public health.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

LtI,

Consider that some of the most serious crimes against humanity have been commited by State actors acting under the color of State authority and law: The Holocaust (Shoah), the Killing Fields of Cambodia, the Rawandan Genocide, the Holomore. All of these crimes were actions from the State against people and they claimed were acting to harm the State.

This is not to aay all States will commit Genocide. It is to say that extremely powerful and unrestricted States all have that potential. Now the best argument against limitations, in my opinion, is to say that any State has that potential if the people of that State support such brutal actions. That's where the debate breaks down to the whether you favor purely political controls versus some structural controls to textually limit the power of the State to act in certain ways. I support structural controls. They act as a speed bump that gives individuals a method to attempt to address State overreach when it occurs.

That said the political side cannot be ignored. Without political support for structural protections such protections are useless. How effective were Constitutional liberty interest protections for Japanese-Americans during WWII, or for loyal citizens during both American "Red Scares"?

Nothing is a panecea. I tend toward libertarianism because an overly powerful government has even more power to abuse than a small limited government does.

It is not that I don't want clean water, effective environmental protection, or pollution controls, I do want those things. It is simply that those regulations, among others, give governments more clubs to use as tools for abuse, I fear the moments when people act like those who support the Governments of the Nazi's, the Khmer Rouge, and the US in rounding up and Jailing Japanese-Americans for being Japanese or alleged "Communists" during the two "Red Scares".

Does that make sense?

[aceluby]

Would definitely be interested in seeing where some actual libertarians are on environmental law, pollution, water rights, etc.

Yeah, any first principles are likely arbitrary, but why use them in the first place, beyond an academic examination of theory? When it comes to practice, I think it's absolutely insane to approach every problem from the same place just in the name of consistency, especially when that consistency is just picking a couple of issues but then declaring that the actual stance "that goverment that governs least governs best." Why doesn't the government that governs best govern best? I understand that these are just platitudes. I mean, I like where the libertarian approach gets us on the War on Drugs and most fourth amendment issues, not so much when it comes to labor, the economy, the environment, education, or public health.

Exactly. History has shown that people will abuse power, regardless of where that power lies. So while abuses of the State exist, we also have a democratic system with checks and balances specifically to allow the people to curtail that power. There is no such mechanism with the 'free market', especially nowadays where everything is owned by a few very large corporations.

Diligence and policy specifics to specific issues today are FAR more important than ideologue platitudes, which IMO are extremely lazy. The govt has been shown to be very good at curtailing private sector abuses, and it's up to the people and our checks and balances to ensure that the State doesn't abuse its power.

[Eyron]

LtI,

Consider that some of the most serious crimes against humanity have been commited by State actors acting under the color of State authority and law: The Holocaust (Shoah), the Killing Fields of Cambodia, the Rawandan Genocide, the Holomore. All of these crimes were actions from the State against people and they claimed were acting to harm the State.

This is not to aay all States will commit Genocide. It is to say that extremely powerful and unrestricted States all have that potential. Now the best argument against limitations, in my opinion, is to say that any State has that potential if the people of that State support such brutal actions. That's where the debate breaks down to the whether you favor purely political controls versus some structural controls to textually limit the power of the State to act in certain ways. I support structural controls. They act as a speed bump that gives individuals a method to attempt to address State overreach when it occurs.

That said the political side cannot be ignored. Without political support for structural protections such protections are useless. How effective were Constitutional liberty interest protections for Japanese-Americans during WWII, or for loyal citizens during both American "Red Scares"?

Nothing is a panecea. I tend toward libertarianism because an overly powerful government has even more power to abuse than a small limited government does.

It is not that I don't want clean water, effective environmental protection, or pollution controls, I do want those things. It is simply that those regulations, among others, give governments more clubs to use as tools for abuse, I fear the moments when people act like those who support the Governments of the Nazi's, the Khmer Rouge, and the US in rounding up and Jailing Japanese-Americans for being Japanese or alleged "Communists" during the two "Red Scares".

Does that make sense?

What are the structural controls you support?

[Eyron]

dp

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Eyenon,

Strong liberty interests for individuals and limitations on where government has the power to act.

[Hereward]

Never mind.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Hereward,

I'm aware those are worthless without the political will to enforce such protections.

[sologdin]

scot--

true enough that the state will have the ability to organize mass crimes, but i think some caution is warranted here. we might note for instance that significant portions of the holocaust were carried out by private actors in collusion with the third reich. the NSDAP is a private party organization, for instance, and had its own apparatus in the SS tocarry out atrocities. auschwitz and the other concentration camps were organized and controlled by the party through the SS. auschwitz 3 is significant because it was built not by the party, but by german industry to make use of slave laborers for the war effort. none of this occurred without at least the approval of the state, of course--but i think we, and the NSDAP attorneys, can be sufficiently lawyerly to acknowledge that there is substantial non-state action here. this position is standard, i think, insofar as the NSDAP and the SS were found to be criminal organizations at the NIMT.

we might consider the mass killings carried out by other private actors in the past, such as the colonization efforts of the east india company, the slave trade, and so on. again, much of this is in collusion with states, which have always already undergirded capitalist development, which is doubtful to have occurred at all in the absence of state benefactors.

RG--

i hear you. i wouldn't hang my hat on hayek; he's worthless.

[James Arryn]

Ah, we've moved on from declarative stages, I see.

I'm always interested in the internal contradictions involved in any advocated system when contextualized in an agonistic or antagonistic global dynamic. Scott raises the point of the internal abuses of top-down government...I think the examples bear slightly different interpretations, but for the sake of argument let's assume...and rather than start listing privatized or semi-privatized horrors like the Conquistadors or latter global slave trade or most Crusades, I would suggest that to only consider the relationship between the individual and the state as definitive of the construction of said state, it's important to recognize how state on state behaviour often redefines the nature of those states.

In the Western world there's often an assumption of at least being allowed limited domain and therefore being able to enact, sustain and evaluate a state in near isolation, but the world rarely affords such a luxury. How would Revolutionary France have been governed and fulfilled it's political identity if all the monarchies which surrounded it had not seen it as an existential threat and declared near perpetual war? Conversely, the international private sector was doing quite good business with Nazi Germany, with the private U.S. interests being it's greatest trading partner/facilitator. How would a plurality of small government states stressing privatization responded to the emergence of Nazi Germany?

It's one thing to decide that the internal horrors of a state like the Nazis would have been precluded had that state itself been more along the lines of a government of your choosing...and people generally think theirs is the government goldilocks would choose regardless....but how it is built to respond to that without (as in foreign) which it cannot control must also be considered. This is not a definitive commentary, but as my academic political immersion has stressed I.R. much more than theory/ internal p.s., it's the often-overlooked aspect I find interesting. I find political laboratories like the Greek or Italian city states to be so fascinating because you see varied political theories expounded and attempted in an incredibly organic environment, wherein their nature must absolutely account for the relationship between the state and individual at the exact same time as the relationship with other states, and even other types of government. States rise and fall on the merits of any and all, and these tend to be the germination stages for much of the political theory that subsequent generations use and build on to this very day.

[Seli]

...

It is not that I don't want clean water, effective environmental protection, or pollution controls, I do want those things. It is simply that those regulations, among others, give governments more clubs to use as tools for abuse, I fear the moments when people act like those who support the Governments of the Nazi's, the Khmer Rouge, and the US in rounding up and Jailing Japanese-Americans for being Japanese or alleged "Communists" during the two "Red Scares".

Does that make sense?

It makes some sense. But I fear the moments that caused things like Bophal, burning rivers, the London Killing Smogs, smallpox epidemics, etc. as well.

And while keeping power away from government might buy a little time once enough people decide it needs to act against some of the population it is supposed to protect, it will hurt me directly if prevented from these environmental regulations. Government is never what caused these things, it was always the people themselves.

[Athias]

athias--

not seeing the strawperson, to be honest. y'all are complaining about 'hate' for libertarian positions; it is not 'hate'; y'all are not under 'attack,' as i noted in the hugo thread regarding torgs and the rest. it is rather disagreement in a democratic society; this should not bother alleged libertarians; that y'all consider disagreement to be 'hate' indicates an aversion for democratic debate, a totalitarian insistence on control of contending opinion. it's an unworthy rhetoric for anyone, but goddam athias, you personally are better than that; i've seen it. sometimes the antagonism is earned, one might admit; am doubtful, for instance, that you'd accept the wide-eyed virginal 'why are you so hateful?' bit from me were i to throw the same vulgar marxist molotovs into every single conversation and then receive vigorous resistance arising therefrom? it is a rhetoric of fake victimization.

I'm not claiming 'hate for libertarian positions'--though 'conflict' may be a better word; I'm claiming hate for libertarians, here, on this forum: and not by all members. I'm not projecting this as some objective characterization of objection to Libertarianism. (There are consistently held objections to Libertarianism.) It's an evaluation--speculation, even--but not a complaint. But I suppose this is all moot. It, my comment that is, has no place in meaningful debate (I never suggested that it did.) I responded to a small snippet. Full of rhetoric? Sure. And I can see how my response to a comment that suggested that everyone hates libertarians may imply an objection to an ubiquitous hatred. And to that, I concede.

Secondly, please don't use "y'all." I've said this many times: I'm not a Libertarian. I take no issue defending Libertarianism from false characterizations. (I've also defended Marxism.) But I am neither a Libertarian nor a Marxist. And while some may see the difference between my held positions and those of libertarians as an inconsequential nuance, that nuance is significant enough to me to characterize my positions accordingly.

fairly reasonable to assume, on the ordinary meaning of the words, that 'live and let live' is a non-interference/isolationist principle, no? what other reading is there for it? if it is not that sort of principle, then what is the meaning of the metaphor? provide some content, by all means. of course no one has explicitly said non-interference/isolation, because libertarianism does not normally set forth actual arguments with any precision, relying instead on unsubstantiated and unsubstantiable abstractions such as "individual." (if 'collectivism' is so evil, i don't see y'all rushing to abolish private anti-individualist 'collectivisms,' such as corporations--no wonder why that is!) this is fairly manifestly not my defect.

That's fairly reasonable to assume. Yet, a quick google search would have yielded these results:

Live and Let Live is an idiom [which] expresses the idea that all should be able to live their lives in the manner they want to, regardless of what others may think of them. (Urban Dictionary)

An idiom expressing the ideal of allowing each other to live their lives as each sees fit (Wikipedia.)

Live and let live is the spontaneous rise of non-aggressive co-operative behaviour that developed during the First World War... (Also from Wikipedia.)

From the free dictionary:

Cliché not to interfere with other people's business or preferences.

Show tolerance for those different from yourself

believing that other people should be allowed to live their lives in the way that they want to

to accept other people as they are, although they may have a different way of life.

------

What is unreasonable sologdin is to argue on behalf of a definition that you had assumed isolated to your description, especially when you were not the one who originally proffered the idea, and then project as a liability of an opposing argument. You could have asked what OrangeStallion had meant. That is where you imputed the strawman.

And now, it seems as though you are operating on a conflation of "non-interference" and "isolation"--those two are not the same--and the non sequitur: "collectivism is evil." Again, tell me: who claimed collectivism was "evil"? You "wonder" why Libertarians have not sought to abolish "anti-individualist collectivisms" like corporations. Simple: libertarians who subscribe to the principle of liberty would not seek to coerce an association. To "abolish" corporations is to interfere with an individual's right to associate with whomever he or she wants. As long as a corporation embodies voluntary participation, I don't see how how it's anti-libertarian or even anti-individualist. Sure, you can argue that corporations are collective structures, whereas I can argue a corporation is merely a circuit of voluntary individual participation of which each member voluntarily defers tasks and authority with an identical goal in mind.

if 'live and let live' doctrine is a non-interference/isolationist principle, then market mechanisms are by definition inconsistent with it, as you appear to admit. if that is the case, why should we prefer the interference of market mechanisms over the interference of the state? y'all have no principle there, other than a desire to evade democratic control over property--but will nevertheless insist, like ayn rand, i suppose, on state protection for property; it is just free-riding, is all.

Who are the ones who insist on state protection? The minarchists? Ayn Rand? And this is somehow a reflection of libertarian priniciple? Other than minarchists, I don't know others--libertarian claimants--who insist on state protection. You are right in the sense that it's hypocritical to insist on some form of democracy in forming law, that consequently results in the protection of one's property, while at the same time arguing that one's private property is immune to said democracy.

[Seli]

...

Who are the ones who insist on state protection? The minarchists? Ayn Rand? And this is somehow a reflection of libertarian priniciple? Other than minarchists, I don't know others--libertarian claimants--who insist on state protection. You are right in the sense that it's hypocritical to insist on some form of democracy in forming law, that consequently results in the protection of one's property, while at the same time arguing that one's private property is immune to said democracy.

All of them? They suppose a system that will determine and define property, determine violation of NAP, and punish violation of NAP. Which definitely seems to be a state, which is supposed to be there to protect them.

[Athias]

All of them? They suppose a system that will determine and define property, determine violation of NAP, and punish violation of NAP. Which definitely seems to be a state, which is supposed to be there to protect them.

Yes, a system of moral and ethics that informs the acquisition of property and its ownership. How is that a State? Have they argued that dealing "punishment" as a result of violating the non-aggression priniciple should be centralized to a select group of arbiters?