Libertarianism.. Good or bad?

Blunt but well stated. Go Ron Paul!

As you all probably know by my comments in the recent communism thread, I am a libertarian. Well, more specifically, anarcho-capitalist - which is the purest form of libertarianism. (More about that if you are interested.)

I encourage you all to listen to the free audio book of 'The Libertarian Manifesto' found here:
http://www.mises.org/media.aspx?action=category&ID=87

Murry Rothbard actually predicted that a shift in public attitude would occur around this time toward libertarianism. The book is FANTASTIC, and an absolute must-read for anyone interested in libertarianism and the business cycle.

All you budding libertarians: Good luck out there! Its a nasty statist world and we have much work to do in educating the masses.



... man this is exciting. I can't believe how quickly the libertarian movement is growing!

 

How is that any different to the current system?
At the moment your family and friends can go to any street corner and buy drugs. They just have a marginally higher chance of being shot at.

Yes your opinion is - both by your parents and by the state. You sound like a typical left-leaning - straight off the production line - product of the US, UK, CA or AU public school system. I guess you believe the government should give people free handouts and steal money from successful corporations too?

 

Well clearly you are uninformed about anarcho-capitalism.

It is not anarchy in the sense of chaos, because there are laws, there is just no government to write new laws.

Overwhelmingly you already live in a state of perpetual anarchy. It is only the good will of the people around you that keep the system alive.

When you are being mugged on the sidewalk, does a cop show up and save the day? Most unlikely. Police are reactionary forces only. So, by your logic, the current system should have rampant crime everywhere, and nothing should work.

But this isn't the case. Why? Because 99% of people (in the first world) have a strong moral compass. This is why sites like ebay work. And why good suburbs need no surveillance.

Don't get me wrong. Libertarians and anarcho-capitalists are NOT utopians. The ideology is based on man how he currently acts and reacts, not on some 'man of the future' or hive mind, like marxism.


Anarcho-capitalism holds that all services currently provided by the government can be provided more fairly and more cheaply by nongovernmental organizations (be they non profit or for profit).

For example:
The court system could be provided by the free market. It would be very similar to the current insurance system. People would go out and purchase an agreement with a court, just as they do with an insurer today.

If someone laid a claim against this person, they would then proceed to trial in the defendant's court. If, at the end of the trial, either party rejected the verdict, the trial would recommence in another court, which was recognized as a legitimate court by some sort of industry body (say, an association of courts.) If the second verdict were the same as the first then the verdict would be final, regardless of the feelings of the either party.

If the verdicts were divergent (wildly different) the case may proceed to a high court (one, or one of a group, which is elected by the justice industry as being the fairest and best).

Now by this point you are probably saying: what if the courts went sour? Well what if the courts went sour in the current system, which they largely have? What then? You can do nothing about it in the current system. But at least in an anarcho-capitalist system there would be competition, new courts would spring up which provided fair verdicts, and people would shift court services to get the fairest trials.

You may also be saying: how would courts know what the law is if there was no government to write the law? In which case you clearly have never heard of common law. Overwhelmingly the job of a judge is to 'discover the law,' not create it. The law of the land already exists within the hearts and minds of the people who live on the land. It is just a matter of finding it and applying it without bias. This is historically the role of a judge, and remains largely the courts' only role in today's society.

I strongly suggest you listen to, or read, the libertarian manifesto above. It gives a comprehensive example framework of how a government-free society would likely function.

 

I see, and private security is no deterrent? What about when the owner of the bank has a shotgun under the counter, and random people currently in the process of performing banking transactions are allowed to carry their protection with them. How willing would robbers be when they are likely to be shot at by citizen police? Furthermore, how would they run off with the money? No federally issued notes. They'd have to pinch the bank's own deposit slips, in which case the bank could cancel them. Either that or attempt to steal a vault full of gold and silver.

No. 99% of people have a moral compass. In a free society where people are spread out, families form alliances and its not the individual against the world. We live in a sick society. Freedom has worked before and it will work again.

No one, except the old reactionary right, worked together to 'stifle the masses' - certainly this was not the aim of capitalism. During the European industrial revolution, the newly discovered entrepreneurial class followed a set of beliefs which encouraged the view that any action which increased profits was moral and just. This set of beliefs passed long ago with the various extreme forms of Social Darwinism. Capitalism is not inherently evil, as the lefties and statists would have you believe. Every other political system, in practice, is about a lower class serving an upper class. Only capitalism gives people equal opportunity and freedom to own property and control their own lives.

A famous quote:
"the virtue of capitalism is not that it provides more silk stockings for queens, but that it makes silk stockings affordable to the lower classes."

You are incredibly brainwashed if you do not believe the courts have gone bad. There exists a double standard in almost every country in the world today, where officials and rich businessmen are above the law. Who was sent to prison over the 9/11 attacks? No one. What about all the people who supposedly fucked up in the military? How could such a massive crime go unpunished? If a serial killer murdered 3000 people you'd want to see him locked up, right?

In the US it is unconstitutional to pay income tax. So some people, following the highest law, refuse to pay. The government SWAT teams their house. Can they sue the government? No, because the government owns the courts. Thats just one example of so many.

There are thousands of families who have their kids taken away from them, forced onto medication, or forced to go to public schools. The US government tortures and kills people behind closed doors. The families have no avenue to seek justice.

The supreme court deliberately misinterprets the US consitution, giving the US congress, and the executive branch, powers it should never have acquired. In your supposedly perfect and wonderful court system where do you turn to prevent the US government giving itself the right to walk into your home and take your gold, take your assets, take your children, and take your lives?

War is murder.
Conscription is slavery.
Taxation is theft.

And you have no avenue to pursue justice for any of these crimes.

[/quote]

Well you are simply wrong. It is a historical and modern fact that the vast majority of the law is based on what most people believe is just. Why do you think court rooms have juries? Are you that insanely brainwashed that you think the government is a supreme-being with a rightful claim over your life? Over the life of your family, your township? Do you believe that if a dictator doesn't write it then it can't be a law?

 

You really are a socialist then. You may be too far gone to convince.

To my knowledge the 16th Amendment was never lawfully passed. I am no expert on US law, but many people in the US constitutional movement are. People have gone to jail over this. Their defense was that the 16th amendment was never lawfully ratified. The court apparently threw this out on the counter-argument that the IRS's lawful ability to tax does not stem from the 16th amendment.

- http://political-resources.com/taxes/16thamendment/default.htm

You should look it up and review the amount of controversy there is surrounding this issue, rather than blindly accept what you have been told by the media.

Based on your opinion? Based on a doctor's opinion?
Here in Australia we have what is called the 'stolen generation'. The government forcefully took aboriginal kids, using this same justification, and treated them horribly. Now that whole generation is completely screwed up and everyone agrees how 'wrong' it was, but they fail to see that the same things are still being done today.

No one has the right to take your kids. NO ONE!
If you ever tried to take my kids I'd kill you with my bare hands. I don't care what your justification is.

'Study: Troubled homes better than foster care'

Full story: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-07-02-foster-study_N.htm

I sincerely hope you understand that medication and drugs are the same thing. A doctor who is paid 50 dollars every time he gets a patient onto an antidepressant is no different to a drug pusher on the side of the road. These drugs destroy lives. Its just another facet to the double standards of corrupt big government society.

Parents are natually able and supposed to educate their children. The state is an invention, not a natural process like raising children. Under no circumstances should the state ever have the power to remove children from their families and force feed them tripe.

We all agree that Nazification of children is bad. So why is the current system not? Families need to be left alone to educate and raise their children in the best way they can. You have some bizarre complex which makes you think people dislike their kids. Overwhelmingly parents love their children, even if you are too stupid and too narrow minded to see that.

What gives you the right to take someone's children from them?
What if a group calling themselves "the child protection league" came into your house and felt that you were too stupid, too moronic, and too abusive to take care of your kids. What if they took your kids away and turned them into children of the state. How would you feel then?

The power to tax, spend and go to war without declaring war, to name a few.

Clearly you have never heard of guerilla-warfare. By far the most effective and conservative form of national defense. Also the cheapest, and it doesn't require a standing army.

Absolutely unnecessary, unjustified, illegal and immoral. The only reason the government would ever have to force people to join a war is if they weren't paying the soldiers enough. And why would that be? because they cant afford the war to begin with. Well maybe they shouldn't start wars then. That'd be a good idea.

I CANT BELIEVE I AM READING THIS!

The darker side of humanity IS government. Every chapter of human history has been about running away and conquering, or evading, some governmental or oppressive organization. Be it another country, a monarchy, an empire, or a church. All the evil, all the mass murder, all the mass starvation, all the bombing, all the gasing, in the world is all caused by criminal rackets we refer to as governments, churches, or empires.

Do you truly believe that freedom is the darker side of humanity? What about serfdom. Do you realize 400 years ago countries didn't even exist. If we were still living in that time we'd all be peasents on some lord's estate, living at subsistence level with no technology and no medical science.

And you call freedom 'the dark side of humanity.' Good grief.

Yes and what is wrong with that? Who gave you the right to decide what laws everyone should follow. You make me sick.

 

You are entitled to think they are lousy parents but what gives you the authority or the moral justification to separate the child from the family? What gives you the power of superior judgment that you may step in and change what would otherwise be in the lives of people who have no done anything to you? Many of the great evils of the world have been justified using this argument. I suggest you rethink your place in the world.

'Taking' a child is always an immoral act. You have no right and no superior claim to someone's child. You also neglect to ask the child. It is a violation of the civil rights of the parent and child alike. There is no moral or ethical justification for your actions, because they are based solely on your beliefs, and are not performed in mutual agreement with the other humans concerned.

Again, what gives you the right to judge other people and act on those judgments? Are your beliefs somehow superior to theirs? What gives you the right to determine who has children and who does not?

Again: these people have not aggressed against you. You are punishing them for a passive act. You are the aggressor, you are the criminal in this situation.

Now you are engaging in doublethink. You both support the separation of children from their parents and agree that it is wrong.

You are in the system now. Your pills are rotting away your brain. I suggest you do some research on antidepressants and consequent suicides.

Then nothing. Mind your own business. Its their family, their bloodline, their offspring, their heritage. They are not aggressing against you, so leave them alone.

What if a middle eastern family came into your home and looked at your parenting skills and decided that you were an abusive parent because you did not let your children read the koran or wear a head scarf. Do they automatically gain the right - the moral high-ground - to forcibly remove your children from your home, just because their beliefs do not agree with your beliefs?

As I said before: Mind your own business. Your actions are unjustified. Even if there is a wrong occurring in a household that does not automatically give you the right to correct it.

Again you are touting the superiority of your own beliefs. You seem to think you have the RIGHT to tell people what they should think and believe. Humans have free will. If the child does not like what they have been taught then they will convert to another teaching later in life. You have no right to tell people what to believe in or how to raise their kids. In fact it is very disturbing that you assert you do have this right.

You assert that your beliefs are superior and correct, and that you have the right to force people to believe what you believe. This is a form of egomania.

Yeah, ok, and this is why Iraq and Afghanistan are unwinnable isn't it? Because guerrilla warfare is so 'easy to beat'. Oh please. Every time an army has ever tried to go up against the actual population of a country they have always failed miserably. The only way to win is to exterminate the entire population, and that is a false victory... all you win is land.

Even in the most horific cases of war against guerrilla armies, where agent orange, bioweapons and gasing, were used the invading armies STILL LOST in the end.

Never justified, ever. When you talk about national conquest, you are simply talking about displacing one government in favor of another, by military force. So really the war is between two governments, two criminal gangs, not between two nations of people.

Would you feel it was justified if the gang on your block forced you to fight and die for them so that they could retain control of your suburb? No, of course not, how absurd.

You might. People you know might. But then again your brain chemistry is completely fucked up by the pills they have you popping.

Decent people who love their families and love their country have a moral compass. If there were too many people like you in one area the good people would move away and leave you criminals to your moral-less subsistence. You would be left to steal from each other, and any attempt to steal from wealthy prosperous townships would see you shot by the inhabitance. You would quickly discover that you reap what you sow when you are no longer protected by sympathetic leftist laws.

Again, you are focusing on your beliefs and your interpretation of the situation, rather than on your own right to do anything about it. Just because what you perceive has being wrong is occurring does not give you the right to correct it. An action is only virtuous when it is performed in mutual agreement. All actions which affect others, without their consent, are criminal.

In fact, there are probably tribes in Brazil this very moment who perform female circumcision. Obviously you disagree with them, but that does not give you the right to march into their tribe and force them to abide by your beliefs, does it? How narrow minded and intolerant you are... Your ideology does not allow you to coexist peacefully with other people and other beliefs.

Regardless, I find your point of view both disturbing and revolting.

 

Shredderbeam, you have lost this debate.

In your most recent post you admitted that you believe your own beliefs to be superior to others and that you believe you have the right to go into other people's homes and impose your beliefs on them. You are an intolerant bigot, incapable of coexisting with anyone that does not share your beliefs. You are no different from the Nazis, the fundamentalist Muslims, or the roman catholic church.

You must concede defeat because you can never be at peace with the world. Your ideology prevents you from accepting other people, other customs, and other cultures, without asserting yourself on them and imposing your beliefs on them, and, ultimately, changing them to suit yourself.

You would happily burn books, steal children, and imprison innocent people, because you simply do not agree with the way other people wish to passively live their lives.

You have no humanity.