Inside the libertarian version of Burning Man: Guns, booze and bitcoin
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The tone and content of this article have nearly zero in common with the tone and content of this festival.
What I saw was a warm, welcoming, well-read, sophisticated, diverse group of people focused on learning, doing, and playing.
The tech talks were as good as a tech conference. The gardening and permaculture talks were as good as a WOOF seminar. The political talks were as diverse and compelling as a beltway nonprofit convention. And yet, all these things occurred in one week at one festival.
Joel Salatin's keynote was particularly awesome. Patrick Byrne and Lyn Ulbricht were also very good.
At my talk on mesh networking, which was supposed to be introductory, the crowd well overflowed the tent and was incredibly sophisticated, having already read up on IPv6, CA's, DNS, and a bunch of other tangentially related topics.
There were hundreds of children playing all kinds of engaging, self-organized games throughout every day across the entire festival grounds, including the biggest and most passionate game of humans vs. zombies I've seen outside a university campus. :-)
There were also classes and workshops for children all day every day. The kids weren't "wandering around the festival" as the article puts it, but in fact were an integral part of it.
The level of debauchery and intoxication was far, far lower than a typical music festival. Yes, there was lots and lots of cannabis consumption. However, I didn't see a single person who was incapacitated (or even impaired) from drug use, including alcohol, which for a 2,000 person outdoor festival is unusual.
This was a great festival and a very healthy experience for me. I highly suggest attendance.
Said the guy who drove to the festival on the trillion dollar road network.
The existing system has many advantages. What are some advantages of taxless governance?
You seem to assume that all of those services would not exist without the current system. This seems to assume that there's only one possible way to fund things.
There are historical examples of all of these (except "offsetting recessions") being funded privately, and arguably producing much better results.
As for "offsetting recessions", the recessions and general economic malaise we experience are directly attributable to the current systems distortions of the market, particularly the monetary system.
Naturally, the current system spends a great deal of effort telling people that the current system is the best system. This is not unique to the USA. People in most countries, from Saudi Arabia to North Korea, from Bolivia to New Zealand, think their country (and its "system") is one of the better ones. In large part this is because one of the first things any government takes over is education.
I believe that if the US had held to the system it was intended to have in the constitution, we would have eliminated poverty by 1940, the great depression never would have happened, and everyone's effective purchasing power would be an order of magnitude better.
The poverty line is $16k or so, right? If people today who earned $16k had the purchasing power of someone who earns $160k, then they wouldn't exactly be poor. That difference can be accounted completely by the distortion in economics and poor finance and operational results of the US government.
And it is getting worse.
What was the intended system?
Consider this- the federal governments debt alone (including unfunded liabilities) is more than the amount of US dollars in circulation.
This name is sometimes given to Article I, Sec. 8, which gives Congress certain powers, but is not the only part fo the Constitution providing powers to the federal government -- or even Congress specifically -- powers (as well as limitations other places in the Constitution that apply even to the exercise of the powers enumerated in Art. I, Sec. 8 or elsewhere) are provided throughout the Constitution, so it is completely untenable to describe a federal government whose power is defined solely by those powers assigned to Congress in Article I, Sec. 8 ("the Enumerated Powers Clause") as "the system [the US] was intended to have in the Constitution".
> Consider this- the federal governments debt alone (including unfunded liabilities) is more than the amount of US dollars in circulation.
The total debt held by the public (you are using a bit of nonstandard terminology, so I'm not sure what you mean to include or exclude) is about 10 times the amount of US currency in circulation, and the total public debt is closer to 15 times the amount of currency in circulation, but I have trouble finding any remotely plausible reason for considering any particular ratio of those two numbers important.
Lots of people believe lots of things. What reason is there for anyone else to adopt your beliefs on these points?
I suggest you read Man, Economy and State by Murray Rothbard. But if you want something shorter and quicker, try Economics in One lesson by Henry Hazlitt. Both are available free online.
1) Your definition of "the system [the US] was intended to have in the constitution" (including how, in concrete terms, it differs from the status quo and your justification for the assertion that the system you describe was, in fact, what was intended in the Constitution), and
2) The argument (which can be brief and supported by appropriate citations to other works) that you believe has "proven" "as a fact" that that system would have the effect you claim.
EU colleges are compelling, because their students graduate without a burden of debt to be repaid over a decade or more. It's unlikely any private system could fund all students in a country for no returns (other than the benefits of an educated population).
Is that so? I'm sure that in many areas, this would immediately exclude many people of wrong colour/country of origin/sexual orientation. One thing that a normal democratic system is the protection of minorities.
It's certainly a possible improvement, but it's not an absolute one.
And while democracy does quite likely facilitate the institutionalization of these processes, it's 'causal' role in this is perhaps weaker than we think.
This is the reason why I often worry about the growing xenophobia and populism in political activity. It seems much more the case that politicians sway popular opinion than the other way around, creating tempest in teapots, some of which become 'societal issues' that really aren't.
It's also a reason why I've become curious (but still quite skeptical, I must admit) about these 'alternative' democratic approaches that don't assume voting (and by extension majority rule) to be the basis of democracy.
That said, I might be saying colossally silly things here. I'm in an armchair.
Please correct me, or point me to interesting resources, as I am very invested in this topic.
Then if there's a fire and you're somehow NOT a subscriber you can still call and have them to put out the fire anyway so long as you're willing to reimburse the full (retail) cost of doing so (which is quite expensive!) or your neighbors can call to have them come and stand by to make sure the fire doesn't escape your property to protect the rest of the neighborhood.
Police protection is a similar thing - best paid for by subscription in advance rather than on a case-by-case basis.
You really have to consider the whole budget, in its entirety, and compare the amounts spent on those things you find to be worthwhile, and those things that you abhor, along with the actual results yielded from that spending. Different people will have different opinions, and therefore produce different numbers when calculating the net value of government, by subtracting disadvantages from advantages.
Pretend that government is a cable company. Some people like the social justice channel, and the safety net channel, and the environmental protection channel. Other people like the foreign wars of choice channel, the temperance channel, the religious non-interference channel. And some people like the robust infrastructure channel, the rule of law channel, and the tedious indie film channel. (Someone has to, I suppose.)
Most customers would prefer to only pay for channels that they typically watch. But then some of the less popular channels would have to be dropped. The cable company executives really like those unpopular channels, so they work together to ensure that customers cannot buy the channels they actually want unless they are bundled with all those other channels. And they set the price really high, because all those cool guys walking away from explosions on the war channel and the heartwarming tales of people overcoming adversity on the social justice channel cost a lot of money.
When people don't like the real cable company, they can get satellite, or an over-the-air antenna, or tv-over-fiber service, or online streaming, or buy and rent DVDs, or pirate shows. But in this metaphor, you could still get those things, but you still have to pay for the cable bundle anyway, whether you like it or not.
Can you see any advantage to not forcing a person who hates watching football to buy the NFL Sunday Ticket, even if you really like watching football? Remember, that guy is making it less expensive for you to watch.
The chief advantage of paying by subscription in a market for services like fire protection is that you don't have to pay for services you don't need and there is a profit incentive for efficient and effective customer service. Private firms can't just automatically raise their rates and FORCE everyone to pay the new rate, so they have to actively LOOK for ways to save money on an ongoing basis. Police patrols are in a similar situation - when you include building security, most police in the US are privately funded, and the private ones are lot less likely to bust into your house and set your baby on fire and much more likely to be polite and reasonable and helpful.
If you want more info on how either of those work, I recommend to you a book called The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without The State that goes into a fair amount of detail on how much our system ALREADY relies on successful but overlooked free-market provision of police, fire departments, courts and other services.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Enterprise-Law-Justice-Without/dp/...
If you want more on the practical, logical CASE for doing so - including some interesting historical precedents - I recommend a book written by the son of Milton Friedman called The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism - the new updated edition should be out in a few months.
http://www.amazon.com/Machinery-Freedom-Guide-Radical-Capita...
Now, could the OP have derived a lack of perspective or understanding purely from the quote, in isolation? No, maybe the speaker knows very well that he and others are indulging in a something of a group LARP. But I think OP singling out that quote is not really to criticize the speaker, but the attitude of the festival itself: have a great time, but please remember that this is fiction, and you're offering very simple prescriptions for huge, complex problems of governance involving hundreds of millions of people, the vast majority of whom are nothing like you and don't have anything resembling your life experience. To hear simple solutions spouted as 'obvious' gospel doesn't reflect well on your ability to grasp the challenges of governance.
Which is really different, imo, than just criticizing someone for playing into a broken-but-necessary system, which is what you got out of it.
By the way, quoted person is not offering a "simple solution". (S)he's not offering any solution. (S)he's saying, income tax is equivalent to theft, and theft is not a justifiable action, even if we can point to its benefits.
This is not a different solution. This is not a difference of opinion on the best way to run the government. It's a moral principle.
Now, you can disagree whether the income tax is actually equivalent to theft, or defend that theft can actually be justifiable in special circumstances, but your criticism is completely off the mark.
I don't mind tax as long as it's optional, I'll pay road tax, I don't want to pay income tax.
The SCotUS struck down poll taxes because the exercise of a right--in that case, voting--cannot be taxed. By that reasoning, if you support a tax on something, you must believe that no one has a right to that thing.
Sales taxes and income taxes imply that there is no right to engage in voluntary commerce. You have no right to earn or spend money. Property taxes imply you have no right to own property. Naturally, if this principle were carried out to its logical extreme, the government has a revenue incentive in denying people their rights.
And that leads to the question: so how do people who love their freedoms pay for a government? And there is no single, objectively correct answer to that question.
And there is also no good reason to mock and ridicule either the people that ask it, or the people who answer it differently.
True...
> because the exercise of a right--in that case, voting--cannot be taxed.
False.
The Supreme Court struck down poll taxes because "A State's conditioning of the right to vote on the payment of a fee or tax violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment" because "[o]nce the franchise is granted to the electorate, lines which determine who may vote may not be drawn so as to cause invidious discrimination", "[f]ee payments or wealth, like race, creed, or color, are unrelated to the citizen's ability to participate intelligently in the electoral process", and "[t]he interest of the State, when it comes to voting registration, is limited to the fixing of standards related to the applicant's qualifications as a voter", finding that "[t]o introduce wealth or payment of a fee as a measure of a voter's qualifications is to introduce a capricious or irrelevant factor." Harper v. Virginia Bd. of Elections, 383 U.S. 663 (1966)
It did not at any point make the argument that "the exercise of a right cannot be taxed". It only made the argument that poll taxes were an unacceptable burden on the right to vote because they impose a burden on a fundamental right that is not sufficiently justified by any state interest relating to the exercise of that right.
> Sales taxes and income taxes imply that there is no right to engage in voluntary commerce.
No, they don't. The Supreme Court tolerating them when it has struck down poll taxes for the reasons described above indicates that the burden that such taxes pose on the right to voluntary commerce, presuming such a right exists, is not unjustified by legitimate government interests related to commerce, it does not imply that the right does not exist (or even that it is not a fundamental right like voting.)
The SCotUS is not staffed by supermen or gods. We can reason as well as they can, but we are not bound by their tradition or political expedience. We can more safely make decisions that might impede the flow of money into the treasury or even collapse the existing government entirely.
I say that a right cannot be taxed. Any external impediment to the exercise of that right, of which taxation is but one, is an infringement. You can disagree, if you like.
Now, a Supreme Court justice, paid in part by the collection of taxes, would obviously say, "Whoa, now. Let's not be too hasty, there, fella." If I were in that position, I too might want to establish some form of guideline or balancing test, such that the infringement be "in the public interest" and "overtly nondiscriminatory, while still greatly advantaging rich people".
Taxing someone's speech by the word is unethical. Taxing someone's religion by the prayer is unethical. Taxing someone's trade by the amount of coin that changes hands is unethical.
We tolerate some level of unethical behavior in government, but it can go too far. If, for instance, someone raised the income tax rate to 101%, there is nothing inherent to the substance of the law preventing that. But you can be certain that it would go to the SCotUS, and they would find a way to say "you can't go that high" without also saying "you can't have that tax at all." It is very likely that they would carefully avoid establishing anything lower than 101% as an upper limit, thus inviting further decisions for 100% and 99% and so on until everyone got tired of trying the same case repeatedly.
Also, I do allege that voluntary commerce is a basic human right. The ability to buy and sell is a necessary and critical element of participation in civil society, and essential to securing our survival needs. It is derived from and intimately related to the right to own property.
Unless we are communist, and openly disavow any right to own property, I think we can safely presume that we also have the right to buy and sell that property.
But let's not just appeal to authority and let it lie without addressing the substance of the argument.
No, it didn't just not explicitly say that was the reason for its decision, it explicitly said what the reason was, and that wasn't it. So it is a falsehood to claim that the SCOTUS struck down poll taxes for the reason you claim.
> but that doesn't obviate the fact that I am making that argument, absent any appeal to authority, right now.
Okay, fine, you are making the argument, and you are wrong. Exercise of rights can be taxed (whether you are using "can be" in the strict sense of possibility, or in the sense of "consistent with the US Constitution".) You may want to argue that they should not be taxed, but you haven't made that argument.
> The issue was that poll taxes were being used to prevent poor black people from voting, denying their rights.
Not exactly; the issue was that taxation created a differential burden based on wealth which thereby denied equal protection of the laws by imposing a qualification with differential impact on an axis (wealth) unrelated to a valid government purpose related to the right being exercised (voting). (Not particularly relevant to the immediate discussion, but additionally contrary to your statement, race actually was not a cited factor in the decision, though wealth was analogized to race, creed, and color in the decision.)
> I say that a right cannot be taxed. Any external impediment to the exercise of that right, of which taxation is but one, is an infringement.
If a right were truly absolute then, certainly, by definition any external impediment would be an infringement. The question is whether we should consider "voluntary commercial activity" an absolute right (a category which even most basic rights are not generally held to fall into, as they are not generally, even by people who agree that they are fundamental rights, tend to accept certain external impediments to them as necessary) -- and you have not made any argument for why it should be so. You may consider it to be an axiom, a fundamental, unquestionable value in itself. But if you do, you should just say that and admit that discussion is impossible, not try to reference a Supreme Court decision that does nothing to support your position.
> But let's not just appeal to authority and let it lie without addressing the substance of the argument.
There is no substance to your argument, just an assertion of what is either a conclusion without support or, to you, a basic axiom ("a right can't be taxed") combined with a series of dubious analogies, and waving at inaccurate descriptions of what the Supreme Court has said and your predictions of what the Supreme Court would say in cases that don't clearly relate to the point you are arguing for.
When I say "cannot be taxed", I mean that the taxation destroys its status as a right.
Matters related to the Supreme Court are distracting from the core argument. I withdraw any claims I made regarding the SCotUS. They were only made as a matter of rhetorical convenience.
As a result, this is the argument:
1. A right is any activity that members of a society agree to protect unconditionally. (definition) 2. Therefore, if conditions are placed on an activity, it is not a right. (contraposition) 3. Voluntary commerce is a right. (premise) 4. Taxation represents the addition of a money-based condition to an activity. (premise) 5. Voluntary commerce includes one or more buyers, and one or more sellers, wherein the sellers transfer ownership to a good or provide a service to the buyers, and the buyers transfer ownership of a quantity of trade currency to the sellers. (definition) 6. Sales taxes apply to commercial activity, when the seller transfers ownership of goods or renders service. (by definition) 7. Income taxes apply to commercial activity, when the buyer transfers ownership of trade currency. (by definition) 6. Therefore, if commerce is a right, application of sales or income taxes would destroy its status as such.
The logic is sound, so only the premises are assailable.
I should clarify that when I said "external impediment", I meant that such impediments can only be created by actors with moral agency. If a mountain stands between you and the marketplace, it is not an external impediment to your right to commerce; it just increases your overhead costs. A highwayman that robs, kidnaps, or murders you on your way to the market is, in that he made a choice that ultimately prevented you from trading. I don't know of any more precise term to describe this. Antagonism, perhaps?
The link you provided does not support your claim -- it says that the vast majority (93.5%) of the federal funds for regular financing of the Interstate Highway System comes from specific non-income tax dedicated revenue sources, but it doesn't say where the other 6.5% of the federal funds comes from, and it doesn't address one-time investments in the system like those made through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and other historical one-time efforts with large investments in the system, which are often made from general funds (which largely means income tax, either directly or through debt financing which is repaid that way.)
Then please try not to click on anything you are unsure of while you are visiting, you might unleash the killer robots and the insurance on them is atrocious.
I think this is a problem endemic to the internet.
Voting was created to combat spam, originally, but unfortunately often can effectively become censorship by democracy.
So how about giving back North-America to the rightful owners?
Since this is by far the largest and longest standing misappropriation of wealth on the continent, I would expect it to be the primary if not sole focus of Libertarians.
And if you DO believe that there is a collective guilt like that, care to elaborate on how it might work? Should just anybody who moves to the US have to pay, even if they did so centuries after the crime? Should just anybody who joins or announces affiliation with an indian tribe receive payment, even if THEY did so centuries after the crime? (If so: I shall have to declare that I am a Hopi Indian. Or a Navajo. Whichever gets me a bigger share.)
Simply if you own land in North America you have bought stolen goods and have no more legitimate claim on it than anyone else.
You can not say "this is mine because I bought it from someone who bought it from someone who stole it from someone"
And people who own no land haven't done anything wrong so no collective guilt at all. Only people own land are guilt. And even they owe nothing more than admitting their claim is bogus (or returning the land to the correct owner). If you can not find the rightful owner of something, that does not mean it is yours to keep. It means it is not yours until you can deal with the correct owner. If you can't find him or his descendents, too bad, you can't claim it any more than anyone else.
>care to elaborate on how it might work
Admit those ideas about private property are simply self serving and that claims to moral unquestionable ownership are bogus. Manage the land accordingly, preferably democratically acknowledging free markets and their limitations.
I'm actually surprised your (weird) claim is so restricted. Why are people who make use of land not also "guilty"? If I work for a company situated on some land, or I drive to work on roads situated on some land, shouldn't that count too?
Ask any anarcho-capitalist or libertarian if they are willing to pay for usage of a private road. And most, if not all will say yes.
Government-built roads are a libertarian trope, because non-libertarians always bring them up, eventually. It's almost like the Godwin's Law of a libertarian discussion, except it has competition from the hypothetical lifeboat scenario, the starving homeless person, the Keynesian economics argument, and the foreign invasion by a nuclear-armed power.
I usually bring up the question when I meet someone who calls him/herself libertarian and the answer is rarely the same (no true Scotsman, I know). It's a good test of where they stand on the spectrum, as well as how well they've thought about the practicalities of their politics vs. just disliking paying tax.
After all, if you don't like the toll on the road in front of your property, you can sell it and move to a street owned by a company that charges less.
Paradise rapidly ensues!
This isn't even malicious, it's just an expression of the person's fears.
Practically, surface streets would likely be owned and managed by a corporation, whose shares are owned by the people who live in and operate businesses in the vicinity. And you wouldn't move there without doing diligence on the situation.
This is exactly the situation in many communities where the streets are owned by the homeowners association. Also happens in rural areas where several houses are served by a street that connects to a city road. The maintenance of which is paid for by the home owners in a way they agree to.
Contracts to manage things where property is owned by groups of people exists in the current system can can be applied to many situations that are currently handled by the government.
And no legal protection from monopolizing those resources.
>Another trope is "the only alternative to the current state of affairs is the worse possible thing I can imagine".
On the contrary there are many ways to improve the current state of affairs namely more restriction on abusive behaviors not less.
And indeed there are many ways to make things worse. The kind of lunacy I pointed out is firmly in that category.
So no, practically speaking, the profit to be had from acquiring a monopoly on streets in front homes and business would be so great that, unless there were non-salable restrictions on the practice, those resources would quickly be bought at irresistibly high prices to create an absurdly profitable monopoly.
If those city assets came up for sale right now, any sensible investor would buy as many roads as possible in every town possible and charge the highest rate possible. If it were all under a single company, all the more profitable.
Indeed, the very last person who could ever afford to buy city streets on the free market would be a small business or home owner.
That is what libertarians experience whenever they describe libertarianism to non-libertarians. It always ends up with people starving in the streets that don't exist because no one built them.
Your scenario, in which one person buys all the streets and then prevents everyone else from using them at reasonable cost ends with that guy getting his head caved in with a chunk of asphalt dug out of one of his own streets. Rule number one for any civilization, regardless of its form of governance, is to not be an asshole. The release valve for people abusing the system is other people ignoring the system.
If you antagonize everyone, then no one will help you police your many miles of streets, to make sure no one on them has not paid. You have one cop car, but no one pulls over when you flash the lights, and if you try to issue a ticket, people crumple it up and throw it in your face.
This is completely independent of the laws or governance. If you don't help other people, they eventually stop helping you. If you coerce other people by force, eventually they start fighting back.
In reality, most people are not jerks, and road investors will likely find that they could have lost less money by buying a boat. The only profitable roads would be in the commercial districts and the highways, and those would probably make more money on parking, advertising, and rest stops than they ever could from direct charges to businesses and the public. Sensible investors would avoid them like the plague unless they already owned some sort of business related to them. Your city roads will be maintained by McDonald's and Wal-Mart, and your highways by ExxonMobil and Chevron. Major bridges and other large capital investments would have associated tolls.
And if people think paying $45 is a lot to attend a festival, then... well let's hope they never try and attend a more mainstream event
http://i.imgur.com/BTv37qB.jpg
ahh yes, I think I see is a solitary black kid near the middle.
You're arguing in support of a prejudice that says "only white males are libertarians therefore we don't have to listen to their arguments".
It's anti-intellectual.
Well the libertarian movement certainly does.
Currently, in the supposedly "democratic" and "free" world with a state government we have varieties of classes and hierarchies of people. Some have benefits, some are favored, others are despised and denied rights. I'll take my Libertarian supposed "ignorance" over Democracy's fake "equality of all" non-sense that is pretty much double-speak.
I'm not sure what it is that gives someone the moral right to reserve a section of the surface of the earth by force of arms in a system where all violence is considered morally wrong (and so many things can be apparently considered violence).
If you can use violence to take away my access to land, I don't see how that differs from the rest of us taking some of your income.
Come to the festival and ask these questions; you'll be surprised at the diversity and sophistication of the answers you'll get.
I'm still shocked and embarrassed at how I once lumped all forms of libertarianism into the 'primitivist anarchism' pile, only to discover that a lot of thought and practice has gone into the various libertarian systems.
I assumed, for the longest time, that they were all basically people who couldn't make life work or were lazy, and decided to rationalize this as a choice. The weed-smoking, squatting type who badly needs a shower and a haircut, and secretly relies on others for money and a safety-net (mind, all of these things don't necessarily go together!).
Ironically, I spent much of my life as a Christian battling stereotypes that were based on American right-wing evangelical extremism. I should've known better.
Experiencing some of these 'libertarian' environments and reading some of the literature painted a much more nuanced picture, and enriched my views tremendously, even if just because the views were so radically different from what I was familiar with.
At some point in my life I decided that it would be good to spend significant effort to learn about views that are alien to me. Because even if they don't make a convincing argument in the end, they make me question whatever system I have in my head, and I feel that that's always a good thing.
But the inconsistency strikes me as odd.
(apologies if this is not the view you take! I'm getting the picture this is not a consistent thing across libertarians, I may be getting confused by objectivists....)
No one assumed, or coerced us in to this agreement. We as sound-minded individuals consented to it. We weren't automatically put into such an agreement by virtue of being born on this land.
Would you call it theft if I went and mowed your lawn (without you asking), and then had your employer deduct my fee/charge for doing so from your paycheck?
Also, take care when discussing this topic. Libertarianism is a bit different to anarcho-capitalism. Libertarians generally feel that we still need government to do basic things such as enforce "laws" and provide state protection. Not ideal, but for a lot of people, it's a starting point into attempting to devise a perfectly moral system founded on sound first-principles.
You seem to be referring to the non-aggression principle. Libertarians believe that the initiation of force is immoral. This is not the same as "all force". Thus, self defense is moral to a libertarian, while aggression is not.
>If you can use violence to take away my access to land
You seem to be claiming a right to access any land anywhere at any time? Doesn't that conflict with government's belief that it owns the land?
>I don't see how that differs from the rest of us taking some of your income.
You also seem to see libertarians as land owners and "the rest of us" as taking income in compensation (for the land?)
Taking away someones' property is roughly equivalent. If you want to argue that nobody can own land, you can do that.
But that argument is orthogonal to libertarianism. There are libertarians who believe nobody can own land.
Yup, that's exactly what I'm talking about.
>> You seem to be claiming a right to access any land anywhere at any time? Doesn't that conflict with government's belief that it owns the land?
No, I'm not really talking about governments, more the abstract idea that on some level all property is theft from the commons, particularly land which is a limited resource. It seems to be a common theme amongst libertarians I've talked to on the net that they consider tax to be theft at the point of a gun, but not private land ownership even though the point of the gun is very much still there.
>> You also seem to see libertarians as land owners and "the rest of us" as taking income in compensation (for the land?)
It's not my view that libertarians are landowners, I'm talking about the attitudes of libertarians towards their land and the rights they assume around it.
>> Taking away someones' property is roughly equivalent. If you want to argue that nobody can own land, you can do that.
I don't dispute land ownership rights under our current model at all, from a utilitarian standpoint they allow society to operate, without them we would have a hard time doing a lot of things. It's the aspect of application of force being bad in one circumstance (taking my money) and not in another (get off my land or I'll kill you!).
>> But that argument is orthogonal to libertarianism. There are libertarians who believe nobody can own land.
Then I have previously only encountered the internet libertarian breed that are inconsistent in this way.
There is no inconsistency in saying that force is bad when used for aggression but not bad when used for self defense.
Certainly there is not. But what about land? What would give you the right to potentially kill someone (or at least use force to remove them) from a piece of land?
This question stems from conversations with internet libertarians who consider property rights (including real estate) as sacrosanct. I simply wonder what gives them rights to the land over other people, and how violence could be justified to protect them.
Presumably they paid to reserve the land for a week, just like you can pay to reserve a house and the land it sits on for a period of time. I don't understand what is complicated or un-libertarian about that.
That's actually exactly what I'm talking about! Not the festival but the general principle.
>> Presumably they paid to reserve the land for a week, just like you can pay to reserve a house and the land it sits on for a period of time.
Who are you paying? You presumably haven't paid the whole of the rest of humanity in perpetuity, yet it can be considered right to defend a piece of land you consider your property with deadly force?
All I'm saying is that it's not really consistent with the non-aggression principle.
To you, land belongs to whole humanity and therefore it's an aggression on others to prevent them from accessing. But you shouldn't assume that everyone believes the same. To many a libertarian, lands initially belongs to nobody, and anyone can appropriate it freely: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_principle
And of course, there's a whole field of libertarians who reject property, regardless of what the prevalence of right-wing libertarians on the Internet might indicate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-libertarianism
In the same way that I disagree that taxes are a form of violence, yes. However if we're reducing everything to violence (as libertarians tend to) then I don't see these as different.
>> To you, land belongs to whole humanity
As something of a pragmatist, I consider property rights to be useful rather than absolute and have no particular views on universal owenership. I'm not exactly a Marxist.
But I wonder what the philosophical basis is for appropriation of land in a system that (on the surface) claims to be absolute, particularly in the principle of non-aggression.
Homesteading is wonderful in a system where land is unlimited, it can be seen as an extension of the moral right to the work of your own hands. But in a system where land is limited, the very act of appropriating does deny the resource to others, and any defence of that appropriation would surely be violent? In fact Locke appears to have acknowledged this (from the page you linked to) - The Lockean Proviso.
And yes, left-wing libertarians are not often encountered on tech boards in my experience :)
Libertarians tend to reduce arguments to discussions of violence since it is the fundamental primitive around which most governments (or lack thereof) are organized. Specifically, a government (at least from a libertarian view) is any institution which exercises a monopoly on violence in a particular region. The mechanisms by which they maintain and exercise this monopoly serve to classify them.
This reduction is just a starting point though. It is to philosophies of government what evolution is to biology: a founding principle that serves as a lens to understand the rest of it. But there is much more to biology than just a knowledge of evolution, and likewise libertarian thinking.
Libertarians also, as a rule, follow the non-aggression principle and are not opposed to violence in all cases (e.g. self-defense, defense of others who did not initiate violence themselves, etc) [1]. This is a little less common amongst left-leaning libertarians, however.
> "Homesteading is wonderful in a system where land is unlimited, it can be seen as an extension of the moral right to the work of your own hands. But in a system where land is limited, the very act of appropriating does deny the resource to others"
Any philosophy of government has to deal with the blunt fact that the world is one of finite resources. Libertarians of different stripes have a lot to say about property in various forms; it's not something they always agree on. Libertarianism does not have as its direct goal maximizing the efficiency of resource usage, though many would argue that libertarian policies would have that result indirectly. Virtually all would argue that privately owned resources are at least available to others via the market (i.e. for a price), whereas any resource that is publicly monopolized is only available to others if the controlling government decides to share it (which is more likely in democratic societies, but not by their nature, required).
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism#Personal_autonom...
In which case libertarianism is no more fundamentally correct or moral than any other system, we're simply arguing about the extent of the state and personal vs. group rights.
Which is fine by me, so long as libertarians stop proclaiming to have a consistent and correct system.
This fascinates me. It seems both very American and very 'techy' to be a right-wing libertarian (or is that the wrong term?). In many ways both views are very opposed, but there are striking similarities too (especially on a 'social' level, which interests me as a social scientist).
It's like we're siblings: entirely different personalities that often clash, but a strong mutual understanding and similar 'values' through similar background/upbringing.
With the disclaimer that I'm still very much investigating and that I might very well be wrong, it seems to me that the left wing tends to be more on the 'social' side of things, and more burdened/informed by the European past, and perhaps too theoretical and big in scope.
The right wing seems to focus more on the individual side of things, is perhaps a little too uninformed by Europe's past (and the role of property in that), and sometimes seems a little too much like 'let's change everything without questioning our basic assumptions'.
I find that the techier, more entrepreneurial side of myself is more attracted to the right-wing libertarian views that seems more optimistic, but that the social scientist side of me combined with a very communal, religious upbringing (in a 'socialist' country) is more attracted to the left-wing libertarian views that feel a little more pessimistic/cranky at times.
Perhaps that is why HN seems to have more right-wing libertarians, whereas my intellectual and often decidedly anti-technology circles ar almost entirely left-wing libertarians (if they're libertarians to begin with).
Some thoughts from my armchair...
Of course there are countries, including parts of the UK, where you have a right to go pretty much where you want in terms of access to land (with some sensible restrictions - powered vehicles etc.) and civilization doesn't seem to have ended.
NB For a fascinating account of the extremely dubious history of land ownership in Scotland I can recommend "The Poor Had no Lawyers: Who Owns Scotland and How They Got it":
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Poor-Had-No-Lawyers/dp/178027114...
Here's Rothbard on the issue: http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/eleven.asp
The sad truth is that most of these laws exist because there exists a minority of people who are not as reasonable as you. We get more and more laws in large part because those people are finding loopholes in current laws and getting away with murder. The unfortunate thing is that our attempts to reign in the minority bone the majority.
While the extreme left theory has been shown in the 20th C to be unachievable, we haven't seen yet an extreme right version in real-life (or if we have, we've forgotten what it looks like). The libertarians want to try it out and I predict a similar disaster.
Looking at patterns of human activity in the past, I do believe that libertarianism would go that way, yes.
That doesn't automatically mean that I'm a huge fan of the status quo, though. There is more spectrum to political thought than libertarians on one side who want to change everything and statists on the other who want to change nothing.
Saying that 'extreme left' theory has been shown unachievable is perhaps a bit too broad a statement.
The left actually split over the very issue that then led to this 'failure', namely the idea that one can impose one's left-wing ideals through violent revolution.
A significant portion of the 'left' believed that (violently) removing a system through revolution would leave a vacuum that would be quickly filled by a system similar to the one removed, instead of whatever utopian ideal that led to this revolution. That seems to have been correct.
Furthermore, this group argues that one inherent problem of the 'left' that won (and then 'failed') was that they were too focused on economic equality, and, in a way, tried to implement a left-wing ideology on an incompatible foundation.
I might have gotten some (or much) of this wrong though. My apologies if that's the case.
My point is merely that they'd argue that it's primarily a particular strain of 'left-wing' though (state socialism) that failed, and that left-wing libertarianism is equally untried as right-wing libertarianism (well, they'd argue it's been successfully tried but destroyed by outside forces). And there are some important differences between the two strains of libertarianism.
Can someone give me an example of a government where Libertarian principles have been successfully implemented? It doesn't have to be perfect (nothing with humans ever is) but at least something that is non-imaginary would be helpful in making their case.
Let me just say this again, because it needs to be said over and over again. All the arable and usable land has been taken over and controlled by the state. All.
If you want to form a country, or some entity with sovereignty over a decent-size plot of land, then you're going to need a military. That military will have to actually be loyal to the government/leadership and the population of that place. If you don't have that, then some other more established country will come take over, or at least have such strong influence that they are de facto in charge.
That's why I don't think pure libertarianism is tenable - if you don't have some sort of powerful state, then some other powerful state will come take over your society. There's still plenty of room for debate on exactly what the role of that state is, and how the leadership is chosen and laws are made, but I don't think you can ever get around that. It's kinda like claiming that total pacifism is the best philosophy, but it never had a chance because all of these other big meanies keep squashing it. Like it or not, those big meanies are part of the world too, and if your philosophy can't handle them, then it's no good.
I can see the appeal of being left alone in peace.
Certainly you can see the appeal of being able to live on a river that isn't polluted, or being able to drink water that isn't contaminated?
The only reason you can do that is because big brother uses those ("taken by force") taxes to keep the poor factory owner (who just wants to be left alone) from dumping his mercury where ever he wants.
"The only reason you can do that is because big brother uses those ("taken by force") taxes to keep the poor factory owner (who just wants to be left alone) from dumping his mercury where ever he wants." Ah, yes... I see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill
You're correct to recognize that it is a scale of grey. Historically, countries that are more libertarian (e.g.: economic and social freedom) have better outcomes than countries that are more authoritarian.
There are so many errors here that its hard to know when to start. But lets start with this--at no time that the US existed did it bear a relation to the more developed nations of the time similar to those of a modern LDC; it was a set of reasonably wealthy colonies of the world's dominant power that was almost immediately upon independence the dominant economic power of its region.
Your description confuses being born on third base with hitting a triple.
This may be part of the appeal to some people to see such a system attempted. And it is definitely a common reason used against such a system.
Ask yourself should we (as human beings) be against systems which have not been implemented yet? And if so how do new systems come into existence if we are?
It is very interesting to observe the natural tension between the strongly individualistic ethos and the fact that it's essentially impossible to accomplish anything socially without collective action.
I think that's pretty much every event where you get a bunch of people together in the woods :-)