So, what's wrong with Libertarianism?

[Tahuti]

Actually, with a good deal of historical and economic argument on my side, I can.

Except that pretty much EVERY African country is a failed state, and pre-"Stateless" Somalia was no exception.

In some ways, the collapse of the Somalian central government in 1991 was beneficial in comparison to the periods before it, as the new de-facto states (including ICU territory and the self-declared Republic of Somaliland) struggled to implement economic regulations, enforcement of arguably harmful regulations ceased as well. This allowed for improvements of Somalia's communications sector, and Somalia has one of Africa's best telecommunication networks and internet access thanks to its lack of effective regulations, most of which was apparently harmful - and the casual link being much less tenuous than No Government => Chaos, Pirates & terrorists.

This doesn't make Somalia an example to be followed, as Somalia was and still is by most metrics a bad country to live in. But it isn't as one-sided as "Once upon a time there was a government in Somalia, but then it collapsed, and so it was that the people lived lives that were nasty, brutish and short", as if it was somehow not bad already.

 

[Traitorfish]

Perhaps we could skip to bluntest of blunt points and say "Thank God there was a government in Poland in 1943, or who knows what terrible things could have happened?"

 

[Dachs]

Actually, with a good deal of historical and economic argument on my side, I can.

Except people have been hammering AJR specifically and econometrics in general for correlation-causation issues for the last two-odd decades.

 

[Tahuti]

Perhaps we could skip to bluntest of blunt points and say "Thank God there was a government in Poland in 1943, or who knows what terrible things could have happened?"

True dat. The Reich saved Poland from the filthy hands of those who would turn it into 1940s Europe version of stateless Somalia.

 

[Ayatollah So]

The problem with libertarianism - broadly defined to include both left and right stripes - is that it overvalues liberty. At the expense of other values that help make life worth living. Wrong weightings in, wrong answers out.

With inclusive groups, you have people wrong in all directions, and the compromise is something in the middle that most people can live with.

I would have thought you'd appeal to the wisdom of crowds:

A classic demonstration of group intelligence is the jelly-beans-in-the-jar experiment, in which invariably the group's estimate is superior to the vast majority of the individual guesses. When finance professor Jack Treynor ran the experiment in his class with a jar that held 850 beans, the group estimate was 871. Only one of the fifty-six people in the class made a better guess.

The idea being, I guess, that random noise tends to cancel out, but genuine knowledge distributed throughout the crowd adds up, when averaged. I suspect that in the bigger picture, crowd-wisdom follows Col's rule ("Extensive research has shown that sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.")

(Whatever happened to Col, anyway?)

This is the inconsistent part. Either taxes are bad and need to be abolished or they aren’t and can be used to fund public services according to what democratic elected leaders deem necessary. After all, if governement is so bad, why would you let it control the army?

This.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

True dat. The Reich saved Poland from the filthy hands of those who would turn it into 1940s Europe version of stateless Somalia.

Because your position is not clear, in the light of Poe's Law, let us make it so: Fascist government is preferable to no imposed government, yes or no?

 

[Lord Baal]

Because your position is not clear, in the light of Poe's Law, let us make it so: Fascist government is preferable to no imposed government, yes or no?

Say what you will about Fascists, but they make the trains run on time.

 

[Part_Time_Civer]

Actually, with a good deal of historical and economic argument on my side, I can.

Don't you understand that I'm not challenging your conclusion, but the way you arrived at it?

 

[ParkCungHee]

True dat. The Reich saved Poland from the filthy hands of those who would turn it into 1940s Europe version of stateless Somalia.

And we don't even have to imagine how bad it would be! Look at how much better of the Chinese people were with the nice strong state apparatus the Kwangtung Army provided. How relieved the women of Nanjing must have been that they were part of a process that would save their people!

Alas, all of China is not as well today. Since the 1970s, the Island of Taiwan has been reduced to a state of Anarchy. The people cry out (or would, if they weren't an unintelligent rabble) for the strong hand of Japan or China to guide them.

 

[Tahuti]

Because your position is not clear, in the light of Poe's Law, let us make it so: Fascist government is preferable to no imposed government, yes or no?

I prefer any anarcho-capitalist or anarcho-communist utopia everyday over fascism.

 

[Cutlass]

Don't you understand that I'm not challenging your conclusion, but the way you arrived at it?

You may be challenging the way I expressed it. But I'm not sure you know how I arrived at it.

In theory, there's no reason to make the assumption that a society with little to no government is going to result in the outcomes that hard libertarians will assume it would. People have never been shown to act like that in large numbers and a complex society/economy in the past. And it entirely ignores how people routinely behave now.

So hard libertarians are assuming an outcome opposite to all evidence.

Why does Somalia come into these discussions? Because there is no centralized authority that has the ability to compel people to behave in ways which are not predatory towards others. Maybe it has some government, but it does not stop extra-governmental predation of people on people.

And, by the same token, hard libertarianism also does not have any centralized authority that has the ability to compel people to behave in ways that are not predatory towards others. They simply make the assumption that people will not behave like that.

And yet in the real world people act in ways harmful to others all the time. So the hard libertarian has to make the argument that no people, none at all, will act in ways in which many people act currently.

And that is fundamentally an irrational argument.

 

[Traitorfish]

If preventing predatory behaviour or even merely aspiring to do so is a qualification of effective statehood, then it seems to me that there isn't a single effective state on the face of the earth.

 

[Part_Time_Civer]

You may be challenging the way I expressed it. But I'm not sure you know how I arrived at it.

I think you expressed quite clearly how you arrived at it:

The biggest problem with it is that the people who are advocating it really don't know what it is that they are advocating, or why. But a major related problem is that some of them really do know what they are after, and why, and those things are really bad for the rest of us.

Liberty is about maximizing the freedom of each person to make as many choices, and as broad of a range of choices, that effect their own lives as possible. Consistent with those people not harming other people or taking away the liberty of others. Liberty does not mean there is no government. Because the reality is that without government, there is no liberty for the overwhelming majority of people. There is a reason Somalia is so frequently brought up in discussions of libertarianism. You have a land without, to all intents and purposes, a government. You also have a hellhole where it is kill or be killed, be predator or be prey. There is no liberty to be had there, outside the "liberty" to beat, kill, rob, and rape, others.

There is no liberty to be left alone to do your thing and run your business and raise your family in Somalia. Instead, they have no government.

If you consider the Harm Principle and the Non-aggression principle as starting points, legitimate behavior for liberty excludes those behaviors that bring harm to others. But how do you enforce that? Some people simply make the, ridiculous, argument that that without government people won't act in ways that bring harm to others.

Which brings us back to Somalia.

In the real world people act in ways that harm, or at least risk harm, to others all the damned time. And this is particularly true in economic dealings. Without a government to keep a lid on those behaviors, those people who are the victims of others have no liberty. So without government instead of getting the liberty of all, you only have the liberty of the few, and that specifically at the cost of the loss of liberty of the many.

Summarizing your argument:

Premise A:

You have a land without, to all intents and purposes, a government.

Premise B:

You also have a hellhole where it is kill or be killed, be predator or be prey.

Conclusion:

So without government instead of getting the liberty of all, you only have the liberty of the few, and that specifically at the cost of the loss of liberty of the many.

 

[potatokiosk]

You may be challenging the way I expressed it. But I'm not sure you know how I arrived at it.

In theory, there's no reason to make the assumption that a society with little to no government is going to result in the outcomes that hard libertarians will assume it would. People have never been shown to act like that in large numbers and a complex society/economy in the past. And it entirely ignores how people routinely behave now.

So hard libertarians are assuming an outcome opposite to all evidence.

Why does Somalia come into these discussions? Because there is no centralized authority that has the ability to compel people to behave in ways which are not predatory towards others. Maybe it has some government, but it does not stop extra-governmental predation of people on people.

And, by the same token, hard libertarianism also does not have any centralized authority that has the ability to compel people to behave in ways that are not predatory towards others. They simply make the assumption that people will not behave like that.

And yet in the real world people act in ways harmful to others all the time. So the hard libertarian has to make the argument that no people, none at all, will act in ways in which many people act currently.

And that is fundamentally an irrational argument.

You could have just posted this cartoon, since this seems to be what your argument boils down to:

 

[Cutlass]

You could have just posted this cartoon, since this seems to be what your argument boils down to:

The reality is almost that bad.

If preventing predatory behaviour or even merely aspiring to do so is a qualification of effective statehood, then it seems to me that there isn't a single effective state on the face of the earth.

Sure. But eliminating much of the violence and predation is still better than being a victim of all of it.

I think you expressed quite clearly how you arrived at it:





Summarizing your argument:

Premise A:
Premise B:
Conclusion:

OK. So if you believe that's my argument, show me that it's wrong.

 

[Part_Time_Civer]

The reality is almost that bad.



OK. So if you believe that's my argument, show me that it's wrong.

Sure. I'll do it with a counterexample.

Premise A: Sweden is cold.
Premise A: Sweden is rich.

Conclusion: Cold countries are rich.

 

[potatokiosk]

Well, countries with temperate climates do seem to be richer, on average, than countries with tropical climates.

 

[Part_Time_Civer]

Well, countries with temperate climates do seem to be richer, on average, than countries with tropical climates.

The conclusion may accidentally be correct (it isn't: think of Russia) but the logic is still flawed.

 

[Cutlass]

Sure. I'll do it with a counterexample.

Premise A: Sweden is cold.
Premise A: Sweden is rich.

Conclusion: Cold countries are rich.

That doesn't actually show me a reason why my argument is wrong. Because you aren't making an argument that those things are related. But I did make an argument that the lack of an inclusive state usually results in poverty and violence. And you do not have a refutation of that.

 

[Cutlass]

Well, countries with temperate climates do seem to be richer, on average, than countries with tropical climates.

That wasn't always true, however.