Do you support a Libertarian Utopia?

[civver_764]

These arguments are just annoying to read. Hardly any details are discussed, it's just a contest of who has the best rhetoric.

I've got a serious question: What's the difference between someone who owns a significant portion of land and exercises "private" control over it and a government who uses police to do the same thing? Monarchies were essentially just wealthy landowners, weren't they?

 

[Mark1031]

The example in the OP is set in today's environment with today's politicians and today's attitude and will not work as a result of that.

But you realize that that is the point of the usage in the OP (it was tongue in cheek and mocking). And your argument is the same as the apologists for Communism's failure. The whole idea is to devise a functional and fair and freedom/pleasure etc. maximizing system based on what human beings are rather than some ideal of what they are certainly not.

 

[warpus]

The government is forcing me to:

1. Pay taxes
2. Use a specific currency

I feel bad for you, you are so oppressed.. This aggression will not stand!

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

But you realize that that is the point of the usage in the OP (it was tongue in cheek and mocking). And your argument is the same as the apologists for Communism's failure. The whole idea is to devise a functional and fair and freedom/pleasure etc. maximizing system based on what human beings are rather than some ideal of what they are certainly not.

If the apologists used "it's a great system, it just doesn't work with humans" it sounds more like an admission of defeat to me

I'm not surprised Tenochtitlan didn't react.

 

[Cutlass]

Different banks take different risks. People who want less risk would deposit in banks that do not take much risk with other people's money, and would buy insurance. They would also be free to choose which currency they want, and not be forced into one prone to destructive business cycles such as contemporary fiat currencies.

Doesn't work. First, without government regulation there won't be a selection of banks. Second, the customer has really no ability to judge, or even to know of, the risks that the banks take, and the relative risks of the different banks. And third, a bank does not just risk the money of the depositors, but in fact all of the people who never have anything to do with the bank because the economy as a whole takes the hit when there is a banking crisis.

If you don't regulate polluters, Then they will poison the environment and innocent people will sicken and die the property of many innocent people will be damaged or destroyed.

I agree with this one, since polluting is an act of aggression against others. We do not have the right to pollute the air or water that would result in damaging health of anyone outside the community. Internal pollution regulations that only affect the community are agreed upon within the community.

I'm glad you feel that way. How do you enforce it? There isn't a market mechanism for doing so.

If you don't regulate employers, Then the employees will be harmed and killed by the unsafe working conditions they are compelled to work in.
Employers do not have the right to force employees into unsafe working conditions

I'm glad you feel that way. How do you enforce it? There isn't a market mechanism for doing so.

If you don't regulate manufacturers, Then then they will produce unsafe products that sicken, injure, and kill, innocent customers.
Amadeus mentioned earlier an example of market-regulated products. There is no need for a centralized coercive authority for this to work.

Ama is wrong. For every instance in which the market forced an unsafe product out of selling, there are 1000 people dead of an unsafe product that the companies made money off selling and never went off the market until the government forced the issue.

The market is not capable of doing this in the overwhelming majority of cases.

Deregulation is, in and of itself, an act of aggression with either the intent to harm or best case the reckless disregard of harm to innocent people.
I'm not even arguing for deregulation, it's just that we do not believe a system of regulation necessitates a centralized coercive authority.

So regulation without anyone to actually do it? The market isn't going to do it. So who will?

And so you make it clear that doing harm is either your intent, or something you completely disregard in your designs. But you don't have the right to harm people by intent, and you don't have the right to harm people through reckless disregard for their safety.

You are not going to leave others alone. So you don't have the right to have your potential victims leave others alone.

What if we pulled it off and were able to sustain a community that does no harm to outsiders or members?

But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.

You have to demonstrate that all are angels before we can even have that discussion.

 

[Mark1031]

You have to demonstrate that all are angels before we can even have that discussion.

Exactly. What the libertarian argument fails to acknowledge is that people seek power over other people and that money is power. While libertarians chafe under the power of government, and rightly so in many cases, they seem to be blind to the notion of power from any other source. Are they not aware that the biggest problem with the power of government at the moment, in the US at least, is that it is corrupted by the people with money buying control to help themselves at the expense of others. The proposed society would quickly devolve into corporate labor camps where workers were paid in minimal food and lodging in the company town with private police forces to stomp any complaints just like in the Libertarian Utopia at the end of the 19th century. It has been tried before many times in history. The key question is how to distribute resources efficiently without the wealth accumulation leading to run away corruption and exploitation. Asking nicely and invisible hands do not seem to work.

 

[El_Machinae]

I've got a serious question: What's the difference between someone who owns a significant portion of land and exercises "private" control over it and a government who uses police to do the same thing? Monarchies were essentially just wealthy landowners, weren't they?

I'm curious regarding this as well. You're welcome to use our roads, but just keep in mind that they're ours.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

I was wondering where this thread went.

Reminder about some key questions

I'm glad you feel that way. How do you enforce it? There isn't a market mechanism for doing so.

How to enforce regulations? How to check whether regulations are met?

Exactly. What the libertarian argument fails to acknowledge is that people seek power over other people and that money is power. While libertarians chafe under the power of government, and rightly so in many cases, they seem to be blind to the notion of power from any other source. Are they not aware that the biggest problem with the power of government at the moment, in the US at least, is that it is corrupted by the people with money buying control to help themselves at the expense of others.

How to overcome human nature in a libertarian utopia?

I've got a serious question: What's the difference between someone who owns a significant portion of land and exercises "private" control over it and a government who uses police to do the same thing? Monarchies were essentially just wealthy landowners, weren't they?

And what is the difference?

 

[Traitorfish]

Exactly. What the libertarian argument fails to acknowledge is that people seek power over other people and that money is power.

"Exactly. What their philosophical anthropology fails to acknowledge is that my philosophical anthropology is better. Why oh why can't they see that I'm just right?"

I don't disagree that the right-libertarian conception of society is broken in several dozen different ways, but this? This is just lazy.

 

[HannibalBarka]

It's this "progress"-at-all-costs mentality that I think leads a lot of Objectivists into supporting things that conflict with their ideology; Rand was a zealous supporter of Israel as a "civilized" nation and believed that the U.S. government had a moral obligation to support (subsidize) Israel.

Rand supported Israel because she was jewish. If she stood to her libertarian belief, she wouldn't have supported the Kibbutz!! Kibbutz was the exact opposite of her Utopia

 

[Tahuti]

Rand supported Israel because she was jewish. If she stood to her libertarian belief, she wouldn't have supported the Kibbutz!! Kibbutz was the exact opposite of her Utopia

Doubtful: Religiously, Ayn Rand was an Atheist who strongly lapsed the Jewish religion. She had little reason to care for Israel other than despising the Arab countries, which she did.

 

[Traitorfish]

And you can be sure that if Israel had ended up in the Soviet orbit, she would have opposed it in every instance, regardless of its formal ethnic character.

 

[HannibalBarka]

And you can be sure that if Israel had ended up in the Soviet orbit, she would have opposed it in every instance, regardless of its formal ethnic character.

Allow me to doubt that. Sure Rand was an atheist jew, ie she was jewish by heritage not by belief, but that rarely matters when it comes to jewish support to the State of Israel. The first Zionist were all non religious to say the least and even had to fight againt the religious jews who were opposing a man made return of the jews to Israel. Ben Gurion and Wizeman were any thing but "devout" jews.
Ayn Rand suffered from the Holocaust almost directly and regarded Israel as a needed place for the jews to be safe and that is why she supported Israel even though Israel was evidently a "socialist" state (that is by the way what made Stalin be the first leader to recognize Israel).
Ayn Rand, like the rest of us, is not a "machine who thinks" but a human being whose opinion are also influenced by its feelings. And in the Israel case I think her "jewishness" played a major role in her opinion. The fact that Arabs were "backward aliens" according to her did also help indeed. But were Israel been founded in the heart of Hounshu, I think she would have supported the Socialsit Zionist against the Japanese Capitalist.

 

[Ajidica]

Ayn Rand suffered from the Holocaust almost directly

Yes, living in America during the holocaust certiantly was directly suffering from it.
EDIT: Blech, wiki is down so I can't confirm that, but I believe after the Russian Revolution she came to America with her family.

 

[Traitorfish]

Allow me to doubt that. Sure Rand was an atheist jew, ie she was jewish by heritage not by belief, but that rarely matters when it comes to jewish support to the State of Israel.

Aaaand this is where I ask you if you have any idea quite how anti-Semitic that sounds?

The first Zionist were all non religious to say the least and even had to fight againt the religious jews who were opposing a man made return of the jews to Israel. Ben Gurion and Wizeman were any thing but "devout" jews.
Ayn Rand suffered from the Holocaust almost directly and regarded Israel as a needed place for the jews to be safe and that is why she supported Israel even though Israel was evidently a "socialist" state (that is by the way what made Stalin be the first leader to recognize Israel).
Ayn Rand, like the rest of us, is not a "machine who thinks" but a human being whose opinion are also influenced by its feelings. And in the Israel case I think her "jewishness" played a major role in her opinion. The fact that Arabs were "backward aliens" according to her did also help indeed. But were Israel been founded in the heart of Hounshu, I think she would have supported the Socialsit Zionist against the Japanese Capitalist.

If it's a question of ethnic identity, then, she still doesn't qualify as someone of exceptionally above average Jewishness. She basically identified as Russian, her Jewish ancestry being a genealogical artefact rather than an active identity. This wasn't unusual among the Russian intellectual stratum, because there had for a very long time been a pressure to adapt themselves to mainstream society, with which even a latent Jewish identity was regarded as incompatible. (No multiculturalism in Tsarist Russia!) The very fact that her family lived outside of the Pale of Settlement, which you'll recall wasn't abolished until 1917, illustrates how distant they had become from their roots.

 

[HannibalBarka]

Aaaand this is where I ask you if you have any idea quite how anti-Semitic that sounds?

Why would that sound anti-semetic? the vast majority of jewish people support Israel in its right to exist and a sizable minority to say the least in its actions almost no matter what. But I also think that Palestinians and Arabs, to take the opposite side, do support the Palestinians "proto" state and its actions same wise.Do you thinks I am also being "anti-ismaleite"?

If it's a question of ethnic identity, then, she still doesn't qualify as someone of exceptionally above average Jewishness. She basically identified as Russian, her Jewish ancestry being a genealogical artefact rather than an active identity. This wasn't unusual among the Russian intellectual stratum, because there had for a very long time been a pressure to adapt themselves to mainstream society, with which even a latent Jewish identity was regarded as incompatible. (No multiculturalism in Tsarist Russia!) The very fact that her family lived outside of the Pale of Settlement, which you'll recall wasn't abolished until 1917, illustrates how distant they had become from their roots.

But that is the heart of the european jewish dilemma in the 19th and early 20th century: were they part of the "jewish" nation or the "host" nation. Herzl thought of himself as being "austrian" and its witnessing of the Dreyfus Affair that made him think that the Jews can't integrate into the host nations and therefore needed to have their own. Herzl was jewish culturally and not religiously like Ayn Rand.
On the other hand , many, and a majority post Holocaust, among the jew who felt of themselves as being "russian" or "french" first did support the Zionists because of the "We need a safe place incase" thinking. So Rand being non religious and "integrated" is in my opinion no reason to think that her support for Israel was, among other things, motivated, by her jewishness.

 

[kochman]

But that is the heart of the european jewish dilemma in the 19th and early 20th century: were they part of the "jewish" nation or the "host" nation. Herzl thought of himself as being "austrian" and its witnessing of the Dreyfus Affair that made him think that the Jews can't integrate into the host nations and therefore needed to have their own. Herzl was jewish culturally and not religiously like Ayn Rand.
On the other hand , many, and a majority post Holocaust, among the jew who felt of themselves as being "russian" or "french" first did support the Zionists because of the "We need a safe place incase" thinking. So Rand being non religious and "integrated" is in my opinion no reason to think that her support for Israel was, among other things, motivated, by her jewishness.

Before the Holocaust most found themselves to be German or Polish first, then Jewish... those who didn't already lived in the Holy Land...

Today, most American Jews, for example (or any ethnic group that's been there for more than a generation), think of themselves as American first...

 

[Traitorfish]

Why would that sound anti-semetic? the vast majority of jewish people support Israel in its right to exist and a sizable minority to say the least in its actions almost no matter what.

Noting a correlation is acceptable. But that's not what you did: you posited that Jews support Israel because they are Jewish, and, indeed, that above all other reasons. The generalising logic is quite the same as that which lead to the assumption that all Japanese-Americans were sympathetic to the Empire.

But I also think that Palestinians and Arabs, to take the opposite side, do support the Palestinians "proto" state and its actions same wise.Do you thinks I am also being "anti-ismaleite"?

If you think that Arabs are uniformly pro-Palestine, and this only because of their related ethnic backgrounds, then you don't really really know very much about the Arabs or about Palestine.

And, I'll point out, I didn't say that you are anti-Semitic, or that you are being anti-Semitic, just that what you said sounded anti-Semitic, with the implication that this should lead you to inspect it more closely. That's a crucial and sincere distinction.

But that is the heart of the european jewish dilemma in the 19th and early 20th century: were they part of the "jewish" nation or the "host" nation. Herzl thought of himself as being "austrian" and its witnessing of the Dreyfus Affair that made him think that the Jews can't integrate into the host nations and therefore needed to have their own. Herzl was jewish culturally and not religiously like Ayn Rand.
On the other hand , many, and a majority post Holocaust, among the jew who felt of themselves as being "russian" or "french" first did support the Zionists because of the "We need a safe place incase" thinking. So Rand being non religious and "integrated" is in my opinion no reason to think that her support for Israel was, among other things, motivated, by her jewishness.

So because some Jews came to that conclusion, all individuals of Jewish ancestry who supported Israel can simply be assumed to support that conclusion? That's pure conjecture.

Before the Holocaust most found themselves to be German or Polish first, then Jewish... those who didn't already lived in the Holy Land...

Germany, perhaps, but Poland was more complicated. The Jewish experience varied quite significantly there to begin with, between the towns and the cities and between the former German-Austria and Russian regions (the Tsarist state having been institutionally anti-Semitic), and on various other factors such as local political orientation. This part of Europe was still having some difficulty figuring out which "nations" it was actually comprised of, and there was a strong feeling both among Poles and Jews that the two constituted distinct nationalities. Furthermore, that "Jewish nation" was often characterised as Yiddish and Europe, rather than Hebrew and Levantine, so it can't simply be assumed that all Jewish nationalists were already in Palestine when a great many of them considered the de facto "Jewish homeland" to be in Eastern Europe.

...And I realise that this seems to be contradicting my original point (damn my pedantry), so I'll point out that there's a significant distinction between a Yiddish-speaking peasant in rural Poland and a Russian-speaking intellectual in St. Petersburg, even before we consider individual religiosity and strength of identification.

 

[HannibalBarka]

Before the Holocaust most found themselves to be German or Polish first, then Jewish... those who didn't already lived in the Holy Land...

Today, most American Jews, for example (or any ethnic group that's been there for more than a generation), think of themselves as American first...

I know, and most, second generation, Arab American think of themselves as American first as you said. But that is not uncompatible with the fact that a vast majority of American Jews support Israel when the vast majority of Arab American support "Palestine".

 

[Leoreth]

"Exactly. What their philosophical anthropology fails to acknowledge is that my philosophical anthropology is better. Why oh why can't they see that I'm just right?"

I don't disagree that the right-libertarian conception of society is broken in several dozen different ways, but this? This is just lazy.

That would be a better argument if most libertarians wouldn't field the "government is evil because people abuse it to gain power over others" argument themselves.

They already conceded that people seek power over others, so why don't engage on this common ground?