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Comment by Day1 | Hacker News Reader

I thought libertarians tout smaller government? Are police not part of the government?

"That's libertarians for you — anarchists who want police protection from their slaves." - Kim Stanley Robinson, Green Mars

Or technically a character from the book.

But I think, that's the point of the article: Smaller government for the part of government which doesn't concern you. But that in turn might look differently for people in different circumstances.

Demographics (to avoid the term "race") affect your view if police or other parts of government are essential or rather part of the problem .

Thank you for your response. I’m curious to know what the utilitarian approach to policing would be. (An approach that is useful or beneficial to the majority?) I currently believe that approach is still a highly decentralized one—Local communities deciding what the best approach is and the freedom to move over to a different community if desired. And I still think that belief aligns most with libertarianism.

The paradox cuts both ways—liberals and leftists purport to want more regulation and bigger government, so presumably we should want more police. Of course, issues are decoupled so a leftist can want more regulation of businesses and less policing and a libertarian can prefer more moderate police reforms while wishing the government were less involved in business and social affairs (I’m a liberal, so I disagree with libertarians, but their ideology is at least as consistent as mine).

Every gun collecting, gadsen flag waving self-described "libertarian" I have met in real life, curiously, also sported things like thin blue line stickers on their pickup truck and was a huge supporter of their local sheriffs department.

wouldn't a key word there be 'gun' ?

I'm always confused why this seems hypocritical.

One can take any large-change political idea - communism, libertarian, anarchist whatever - won't there be a transition? Does even the most hardcore supporter believe you can upend society in a day? That seems straw manning a true Scotsman to me - where if you don't support the sudden, radical change of society you are not a true Scotsman.

You can run the experiment yourself. Sh/would a communist see private land ownership as the first thing to go? Or sh/would it nationalize business? Sh/would a libertarian want police gone first? Or licensing for lawn cutting?

Libertarians should want Taft-Hartley and other wage-suppressing regulations abolished first. They don't because free markets are really just code for making sure owners win and workers lose.

As a self-described libertarian -

I respect the job the police do, and I wouldn't want to have to do it myself. But that is completely orthogonal to holding individual police officers accountable under the same laws as everybody else. Agents of the state summarily executing people is one of the most egregious violations of individual liberty possible - larger than "licensing for lawn cutting" or most anything else. The "thin blue line" flag is a counter protest to the call for police accountability, and it is blatantly hypocritical to call yourself a libertarian while opposing a major libertarian critique.

The internet variety of Anarcho libertarian is quite anticop. Frequently see things like, "a cop will enforce any law up to and including the execution of children".

You meet a very peculiar brand of libertarian.

https://www.lp.org/issues/crime-and-justice/

https://old.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/search?q=Police&restric...

the rural eastern WA / OR / ID ones, mostly.

Libertariansim is about people being able to exercise their rights however they want, as long as that doesn't infringe on someone else's rights. If you believe in that, you need law enforcement to enforce people's rights when someone is infringing on them.

That doesn't seem realistic. Even good faith believers will have disagreements.

Who decides how a disagreement gets resolved? Even if you do contractual everything, what happens if a contract dispute arises? Sometimes contracts are done based on misunderstandings, or someone tries to press an advantage in a way the other party doesn't like.

Beyond all that, the "if you believe in letting everyone exercise rights as long as they don't infringe on someone else's rights" sounds a lot like the wishful thinking that goes along with advocating communism. If everyone believes in from each according to ability, and to each according to need, you don't need legal systems and law enforcement, either.

There's nothing odd about that, seeing as how law enforcement and national defence are some the few tasks relegated to the state in a libertarian society. Now if you were talking about anarchists sporting such stickers you'd be right but libertarians are not anarchists. They want as little government as possible, not "no government at all". In other words, there is no incongruity in having both a Gadsen flag as well as some Thin Blue Line piece of marketing material on a truck.

As I understand it, libertarians would replace government by contractual relationships. How do those contracts get enforced? How do contract disputes get resolved? How does the private ownership of everything get enforced?

Libertarianism implies a very large court system, and a large police force, to enforce all the contracts and so forth.

I'm a left libertarian w/ some georgism ideas....

I think what we need is a better social contract such that local municipalities get the dragons' horde of taxes... I also think we need a more EU style federal govt..

My ideal country would be 200 city-states (minimum), each governor is also a senator for the Congress. No house. There'd be ten regions in the country which might be like countries... or provinces ... these would simply be loose orgs of governors in an area who elect a President yearly to oversee the group, and speak for them. Each region has it's own military that the fed can conscript IF the region has 60% approval from states.

Fed is basically in charge of interstate commerce, international affairs, national security, etc...

100% of taxes would be required to stay within 100 miles of 'home' for the person paying the taxes... 10% of the total would be distributed among regional and federal levels...

Most things would stay the same organizationally, hopefully states would form their own universal healthcare and welfare programs, and grants for worker-owned companies. No subsidies at all for single-person or regular 'corporations'.

Some states would definitely fall back to more draconic thinking...esp on lines of abortion/gun control... some being pro-choice, some anti-abortion.... but w/ more states in wider areas you can move to a more progressive place hopefully.. like Austin might be a uniquely progressive city-state and Amarillo a more conservative one...

Don't like the one move to the other...

The problem to me is we put everything in D.C. and all our cash there as well, and all they do is spend it on the Military and nothing else gets done...ever.

Both sides are equally stagnate in proposing true/good options..

If we move the higher powers of government to local, and then thin it out as we move up to regional and federal, then people have more control of what really happens in their neck of the woods, and at least some places might have better living conditions and maybe the better places rub off their 'success stories' on the worse places and you get improved living conditions across the board...

Jefferson believed that people shouldn't be patriotic towards USA but towards Virginia, or whatever state... I think if we became more like that...then things might sort itself out.

Political libertarianism is just absolutist property rights. It's the absolute sovereignty of the property owner. It's "small government" in the same sense as the "state's right" to deem persons slaves: big government stays out of my way as I exercise my rightful power to dominate others.

"Defund the police" certainly does sound like a libertarian proposition to me, but people who call themselves Libertarian are much more concerned about government regulation of businesses, and see the police as necessary to insulate them from the negative externalities of late-stage capitalism.

I doubt libertarians would agree with this characterization. Rather, they would probably say some amount of policing is required to preserve our liberties, which—as a liberal and thinking person—I’m inclined to agree with (murder, theft, and oppression long predate any sort of capitalism, so implying that police are a consequence of a capitalist system is silly).

In discussing the realities of LA, SF, and Seattle with libertarians, most of them want stricter policing as a direct solution to the problems caused by rampant homelessness -- which is a result of wage stagnation and skyrocketing housing costs. People with the very most money are free to gamble on the housing market, and to pay people as little as they can get away with. Damn the consequences; those are felt by the people without. No matter that "small government" doesn't consider the size of the sprawling prison industrial complex. Whether or not libertarians would agree with my characterization is immaterial to the reality of the impact of libertarian policies which are tailored in favor of the rich at expense to the poor.

> Whether or not libertarians would agree with my characterization is immaterial to the reality of the impact of libertarian policies which are tailored in favor of the rich at expense to the poor.

I was remarking about your specific claim about the Libertarian perspective and your implication that they’re inconsistent:

> [libertarians] see the police as necessary to insulate them from the negative externalities of late-stage capitalism.

The libertarian belief that a “rising tide floats all boats” might be incorrect, but inaccuracy and inconsistency are different things. Moreover, progressive policies have often been hard on the poor, and socialist and communist policies have been absolutely disastrous. No political ideology is blameless.

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