Educating Hunter: Libertarians

[Nephew Twiddleton]

On the contrary, I trust them to deny me freedom. Every leap in personal freedoms, throughout American history, has been done at the national level, not the state level. And it's usually been through the Supreme Court, not the Congress or the Presidency.

I'm looking at it differently. I see national marijuana prohibition, but state medical marijuana permission.
I see a federal defense of marriage act, but many states allowing and recognizing them.

Two words: "States Rights".

People pushing for that always seem to suck.

States Rights is code for "we're totally cool with being backwards and fuck you for trying to improve us"

ETA: with a little wink wink nudge nudge "hey, never mind that dark thing hanging from the tree"

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

On the contrary, I trust them to deny me freedom. Every leap in personal freedoms, throughout American history, has been done at the national level, not the state level. And it's usually been through the Supreme Court, not the Congress or the Presidency.

I'm looking at it differently. I see national marijuana prohibition, but state medical marijuana permission.
I see a federal defense of marriage act, but many states allowing and recognizing them.

Two words: "States Rights".

People pushing for that always seem to suck.

States Rights is code for "we're totally cool with being backwards and fuck you for trying to improve us"

Precisely.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

On the contrary, I trust them to deny me freedom. Every leap in personal freedoms, throughout American history, has been done at the national level, not the state level. And it's usually been through the Supreme Court, not the Congress or the Presidency.

I'm looking at it differently. I see national marijuana prohibition, but state medical marijuana permission.
I see a federal defense of marriage act, but many states allowing and recognizing them.

Two words: "States Rights".

People pushing for that always seem to suck.

States Rights is code for "we're totally cool with being backwards and fuck you for trying to improve us"

Precisely.

See edit for more detail

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

On the contrary, I trust them to deny me freedom. Every leap in personal freedoms, throughout American history, has been done at the national level, not the state level. And it's usually been through the Supreme Court, not the Congress or the Presidency.

I'm looking at it differently. I see national marijuana prohibition, but state medical marijuana permission.
I see a federal defense of marriage act, but many states allowing and recognizing them.

Two words: "States Rights".

People pushing for that always seem to suck.

States Rights is code for "we're totally cool with being backwards and fuck you for trying to improve us"

Precisely.

See edit for more detail

Yeah.

You never hear the medical marijuana people or the gay marriage people even USING that term. It kind of begs the question: if you let that stuff happen just at state level, does it open the door for the other stuff to happen?

[Bu🤠ns]

Penn Jillette: Why I Am A Libertarian

He discusses the difference between being a member of the party and being a dick, lol.

He like Ayn Rand too, but I suspect he'd participate in a fair debate.


at any rate, it might be  a good way to build up your buddy's own argument to then tear it down.

[Dildo Argentino]

Live in a city-state:
Mayor fucks up big, angry mob successfully overthrows government, preferably for the better.

Live in a globe-state:
Beefed up General Secretary fucks up big, angry mob gets sent to concentration camps, nothing changes.

Couldn't both happen at the same time? Devolution as far as possible, do not centralise coercion, and if the beefed up General Secretary fucks up bug, an angry mob of city-states calls her to account? It could even be argued that some of it is sort of in place already, except most nation-states are too large to encourage proactive elector involvement, the consumer ethos also discourages it, and the global institutions have horrible bloatware operating systems. This could be fixed, question is, where does the leverage come for fixing it.

I am not against the idea of a multi-tiered variably federal/confederal sort of government. It might even be the best idea. City-states with a loose planetary government. But I think the problem is that planetary government has to evolve. We're at an intermediary stage. We're starting to see the emergence of continental unions. And those aren't working out too great. I just hope the concept can be tweaked the right way before it gets ditch because Germany tried to take over Europe again.

Have you heard about open source governance? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_governance
This would be a technological solution to making the planetary government (or any system of government) evolve rather more rapidly than what we're used to.

Germany has already taken over Europe, no? 

But the leverage comes from different areas. What would convince you that planetary government is a good thing?

Me personally, I'm tired of seeing human competing against human. I would rather see them cooperate on most things, and compete for sport.

It's the fucking future for Christ's sake. Let's start acting like it already. In a good way. Not a dystopian way. We already have dystopia.

I agree, totally. In order to be convinced, however, I would have to see it work well. Or, if my assent was needed before it started, I would have to see it set up in a way that is highly adaptible and responsive to citizen input and totally transparent. Bit like Sweden... (?)

[Luna]

On the contrary, I trust them to deny me freedom. Every leap in personal freedoms, throughout American history, has been done at the national level, not the state level. And it's usually been through the Supreme Court, not the Congress or the Presidency.

I'm looking at it differently. I see national marijuana prohibition, but state medical marijuana permission.
I see a federal defense of marriage act, but many states allowing and recognizing them.

Two words: "States Rights".

People pushing for that always seem to suck.

States Rights is code for "we're totally cool with being backwards and fuck you for trying to improve us"

Precisely.

See edit for more detail

Yeah.

You never hear the medical marijuana people or the gay marriage people even USING that term. It kind of begs the question: if you let that stuff happen just at state level, does it open the door for the other stuff to happen?

Of course it does.  That's the POINT.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Whoo! for a good crazy thread on this topic

I would have replied earlier but with the trip to Paris and all, its been a crazy couple weeks.

OK. Here's my thoughts (as someone that once considered themselves libertarian):

First, figure out what libertarian means specifically to this guy. Libertarian the political philosophy is very different than Libertarian the US political party.

Even within the philosophy, there are several levels of belief. At its most extreme, there would be 0 taxes and extremely minimal government. At its least extreme, the government would be responsible for public safety, national defense, interstate commerce and property taxes (not income taxes) would be used to fund these basic needs. Further there are differences within the philosophy about local taxation. That is extreme Libertarians would argue against most state or local taxes, while other libertarians would argue that local taxes could be acceptable since a person could choose to not live in the boundaries of the city or town.

Then you get some people that claim to be libertarian, but really fit more with Classical Liberalism. These schmucks just need a friendly pointer in the right direction.

I think several of the negatives associated with Libertarianism (both the ideal and the party) were hit pretty well here.

Libertarian philosophy (depending on the strain) can make some very valid points. The role of government in a society is not an objective truth and the debate between liberals and libertarians really boil down to moving the line between government and private industry. Libertarians aren't anarchists, they believe in government just a smaller government with less power, less money and less functionality. This country ran pretty well for nearly a century with a rather limited government. Times were different, of course, you could pay your doctor in chickens and it wasn't like a doctor bill was ever in the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. Most of the country were smallish settlements and within those settlements, the governments role didn't really exist beyond the local law enforcement. Private or volunteer fire brigades worked fine. In the larger cities however, this sort of community ideal fell apart. Private fire depts. often fought over who got to put out which fires and who got paid, sometimes privately held fire depts. actually set fires to increase their profit.

Humans spent a large part of their existence in societies that were more libertarian than liberal. Tribes, Settlements, Villages etc. often relied on getting things done by the people living there rather than a government sponsored solution based on taxation. However, in almost all of those societies, the size was small... larger societies almost always ended up with some kind of taxation and government responsibility. From a philosophical position, the libertarians make a valid point. If we are truly free individuals then there is no right for one man to tell another what he must or must not do (ie slavery) nor is there any right for a group of people to tell one man what he must or must not do (ie government). This tends to fall apart in practice, mostly because humans tend to cluster together in large bunches, with varying degrees of personal responsibility. There are some that choose to do as little as possible, others that have some condition that prohibits them from doing as much as others and some people that see part of their personal responsibility as helping others. If everyone fell into the last group, libertarian philosophy would have a much stronger argument.

Finally, there's the biggest disconnect I've seen in many libertarians... Social vs Fiscal. Many individuals want their personal freedom, freedom to stick various chemicals into their own body if they want, to live in whatever social agreement they want (marriage, gay marriage, living together etc etc), to own guns if they want, to basically DO ANYTHING within their private lives that they want as long as they don't directly impact the private life of someone else. So they may say "If I want to own a fully automatic rifle withexploding bullets I should be allowed. I should only be punished if I use the gun and bullets to kill someone or commit a crime." The idea that "Some people might abuse X so we'll outlaw it for everyone" doesn't sit well with these people... and again, that is a valid point.

So to sum up, I've met libertarians that hold cohesive, rational positions based on a understandable philosophy of personal freedom. I've met libertarians that are completely nuts, have no cohesive or rational position (weed should be legal, abortion should be illegal) and as far as I can tell base their beliefs on a combination of Fox News and an attachment to the word libertarian being more cool than the word Republican. I've met libertarians that hold a cohesive view, but its based solely on philosophy with no connection to any sort of real implementation (Randians especially) and I've met some that appear to be willing to compromise between their philosophy and reality. So figuring out where this poor spag is on the scale, is probably key to figuring out which arguments will work and which won't.

In a perfect world, where all humans accepted as much personal responsibility for themselves and their community as possible, libertarianism and even some forms of anarchism would probably work... but then if we used leaves for money, we'd all be rich (or very poor due to inflation).

ETA: On the issue of States Rights, I've seen the same dichotomy. There are States Rights people that are complete asshats. However, there are also States Rights people that have a cohesive argument. The best argument I've seen is basically that the State should be responsible for MOST laws and only if those laws infringe on the constitutional rights of a citizen, should the issue be taken to the Federal government.

So for example, Medical Marijuana would be a states rights issue. A lack of Civil Rights, however, would infringe on the constitutional freedoms of minorities and therefore fall to the federal justice system. Generally, if the issue of States rights comes up I tend to ask about these two topics... if the person argues that civil rights should fall to the states, I assume that they are either racist, idiots, or just regurgitating what they read/heard from racists and idiots. If they make a rational argument that covers the constitutional rights for all, and leaves the rest up to the States, I figure they may have ayt least a few brain cells working.

[hooplala]

Penn Jillette: Why I Am A Libertarian

He discusses the difference between being a member of the party and being a dick, lol.

He like Ayn Rand too, but I suspect he'd participate in a fair debate.


at any rate, it might be  a good way to build up your buddy's own argument to then tear it down.

Penn is the single person who almost convinced me of the merits of libertarianism, but he is also the first person to admit that it's utopian and he has no idea how the ideas could be practically implemented. 

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Two things:

1.  Libertarianism != tribalism.  Tribalism is closer to communism than libertarianism.

2.  Utopias are fine for navel-gazing.  Implimentation, though, requires stacks and stacks of bones.

[hooplala]

Two things:

1.  Libertarianism != tribalism.  Tribalism is closer to communism than libertarianism.

2.  Utopias are fine for navel-gazing.  Implimentation, though, requires stacks and stacks of bones.

Which is what I eventually realized, after some help from a bunch of nutcases on this online forum I go to sometimes...

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Two things:

1.  Libertarianism != tribalism.  Tribalism is closer to communism than libertarianism.

2.  Utopias are fine for navel-gazing.  Implimentation, though, requires stacks and stacks of bones.

Which is what I eventually realized, after some help from a bunch of nutcases on this online forum I go to sometimes...

What I think is REALLY funny is that after all these years, we're still having this subject pop up.

I think we all know what's going to happen.

[LMNO]

I think we all know what's going to happen.

In approximately that order.

[hooplala]

This is why we can't have nice things.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Two things:

1.  Libertarianism != tribalism.  Tribalism is closer to communism than libertarianism.

2.  Utopias are fine for navel-gazing.  Implimentation, though, requires stacks and stacks of bones.

I agree with this. Many tribal societies work in a communal fashion. However, some tribes and many settlements work in a more libertarian fashion. That is "what's mine, isn't yours.. but I'll help you out because its in the best interest of the community". Much of the early American settlements were like this and in my discussions with the Amish, they appear to work along the lines of a socially enlightened libertarian ideas. If an Amish family has more money/resources than their neighbors, they do not assume it belongs to a collective 'community', but they do use their resources to help their neighbors out of a sense of altruism. Most (not all) of the families though, grow their own food, build their own homes etc and get assistance from their neighbors (by choice, not force) when doing the work. Families that are focused on specific types of work like carpentry or architecture will barter with neighbors that focus on farming. This seems in line with what I've read about many of the early American settlements.

(Unreleated side note: One Amish guy I knew had a brand new Ford pickup truck he used for work. He was an architect. He still refused to have a button on his pants, but he really liked his shiny truck  )