What is Libertarianism?

[SimpleDon]

In the coming libertarian paradise will people be able to voluntarily sell themselves into slavery? Will they be able to sell their children into slavery?

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That the answer to both has to be ’yes' seems to be an unavoidable consequence of the libertarian principles of maximum individual freedom, government non-interference in the operation of the free market and parents in effect owning their own children.

In the event that you have ambitions to be a serious participant in an intellectual discussion and not just another purveyor of "[/conservolibertarian]"-style strawmen, then either
(1) quote a libertarian on this board saying it's a libertarian principle that parents in effect own their children, or
(2) stop trying to paraphrase your opponents. You have no talent for it. You are unable to distinguish your own premises from other people's long enough to avoid committing "You believe X; I believe X implies Y; therefore you believe Y." fallacies.

I apologize, I didn't realize that libertarians believed that society has a responsibility for children who have parents and can impose government restrictions on parents. I would appreciate any libertarian articles that you could point me to that clarifies this point for me.

We are pretty much forced to paraphrase libertarians because they don't seem to respond to questions about the practical applications of their philosophy. In this case you have declared that libertarians don't own their children, but you still haven't answered the questions. Can you?

 

[skepticalbip]

Here are two transition questions from the slavery derail. We have heard a lot so far about the libertarian philosophy but almost nothing about how this rather idealistic philosophy would work in practice, where most idealistic philosophies fail, see Marxism for example.

In the coming libertarian paradise will people be able to voluntarily sell themselves into slavery?

People will be able to sell their time and labor to another just as most people do today with their 40 hr/wk job. However, ownership of another individual is obviously contrary to the libertarian ideal.

Will they be able to sell their children into slavery?

An asinine suggestion. Parents don't own their children. They are responsible for them. Children are individuals too.

ETA:
So what is your ideal of government? Unless you believe in an all powerful central government that dictates all human activity and decides what each individual is due, you likely hold quite a few libertarian ideals. That is unless you advocate absolute anarchy where there is absolutely no government.

 

[SimpleDon]

Here are two transition questions from the slavery derail. We have heard a lot so far about the libertarian philosophy but almost nothing about how this rather idealistic philosophy would work in practice, where most idealistic philosophies fail, see Marxism for example.

In the coming libertarian paradise will people be able to voluntarily sell themselves into slavery? Will they be able to sell their children into slavery?

And even if we don't ask such slippery slope questions and temper such questions and scenarios, we still hear very little affirmative. Is libertarianism just a "response" to the other "isms"?

These are slippery slope questions that I asked. But the libertarian philosophy is so unrealistic and extreme that it is nearly impossible to ask any question about the practical application of their philosophy that is not a slippery slope question. Bomb#20 argued one time to me that families have no purpose in society, no reason to exist as he (she?) slid down the slope from arguing that the economy has no purpose, no reason to exist.

Show

I don't take issue with very much of the libertarian philosophy just like I fully support the flag, motherhood and apple pie. It is the application of that philosophy where they fail to impress. Somewhere recently I said that most of the goals of the libertarian philosophy are worthwhile, the maximum personal liberty, the maximum use of private markets, respect for property rights, etc. are the same as we have been trying to achieve for 200+ years and that we have achieved as close to the libertarian ideal in most of them as is possible now.

The main difference is that the society and the economy that we have now has had to deal with the reality of implementing these goals and the libertarians have only talked about it.

And as our economy has become more complex and the products and services that it provides us have become more complex, we have had to turn more of it over to professionalism primarily and away from the simplistic market mechanism. Homes, automobiles, drugs, medical care, education, air travel, the law are all examples of products and services too complex to leave solely to the market mechanism of low price. They depend at least in part on professionals who have an obligation to the customers and to society beyond the price. But we have also gained a lot from the complexity of the products and services that are now offered.

 

[SimpleDon]

People will be able to sell their time and labor to another just as most people do today with their 40 hr/wk job. However, ownership of another individual is obviously contrary to the libertarian ideal.

Will they be able to sell their children into slavery?

An asinine suggestion. Parents don't own their children. They are responsible for them. Children are individuals too.

ETA:
So what is your ideal of government? Unless you believe in an all powerful central government that dictates all human activity and decides what each individual is due, you likely hold quite a few libertarian ideals.

As I have said I don't have a problem with most of the libertarian philosophy. It is pretty much the flag waving all American philosophy that we have been trying to achieve for more than two centuries. And I contend that we are now as close to it as we can now practically achieve.

We obviously took a step too far in deregulating our financial markets, as the financial crisis of 2008 showed us.

The attempts to reduce the size of the federal government produced a much larger increase in the state and local governments, they have more than doubled. As I have also said you can have an efficient government or you can have a decentralized government, but you can't have both.

Certainly many of the problems that we are having today can be traced to the recent decentralization of government or the legacy of the 18th century poor travel and communications that scattered and built so many different levels of government.

Having the inefficiency of more than 13,000 school boards, all having pretty much the same problems and coming up with pretty much the same solutions so that we can fool ourselves into believing that we have local control of the schools or having 17,000 different police agencies in the country doesn't seem very efficient to me and is probably one of the major reasons that we have so much trouble with education and policing today.

So that you believe in a libertarian paradise people will not be able to sell themselves or their children into slavery. Good, I agree with that. Just one question. Who is going to prevent these things? The various layers of government enforce the laws against these things now. Are you going to use the power of the government too or are you going to rely on social pressure and moral persuasion like the Libertarian party platform says that they are going to prevent pollution?

 

[arkirk]

People will be able to sell their time and labor to another just as most people do today with their 40 hr/wk job. However, ownership of another individual is obviously contrary to the libertarian ideal.

An asinine suggestion. Parents don't own their children. They are responsible for them. Children are individuals too.

ETA:
So what is your ideal of government? Unless you believe in an all powerful central government that dictates all human activity and decides what each individual is due, you likely hold quite a few libertarian ideals.

As I have said I don't have a problem with most of the libertarian philosophy. It is pretty much the flag waving all American philosophy that we have been trying to achieve for more than two centuries. And I contend that we are now as close to it as we can now practically achieve.

We obviously took a step too far in deregulating our financial markets, as the financial crisis of 2008 showed us.

The attempts to reduce the size of the federal government produced a much larger increase in the state and local governments, they have more than doubled. As I have also said you can have an efficient government or you can have a decentralized government, but you can't have both.

Certainly many of the problems that we are having today can be traced to the recent decentralization of government or the legacy of the 18th century poor travel and communications that scattered and built so many different levels of government.

Having the inefficiency of more than 13,000 school boards, all having pretty much the same problems and coming up with pretty much the same solutions so that we can fool ourselves into believing that we have local control of the schools or having 17,000 different police agencies in the country doesn't seem very efficient to me and is probably one of the major reasons that we have so much trouble with education and policing today.

So that you believe in a libertarian paradise people will not be able to sell themselves or their children into slavery. Good, I agree with that. Just one question. Who is going to prevent these things? The various layers of government enforce the laws against these things now. Are you going to use the power of the government too or are you going to rely on social pressure and moral persuasion like the Libertarian party platform says that they are going to prevent pollution?

Aren't you talking central planning? Have you considered what this might do to private schools and cops? We all know private is best. So is local. I don't think curriculum should be locally determined. That is how we get flat earthers, right to lifers, Genesis believers, etc etc etc. You better clear this with Axulus and Max. I don't think they will like it. By the way I do like the idea that we have the means to discuss these things on a very large scale and come to some agreement on what happens in a science course and what happens when someone is arrested. These things have been ignored far too long.

 

[Bomb#20]

I apologize, I didn't realize that libertarians believed that society has a responsibility for children who have parents and can impose government restrictions on parents. I would appreciate any libertarian articles that you could point me to that clarifies this point for me.

Not my job. I'm not a libertarian; I'm one of the people asking JH for clarification. That said, you can figure out as easily as I can that a libertarian society can impose government restrictions on parents. Libertarianism has never been about getting rid of the police, whose number one job is to stop people from initiating violence against one another; and children are people too. Duh!

We are pretty much forced to paraphrase libertarians because they don't seem to respond to questions about the practical applications of their philosophy.

Who you calling "we"? I don't have a problem with anybody paraphrasing his opponents as long as he's vaguely competent at it and is willing to put in the modicum of effort it takes to not make, as skepticalbip puts it, asinine suggestions.

In this case you have declared that libertarians don't own their children, but you still haven't answered the questions. Can you?

"The questions"? You mean these ones?

In the coming libertarian paradise will people be able to voluntarily sell themselves into slavery? Will they be able to sell their children into slavery?

I think I pretty obviously definitively answered the second one. As for the first, once again, not my job. If you'd asked only that one I'd have left it for JH.

That said, I've noticed that the people who accuse libertarians of thinking it's okay for people to voluntarily sell themselves into slavery usually have the oddest notions of what constitutes "slavery". They usually seem to define it as something along the lines of a contract in which a person offers a lifetime of unpaid obedience in return for some sort of compensation. The libertarians who are challenged with this question usually define "slavery" more along the lines of a person being chained up, forced to work at whip point, and hunted down and recaptured if she runs away. This tends to make the disputants talk past each other.

So if you aren't just grandstanding and you sincerely want an answer to whether people will be able to voluntarily sell themselves into slavery in the coming libertarian paradise, I highly recommend that you clarify what it is you mean by "slavery". Moreover, if what you mean is a contract in which a person offers a lifetime of unpaid obedience in return for some sort of compensation, I suggest you take into account the fact that for a hundred years after we enacted the 13th Amendment banning involuntary servitude, our judges not only tolerated but in fact customarily officiated at ceremonies celebrating "Do you promise to love, honor and obey until death do you part?" contracts.

And if you genuinely can't tell the difference between a lifetime obedience contract and a person being chained up, forced to work at whip point, and hunted down and recaptured if she runs away, I suggest you google the legal term "specific performance".

 

[Bomb#20]

These are slippery slope questions that I asked. But the libertarian philosophy is so unrealistic and extreme that it is nearly impossible to ask any question about the practical application of their philosophy that is not a slippery slope question. Bomb#20 argued one time to me that families have no purpose in society, no reason to exist as he (she?) slid down the slope from arguing that the economy has no purpose, no reason to exist.

What the hell is it going to take to get you to stop trying to paraphrase your opponents? How much more proof do you need that you stink at it? Don't believe everything you think!

No, I never told you either families or the economy have no reason to exist. Go look up the bloody thread! You are the person who mentally equates reasons with purposes, not I. You have just committed yet another of your signature "You believe X; I believe X implies Y; therefore you believe Y." fallacies.

As for an economy and a family having no purpose, that has nothing to do with libertarian philosophy. As I said, I'm not a libertarian; and it has nothing to do with any sort of political philosophy. A purpose is an emergent phenomenon that exists in the brain of an individual animal. I do not believe in disembodied purposes for exactly the same reason I do not believe in gods or the healing power of crystals. And the last time we discussed this, you were unable to tell me which individual animal your so-called "the purpose of an economy" was a purpose in the brain of. You are propounding metaphysics; metaphysics does not impress me.

And if you wish to talk any more about your objections to my statements about purposes, start a thread on that topic. It's off-topic here.

 

[SimpleDon]

As I have said I don't have a problem with most of the libertarian philosophy. It is pretty much the flag waving all American philosophy that we have been trying to achieve for more than two centuries. And I contend that we are now as close to it as we can now practically achieve.

We obviously took a step too far in deregulating our financial markets, as the financial crisis of 2008 showed us.

The attempts to reduce the size of the federal government produced a much larger increase in the state and local governments, they have more than doubled. As I have also said you can have an efficient government or you can have a decentralized government, but you can't have both.

Certainly many of the problems that we are having today can be traced to the recent decentralization of government or the legacy of the 18th century poor travel and communications that scattered and built so many different levels of government.

Having the inefficiency of more than 13,000 school boards, all having pretty much the same problems and coming up with pretty much the same solutions so that we can fool ourselves into believing that we have local control of the schools or having 17,000 different police agencies in the country doesn't seem very efficient to me and is probably one of the major reasons that we have so much trouble with education and policing today.

So that you believe in a libertarian paradise people will not be able to sell themselves or their children into slavery. Good, I agree with that. Just one question. Who is going to prevent these things? The various layers of government enforce the laws against these things now. Are you going to use the power of the government too or are you going to rely on social pressure and moral persuasion like the Libertarian party platform says that they are going to prevent pollution?

Aren't you talking central planning? Have you considered what this might do to private schools and cops? We all know private is best. So is local. I don't think curriculum should be locally determined. That is how we get flat earthers, right to lifers, Genesis believers, etc etc etc. You better clear this with Axulus and Max. I don't think they will like it. By the way I do like the idea that we have the means to discuss these things on a very large scale and come to some agreement on what happens in a science course and what happens when someone is arrested. These things have been ignored far too long.

There is obviously a huge amount of inefficiency in the way that we police. We are the largest police state in the world with twice as many policemen per capita than the next largest police state, Germany. I don't know how this flies with the libertarians on the board. They have never discussed it with me in any of the half dozen times that I have mentioned it.

Our only saving grace is that so many of the police in the US are working in the administration of those 17,000 agencies that they aren't noticed. Otherwise we would be able to say that the US also has the most incompetent police in the world. A lot of police and yet a lot of crime.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

To be fair, a decent portion of that crime is the police going around shooting people.

 

[skepticalbip]

Aren't you talking central planning? Have you considered what this might do to private schools and cops? We all know private is best. So is local. I don't think curriculum should be locally determined. That is how we get flat earthers, right to lifers, Genesis believers, etc etc etc. You better clear this with Axulus and Max. I don't think they will like it. By the way I do like the idea that we have the means to discuss these things on a very large scale and come to some agreement on what happens in a science course and what happens when someone is arrested. These things have been ignored far too long.

There is obviously a huge amount of inefficiency in the way that we police. We are the largest police state in the world with twice as many policemen per capita than the next largest police state, Germany. I don't know how this flies with the libertarians on the board. They have never discussed it with me in any of the half dozen times that I have mentioned it.

Our only saving grace is that so many of the police in the US are working in the administration of those 17,000 agencies that they aren't noticed. Otherwise we would be able to say that the US also has the most incompetent police in the world. A lot of police and yet a lot of crime.

The overwhelming percentage of those police are there to enforce government regulations not to stop citizens from criminal acts against other citizens. Reduce the number of senseless government regulations and most of those police would have to be let go to move out of police work and into the business of contributing to the economy. How many police and government departments are there in the "war on drugs" out beating the forests looking for marijuana? How many thousands of police are there patrolling our waterways insuring that boaters have registration numbers on their boats (I see several every time I go sailing or fishing)? How many police are involved in rounding up prostitutes? etc. etc.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Still waiting for a professed libertarian to say in clear concise DECLARATIVE sentences what libertarianism is, NOT what it is not.

I have read many posts throughout my time on the these board saying what libertarianism is NOT. the scenario goes something like this. a non libertarian will make a statement about what they think libertarianism is or perhaps ask a specific question about something ascribed to libertarianism and the PL (professed libertarians) here say that's wrong and then we all go down the garden path of arguing about the libertarianism IS NOT, and we never say what it IS.

Now Jason has stated what he sees as its basis, so what policies do libertarians draw from this basis and how do they propose to make those policies work?

Still waiting

Post 79. Page 8. I said what it is.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Then they should speak up.

Unless it is some kind of religion.

If it is a set of coherent ideas then those ideas can be expressed.

Why would somebody attach that label to themselves?

What do they believe in beyond lowering their tax burden?

I'm surprised that you even had to ask that. Several positions held by libertarians are well known. Our opposition to the drug war is exceedingly well known, so much so that even you must have heard of it. Likewise we are all in favor of sexual freedom, opposing laws that punish homosexuality. We were in favor of gay marriage back in the 1970s, and Hillary wasn't in favor of it until just a few years ago.

I've given the basis for our positions. That should really be enough for you to figure out where we stand on almost anything. There are some issues that divide libertarians, but on most of them we are in agreement. So think - we believe in the NAP, described in post 79.

What, then, is our position on foreign policy?
What, then, is our position on whether or not people should be allowed to form a union?
What, then, is our position on free speech?

In the coming libertarian paradise will people be able to voluntarily sell themselves into slavery?

Voluntary slavery is a contradiction in terms.

Will they be able to sell their children into slavery?

Absolutely not, and there is no way to derive that position from the NAP. That is not even wrong.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Still waiting

Post 79. Page 8. I said what it is.

I read that post.

Now that I've gotten all the preliminaries out of the way, I will finally come out and describe libertarianism itself. It actually starts from some simple premises, and everything is derived from them.

One way would be to say that libertarianism is the political philosophy dedicated to maximizing the rights of the individual. Another way is with the NAP or ZAP, which means "Non-Aggression Principle" or "Zero-Aggression Principle." This means that no person has the right to initiate aggression against another person. And no, owning private property is NOT an aggression. Proudhon's declaration against Earl Grey Tea is nonsense to us. That is a joke, Earl Grey is Proper Tea.

A key word is "initiate". The NAP is not pacifism. A person is completely within his rights to defend himself.

What makes libertarianism fairly unique in the political sphere is that said principle is applied to the government, instead of always carving out exceptions for the government.

Since no person has the right to initiate aggression, no person may delegate that right. Not even if they get together in a large group and do so by voting.

Everything else libertarian derives from that.

It's not that we are anti-government. It is just that while there are various people or groups that feel they do have a right to initiate aggression, one entity does so on a scale far beyond the rest and therefore must be most carefully watched and guarded against. Who killed more people, Adolph Hitler or Charles Manson?

This is why we are in favor of gay marriage and drug legalization. People have a right to do whatever they want as long as they don't violate the rights of others, and it would take an act of aggression to prevent or punish those who wish to engage in gay marriage or drug legalization.

It's also the reason we are in favor of the free market. If two people voluntarily enter a transaction, no third party has any authority or right to say otherwise and it takes an act of aggression to say otherwise.

Now to expand it and flesh it out further,

Now Jason has stated what he sees as its basis, so what policies do libertarians draw from this basis and how do they propose to make those policies work?

you said,

Everything else libertarian derives from that.

What is that "everything else?"

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Our positions on social issues, economic issues, and foreign policy.

 

[bilby]

Our positions on social issues, economic issues, and foreign policy.

How do you define the initiation of aggression for the purposes of those policies?

Not initiating aggression has a wide variety of interpretations. What do you do about salami tactics (see below video from 1:23)? Where do you draw the line?

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX_d_vMKswE[/YOUTUBE]

 

[Bomb#20]

One way would be to say that libertarianism is the political philosophy dedicated to maximizing the rights of the individual. Another way is with the NAP or ZAP, which means "Non-Aggression Principle" or "Zero-Aggression Principle." This means that no person has the right to initiate aggression against another person.
...
Since no person has the right to initiate aggression, no person may delegate that right. Not even if they get together in a large group and do so by voting.

Everything else libertarian derives from that.

Here's the problem with that explanation. Okay, the two problems. The little problem is that you haven't shown any means by which we can determine what is or isn't aggression. For instance, you say private property isn't aggression and arkirk says it is. If we can't determine who's right, then you haven't actually defined libertarianism. All you've done is set us up for a "You're initiating aggression."/"No, you are!" shout-fest. But as I said, that's a little problem. All you need to do to deal with it is give us the libertarian definition of aggression. We can incorporate that into your explanation and then Bob's your uncle. (So, since you aren't answering my question about how to find out who's right, please define "aggression" as libertarians understand it.)

The big problem is that you've given us not one but two definitions: maximizing rights and zero aggression initiation. You appear to be taking for granted that the two are equivalent. But it's not at all self-evident that they're equivalent. It seems obvious to me that there exist circumstances where somebody initiating aggression against somebody else will do a better job of protecting individuals' rights than if he refrains from initiating aggression. If such circumstances indeed exist then once again you haven't defined libertarianism. All you've done is given libertarians an unfalsifiability engine -- a contradiction lets one logically derive anything. So if you want to produce a workable explanation of libertarianism you're going to need to either prove the counterintuitive proposition that your two definitions really are equivalent, or else drop one of the two.

 

[SimpleDon]

Murray Rothbard, while he not quite advocated being able to sell children into slavery but he did say this,

In a purely libertarian society, the young child is not as bereft as might at first appear. For in such a society, every parent would have the right to sell their guardianship rights to others. In short, there would be a free market in babies and other children.

Murray Rothbard, the essay Kid Lib in Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays available here.

Rothbard was not random internet blogger

Murray Newton Rothbard (/ˈmʌri ˈrɑːθbɑrd/; March 2, 1926 – January 7, 1995) was a Jewish American heterodox economist of the Austrian School,[1][2] a revisionist historian,[3][4] and a political theorist[5](pp11, 286, 380) whose writings and personal influence played a seminal role in the development of modern libertarianism.[6] Rothbard was the founder and leading theoretician of anarcho-capitalism, a staunch advocate of historical revisionism, and a central figure in the twentieth-century American libertarian movement.

 

[untermensche]

I'm surprised that you even had to ask that. Several positions held by libertarians are well known. Our opposition to the drug war is exceedingly well known, so much so that even you must have heard of it.

People on the left have been opposed to the Drug War since the day Reagan started it.

Saying you are opposed to the Drug War is good but it isn't any original or unique position.

What Anarchists oppose for example are illegitimate power structures, like the top down power structures that exist within capitalist institutions.

They equate this with tyranny similar to the tyranny of top down monarchy.

In a world where labor had many choices these power structures may not represent much of a problem. But in a world where most much choose between one top down dictatorship or another it is a very real problem and real imposition on human freedom.

What do Libertarians make of human created power structures that are used to dominate and exploit others?

What is the Libertarian position on democracy? On democracy in the workplace as opposed to dictatorship? Even if it is free submission to dictatorship as has existed throughout history for survival.

 

[Togo]

In the coming libertarian paradise will people be able to voluntarily sell themselves into slavery?

Voluntary slavery is a contradiction in terms.

How does that square with voluntarily entering into a binding contract?

Or voluntarily entering a communal organisation - such as a worker's union?


What this does do is make the link to conservatism much clearer. Putting property ownership as a fundamental right, and emphasising freedom from actions from others that might change property ownership, would be very attractive to those who own or control more property than others, and want to keep it that way.

 

[Bomb#20]

People on the left have been opposed to the Drug War since the day ReaganNixon started it.

Fify.