I am a libertarian market anarchist...

Started by jrodefeld, August 01, 2014, 12:22:48 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

jrodefeld

Hello,

I am a new member here and I am posting because I want to compare and contrast our different political views.  I find great value in dialog with those of differing political persuasions.  I have spent some time debating leftists on various forums, and I wanted to do the same with a conservative group.  I don't mean to "troll" or be rude in any way.  I don't exactly know how much we might agree or how much we might disagree.  I hope to find that out through discussion.

I'm sure you are aware that libertarianism is a growing political movement in this country, with plenty of influence taking root within the (grassroots) GOP, as well as outside of organized politics.  I want to state my views and I look forward to thoughtful critiques.

I am an anarchist libertarian, otherwise known as "anarcho capitalist", though I have some issues with that label.  What this means is that I believe in individual self ownership.  As a purposeful independent human being of intrinsic worth, I reject the idea that any other individual has the right to commit aggression against me without my permission.  And similarly, I don't believe I have any right to use aggression against anyone else.  Aggression is the initiation of force.  This principle is otherwise known as the non-aggression principle.

I believe that aggression cannot ever be justified.  And the State, as an institution, necessarily must use aggression.  Therefore, the State is illegitimate and immoral. 

As another justification for this view, I understand that any rational ethical principle for human behavior must be universal.  If, say, murder is determined to be immoral and unjustified, then it must be immoral and unjustified for all individuals in a society.  We cannot have different standards for ethical behavior based on class, wealth, or any other superficial distinction.

By tolerating the existence of the State, you must concede that you do not accept any universal moral principles for human behavior.  Because those that hold office in government, or are granted special privileges through the State, necessarily are permitted to commit acts of aggression whereas all those individuals who are outside of the State as expressly forbidden from committing these very same actions. 

You are not permitted to steal your neighbors money and property and call it "taxation".  You are not permitted to counterfeit money and call it "central banking".  You are not permitted to secede and disassociate yourself from the State.  You cannot decide to murder people and call it a legitimate "war" or a "targeted drone strike".

Conservatives are supposed to believe in moral absolutes.  There are certain actions that are immoral and unjustifiable.  To arbitrarily make exceptions to the moral law for politicians is to reject ethics and philosophy outright.


Could you explain to me why aggression is justified?  And if you have a broader issue with libertarianism in general, I'd like to hear your best critiques.

AndyJackson

I have a paper due in my sociology class, and was wondering if you would read this and tell me what you think of it....

Hector

Please send me all of your counterfeit money so I can dispose of it properly at my local strip club.

jrodefeld

Okay, now would either of you like to respond substantively to my post? 

Darth Fife

The Non-Aggression Principle only works, if everyone adheres to it.

If an individual, or group of individuals choose not to play your game and, instead choose to exercise aggression towards you and your NAP friends, what are you going to do? You are going to organize yourself into a cohesive unit to oppose them. This is government in its most basic form - a group of people joining together to achieve a common goal they could not achieve individually.

Anarcho Capitalism, is an ideology as shortsighted and impractical as is Marx's Communism - and will never work. The reason, in both cases, is the same - human beings. Human beings are by their very nature imperfect and corruptible. No matter how "perfect" the system, there will always be someone who will seek a way to subvert it to their own ends. And, in all most all cases, they will succeed!

When dealing with human weaknesses, failure is always an option.

-Darth


Bad Dog

Wow, you almost had me onboard with this new fangled Arachno Libertarianism.  That is, until you got to the non-aggression principle.  Sorry but there's lots of folks out there that just need a good thumpin every now and then.

Solar

Quote from: jrodefeld on August 01, 2014, 12:39:23 PM
Okay, now would either of you like to respond substantively to my post?
How does Islum fit into your "Non Aggression" equation?
Official Trump Cult Member

#WWG1WGA

Q PATRIOT!!!

jrodefeld

Quote from: Darth Fife on August 01, 2014, 12:49:26 PM
The Non-Aggression Principle only works, if everyone adheres to it.

If an individual, or group of individuals choose not to play your game and, instead choose to exercise aggression towards you and your NAP friends, what are you going to do? You are going to organize yourself into a cohesive unit to oppose them. This is government in its most basic form - a group of people joining together to achieve a common goal they could not achieve individually.

Anarcho Capitalism, is an ideology as shortsighted and impractical as is Marx's Communism - and will never work. The reason, in both cases, is the same - human beings. Human beings are by their very nature imperfect and corruptible. No matter how "perfect" the system, there will always be someone who will seek a way to subvert it to their own ends. And, in all most all cases, they will succeed!

When dealing with human weaknesses, failure is always an option.

-Darth

This is a common objection to libertarianism.  However, you are misunderstanding what the non-aggression principle means.  You are likening it to something like pacifism.  You presumably are thinking that we will all voluntarily reject the use of violence and live peacefully together without any thought given to those who still choose to use violence and crime against others.

Anarchy doesn't mean "no rules", as most would assume.  What it means is "no rulers".  That is an incredibly important distinction.  "An" means "no" or "against".  "Archy" means "rule".  Monarchy is rule by one person.  Oligarchy means rule by many.  Anarchy means no rulers, no people who are granted authority over others and are exempt from the universal moral principles that we all must abide by.

The non-aggression principle means only that it is unjustified to initiate the use of violence against someone who is minding their own business.  However, the use of violence itself, in certain contexts, is entirely permissible and even encouraged under libertarian principles.  In particular, it is entirely legitimate to use violence in self defense or to defend someone else from violence.  It is also permissible to use proportional force against a criminal who has been proven to have used aggression against the person or property of another.  The criminal can be forced to pay restitution to the victim or, if he or she is indeed an ongoing danger to public safety, they can be physically removed from society for a time.

So, yes, libertarians fully recognize that some people in society will always choose violence as a means of "getting ahead". 

I think your appeal to human nature as an argument against libertarianism is misplaced.  We see it entirely the opposite.  If human beings are naturally corruptible, or prone to abuse of power, then taking a small number of these same individuals and giving them great power and authority and calling it a "State" will not improve the situation.  Rather, it will make things far worse.  The capacity for States to commit violence and aggression is far greater than the means available to any individual criminal.

Whatever the moral character of a population, whether the people are mostly good, most evil or somewhere in-between, taking a small number of the people in any given society and granting them positions of authority and the ability to violently dominate the others will not improve the situation one bit.

As much as I don't appreciate the violence of the inner city gangs or the highway robber, their violence pales in comparison to the State.  The Crips may make it tough to live in Compton, but a few madmen in government could practically wipe out life on earth by precipitating nuclear warfare with Russia!

Also it is important to keep in mind what a State is.  If a group of people organize for collective defense, this is NOT a State unless there is compulsory taxation to finance it.  As long as an organization of mutual defense is voluntary, funded by contributions and paid dues by its members who participate of their own volition, then this is not a State.

It is indeed far likelier in a Stateless society that individual communities will collectively organize and contract with private defense agencies to defend the lives and property of the members of that community rather than each individual hiring their own body guard or something like that.  But every member of the community participates voluntarily.  They are free to leave at any time. 

To equate a voluntary organization for mutual defense in a community with a compulsory central State is quite foolish.  It is not collectivism, socialism, community, centralization or any of these other things that are the problem with the State.  It is the gun.  It is the violence that we object to.  If you remove the violence from the State, it becomes a voluntary organization and there is nothing left to object to.

jrodefeld

Quote from: Solar on August 01, 2014, 01:09:02 PM
How does Islum fit into your "Non Aggression" equation?

Islam.  What do you mean "how does it fit"?  If someone initiates violence against us then we have the right to defend ourselves.  We have the right to use force to compel restitution or punish those criminals that are proven in a court to have committed an act of aggression.  The key is that the punishment must be proportional to the crime committed.  If you steal a candy bar, you can be forced to pay the cost of the candy bar but no more.  If you destroy someones property you can be forced to pay damages.  If you murder someone, your punishment can be anything up to and including death. 

I don't know how much of a neo con presence there is on these boards, but I don't think I have to explain that the response of the US government after 9/11 has been horrific.  What we have done to Iraq and Afghanistan, and the hundreds of thousands we have killed or displaced, is a far greater crime than what was done to us.

In a different scenario, a libertarian would have advised that we do the following.  In the first place, Osama bin Laden and the dozen or so radical Islamic terrorists that were directly responsible for planning and carrying out the attacks on the World Trade Center should have been formally proven to have committing the crimes in a court of law.  The evidence should have been presented to the American people in an open manner.  After it was proven conclusively that it was indeed bin Laden and a few others who were responsible, we should have targeted those individuals specifically.

Ron Paul argued that we should have used the Letters of Mark and Reprisal in the Constitution to target a non State threat like a dozen terrorists and then use special forces or a contractor to capture those men who were responsible and bring them to the United States for trial.  They should have been tried and then, if found guilty, put to death.

We should have used the opportunity to prove the the Muslim world that we are not the imperialist oppressors that bin Laden made us out to be.  We could have proven that we follow the rule of law, we don't needlessly kill Muslim civilians and we grant a fair trial to even the worst criminals.

The entire thing could have been over in six months, no Iraq War, no occupation of Afghanistan, no nation building, no 6000 dead Americans, no 5 trillion dollars in debt to fight needless wars and rebuild a country after we destroyed it.


taxed

Quote from: jrodefeld on August 01, 2014, 01:46:54 PM
Islam.  What do you mean "how does it fit"?  If someone initiates violence against us then we have the right to defend ourselves.  We have the right to use force to compel restitution or punish those criminals that are proven in a court to have committed an act of aggression.  The key is that the punishment must be proportional to the crime committed.  If you steal a candy bar, you can be forced to pay the cost of the candy bar but no more.  If you destroy someones property you can be forced to pay damages.  If you murder someone, your punishment can be anything up to and including death. 

I don't know how much of a neo con presence there is on these boards, but I don't think I have to explain that the response of the US government after 9/11 has been horrific.  What we have done to Iraq and Afghanistan, and the hundreds of thousands we have killed or displaced, is a far greater crime than what was done to us.

In a different scenario, a libertarian would have advised that we do the following.  In the first place, Osama bin Laden and the dozen or so radical Islamic terrorists that were directly responsible for planning and carrying out the attacks on the World Trade Center should have been formally proven to have committing the crimes in a court of law.  The evidence should have been presented to the American people in an open manner.  After it was proven conclusively that it was indeed bin Laden and a few others who were responsible, we should have targeted those individuals specifically.

Ron Paul argued that we should have used the Letters of Mark and Reprisal in the Constitution to target a non State threat like a dozen terrorists and then use special forces or a contractor to capture those men who were responsible and bring them to the United States for trial.  They should have been tried and then, if found guilty, put to death.

We should have used the opportunity to prove the the Muslim world that we are not the imperialist oppressors that bin Laden made us out to be.  We could have proven that we follow the rule of law, we don't needlessly kill Muslim civilians and we grant a fair trial to even the worst criminals.

The entire thing could have been over in six months, no Iraq War, no occupation of Afghanistan, no nation building, no 6000 dead Americans, no 5 trillion dollars in debt to fight needless wars and rebuild a country after we destroyed it.

My heart is always with anarcho capitalists, since I would love to live in a mutually peaceful society.

Initial question, which I'm sure you've answered a million times, but how would you defend against a bunch of tanks and stealth bombers leveling your community, and keep up with the technology to counter it?
#PureBlood #TrumpWon

AndyJackson

Quote from: jrodefeld on August 01, 2014, 12:39:23 PM
Okay, now would either of you like to respond substantively to my post?
No, I would not like to.

It's the same baited magnum opus that we see about once per week, by somebody probing our hard manly underbellies for ways to annoy us.

supsalemgr

You have already exposed your self as a TROLL. Now go away.
"If you can't run with the big dawgs, stay on the porch!"

AndyJackson

Oh, BTW, the state has been limited from aggression against the people, by the constitution, better in America than any country ever.

The US constitution also enjoys a separation of powers so wise that it is the world's best inoculation, against unwise entanglements against other countries.

Unfortunately it gets distorted, ignored, and misused in many ways.  But as written, it's really the best guiding document that a libertarian could ever hope to wield, if it's to be taken at face value and used properly.

AndyJackson


Hector

Quote from: jrodefeld on August 01, 2014, 12:39:23 PM
Okay, now would either of you like to respond substantively to my post?

Sure, what's the alternative to printing counterfeit money?