Posted by Amanda Marcotte July 30, 2007 in Uncategorized, Libertarians
68 Responses to “Shorter This FAQ:”
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If that page is a rallying point for every non-libertarian, what’s the specific political philosophy that everyone should glean from the page?
Wow, right off the bat, someone using a modification of the, “If you don’t believe in god, how can you have morals” argument. And libertarians don’t believe that they’re pretty much following a faith-based ideology.
Think it over, Amanda. “Silly” is the word we use for things that are refuted by facts people widely profess to know in common. What are those facts in the case of libertarianism’s essential silliness (bear in mind that everyone who hates libertarianism for whatever reason must be satisfied by what you say)?
What I find most interesting about the libertarians’ argument that taxation is theft, rather than merely a citizen’s obligation in a social contract, is that they view the poorest folks in America – people who have either opted out of the social contract or been driven out – with unvarnished disdain in part because that class doesn’t pay taxes.
What I find most interesting about the libertarian argument that taxation is theft, rather than merely a citizen’s obligation in a social contract, is that they view the poorest folks in America – people who have either opted out of the social contract or been driven out – with unvarnished disdain in part because this class of people doesn’t pay taxes.
Devil’s Advocate:
Where’s your evidence of disdain? How do you know I hate poor people?
If that page is a rallying point for every non-libertarian, what’s the specific political philosophy that everyone should glean from the page?
That Libertarians are the political equivalent of Scientologists?
That’s what I got from it.
Brian’s right. Occam’s Razor dictates that we should assume he’s more stupid than hateful.
Social contract? These are folks who will deny the existence of society, whose entire political philosophy is built on overcoming or denying the fact that humans are a social species.
Every Libertarian that I have known is to my mind an incipient dictator in disguise. Their problem is that they think of their country as themselves yet they ignore domestic affairs in order to concentrate on the wrongdoing of foreign bodies.
That FAQ doesn’t cover left-libertarianism, nor any form of libertarianism that derives from Marxism. Therefore it is incomplete. The FAQ can be ignored, due to its incompleteness.
(And can I also say your new spam guard is really tough. It takes multiple tries to post a comment.)
Maybe you ought to rethink your definition of “one page.”
It seems to me that the essential problem here is contained in the devil’s Advocate’s condition:
The libertarian would argue that he was never given the choice of accepting or rejecting that “social contract,” but that it was forced upon him, and is frequently changed without his consent.
In a democratically-elected representative republic, that’s just what we do — and I don’t think it much of a stretch to say that many of the Pandagonistae would disagree with many of the restrictions they face and taxations they endure as voted upon by the last six Congresses.
Remember: you are being taxed to pay for the war in Iraq! Yet, if y’all get your way in the next election, I may be taxed to support something I think should not be done (a single-payer health care system) and something I find morally reprehensible (abortion paid for by the state.)
In each case, it is the result of being on the losing side in an election: the winners get to force their programs upon people who don’t support their programs.
There are a fair number of functioning minarchies in the world, for some very approximate definition of “functioning”. It’s just that libertarians feel a little foolish holding up western afghanistan, haiti or somalia as shining beacons for the rest of the world to follow…
What struck me about the discussion on the page was how many points of similarity there are between the archetypal libertarian and the archetypal chickenhawk, neither of whom would survive long under the conditions they claim to advocate. The chickenhawks are a little more open about this contradiction.
Aw, thanks for the lecture daddy dana. It’s so nice when you come over and tell us how your desire to control our lives and make them worse and to kill brown people is little more than a difference of opinion instead of real people’s lives.
But be less snarky the real issue is that libertarians are essentially fundies with a different religion, as the faq noted. Even using that FAQ you would not be able to convince many libertarians that their ideas are foolish.
Getting back to first principles is hard because they hold as axioms derivative ideas that themselves have to have a base.
The whole coercion is the basis of society and therefore society is bad.
Freedom is the only good.
Freedom is purely a negative good.
They take bits and pieces of Hobbes and Locke, throw in, if their well read enough, Nozick and think they have an argument.
Also, Nozick is wrong, he tried to come up with a non coercive form of government formation but it’s still lurking in the back ground.
Dana wrote:
Well, I would suggest that nobody is forcing this hypothetical libertarian to generate enough wealth to be subject to taxation. I mean, nothing is forcing him or her to earn so much, assuming they are all right without luxury. View taxation as tantamount to tyranny? Fine, then live “off the grid.” It certainly seems possible in most cases, though I imagine it’s difficult.
But of course, that also sounds kind of absurd, or maybe even dangerous, what with health and family concerns and all. Which is the thing that kind of gets me about libertarians in general. Most want to benefit from society, live the kind of lives that a healthy society might provide, without supporting it in turn. For instance, living in cities, the development and maintenance of which, it seems to me, require a decent amount of government interaction.
My favorite definition for libertarian (stolen from someone’s sig file).
A libertarian is someone who wishes to take away all the advantages they had in life away from everyone else.
Eh, in the non-Lib’tn FAQ I’m not impressed with the arguments against Lib’tn denial of the social contract (which I assume to be a manifestation of the social responsibility concept) and I don’t see enough info contradicting the my-labor-my-money-my-choice meme.
Can someone give me a better argument for explaining to a Lib’tn that they have a responsibility to provide for the betterment and welfare of their fellow citizens? Bonus points for responsibility as a global citizen…
Disagree, yes. Work to change things, yes.
Kill people because we disagree with them? Kill government agents who try to collect back taxes? Sorry, that’s all you guys for at least the last 20 years.
yes, inkybrain– to the libs streets and roads are naturally occurring resources.
See 7-13 of FAQ above.
Not really.
When libertarians whine about the social contract, their real complaint is that they were not able to choose the nature of the society in which they were born, and as such, any effort by that society to dictate their behavior is unjust.
Really, no different from a toddler who might complain that they aren’t obliged to obey their redheaded mother, because had the kid her druthers, she would have chosen a blonde. Except the toddler is thirty.
I hate this argument. It’s frankly borderline retarded. It is stupidly easy to drop off the grid within the US, which lets you continue to take advantage of the US’ effective monopoly on the use of force and strong national defense. And that’s ignoring the real ability to go someplace else and really really disappear.
But, of course, that’ll never happen.
Okay, then I’m not comfortable with defining the Libertarian notion of a social contract as the same thing as Rousseau’s version. What I’ve read of the social contract is a European pre-Enlightenment/Enlightenment philsophy. Present-day Libertarianism is a pathetic attempt to hijack Jeffersonian republicanism and merge it with some post 1960s government backlash. Not the same thing at all. And yeah, I’ll admit this is anecdata, but when a Libertarian talks to you, does (he) really speak of a social contract, or does he speak of individual liberties and personal responsibility? The entire concept of a social contract is dismissed from the outset, because fundamental to Libertarianism is an implied consent to instability, as there is no force of coersion meant to moderate the individualistic radical elements of society via a strong federal government - only the tendency of people to prefer separating themselves from such elements, bringing about the likely formation of cohesive, small, regional communities that are largely homogenous outside of trade or communications necessities.
I don’t know if the state-voter:mother-child analogy is right. The relationship between the state and an adult is totally different from the relationship between a parent and a child. Parents have all sorts of privileges of coersion and rights of property vis a vis their children that states do not have vis-a-vis their citizens.
I think the best way to bring reality home to Libertarians is to actually discuss with them where their tax dollars go and to find ways to explain how if they had to pay for particular services on their own, without the benefit of forced collective contributions, how unlikely it would be that their reality would be so comfortable.
I have a Libertarian boyfriend who went to public schools, got free public lunch because his mother was too poor to afford it herself, got government scholarships, went to TWO different state universities, lived in safe buildings because of state regulations and likes to take heavily subsidized public transit to work - and then he goes on about how Libertarianism is the ultimate political philosophy. It’s insane.
Except that really poor folks – homeless people who shun shelters, especially – and émigrés and those who live exclusively off the land in remote areas have opted out. None of these three groups is required to pay income tax to the US or Canadian governments – and this, despite the fact that two of those groups still use public resources (e.g., roads, parks, police and so on).
What most libertarians are really saying is this: they wish to opt out of the social contract without suffering the loss of any benefits secured through that contract. I can’t imagine, for example, that any libertarian would choose to opt out by becoming homeless and working under the table as a day laborer.
And as for the contract being changed without consent, I would argue that political inaction by dissatisfied citizens is a form of consent. If you don’t like the government’s making supposedly unilateral changes to the social contract, do something about it: write letters, make petitions, picket, run for office, move away, revolt, opt out and so forth.
The government isn’t some great and evil monolith. It’s made up of people like you and me, most of whom will act for the good so long as the proper checks and balances are in place. Government, no matter its size or philosophy, doesn’t spoil in a vacuum; it goes bad when left too long without proper and critical supervision by the public it exists to serve.
Here’s the thing: once a Libertarian loses a taxation argument, how often do we see Lib’tns avoiding use of those services paid for with their tax dollars? Do we see Lib’tns starting up their own fire departments? Do we see Lib’tns building their own elevator bays in large buildings to prove the free market protects our safety just as much as government inspectors do? Do we see Lib’tns holding national, multi-million dollar bake sales and events to promote charitable contributions or to raise money for funding of the arts? NO. Not at all. Altruism is seen as bad. Doing for oneself is seen as good. Yes, this is more Objectivism than anything else, but it’s mainstream thoughout Lib’tnsm: the very social values they claim individuals would rise up to support, and the causes they would take on to fight with voluntary, non-tax contributions would suffer dearly, because at the end of the day a Libertarian is a cheapskate with bullshit good intentions. They don’t even have the courage to boycott the services a pittance of their tax dollars support.
Libertarianism has the distinct advantage of sloganization. It’s incredibly easy to create Libertarian axioms that sound just and fair. As a result, even idiots can grasp the concepts and think they sound like a good idea. But it’s utterly useless for any practical application, because it is an express denial of everything you NEED a political system to be capable of handling. It’s not dissimilar
Libertarianism is a gateway political school. Someone who is utterly apolitical, who doesn’t think in political terms, is very very easily swayed by libertarianism. I have had friends on more than one occasion who were entirely without any kind of political framework, the same sort of people who become “swing voters” and who when you pose any political question will answer thoughtfully “I dunno. On the one hand (talking point) but on the other (counter slogan).” They listened to a libertarian candidate speak at a campus, got a pamphlet and got really fired up about it.
after 30 minutes of explanation, I managed to convey to them that “Libertarian candidates are the people who think that the only thing the executives at Enron did wrong was live in a country where they’d be prosecuted for what they did.” and how they’re the worst kind of soulless, property fetishists stingy-fisted assholes. but from then on, they thought in genuine political terms when discussing an issue and were capable of actually forming opinions.
“When libertarians whine about the social contract, their real complaint is that they were not able to choose the nature of the society in which they were born, and as such, any effort by that society to dictate their behavior is unjust.”
Maybe the term “social contract” is a poor metaphor for our society is set up? The word “contract” implies choice. Our legal traditions hold that no contract is valid if it is made under “duress”, meaning that if I put a gun to your head and make you sign a contract, then the contract is invalid. But we don’t get a choice about what society we are born into, so “contract”, as a metaphor, creates some difficulties.
Thomas Jefferson at one point suggested that all of America’s laws should be rendered void and meaningless every 20 years, so that each generation should have the chance to create their own laws from scratch, and therefore have something like the choice that is implied by the word “contract”.
“Libertarianism has the distinct advantage of sloganization. It’s incredibly easy to create Libertarian axioms that sound just and fair.”
People use the word “libertarian” to refer to different things. In England the word has a connotation that focuses on civil rights, or at least more so than in America. Some people, myself included, also use the word to refer to the Enlightenment tradition, since, at least in Aamerica, the word “liberal” is now used in a multitude of confusing ways. In that sense, my two favorite libertarian writers are Amanda Marcotte and Glenn Greenwald.
Dana:
Actually, we’re pretty much constantly being given the choice to accept or reject that social contract. The fact that most of us accept it without even thinking about it doesn’t mean that we haven’t been given the option.
What you’re not allowed to do is to accept the benefits of that contract while refusing to do what it requires of you in return.
And yet none of us are claiming that the governmental system itself is faulty, because that’d be cutting off our nose to spite our face.
It’s not government that I distrust. It’s this government.
This is just another part of the whole “social contract” thing. Simply by virtue of your participation in the democratic process, you have implicitly assumed the risk that you might not be in the majority.
Recognizing that you don’t always get exactly what you want is a big part of being an adult. Which in a roundabout way, might explain why contemporary US politics looks more than anything else like the interactions of high-school social cliques.
Any chance we could go back to making a distiction between “libertarians” (with a small “l”, refering to the intellectually respectable form which invented social contract theory back in the 19th C) and “Libertarians” (with a capital “L”, denoting the bizarre psuedo-intellectual contortions of the over-entitled in modern day America)?
Perhaps that was too many parenthical asides?
Man, this captcha is hardcore!
I think the thing that distinguishes the social contract from other contracts is the presupposition of most libertarians that government is illegitimate. As the page points out, none of the contract terms would be considered unreasonable if imposed by a private party, even if the private party were, say, owner of a company town who controlled transport in and out.
Can someone give me a better argument for explaining to a Lib’tn that they have a responsibility to provide for the betterment and welfare of their fellow citizens? Bonus points for responsibility as a global citizen…
New immigrant to the US, works hard, lives thriftly, accumulates capital (in the form of small business), becomes rich; forgets was unable to do this in home country, attributes all success to self and nothing to the surrounding polity/economy/society/law, becomes libertarian Republican, full of scorn for all the Americans who couldn’t lift themselves up by their bootstraps the way he did. Similar paradox.
“Silly” is the word we use for things that are refuted by facts people widely profess to know in common.
No, “silly” is the word we use for things that are risible.
That FAQ is lacking in a lot of places (the Dred Scott argument is badly-written, for example).
deep6, I wouldn’t say it’s insane to have a friend or boyfriend with such a selfish, idiot philosophy, but it is silly.
Maybe the term “social contract” is a poor metaphor for our society is set up? The word “contract” implies choice. Our legal traditions hold that no contract is valid if it is made under “duress”, meaning that if I put a gun to your head and make you sign a contract, then the contract is invalid. But we don’t get a choice about what society we are born into, so “contract”, as a metaphor, creates some difficulties.
You seem to imply that things you did not choose, you were made to do under duress (having a gun held to your head). That is a wrong dichotomy. By exactly the same token, since you had no choice about being born - you were born under duress and hence cannot be termed free. By the very fact of being born without a choice in the matter, you are a prisoner, hostage, slave - in a condition of duress. “Freedom is my birthright” is as problematic as “social contract”.
They’re social isolationists, basically.
Look at libertarians’ demographics, and look at their positions on social issues. For issues that directly affect the interests of young white male base (guns, drugs and money), the position is that everyone has a right to private enjoyment to these goods. When it comes to issues that don’t directly affect young white males, protection is much more limited (cf. the Libertarian Party’s weasel-worded statement on abortion with their position on their big three issues.)
I always wondered what the libertarian position would be on a community that used private housing contracts to forbid homeowners from possessing firearms. Kind of like that Ave Maria community, only with gun control instead of Catholicism.
Dana, your entire argument is shot down neatly in the FAQ. Do the reading or look like an idiot.
Lawrence, the invocation of “left-libertarianism” is like drawing parallels between the word “conservation” and “conservative” and assuming that because they sound the same, they are the same. Not at all. It’s not the fault of thinking people that a handful of leftists still cling to the word “libertarian”, even though most people don’t understand it to mean what you wish it did. The FAQ isn’t talking about the vanishingly small minority of left-libertarians. Pretending that someone is talking about you when they’re not so you can get offended is a low trick.
In that sense, my two favorite libertarian writers are Amanda Marcotte and Glenn Greenwald.
Really? because Amanda is my favorite SF writer. She writes about science, and she writes about fiction. Like when she calls Evo-Psych bullshit, and then in a different post writes about the new harry potter.
What? you mean I can’t randomly change the definition of a term just because I want to? small l libertarianism is as valid to this discussion as the German Peasants War.
Big L. means something very specific.
but nevermind about that. you said something else much more stupid.
Maybe the term “social contract” is a poor metaphor for our society is set up? The word “contract” implies choice. Our legal traditions hold that no contract is valid if it is made under “duress”, meaning that if I put a gun to your head and make you sign a contract, then the contract is invalid. But we don’t get a choice about what society we are born into, so “contract”, as a metaphor, creates some difficulties.
And yet, the legal structure of contract law does NOT recognize the duress of “I must do X to avoid starving.” Which is generally a much stronger form of duress than a guy with a gun, because you can call the cops on a guy with a gun.
Libertarians have made a creepy fetish out of contracts (because they amount to a form of extortion that they, as property holders, are capable of indulging in), and your reference to it here does imply that you are NOT a left-libertarian as you claim, but are in fact the same goddamn creepy “GET OFF MAH PROPETAH” Libertarians that deserve every ounce of scorn and disgust heaped upon them.
It never ceases to annoy me that the American right apropriated a term that in the rest of the world is synonymous with anarchism.
I think you’re confusing the whole world with America here, Amanda. Because everywhere else in the world Libertarianism does indeed mean a leftist - often mutualist or distributivist - philosophy.
Here is David D. Friedman’s response to Huben’s FAQ. There is also a link to a rebuttal and another response at the bottom. While there are good critiques of libertarianism, Huben’s page is not one of them, and his lack of response to Friedman is telling.
I’ve also got to say, as much as I don’t like the right-libertarians the FAQ is trying to refute, the FAQ itself is rife with pretty bad arguments.
Some gems:
The inescapable evils of coercive behavior are not unique to government. Our government is where we choose to channel and regulate them, because the alternative (private, unregulated coercion) gives much worse results, as the history of privately owned states (monarchies, dictatorships, despotisms) and private “law” such as slavery, mafias, warlords, etc. show rather clearly. We have constructed a government that is jointly owned by all, because private ownership gives too much incentive for profit through coercion of others.
This a)Presumes that Thomas Paine was, in fact, talking about a very specific form of government and made a distinction between “small” and “big” goverment, and b) Goofily suggests that modern democracy is, in fact, not run exclusively by and for the ruling class.
Did Ayn Rand pay her taxes out of friendship then? That’s a new one on me.
While there’s plenty of reasons to call out Ayn Rand as a hypocrite, calling her out as a hypocrite for paying taxes (when she was obviously being coerced to) is a bit much.
History shows that the USA has been one of the best governments, by most people’s standards, even libertarian.
The correct version of this sentence would replace “by most people’s standards” with “by white people’s standards”
Honestly, most of this is nothing but hack American triumphalism disguised as some kind of serious defense of the role of the State.
“The FAQ isn’t talking about the vanishingly small minority of left-libertarians. Pretending that someone is talking about you when they’re not so you can get offended is a low trick.”
It probably is a low trick and I probably should have have written my original comment more carefully. I think words like “capitalism” and “democracy” and “libertarianism” mean different things to different people. I do think its best to wrap constraining adjectives around most of these words, so as to offer a bit more context than the naked word itself offers. But I suppose that is a conversation for another day.
“What? you mean I can’t randomly change the definition of a term just because I want to? small l libertarianism is as valid to this discussion as the German Peasants War.”
I apologize for my ignorance, but what do you mean by referring to small l libertarianism? To my mind, “upper case Libertarianism” would suggest a reference to the Libertarian party, which isn’t under discussion, as far as I know.
“Can someone give me a better argument for explaining to a Lib’tn that they have a responsibility to provide for the betterment and welfare of their fellow citizens?”
The most famous of all of the 20th century libertarian writers was Friedrich Hayek, who, in his most famous book (The Road To Serfdom), wrote:
“Nor is there any reason why the state should not assist the individuals in providing for those common hazards of life against which, because of their uncertainty, few individuals can make adequate provision. Where, as in the case of sickness and accident, neither the desire to avoid such calamities nor the efforts to overcome their consequences are, as a rule, weakened by the provision of assistance - where, in short, we deal with genuinely insurable risks - the case for the state’s helping to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong. There are many points of detail where those wishing to preserve the competitive system and those wishing to supercede it by something different will disagree on the details of such schemes; and it is possible under the name of social insurance to introduce measures which tend to make competition more or less ineffective. But there is no incompatibility in principle between the state’s providing greater security in this way and the preservation of individual freedom. To the same category belongs also the increase of security through the state’s rendering assistance to the victims of such “acts of God” as earthquakes and floods. Wherever communal action can mitigate disasters against which the individual can neither attempt to guard himself nor make provision for the consequences, such communal action should undoubtedly be taken.”
To my mind, this passage justifies universal health care for all, and other such programs.
As I’ve argued elsewhere, our politics have, over the last 50 years, shifted so far to the right that what was once called “libertarian” is now the mainstream of Democratic thought.
I’ve pointed out to self-professed libertarians that in all histories of countries of the world, we’ve ended up with one of three situations: 1) government 2) warlords 3) anarchy. I’ve also pointed out that according to libertarian philosophy of no-gun-control (”an armed society is a polite society”), no taxes, and no government, downtown Baghdad must be an earthly paradise and why aren’t they moving there?
Libertarians are just Communists under a different name–same idealism, same stupidity.
Far be it from me to question your wisdom but perhaps you haven’t actually read “all histories of countries of the world.” I know I haven’t, and I’d be impressed with you if you have. Even if you have, you’d still be missing out on many important oral histories that have never been written down.
That kind of generilazation is ridiculous, (and propably eurocentric) although I’m not entirely sure what you mean by either “government” or “anarchy”. To me, anarchy is a desirable outcome. To most it means something different though, more or less the same thing as “warlords”.
I’m all for ridiculing capitalists, libertarian or otherwise, but that doesn’t justify using intellectually lazy methods to defend statism.
I have a feeling you don’t actually know any communists, do you?
allow me to quote thomas paine on taxation:
“War is the common harvest of all those who participate in the division and expenditure of public money, in all countries. It is the art of conquering at home; the object of it is an increase of revenue; and as revenue cannot be increased without taxes, a pretence must be made for expenditure. In reviewing the history of the English Government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander, not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.”
certainly, few pandagonians would disagree with the idea that war is the means by which the many are ruled by the few. but it’s important for y’all to understand that taxes exist primarily to fund ARMIES. hospitals and schools and social security are nice, and because i’m not a libertarian, i don’t mind paying the government to maintain these institutions. but taxation’s fundamental purpose has always been the preservation of standing armies (which invariably lead to mass death and increased economic inequality).
say what you will about the “siliness” of libertarians. i respond that supporting taxation while opposing war is, in light of history, an untenable (and equally silly) position.
yes, inkybrain– to the libs streets and roads are naturally occurring resources.
No, no, no, Eric - you fail to understand the true nature of the Libertarian society. In Liberteria, each mile of road will be *privately* owned, and self-financing via a toll extracted by the owner at whatever the market will bear.
This will, of course, be incredibly efficient, and will not lose any of the positive externalities that you get now by being able to drive for free on collectivist unfree roads…
Here’s a couple of additional Hayek quotes to confound and astonish so-called “libertarians”.
My name will take you to a couple of additional Hayek quotes to confound and astonish “libertarians”.
“What? you mean I can’t randomly change the definition of a term just because I want to?”
It’s reasonable to judge Marxism by the writings of Karl Marx. It’s reasonable to judge Objectvism by the writings of Ayn Rand. It’s reasonable to judge the Enlightment by the writings of Voltaire, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, and its other leading lights. Therefore it’s reasonable to judge libertarianism by the writings of those who at one time were considered to be the leading lights of the philosophy. That means it’s at least somewhat reasonable to judge libertarianism by the writings of Friedrich Hayek. When I suggest that Amanda Marcotte is one of my favorite libertarian writers, I mean it in the sense of when Hayek wrote “The essence of the liberal position, however, is the denial of all privilege, if privilege is understood in its proper and original meaning of the state granting and protecting rights to some which are not available on equal terms to others.” Something like half of everything that Marcotte writes consists of an elaboration of that basic idea, and she does it wonderfully, and I enjoy reading what she writes.
Are people opposing war in general, or a specific war? There’s a bit of a difference.
Aaargh. Posting about libertarians is like setting out a plate on honey next to a stable. You just know you’re going to attract a lot of nuisances. Do these people have nothing better to do than argue?
Will: I believe the reasoning is thus: I oppose people getting shot. Therefore, my tax support of the local police is hypocrisy.
Supporting a police force while opposing police brutality not being an option, it appears.
Utica:
I don’t think that word (”purpose”) means what you think it means.
The purpose of taxation is general: to raise funds for the government. How, specifically, those funds are subsequently used cannot in any way be laid at the feet of taxation itself.
This is only a valid position if you presuppose that the sole legitimate use of taxation is to fund war. Clearly, that is not the case.
Any “civilization” that I would prefer living in has had some sort of written history. Unless you really like living at the technology level of a small band of hunter-gatherers?
Would those who claim to profess an enjoyment in “anarchy” please go and live a few years in countries like Somalia, Haiti, Iraq, or any other of those countries that would be described by most people as “anarchic”? Then come back and say that those are so much better places to live and bring up a family than one of those horrible statist places like, say, Switzerland. And see if anyone does anything more than laugh at you.
Larry Niven did a very good analysis some time back as to how large of an interplanetary/interstellar migration group one would have to have to keep a certain level of technology going.
Similarly, you’re going to have to have a certain level of structure just to keep things going. How in the heck do Libertarians expect all those contracts and law court decisions to get backed up without a certain amount of authority (and force to use it)? How are you going to pay for the maintenance of such structures? User fees? Then what about those who can’t afford to pay? Just chuck them out of the system?
For all the ranting and raving Rand did about Aristotle, very few Randians or Libertarians seem to have read him….particularly his comments on how governments come about.
Aaaand this is the part where you’re a racist and I stop talking to you.
“It’s not government that I distrust. It’s this government.”
For god’s sake, you don’t trust government. What would “trust government” actually mean? You’d have to oppose the Bill Of Rights, if you trusted government. Do you? Or to turn it around, do you favor a separation of powers? Do you like a system of checks and balances? Do you think a person accussed should have right to an attorney? Do you think there are some things that the President should not be allowed to do? If you answer “yes” to these questions, then clearly you’ve at least some distrust of government. Our whole political system, from the Constitution onwards, is built on a distrust of government. We have in place multiple checks and balances, because we know that government is dangerous. Do you really want to get rid of that system and replace it with a new one, founded on trust of government? I doubt it.
The best argument against libertarianism is “look at the people who call themselves libertarians.”
Saying you don’t want to live in a society of hunter-gatherers is racist?
Hunter-gatherer is a race? What race would that be? Or maybe you think that Iraq, Haiti and Somalia are all inhabited by the same race?
For god’s sake, you don’t trust government. What would “trust government” actually mean? You’d have to oppose the Bill Of Rights, if you trusted government. Do you? Or to turn it around, do you favor a separation of powers? Do you like a system of checks and balances? Do you think a person accussed should have right to an attorney? Do you think there are some things that the President should not be allowed to do? If you answer “yes” to these questions, then clearly you’ve at least some distrust of government. Our whole political system, from the Constitution onwards, is built on a distrust of government. We have in place multiple checks and balances, because we know that government is dangerous. Do you really want to get rid of that system and replace it with a new one, founded on trust of government? I doubt it.
Again, a false dichotomy. Trusting government means opposing the Bill of Rights? Since when?
We institute government *in order to secure these rights*. i.e., we trust government.
We reserve the right to abolish government if it is destructive of those rights, i.e. we recognize that government can be dangerous.
It is these simple but false dichotomies that probably constitutes the appeal of libertarianism.
It never ceases to annoy me that the American right apropriated a term that in the rest of the world is synonymous with anarchism.
In the same way, anarchism—particularly North American anarchism—seems to have adopted some lazy habits and thinking from American right-wing libertarianism, the worst being a sort of radical bourgeois individualism. (That was a lot of isms. I apologize in advance.) Actual anarcho-communists are a distinct minority within the muddle that is modern anarchism.
Bizarro, the ad hominem attack is always invalid per se, whether you are discussing libertarianism or limes. It’s like attacking liberalism because bizarro people named Bizarro adhere to it.
Huben has been offering critiques of libertarianism for a very long time. Must be a slow day at Pandagon if this is news. This moderate libertarian has exchanged emails with Huben on a couple of occasions, and found him to be entirely reasonable and engaging, rather than petulant and abusive. Perhaps a model for some to follow. And stating that it can be reduced to “one page” is misleading and deceptive; one webpage with approximately 13,000 words contains far more than one printed page. More like 50 pages at 260/words a page. Huben also makes some errors, such as claiming overbroadly that the government did not mandate slavery; manumission was often illegal, though not illegal at the federal level.
Libertarianism is not “silly” but a controversial political philosophy that, unlike the Marxism that gets an occasional back rub and a spot of tea from Marcotte here, has not resulted in the deaths of hundreds of millions of people. I know about Marxist murder and fascist, but not any libertarian murder. Of course, it’s necessary to lump the most extreme libertarians in the more moderate ones like myself, this way we all get the insult and your loyal readers get, well, whatever they get. The chorus of a hundred one-hand typists, I guess.
“We institute government *in order to secure these rights*. i.e., we trust government.
We reserve the right to abolish government if it is destructive of those rights, i.e. we recognize that government can be dangerous.”
Oh, come on! For god’s sake, obviously government does something, otherwise we wouldn’t have it. We institute it to secure us from what Locke called the states of nature and war. Through government we achieve what Locke called The State Of Law. But we all know government can be one of the biggest law breakers that exists. That’s why intelligent people fear it, and a reasonable political order strives to put as many checks and balances in place as possible, short of paralysis. But no reasonable person trusts government. As I.F. Stone said “All Governments Lie!”.
Bruce, capitalism, the economic engine of libertarianism, is responsible for at least as many deaths as communism…mostly through neglect and deliberate “refusal to see”. Capitalism justified slavery. Capitalism in its least regulated forms invariably leads to death for profit. “From its fruits you shall know it”. “Unfettered” capitalism leads to vast swathes of humanity suffering so that a few can prosper. Mixed economy capitalism, with a capitalist engine and a socialist steering wheel, leads to better standards of living for the majority of a society, not just an elite minority.
Lawrence:
IFYPFY.
Brian Flemming had a nice post recently discussing the inevitable hypocrisy of the libertarian view.
“ But no true Scotsman trusts government.
IFYPFY. ”
Dan, I had not heard of the No True Scotsman fallacy, so I looked it up. I read this on Wikipedia:
I don’t see how that this applies to what I’ve written. I am asserting, as explicitly as I can, that if you trust the government then you are not a reasonable person. Our constitutional system has put in place a system of checks and balances, because our history has taught us that all governments that lack such checks will eventually trend toward tyranny. One would have to ignore a staggering amount of empirical evidence to suggest that it is reasonable to “trust the government”. The only way a reasonable person, looking over the empirical evidence, can assert trust of government is by heavily qualifying their statement, for instance: “Given the strict limits placed on every actor in our system, and the many restraints that the law places on each institution, I am willing to trust the outcome of our political process.”
Reasonable people will disagree whether the last statement is supportable. I might point out that George W. Bush has violated the law repeatedly, despite all the many limitations that are in place. But I do think a qualified statement, like the one above, is within the bounds of reason. However, an unqualified assertion of “I trust government” (which is what I was responding to above) is not reasonable, and can not be supported. It is the argument of an authoritarian, and I won’t call authoritarians “reasonable”.