capitalCORN
Member
Basically the equivalent of an adult quoting Nietzchie.
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Has there ever been a successful Libertarian government???
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Basically the equivalent of an adult quoting Nietzchie.
Sectorseven
Member
Kowloon Walled City?
I don't know if functional and successful are the same thing.
I don't know if functional and successful are the same thing.
BreezyLimbo
Banned
Yup. A true communist state would require no corruption. Unfortunately..
capitalCORN
Member
There's a Simpson's reference that very much is pertinent to that example. It involved Mr. Burns and the Mayo Clinic.
Imo Libertarians and anarchists have a lot of parallels which is a bit of a red flag.
Most "libertarians" i know are financially well off and confuse that with being independent, or are engrained in privilege.
Ive always thought it is easier to shit on governance than provide your own.
Most "libertarians" i know are financially well off and confuse that with being independent, or are engrained in privilege.
Ive always thought it is easier to shit on governance than provide your own.
You could elaborate. Libertarianism relies on the people in control of every corporation to not take advantage of those under them in a near-ruleless system, communism relies on every bureaucrat and politician in government to do the same. When your system of government relies on the people in power being completely, and objectively pure of heart 100% of the time it's doomed to failure. Gotta have balance, which isn't perfect and is hard to maintain, but at least it works to an extent.
Pretty much. Systems have to be able to work with corruption in mind, because that's never gonna be eliminated.
old manatee
Banned
There was that one town where after the guy was elected mayor he disbanded the fire department so that the free market could take the wheel, and then a wildfire came and was burning down the town so he appealed to Barack Obama and his federal government for disaster relief. They really had us over a barrel.
Their stances on the civil rights act earns a hard "Fuck'em" for me
Anarchism is basically the same problem: you need an isolated society so that outsiders with the power of a state government can't come in and interfere in your weakness, you need a low-scale economy because how would anarchism work in an industrial, post-industrial, or even a trade based (pre-industrial light manufactures) society? The only difference is you don't need to worry about economic inequality messing it up, assuming we're talking about Anarcho-syndicalism where nobody owns any property.
The libertarian thinkers you can actually listen to are the ones who realize it's economics you compromise on, not social issues.
communism doesn't preclude democracy, in which case the government is still accountable to voters. just because the soviet union was a single-party autocratic state doesn't mean that is inherent to the ideology.
libertarianism is fundamentally different because the only check on corporate power in a right-libertarian system is the market.
Orthogonal
Member
This couldn't be more wrong. Recognizing humans are fallible, corrupt or "bad actors" is a precondition of Libertarian philosophy.
Tomasoares
Member
Do you guys mean libertarianism as anarcho-capitalism?
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
It goes to show how much of the confusion in these discussions is that nobody can really agree on a definition of "libertarianism" to communally use. Otherwise we're all just arguing over misrepresentations of everyone else's point.
capitalCORN
Member
Well, that's nice and good on paper. So how would you address that?
Essentially. But in ways that the powerful (West) exploit the weak in ways more horrifying than what already exists. You know, ancient Rome and shit.
libertarians don't even manage to agree on it themselves, which explains a lot
Link?
It's a pretty broad tent.
Bonen no Max'd
Banned
Jeffersonian liberalism is sorta close-ish to libertarianism with the mantra that the government that governs best also governs least, but it's also heavily focused on agrarianism and would mandate a sort of limit on how much a person could own since the idea is the yeoman-farmer citizen as the ideal. It wouldn't really have the hard on for things like Uber because the goal is maximizing freedom via self-sufficiency.
The closest example as mentioned earlier would probably be post-Civil War but pre-Progressive movement America though. Social Darwinism was influential at the time and afaik there was little state intervention in the economy.
The closest example as mentioned earlier would probably be post-Civil War but pre-Progressive movement America though. Social Darwinism was influential at the time and afaik there was little state intervention in the economy.
I never said communism can't have a democratic shell "in theory". Of course, for communism to be functional in a democratic government, you'd have to have a hivemind of voters voting for only communists. And all these communists have to be above corruption. And these communists have absolute control of the economy, so any slip up from the voters will bring everything crashing down.
There is no check on government power in such a system. See, Libertarians say the government is not your friend, communists say corporations are not your friend, when the fact of the matter is both are not your friend and you don't wanna give either one all the reigns of power. A system where one keeps the other in check, but not so much as to eliminate the other, is, at least, sustainable. Not perfect by any means.
Recognizing that humans in government are bad actors is libertarianism. That's why libertarians leave everything to corporations. Recognizing that humans in corporations are bad actors is communism, that's why communists leave everything to the government.
Bonen no Max'd
Banned
This is the future libertarians want.
Yeah communism requires perfect leaders, and that simply doesn't exist.
I don't think the issue is predictable behavior—by and large, people do act predictably. The problem is that even when the vast majority of people are acting "rationally", that rationality isn't objective (the tragedy of the commons illustrates how rational and predictable behavior has an irrational outcome.) As humans, we tend to be rational but also short-sighted, and fairly easy at fooling ourselves.
This is a common misunderstanding. The government was *deeply* involved in intervention in the economy, but it was at the behest of corporations and business interests, hence the crony capitalism parallels people draw between today's inequalities and the gilded age. Any time you have the state militias or national guards sent in to destroy strikes, you can hardly call it a laissez-faire approach to economics.
Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku!
Member
Rapture
ClosingADoor
Member
It would work. If everyone would be capable of taking care of himself, there was no crime and people got the same opportunities. So basically, file it away together with communism in dream land, because humans don't work that way.
Muppet of a Man
Member
This only happens when a country is not developed (i.e., a blank slate). It is no longer viable once infrastructure has been built and markets are established, mature, and have become saturated as a result.
There are multiple disincentives for healthy competition: unfettered contract law which allows for accelerated consolidation of wealth and power into corporate entities, which results in the establishment of oligopolies and/or monopolies. These kind of entities are anti-competitive and anti-consumer by their very nature and design.
Also, once everything is bought, privatized, and becomes a "toll for use", there is no longer a publically available infrastructure upon which to grow and innovate. It becomes another capital-based barrier to entry for start-up competition, not to mention that it essentially economically enslaves the labor class.
Again, in practice, this all starts to devolve to a modern form of feudalism or a banana republic of sorts.
As it is now, even as a mixed market economy, we have weakly enforced anti-trust laws and the constant chipping away of publically-owned infrastructure, not to mention pay-to-play politics where companies/industries essentially buy politicians and laws made to give them a competitive advantage. Having no regulations or beauracratic red tape at all as checks would pretty instantly doom us to the aforementioned dystopia.
As it is now, we lean too far economically in the libertarian (a.k.a. classical liberal / neo-liberal) direction. We must invest much more into overhauling and modernizing the country's publically-owned infrastructure and make sure that it is not eroded by privatization. We must strictly enforce anti-trust laws. We must rid the political system of pay-to-play in all of its nefarious forms, via limits on lobbying and revolving door politics, reinstatement of campaign finance reform, reversal of Citizens United ruling, etc. We must get rid of anti-competitive statutes that already exist on the books at all levels of government (especially municipal and state).
Humans are both individuals and part of a group dynamic by their very nature. If the way the governing system is designed cannot account for this duality of human nature, it is doomed from the start. This is why both pure libertarian states (anti-group) and pure communist states (anti-individual) are doomed to failure.
SomedayTheFire
Member
no libertarianism does not work.
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
No. There is zero evidence that libertarianism works, anywhere, ever. And when you stop to even think about it and consider how reality works, it becomes obvious why.
But I mean, a quick Wikipedia lookup would tell you this about Singapore's government:
Literally the opposite of Libertarianism, LOL.
Yeah, I have no idea why anyone would bring up Singapore. Don't they also have excessively harsh and restrictive drug laws too? Pretty anti-libertarian right there. xD They have the death penalty not only for murder, but also drug and trafficking offenses, for crying out loud.
But I mean, a quick Wikipedia lookup would tell you this about Singapore's government:
Literally the opposite of Libertarianism, LOL.
Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku!
Member
Slavery doesn't seem very libertarian to me
old manatee
Banned
I might be full of shit. Or it was actually a flood or a tornado or something. Anyway, my point stands.
Slavery is extremely libertarian, but I agree it's not a topic libertarians focus on much.
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
Because of their economic freedom ranking. Which illuminates my point of how people tend to pick and choose what libertarianism means to them instead of settling on a common definition, and how that tends to foster a lot of miscommunication.
Singapore is Libertarian the same way USA is communist that confused me
Bonen no Max'd
Banned
Wait I'd say it's extremely capitalist but not very "life, liberty, and property." Being enslaved is a violation of your negative right to liberty!
Unless you mean wage slavery or whatever, but I *think* libertarians don't believe people can literally be property. Just that they are obligated to work 16 hours a day for scraps of bread and that this is a fair contract between two parties.
This is fair but it's the closest thing I can think of. Given how deeply corrupt politics were it seems like the natural endgame of libertarianism that the winners eventually hold enough power to tell the state what to do.
Tomasoares
Member
Lol I see, I consider myself libertarian, but i'm not even close to being as radical as something like anarcho-capitalism.
I'm Brazillian and Brazil is a very isolated and state-controlled country. At least half of what brazillians produce is taken by the government by taxes. There's lots of bureaucracy and running a business here is a nightmare (it takes around six months here finally get a company legally started).
So, taking this as a reference, I believe the government here should be much smaller than it is currently, but then I'm taking countries like Canada, Chile or the nordic countries as reference (State still has a lot of presence, but they're all in the top of most free countries in the world)
Their thoughts on less regulations are dumb. I mean, we currently let quite a lot of companies do what-the-fuck-ever they want (with people having the power to boycott these companies for all the crap they do) and that has fucked up the environment beyond belief and lead to some fairly bad working conditions because people don't give a shit. Shit ain't gonna get better by freeing it up even further.
The power of exit is first and foremost in libertarianism, no agreement or status should ever be binding under threat of force.
Wage slavery is baked into libertarianism, even, i would argue, indentured servitude (if the contracting party entered into it voluntarily), but not chattel slavery, which begins and ends with the forceful deprivation of rights.
Conciliator
Banned
I have a totally successful libertarian government design written up in my notebook right now. it's fullproof
capitalCORN
Member
Isn't Brazil under a coup government? Either way, corruption in government is going to happen. But if you think the government is a bully. What will you do when the corporate agriculture companies consolidate and collude to exploit the farmer instead? The dream of deregulation may be the small business succeeding. But the reality is the shark eating the guppy. I mean, capital worth isn't going to come to equity before the government starts the races, right?
VendettaRed07
Member
The articles of confederation was basically a libertarian system.
The federal government had basically no power, couldn't tax at all essentially, and states needed to vote unanimously to change anything.
It didn't work and they had to throw it out.
The federal government had basically no power, couldn't tax at all essentially, and states needed to vote unanimously to change anything.
It didn't work and they had to throw it out.
Tomasoares
Member
Nope, the impeachment, even with all the crappy motivations by the oposition and the current shitty government, was legit.
Government will always be stronger than companies, and even if I'm libertarian, I believe state should be aware of environment-care though.
Ethical Hedonism
Banned
Was it really legit tho? Even the current president said that the real reason for it to happen was politically-motivated vengeance by the House chairman.
Don't be so attached to formalism.
capitalCORN
Member
Well, governments need to be elected. Shareholders do not.
hey_monkey
Banned
To be fair, much of the world was a horrible, nightmarish cesspool, regardless of the form of government.
Note I'm not defending the American West here.
There has never been a society in history that has conformed to a perfect theoretical definition of libertarianism/communism/social democracy etc. Most modern western societies are a complex mix of each. It's also important to distinguish between the weirder Randian (and primarily American) forms of libertarianism versus classical liberalism. Both are similar in that they advocate individual freedom and free markets and so on but differ in the sorts of issues that they focus on, with American libertarianism focusing on somewhat fringe issues like returning to the gold standard.
Liberal/tarian thought has been deeply influential in Western societies, mainly for the better. "Don't legislate to control another person's behaviour unless they're harming someone else" is a very classically liberal norm that has done extremely good things for the societies in which it's been applied. Similarly, there are a lot of unquestionably libertarian policies (rule of law, decriminalisation of consensual sexual behaviour, destruction of guilds and barriers to entry in the professions) that are just plain good.
On the other hand, there's definitely an argument to be made on the association between colonialism and imperialism and market capitalism and libertarianism. I think capitalism and libertarianism can be defended to an extent from these charges, but there's definitely a connection there to be explored. Similarly, you might look at the Piketty example of the tendency in capitalist societies for wealth to accrue and pool in the wealthiest strata of society because of the rate of return on capital. Whether the latter is correctable within the framework of liberal democracy is a genuinely interesting question. It might require strong interventionist policies like a huge inheritance tax which is arguably unjustifiable within a libertarian framework.
It's worth remembering that Hayek, probably the best exponent of classical liberal thought, acknowledged that free markets were legal fictions sustained by government and that there was probably a necessity for a minimum basic income in advanced capitalist democracies.
Liberal/tarian thought has been deeply influential in Western societies, mainly for the better. "Don't legislate to control another person's behaviour unless they're harming someone else" is a very classically liberal norm that has done extremely good things for the societies in which it's been applied. Similarly, there are a lot of unquestionably libertarian policies (rule of law, decriminalisation of consensual sexual behaviour, destruction of guilds and barriers to entry in the professions) that are just plain good.
On the other hand, there's definitely an argument to be made on the association between colonialism and imperialism and market capitalism and libertarianism. I think capitalism and libertarianism can be defended to an extent from these charges, but there's definitely a connection there to be explored. Similarly, you might look at the Piketty example of the tendency in capitalist societies for wealth to accrue and pool in the wealthiest strata of society because of the rate of return on capital. Whether the latter is correctable within the framework of liberal democracy is a genuinely interesting question. It might require strong interventionist policies like a huge inheritance tax which is arguably unjustifiable within a libertarian framework.
It's worth remembering that Hayek, probably the best exponent of classical liberal thought, acknowledged that free markets were legal fictions sustained by government and that there was probably a necessity for a minimum basic income in advanced capitalist democracies.
The libertarian concept of property fundamentally entails the forceful deprivation of rights.
If people are allowed to require that my food be given to those who are starving, then property in the libertarian sense does not exist.
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