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Knowing what Libritarian means
If one individual doesn’t have a manifesto, constitution or some form of documentation showing his/her views on what “Liberty” means to that individual, how does another individual, group of individuals, or community know how to treat this individual without “violating” his/her “Liberties” Are any of you willing to “assume” that everyone has not only the same definition for Libertarian, but also the same meaning for that definition?
Would murder and theft have to been written down for you to understand they are wrong? Do you think you can clearly define both? If humans can learn to read and write with different literature to teach them the rules and principals and still communicate across a broad spectrum of individuals, is it not reasonable to assume that principals of liberty and freedom can be taught without a universal document or constitution?
YES murder and theft have to be written down because that is the way that we teach our children YES to written Constitutions because people have short memories All of History proves it. We have nothing but war and disagreement all over the world. Even here in this country. We are in effect at war with our government, and while we the people didn’t “declare” the war we got so busy with the NBA, the AFL and the NFL that we just let it happen. As bad as some of the actors are that are running the government, the bad actors are there because we were lazy not because the Constitution was flawed.
I teach my children all sorts of complicated things. Like bass fishing, some biology, and a little economics. He already understands it is wrong to kill and steal. I have yet to write any of it down for him. He’s 6. Do you have children? Do you write everything out for them?
Yes this is no doubt a problem with anarchy. Even consider the ‘soft’ or weak case of the loss of knowledge from not having a shared code of laws or constitution, and in its absence, having to spend the time and effort to ask and/or sign consent and agreements with every person you wish to engage with. A possible remedy is to sign up with a company that would provide a basic ‘code of laws’ in which to provide a foundation for contracts. In my own thinking, the solution of ‘ostracism’ or a rating system has never been satisfactory to me in dealing with those who ignore or subvert contracts (including controversies, corruption and fraud), for these eventual ‘barbarians’ will be at the gate soon enough. Ostracism does not mean what many would like it to mean; people will not ‘go away’. Prisons serve that purpose now (perhaps to a much greater extent than we would like), but “running them out of town” will certainly not provide the security a prison does for those we would rather not associate with. Even with private security, are you going to always be watching your backyard for the exiled?
Returning to the OP, there is definitely a great amount of benefit from having a foundation in which to interact, and those who advocate a kind of minarchism believe this foundation to be very brief, as opposed to the gross over-expansion of these foundations today. Some centralism has its benefits, which anarchists ignore. And no, this is not statism, requiring forced taxation. Far too many anarchists equate liberty with unlimited freedom / license. How is this liberty? There must be a measurable amount of safety and comfort in any definition of liberty, and a bare foundation of laws provides this, including the ability to protect oneself (2nd amendment) within that framework of laws. Yes, police are minutes away when seconds count, which is why the 2nd amendment is foundational, however the knowledge that justice will prevail with the presentation of evidence to charge lawbreakers is part of liberty, rather than the discretion of a mob or an incensed victim; such an uncertain fate handed down by the latter groups would be no part of a life of liberty.
It may very well be that shared values is the definition of a community, for why would you live near anyone who did not agree on fundamentals with you? Overall, there are a great amount of inefficiencies in a state of anarchy, not to mention currency (back to barter? unless an anarchist actually thinks bitcoin would become the central currency…an irony i suppose), and the OP has pointed one out. In anarchy, we could not presume anything about another individual. Under a minarchy, you can.
It seems a “common” theme of many of the posts on this site that in some way or another there is “something” wrong with the “present” system. Most seem to want to dump it, but few seem to be able to articulate when, where, why “it” or what specifically made “it” fail. This makes me wonder how anyone can “propose” a “better” system without really knowing how or why the present one failed. I don’t even see that much agrement on what Libritarian means. We just had a round of hope and change and look at how well that worked out.
Well the anarchists start from a premise of banning the initiation of force. I don’t follow this path nor think it would be immediately realizable. A lot of re-invention would have to occur, and the only chance would be if we had a long, stable, L society.
Libertarians for the most part are either left (communal societies) or right (capitalistic/private property). However they are both similar in that they want to remove State regulation and management from the lives of people, other than courts, defense, and police. And certainly all Ls are against foreign intervention via military.
The “Courts” are a big part of the “problem” with the current system, because the Courts help to create the allusion of “order” where none exists. The Courts also help to maintain the allusion the we still have a Constitution and that the Constitution is protecting your “rights”. Where “defense” is concerned most of the World knows that the number of individuals with guns in three of the most populous States of the United States would make an army bigger than any other country. What is happening to the police is a more serious problem. The danger is high so the pay is high to get and keep men on a force. When the pay is high the “cost” to a community is high so often the number of members on a force goes down. Now you have a downward spiral in the quality of a Police organization. Police Philosophy seems to be moving closer to the thinking and tactics of the military. This is scarey because our own government also knows how many guns WE have.
First-Anarchy does not mean “without rules” but rather without “rulers”. Private property rights are a foundation of libertarianism. Another is the NAP or ZAP-the “None (or Zero) Aggression Principle”. There might be some small misunderstandings but for the most part common sense tells you what is a proper way to treat someone or their stuff. We know that now and there is no reason to assume that would change in a minarchist or Ancap country/society.
Not too many years ago someone figured out that you could take the number of people the comprised the entire population of the USA and give each one a home on a 1/4 acre parcel of land and fit the whole thing into an area the size of Texas. We have had quite an increase in population since the example was offered, but it still seems clear that a big portion of the problems we face are because we just simply live too close to each other. Many of the ideas that are expressed on this site seem like they would work in a micro society, but not in a big city
I think part of the beauty about SOME of the libertarian community is that people ARE trying to come up with a better way to do things. They aren’t just sitting around crying about how bad it is. Not every idea that comes across is going to be “THE solution,” but hey, if it gets people talking about liberty and about making society better, then we should embrace the free flow of ideas. To sit there and attack every single idea that is not feasible is anti-progress.
Do you take the above to be an attack on ideas, or an observation that an idea might work in one environment but not in another?
Your tone on the following led me to believe that you were attacking those who don’t have perfect ideas:
It seems a “common” theme of many of the posts on this site that in some way or another there is “something” wrong with the “present” system. Most seem to want to dump it, but few seem to be able to articulate when, where, why “it” or what specifically made “it” fail. This makes me wonder how anyone can “propose” a “better” system without really knowing how or why the present one failed. I don’t even see that much agrement on what Libritarian means. We just had a round of hope and change and look at how well that worked out.
Perhaps I read it wrong. But it sounds more accusatory.
May be just an aversion to being too general. It seems that the people of this country “elected” a leader because the words hope and change “sounded” cool. Hope, Hope for “what”? Change, what are you going to change? Was the plan to change the way that the rest of the world looks at the United States as Nation of Individuals with a love for Liberty? Was the plan to destroy the value of our money? If one doesn’t like the present system, shouldn’t we be very specific about what we want to change, lest we get more than we asked for? If you want a libertarian-society wouldn’t you have to be very specific about the nature of that society if you want it to work?
You do need a specific answer, but you can’t arrive at a specific answer right away and the practice of shooting down every single idea is counterproductive. There are ideas that don’t 100% work but have good bones to them. Ideas that can benefit from having many people look at them and contribute that extra piece that finally makes it work.
That makes sense. The more minds working on a problem the better the chances that it will get solved. Shooting down seems kind of harsh. Just pointing out a flaw in an idea doesn’t necessarily shoot it down, it just means the idea has to be refined or adjusted to fix that particular flaw. Libertarianism is a complex concept.
Very true. It’s complex mostly because the type of society being proposed has never been tried on such a huge scale. I’ve heard ideas that sound phenomenally stupid and full of failure when you first look at them, but once some of the concepts are tweaked it makes a lot more sense!
I actually think many of the ideas on this site would work best in a big city. A private street for example could be built and maintained by the one who builds a subdivision. But that aside-there are many ideas being discussed on here and what works in one place may not work elsewhere nor should it. I truly believe liberty works and that it’s better than statism!
This is an interesting topic, here are my thoughts.
I agree, that you cannot enjoy your freedoms unless the people around you recognize them. Thus they are written on a piece of paper, so people would learn and know about them. However, written rules won’t guarantee that people will follow them. Just because it’s there, won’t mean that it is respected.
A timely example of this is the bill of rights. A great document that the US government does not follow and almost nobody even knows about. I believe, that you don’t even need the document if everyone would know and agree about its content.
What stops me from stealing and killing is not the law or a document, but my own moral understanding of things. I want to live a moral life. In fact, I believe everyone to want to live that way, but the problem is that almost no one knows what is moral and what kind of rights they have. People commit immoral things, because they believe them to be justified and they judge moral things because they believe them to be immoral. Of course that leads to another question, is there absolute moral laws.
I believe there is, and that is called ‘natural law‘. I also believe, that we don’t have to write these down to an official document. Rather, we just need to know about them and teach them to other people. The concept is fairly simple, but because people generally don’t get any real education and because almost no one educates themselves, they are not known. Everyone is under the illusion that all the things in our world are complex and thus the issues must be left for the “experts” and intellectuals to decide.
All that is needed to do, is teach about the natural law. Once a person understands the natural law and the difference between a negative and a positive right, the individual freedom will be preserved. Once the people lose that concept, they invite immoral beliefs and ignorance to the society. No written document will stop it. Laws will be changed and people’s conception of morality will be distorted, just like it has been in our world today.
So if a person believes that we have no positive rights, but only negative ones, I know that we will get along. On the other hand, if a person believes that he has some positive rights, then he also believes that it is morally sound to violate my negative rights. Here is an example:
In conclusion, the concept is pretty straight forward. It’s good to distinct the natural law and the human law. Human law cannot contradict the natural law. Written (human) laws are good for recording the used solutions to a more complex problems, but the basic freedoms come from the natural law and from the negative rights.
So I don’t feel that I would have to sign any documents in order for others to respect my negative rights and individual freedom.
Individuals put strings of words together for the expression of their thinking. The strings of words are called sentences. Each sentence is supposed to express ONE thought. An individual can use a string of words for the writing of a sentence for the expression of a “natural law” in the same way that that individual would use other words for writing a sentence for the expression of a “human law”, however it is the choice of words and the construction of the sentence (syntax) which determines what those words mean as the expression of the thought. “Signing” or not signing a piece of paper with strings of words on it does not change the “meaning” of the words or the sentences. Speaking the words is without value because the words are gone when the energy of the sound which carried them is gone.
