Libertarianism, In Theory and Practice

Akrasia

donegalfella wrote: »

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DF you're a very strange chap, criticising Brianthebard for placing thanks while pretty much every post that criticises anarchism (no matter how vacuous) has a thanks from Donegalfella underneath it.

Akrasia

donegalfella wrote: »

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The Democratic party is not a left wing party. It is more 'liberal' than the conservative republical party, but liberal does not = left wing. When was the last time you heard anyone from the 'Democrat party' espouse collective ownership of the means of production.
Historically, they did have ties to the labour unions, and perhaps on a local level they still do, but on a national level, the Democrats were at the forefront of NAFTA and the flight of capital and jobs from the U.S. to south of the border (huge profits for the corporations, wages in mexico have barely increased)

Can you give some examples of Irish media that you would consider left-wing, right-wing, and centrist?

Ireland's media is even more tightly owned than the U.S. media.

Akrasia

donegalfella wrote: »

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Agreed, but you deny that private ownership is a form of authority.

If you are an employer and I am a worker, and you tell me to do x or else I will get fired. That is a form of authority that compells the worker to do something that he may not agree with or else face the total loss of his income with no guarantee that he will be able to find another job (and with no labour rights or welfare safety net, the very real prospect of becoming destitute)

Offalycool

Kama wrote: »

Eh, wouldn't put it that way, but yes I think it's a political philosophy that has definite intrinsic problems as a political movement.

Ok. But I work from the belief that political power is action between people. If citizens what something done, nobody listens to the individual (unless he or she is a politician, but even then they cannot effect change on their own (unless its whistle blowing)). To convince people that they must forever fight for their own isolated and particular interest, and mostly against the will of the collective (which ironically doesn’t exist for libertarians), is to remove the ability of the person to be politically powerful, through solidarity.

Mind you, the same description quite neatly encapsulates the 'depressed hippy' school of lifestyle-leftism better...Rightists tend not to blame society, they blame individuals; blaming society is a left rhetoric, imo.

Ok, just swap out the word ‘society’ for ‘state’...that’s simply what libertarians do IMHO.

silverharp

OK here is another angle for discussion , inflation and deficits. From my point of view both of these are unethical and are a form of theft either directly or indirectly. As issues for the public they are not gasped easily but I see them as something that can distort how the market works in a negetive way in that it causes misallocation of resources. Take the US in the 1960's when they got involved in Vietnam , instead of doing the "honest" thing by raising taxes which the public may have voted against, the slight of hand was to borrow money and inflate the currency to decieve the electorate. Who paid the price? apart from everyone, low income earners pay a higher price as they cannot hedge against it, it might even partially explain why families couldnt live on one income like the previous generation
In this decade the understatement of inflation by how its reported ie ignoring asset inflation and keeping interest rates too low made our hard pressed rational agents "drunk" and again was another factor in the mix that has led the global markets to where they are today.

SkepticOne

Kama wrote: »

Firstly, you are 'telling people how to live'. You have a theory of politics (essentially that collective action that imposes on any other is wrong by coercivity) that either will be shared by all (and hence, stricto sensu, market totalitarianism), or that will be opposed by some on foundational grounds, which refuses outright your assumptions on legitimacy (force or fraud), or who (like me) see leeway in interpreting the word 'initiate'. You will be unable to allow them their 'freedom', as it conflicts with your own, and hence you will be justified in restricting theirs. Much as yours is 'restricted', for the 'greater good', in our normal societies. And the wheel turns again...

I'm not sure I understand this. What freedom would these other people be denied?

Scofflaw

donegalfella wrote:

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Ask yourself - is that really necessary? Does it contribute in any way to the discussion, or is it fundamentally just sniping? I'm sure you know the answer.

moderately,
Scofflaw

Permabear

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Permabear

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Akrasia

donegalfella wrote: »

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I have seen two year olds take a scolding with more grace than that.

Kama

I'm +1 on Silverharps question, btw...could go some interesting places...

donegalfella wrote:

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Damn straight! It's those rentier capitalists with their accumulated surplus! They're leeches, parasites I tells you, draining the life from our economy. Capitalist swine, strangling us with their greed!

To answer less rabidly, no I don't, but I don't think my agreement means the same as yours. I think that once you start claiming other parts of society are 'parasites', it's an unpleasant path, ethically speaking. Something pricks up on my neck, like when I hear someone refer to a group of humans as 'animals'. Frankly, more than the philosophical side of it, coherency, etc, it's that the answer to the foundational ethical question: 'am I my brothers keeper?' in Libertarianism seems so derisively voiced...'fvck him, he's a lazy parasite'.

At this point, your efforts to portray me as a closet totalitarian are simply becoming pedantic and tiresome.

It's becoming equally tiresome trying to explain that being born into a society, without democratic rights, with a total field of exclusionary ownership, without a public space, and no assurance of egality or justification of legitimacy other than being told I would be free, is to my mind, a paradox: a market-totalitarianism. Exorcizing politics from society, and dissolving society, and imagining coercion will not find a new host seems a naivety ill befitting those with such a negative concept of what it means to be human.

Have you read Orwell's "Politics and the English Language," by any chance?

Yup, and I know my style sucks, is convoluted, and probably pretentious wnk. But its what falls out when I type. Mea culpa.

That being said, if we were playing purity about communication, you could get your points across a lot better if you didn't spend half your time either sneering or goading. Intolerant jibes and mockery don't endear anyone to a position; again, libertarians always appear so sure they're right, that any moderates flee the scent of zealotry. All that gloating helped kill the dream of an self-moderating thread, and inflicted Maximal Irony for anarchists. >_<
Alas, we have proved that a polite society cannot exist without Powers and Authorities. People just won't behave!

Now please, can we stop rubbernecking on drama? And discussing moderation?

Permabear

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A Primal Nut

Akrasia wrote: »

I would like to know if the libertarians think their future society would be mostly made up of self employed sole traders, or if corporations would be the dominant form of business organisation.

The main reason I ask this, is because whenever I bring up the point that workplaces are dictatorships of the owners, and that this doesn't sound very conductive to individual liberty, the libertarian solution is that the workers can leave and start their own business.

So do Libertarians see most people being employees, or self employed?

I'm not Libertarian although I'm interested in some of the ideas. It is not about everyone being self-employed but about choice. You seem to think that in a utopian society everyone would be self-employed. The fact is that most people haven't got the ability to run their own affairs and like the security of working for a company. This, contrary to many opinions on here, does that make them slaves. Where this notion came from I don't know. Slaves are forced to work for a company against their will - this leads to their being no competition in the workplace and hence the employee has no room to negotiate on pay or hours. That happens in Communism where everyone is forced to work for one employer, the state. In Capitalism, there is a certain amount of competition for employees; in the sense that one company who treates employees like ****; the employees wll probably go form their own company or go to one who treats their employees better.

Another reason its better to have corporations than self-employeed is that in some industries having groups of people instead of one is essential. I'm not sure why some Libertarians are defensive about this and are struggling to admit that some people will still work for corporations. Its about choice, and there is enough variation of people who want to be employed by a company versus those who don't to make it work.

Permabear

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Akrasia

donegalfella wrote: »

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It would be much easier to have a theoretically and historically informed debate if certain posters didn't keep verbally assaulting everyone who mentions an academic from the left or ~heaven forbid~ Marx and attacking people for using academic language

Akrasia

donegalfella wrote: »

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You're not arguing with communists.
2 posts down from imploring everyone not to use strawmen, and you're hinting at the false dychotomy of 'either the corporate structure, or the communist centrally planned economy'

No mention of the cooperative structures or the federations or syndicates that have been mentioned probably more than a dozen times in this group of intertwining discussions

Permabear

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A Primal Nut

Akrasia wrote: »

You're not arguing with communists.
2 posts down from imploring everyone not to use strawmen, and you're hinting at the false dychotomy of 'either the corporate structure, or the communist centrally planned economy'

No mention of the cooperative structures or the federations or syndicates that have been mentioned probably more than a dozen times in this group of intertwining discussions

A corporation can be and often is a cooperative structure. Its generally in everyones interest that the company does well.

Kama

Mmm, I think most of the socialists aren't listening due to having left the thread, and not due to the logical arguments being too much, more the slightly bitter taste in the mouth.

There'll be no quiet ladies knitting in Libertopia, either, in that Spartan land...

A few brief points, from a long-wilted flower:

For most Marxists, it comes from their inability to distinguish working in a modern corporation from working in a British factory 150 years ago. The Marxist will never admit that the former is in any way a substantive improvement over the latter.

The libertarian seems unable to see how many of those improvements came out of the labour tradition, and political organization for the regulation of capitalism. using the democratic weapon of the State.
Which again, requires a selective and highly partial reading of history. 8 hours for work, 8 hours for sleep, 8 hours for what we will.

On parasitism:

I come at this out of ecology and evolution, where a parasitic relationship is when where one benefits, and one loses out, plus-minus. Firstly, this is a useful reduction, but reality can be complex; many 'hangers-on' in our stomach are commensals; they loaf around and serve no apparent purpose, but when you kill them off, you tend to get an opportunistic infection, and have to eat a lot of active yogurt.

K, point being firstly, that things aren't as simple as the 'parasites' rhetoric makes it look eg. Social Welfare payments can be a good way to maintain consumer demand, redistribution can make an economy more resilient by defusing social tension from inequality, etc. Also, what you might think to be a parasite, might be a commensal, or a symbiote. Wiping out parts of an ecology can have unforeseen consequences. And yes, I do think, in general terms, ecology has a lot to teach economics, and the ecological 'frame' is justified.

Secondly I'm making the kinda aesthetic point that the simplistic rhetoric of 'parasites' has been used by too many nasty fanatics of either ideological extreme for me to treat it sympathetically as an argumentative approach. Hence my OTT 'liquidate the vampire capitalist' rhetoric, which seems an exact mirror of your position of a 'parasite underclass of feckless leeches', which functions marvellously as a populist call-to-arms, but it does the opposite of convincing me; I expect the speaker to say 'vermin' and start the endless search for enemies, Kulaks, whatever...

You are deliberately conflating my positions on small-state libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism

I think I'm accidentally conflating them; perhaps in the interests of clarity you should keep them more seperate. I generally assume minarchist for libertarians (because they always need to keep contract enforcement and the disciplinary apparatus, natch), but you'd moved anarcho-cap a few pages back, when it all went a bit grover norquist (stating that eventually the courts would be privatized). Rules based on a lack of sovereign authority aren't intended as arguments against minarchism.

How do you ensure that your socialist world doesn't devolve into yet another tyrannical elite riding roughshod over a repressed and subjugated populace? How do you address the many questions about socialist "justice"?

1) How does a socialist society justify its legitimacy?
2) What assurances of égalité exist in the socialist world? And how do you make sure that these assurance exist in reality, rather than as empty rhetoric on a Marxist-Leninist hymn sheet?

Sorry if this sounds slightly cheeky, but this thread is on Libertarianism; arguments against socialism are kinda off-topic. We spawned separate threads explicitly to prevent 'omg socialists do this omg capitalists do this' firing-past-each-others-head style of rhetoric (which makes it oh-so-easy to dodge questions with 'well what about YOUR mom?' returns, such as this one), so I'm baffled that you want to move back towards it. You tend to rail against these dastardly socialistic enemies so much, one would suspect you positively require them to justify your position...

You can't justify libertarianism by ranting about the evils of socialism, no more than Marxists can adequately theorize society purely by critiquing capitalism. Justify your system on its own merits, if you can, but don't blame people not accepting it on a socialist conspiracy...

And just to set straight, I haven't mainly been arguing for an extremely 'socialist' society; I've been a good little Goldilocks for the mixed economy right the way through on the whole...just enough state, just enough market...just enough security, just enough incentive...just enough liberty, just enough solidarity...and so on. Boring, middle-of-the-road, safe, tried-and-trusted...hard to get people all fired up about a flawed system, doesn't go well on a cheap slogan or a rousing battlecry...but...

My porridge is just right...:D

Mind you, a drop of social in a good individualist-libertarian porridge probably spoils the whole batch, for DF...

Permabear

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jabbertalky

Donegalfella you are nothing more than a right wing fascist, take your Ayn Rand over to Stormfront and I'm sure you'll get on better

Offalycool

Very well said DF, for the most part. I agree with you about bureaucracy, but I have learned that behind the bureaucracy there are people. Bureaucracy can be destructive, but bureaucracy is a result of human organisation and is part of us, regardless of how we organise ourselves. The world (even a Libertarian world) could not function without bureaucracy.

The danger is ideological. If we have an ideological belief (Ideology being a value based belief that is not concerned with logical constancy), the danger is this ideology can undermine the rational capacity of humans to question authority. Nazi ideology distinguished the ‘Arian human’ from other ‘lesser humans’, eventually referring to ‘lesser humans’ as ‘sub-human’. The logical inconsistency here is that the term ‘human’ became applicable only to ‘Arian people’, making the concept of ‘Arian humans’ absurd. Of course, science will tell us there is no genetic difference in practice between Arian people and other peoples. The only criterion used to distinguish Arian people was language.

Bureaucracy can be dangerous, but only if ideology is forwarded as the reason to stop thinking and accept the future (which ideology always claims to have a monopoly on). Indeed I believe the Totalitarian societies of the world can function on bureaucracy supported by ideology without the ‘leader’ (that is, any specific ‘leader’), who is really just a focal point of ideology (and is interchangeable with others). It is not enough to reject ‘collectivism’ as the cause of totalitarianism, we must reject ideology. We must work with bureaucracy, but always conscious of it. The most destructive human force can be the family man, with a job to do, and a head filled with BS. We must all be responsible for the world we inhabit, and to each other. We must realise the political power each of us possess with others, and be ourselves among others.

Permabear

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A Primal Nut

jabbertalky wrote: »

Donegalfella you are nothing more than a right wing fascist, take your Ayn Rand over to Stormfront and I'm sure you'll get on better

Complete rubbish. State industry and state regulation of industry was very important to Fascism. Libertanarianism couldn't be more different. Fascism had a lot more in common with Communism and Socialism than Libertanarianism.

Stormfront's racial ideology has nothing to do with Economics. Where you get that from I have no idea.

Offalycool

donegalfella wrote: »

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I don’t believe we can ever have the individualist world you crave. We are embedded in our historical culture, the very structure of our society: our concepts, our language, our sexual relations all are derived from our past which has always been political. What Libertarians propose is nothing short of the end of politics. The supremacy of the ‘market’.

Again, it comes down to psychology. The weak person falls naturally into the collective, deriving his sense of self from it. His politics are everyone else's politics; his decisions are everyone else's decisions; his life is lived according to someone else's script. The crafty, power-hungry person works out how to exploit the power of the collective; he appeals to it with guileful rhetoric. "As an individual, you are meaningless, but as part of the masses, you can achieve anything!" he tells them. "Baaaa!" go the sheep.

Anybody can fall victim to ideology, as I’m sure you are aware. Even the ‘crafty’ person can be the biggest sucker of them all. Politics can be destructive, but it can also be creative, through compromise.

This destructive, corrosive logic of groupthink means that no collectivist can ever be truly human. His frail ego cannot exist as a solitary thing; it needs constant bolstering from others, constant reinforcement from the herd. This is a travesty wreaked on mankind. It turns human beings into mindless followers of each other, their heads filled with wooly rhetoric and received ideas, their sense of everything limited by what is "socially acceptable." It's sad, really, but if this trend doesn't reverse itself, one wonders what a "human being" will be five hundred years hence.

Nobody can exist as a ‘solitary thing’; the ‘ego’ is a concept, a way of understanding the ‘self’ and the ‘world’, as separate entities, and is a result of the concept of ‘objective reason’. It is not the only way we can understand (phenomenological inquiry brakes down this dualism.) There are really no human relations that are not political in my view. I cannot accept a non-political person as being ‘truly human’.

Offalycool

A Primal Nut wrote: »

Stormfront's racial ideology has nothing to do with Economics. Where you get that from I have no idea.

Ideology is ideology. Libertarianism may not be as absurd as Nazism, but it's still absurd all the same.

Offalycool

The interesting thing about political philosophy, I believe, is that it is not about envisioning the end of history, the perfect society. This point has been lost to many ever since Plato wrote The Republic. On the one hand it could be understood as an image of the way things should be! But as D.D. Raphael points out, classic philosophy has had two goals from the beginning. The first is to clarify concepts, i.e. what is ‘Sovereignty’. It is important to understand what we mean when we use a word such as ‘sovereignty’. The second goal is to use the clarified concepts to question our beliefs via our reason. Plato (never specified his goal) may also have wrote The Republic to understand and pass judgement on his society. The mistake we can make in political philosophy is to use the tools we create to understand our societies (Marxism, Libertarianism, etc.) as goals in their own right. Perhaps we are better served if we use them to evaluate our society, whilst accepting them as stories, which are fallible.

A Primal Nut

Offalycool wrote: »

Ideology is ideology. Libertarianism may not be as absurd as Nazism, but it's still absurd all the same.

Don't understand the point you are making. I'm not Libertarian and I agree it is quite absurd in some ways. However, I fail to see the connection to Stormfront/Nazism, who are about the exact possible of personal freedom.

Do Libertarianism and Nazism have anything in common, other than the fact that you think they are both absurd? I also think Communism is absurd but I wouldn't tell a communist to go to a Stormfront website?

Offalycool

A Primal Nut wrote: »

Don't understand the point you are making. I'm not Libertarian and I agree it is quite absurd in some ways. However, I fail to see the connection to Stormfront/Nazism, who are about the exact possible of personal freedom.

Do Libertarianism and Nazism have anything in common, other than the fact that you think they are both absurd? I also think Communism is absurd but I wouldn't tell a communist to go to a Stormfront website?

Not really, I think they are both ideology and absurd, that's about it.. I think Ideology has become synonymous with Nazism, and so I assume that's what jabbertalky was referring to. Not exactly a fair comparison, but I can understand if this is indeed his or her point.