U.S. Politics: Don't call it a shutdown

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Death by zesting. Ouch.

[Shryke]

Weirwood,

Libertarians tend to be fairly serious about defending individual liberties and are willing to use government power to do so. A government of limited powers does not equate to anarchic (in the generic not leftist political sense) free for all where Government has no effective power to protect the lives and property of its citizens.

You are assuming anarchy must be the result of a libertarian state. Given the fact that Somalia was not a libertarian state before it collasped could anarchy not be the end result of a more powerful centralized state too? You are assuming that limited government must mean ineffective government. That does not necessarily follow. You are allowing your assumptions to provide your conclusion.

No, he's assuming a libertarian government would have no interest in looking out for the welfare of it's people. By design.

The examples used (protect the welfare of its people, steer the economy or provide relief for natural disasters) are all things Libertarians don't want the state doing.

[WeirwoodTreeHugger]

Ser Scot A Ellison, on 06 Oct 2013 - 3:50 PM, said:

Weirwood,

Libertarians tend to be fairly serious about defending individual liberties and are willing to use government power to do so. A government of limited powers does not equate to anarchic (in the generic not leftist political sense) free for all where Government has no effective power to protect the lives and property of its citizens.

You are assuming anarchy must be the result of a libertarian state. Given the fact that Somalia was not a libertarian state before it collasped could anarchy not be the end result of a more powerful centralized state too? You are assuming that limited government must mean ineffective government. That does not necessarily follow. You are allowing your assumptions to provide your conclusion.

Military and property laws are not sufficient to protect citizens. Libertarianism assumes that property is the only right. A government that doesn't regulate food and environmental safety isn't protecting it's citizens. Labor laws are necessary to protect people from being abused and underpayed by their employers.

A citizen in a country with universal healthcare has the right to not die of preventable and treatable diseases. Even though the government is taking taxes to pay for the healthcare whether each individual citizen likes it or not, they are still more free than somebody who is sick and can't do anything about it because he/she doesn't have access to affordable health care.

This is where libertarianism loses me. I get wanting the government to stay out of citizens daily lives. I'm pro choice, anti drug war and anti theocracy after all. It's just the notion that property rights are the only rights government should enforce that makes no sense. What puts the right to own property over the right to health or the right to an education?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Weirwood,

You are still using Somalia to paint an unflattering characature of libertarianism. Somalia is not now and has never been a libertarian state.

Shryke,

Do you really believe that no libertarians care about people in a given State? That only those who want to use the State to further their goals are people who "care"?

[Shryke]

Shryke,

Do you really believe that no libertarians care about people in a given State? That only those who want to use the State to further their goals are people who "care"?

I think they don't believe the government should do anything about those concerns and like to ignore the results of that.

Same results in the end.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Shryke,

Are Statists who ignore people before them that are in need under the justification that there are programs to help those people any more moral than the libertertarians you claim don't care?

[Ser Greguh]

Weirwood,

Libertarians tend to be fairly serious about defending individual liberties and are willing to use government power to do so. A government of limited powers does not equate to anarchic (in the generic not leftist political sense) free for all where Government has no effective power to protect the lives and property of its citizens.

You are assuming anarchy must be the result of a libertarian state. Given the fact that Somalia was not a libertarian state before it collasped could anarchy not be the end result of a more powerful centralized state too? You are assuming that limited government must mean ineffective government. That does not necessarily follow. You are allowing your assumptions to provide your conclusion.

Libertarians tend to talk pretty serious about individual liberties, but their policy positions, if enacted, would systematically gut a great percentage of the practical means we have to protect those very liberties. Many (most?) people that describe themselves as capital-L Libertarians resolve this fairly obvious cognitive dissonance by hand-waving effectively magical properties to the Free Market that, if real, would mean no protection of those liberties would be necessary. Problem is, they're not.

Case in point is the Libertarian desire to dissolve the FDA, a common talking point among Paulites that sounds great in theory (look at how many fuckups can be laid to the FDA's door) but would in practice be a total disaster. Libertarians think this would be a good thing because they ascribe hyper-simplistic properties to "Freedom" as though it were literally synonymous with less government, but their hyper-simplistic equation completely ignores the well-documented and easily observable abuses that actually occur when the awful oppressive government is brought back down to size. In their version of the Free Market (which I often describe as having frictionless surfaces and weightless ropes and pullies), companies perfectly self-regulate against the sort of abuses that the FDA protects against, rendering the agency obsolete increasing Freedom! through less government. What actually happens is that all the corporate abuses that the FDA was created to protect against come back, and in force, and the populace is left with no effective means of countering them.

This is because the Libertarian equation of lessGovernment==moreFreedom is comically simplistic and doesn't take into account the fact that yes, when you reduce the power of government, sometimes the result is a net increase of freedom, but more often, the power simply transfers to an entity (probably corporate) over which the general populace has even less control than it does over the layered and sometimes labrynthine bureaucratic entites of a government, because that government, layered and labrynthine as it can sometimes be, is still an entity that answers to a democracy, and WalMart never will be. It is truly staggering to me that so many Libertarians are so uncompromising to governments treading on personal freedom and yet have no concept of how effortlessly the private replacements they so adamantly defend fill that void. Imagine Enron x100, and you get the actual result of the full enactment of a Libertarian state. It would be functionally no different from Somalia.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

SerG,

Please, kindly, do not lump me with those who see compromise as an anathmatic concept. I'm the libertarian who has said he'd prefer single payer to the ACA because it deals with the real issue medical costs. Not all libertarians are dogmatists unwilling to compromise. As not all Statists see the State as the be all paneca to any and all ills.

Somalia is not and has never been a libertarian state. It is a former centralized government that fell into an anarchic civil war.

[sologdin]

true nuff, scot. barre regime was part of soviet bloc until '77 when he adopted nationalist greater somali policy and invaded commie ethiopia, which was supported by the world left. barre switched sides to the US thereafter. but he started a maoist.

the post-barre descent into post-socialist warlordism doesn't tally to any doctrine except coldwarism.

[WeirwoodTreeHugger]

Ser Scot A Ellison, on 06 Oct 2013 - 4:52 PM, said:

Weirwood,

You are still using Somalia to paint an unflattering characature of libertarianism. Somalia is not now and has never been a libertarian state.

Shryke,

Do you really believe that no libertarians care about people in a given State? That only those who want to use the State to further their goals are people who "care"?

I explicitly did not say that Somalia was a libertarian state. I said it was an example of government that doesn't look out for the welfare of its people. The end result of a failed state would be similar to the end result of a libertarian state.

As I said, there are no countries that have no government except for military and the enforcement of property rights. There never have been. Libertarians have never been able to defend the lack of libertarian states. If a libertarian state is anything more than a Randian fantasy, why hasn't it been done? Why has there never been a popular movement get rid of all the government services?

I found this lovely example of how much Ron Paul fans care about people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PepQF7G-It0&feature=player_detailpage

What a proud moment that was.

[lokisnow]

Watched the Butler today, was reminded that the Tea Party is basically comprised of all the same people who were in the KKK or were otherwise pro-segregation, anti civil rights, anti equality, anti great society, anti voting rights act. Unrelated to the current libertarian argument, I was also having the thought while watching the movie that libertarians often say they want property rights defended, but only if it is white property rights that are being defended (funny how almost all libertarians are white southerners), and I also thought, isn't it also funny that libertarianism is really just an expression of white privilege--that because whites have never experienced a world where they need any rights protected (other than property rights) from day to day they don't think any other rights should count or be protected.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

locksnow,

but only if it is white property rights that are being defended (funny how almost all libertarians are white southerners)

That is most certainly not my position nor is it the position of any libertarian I've had the opportunity to converse with. What you are doing in throwing that nasty little aside is really unkind. You are forcing words into the mouths of anyone who has claimed the libertarian sobrique and is, quite frankly, beneath you.

[Fenryng]

I am thinking that Obama can get the upper hand in this; whether he does now or not I do not know. My reasoning is thus -

He cannot get re-elected again, and there is no higher office to run for, politically. I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong, but I am not aware of any former President going on to hold any other publicly-elected offices once their presidential term is up. Therefore, depending upon how much he cares about being viewed in the history books, he has no reason to budge.

On the other side, presumably all of the people in the House and Senate DO want to get elected again. And if the general population, who already despise Congress regardless of political affiliation, get on Obama's side, there could be people who waiver.

If he says that he is willing to talk about the budget being changed with the exception of his healthcare plan, and then just waits it out, I think he has a shot, at least.

[Fez]

I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong, but I am not aware of any former President going on to hold any other publicly-elected offices once their presidential term is up.

John Quincy Adams served in the House for 19 years after his presidency. I think he first ran just so he could piss off Andrew Jackson.

But I agree with your larger point.

[Fenryng]

I knew someone would not let me down. Thanks, Fez. Although I am surprised it would have been Jackson he was trying to annoy; I would have guessed Jefferson.

From a morbid fascination point of view, I am curious to see how long this lasts. It might even make the elections next year fractionally interesting; to see what sort of House and Senate Obama has to deal with for the last two years of his term.

[TerraPrime]

I will say that the Liberterians I've read posts from and otherwise read about are not the type of overt racists that harbor animosity towards black people like some of the tea party people are. I think the Liberterians are simply prioritizing personal freedom ahead of addressing structural social inequality like racism and sexism. For instance, Liberterians would favor dismissing the EEOC and the laws prohibiting job discrimination based on race and sex, because they believe that (1) the market force will lead us to the best solution, even if the solution means black people and women are earning lower than their fair share of wage, and/or (2) it is more important to safeguard people's right to free association than it is to protect people from unfair discrimination. IT's not that they actively want to see black Americans to continue to be over-represented in the bottom levels of SEC in the U.S., it's just that they don't really care if that were the case, or not. In their view, the government is the wrong approach to solve these social issues, if they even agree that these social issues exist at all.

I mean, that's the basis for much of Rand Paul's response to the civil rights act (WaPo article on it), correct?

And that seems to be the thinking of many Liberterians on many social issues.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Fenryng,

Taft was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court after his term as President, but that's not an elected position.

[Fez]

I knew someone would not let me down. Thanks, Fez. Although I am surprised it would have been Jackson he was trying to annoy; I would have guessed Jefferson.

I think by the time Quincy really got his political career started, his father and Jefferson had already buried the hatchet and become friends again. And both died during his presidency so they never saw him run for the House in the midterms after his loss.

Andrew Johnson also won a Senate seat a few years after being President, although he died only a few months into his term.

[Shryke]

I am thinking that Obama can get the upper hand in this; whether he does now or not I do not know. My reasoning is thus -

He cannot get re-elected again, and there is no higher office to run for, politically. I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong, but I am not aware of any former President going on to hold any other publicly-elected offices once their presidential term is up. Therefore, depending upon how much he cares about being viewed in the history books, he has no reason to budge.

On the other side, presumably all of the people in the House and Senate DO want to get elected again. And if the general population, who already despise Congress regardless of political affiliation, get on Obama's side, there could be people who waiver.

If he says that he is willing to talk about the budget being changed with the exception of his healthcare plan, and then just waits it out, I think he has a shot, at least.

I don't think Obama is gonna budge cause he, rightly, sees this as a major constitutional crisis.

If he backs down here, then he's ceded executive authority to the House of Representatives, who are now allowed to decide what government services exist without having to pass any legislature or risking any vetos. All via taking the entire country hostage.

[Shryke]

I will say that the Liberterians I've read posts from and otherwise read about are not the type of overt racists that harbor animosity towards black people like some of the tea party people are. I think the Liberterians are simply prioritizing personal freedom ahead of addressing structural social inequality like racism and sexism. For instance, Liberterians would favor dismissing the EEOC and the laws prohibiting job discrimination based on race and sex, because they believe that (1) the market force will lead us to the best solution, even if the solution means black people and women are earning lower than their fair share of wage, and/or (2) it is more important to safeguard people's right to free association than it is to protect people from unfair discrimination. IT's not that they actively want to see black Americans to continue to be over-represented in the bottom levels of SEC in the U.S., it's just that they don't really care if that were the case, or not. In their view, the government is the wrong approach to solve these social issues, if they even agree that these social issues exist at all.

I mean, that's the basis for much of Rand Paul's response to the civil rights act (WaPo article on it), correct?

And that seems to be the thinking of many Liberterians on many social issues.

Which is the thinking of the privileged who've never been on the wrong side of those issues.

It's easy to talk about how you don't need equal employment laws when you are a white male.