• Facepunch Libertarian Chat: Classical Edition
    81 replies, posted
I guess my philosophy fits somewhere between classical liberalism and minarchism, but broadly speaking I would simply call myself a right-wing libertarian. classical liberalism and minarchism are very closely related, minarchism is just a more intense version, but I feel like classical liberalism is too soft and minarchists are kinda missing the point.
This has no place in polidicks and should stay in GD
I disagree that environmental protection is not something government should be involved in. I believe that the most basic job of government is to simply protect the civil rights of the individual. And I believe that individuals have a right to live in a breathable, clean planet. It would be unjust to allow a company to pump harmful chemicals into the air simply because they have a right to make a profit. It could be argued that lawsuits for damaging others health from such chemicals would curb companies from doing it, but many corporations have grown so large that they can either afford to pay off those filing the suit or bury them in legal shit with their 100 top grade lawyers. This is probably my largest dissatisfaction with libertarian thought and politics.
This is largely my problem with libertarian philosophy. It postulates that groups and individuals left to their own devices will create a naturally healthy and productive society and just looking at history we can say this really isn't the case. But when you bring this up the excuse from libertarians and regular conservatives/neocons for that matter is that we haven't tried ~real~ free markets, and if we just deregulate everything individuals and corporations will start taking care of the planet. It really reminds me of the "But that wasn't real socialism" meme that some leftists will hold to seriously, and I've always seen it to be quite paradoxical to have this overbearing paranoia about government bureaucracy but a seemingly naive trust for corporate bureaucracy
i enjoy the idealist side of libertarianism but i don't think it could work in societies as large as ours
this forum isn't owned by me so I can't post here because that would be using someone else's resources for free. libertarianism
I think the problem is radical US Ayn Rand ancap style Libertarianism seems to have taken centre stage. I think it's not a problem with libertarianism, it's a problem with the "popular brand" of Libertarianism mentioned above, I think you can be libertarian while acknowledging the government has a role to play, then it's more a question of what role should the government play and how should it gain it's authority (through consent? through implied consent via non optional social contract? through a monopoly on violence?) Like not all anarchists totally oppose government (just generally oppose government with illegitimate authority), not all libertarians totally oppose government imo
any literature or philosophers you'd recommend on these subjects? also no more tamamo-chan avatar suehund? ;_;
ya I agree there's an intellectual deficit but the only two strains of libertarians in the country are either the Rand types or the absolutely crazy people's party, at least in america. but that's again like the "there's no true communists" argument, in that we only have examples of bad libertarians and not any interested in intellectual rigor.
Some obvious places to start for left lib would be 'The Conquest of Bread' by Kropotkin, 'What is Anarchism' by Alexander Berkman, most things by Chomsky and Bookchin. Stirner, Goldman, Tolstoy to some extent. Of course there's varying degrees of extremity within leftcom. Chomsky is pretty moderate by the standards of the others I mentioned. Orwell wrote that book about Catalonia discussing what they had going on over there too.
I think, at least in America, it began with a concept that government should be smaller and have a less direct role in running our lives, and over the decades it took that concept and ran into the extreme where there should be no government and it is always bad no matter what. I am generally pro-small government, but I do not want a lack of a government entirely. In the US, I would prefer that states begin taking up a lot of the individual load that the federal government is doing as is their general right with the 10th Amendment.
Crumpets who posted below you has some good stuff, libertarian in the general sense is someone who values personal liberty highly. You can also have centrist libertarians who advocate for more personal freedom in the current system or left wing libertarians who advocate for personal freedom along with a fairer distribution of wealth (for them taxing isn't necessarily considered less freedom) Sorta what I was tryna get at before is Libertarian has been claimed by the economic far right which is sad coz itll put off economic moderates. I've tried to specify economic left and right differently from socially consrvative(or authoritative) and socially liberal coz the plain basic left right dichotomy thing sorta clouds the matter and makes it confusing.
As some others I think have mentioned, internet libertarianism has been poisoned by the extreme fringe of the ideology. You can't have a discussion about the topic without some retard coming in and screaming "NAAAAAAP!". It's why I stoped labeling myself that and took up the name classic liberal. Penn Jillett is the sort of person I look up to in libertarianism, but that's about it.
I'm more interested in the snake. Sss.
. i personally think the US has grown far too large too quickly for the federal government to effectively govern as a democracy, and the states taking up the load is critical for the survival of the union as a democracy.
Sorry if this sounds too up front but do you support secession of US states and territories?
i think the dissolution of the federal government wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen
[quote]Applying our theory to parents and children, this means that a parent does not have the right to aggress against his children, but also that the parent should not have a legal obligation to feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights. The parent therefore may not murder or mutilate his child, and the law properly outlaws a parent from doing so. But the parent should have the legal right not to feed the child, i.e., to allow it to die. - Murray Rothbard[/quote] What a lovely ideology.
Except for the world economy crumbling because the United State's has suddenly ceased to exist?
if it happened suddenly then it would be a very difficult time for everyone involved. ceding more rights to the states overtime could help buffer the world economy from the effects of those states becoming their own States in their own right.
well yeah ancaps are morons and rothbard is a fuckin jackass
So as someone who hasn't studied up much on libertarianism, what are some of the practical changes some of you guys would want to see in how the country is governed? What kinds of solutions would libertarianism bring to our most pressing issues?
Libertarians are alright, it's the ancaps that are crazy.
gotta say though i love ancap ball memes and fictional, satirical takes on anarchocapitalism.
Not a libertarian but I could definitely see some fat being trimmed from the executive branch. Putting aside the massive amount of power centralized in the presidency after decades of precedents being set at various crises, you also have a lot of regulatory agencies subverting the role of the legislature. This leads to the regulatory capture being seen under Trump, where the efficacy of each department changes drastically depending on whether or not a (D) or (R) are in the White House.
My reaction to snaketits: https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/651/d2b27497-6664-43bc-a047-e5567d98201b/image.png Jesus christ. Joking aside, the biggest problem with libertarianism as a perspective is the idea of a power vacuum. No power vacuum ever remains one for long, history has proven this again and again. Two important questions need to be answered: 1) What sort of person or organization is likely to forcefully seize power to fill said power vacuum? 2) Would they be likely to govern responsibly? Both the idea of pure communism and libertarianism have the same flaw. You're giving almost complete power to government or to corporations, respectively, and hoping that out of the goodness of their hearts they'll avoid using it corruptly. In a worst case scenario, libertarianism is the same as throwing away your right to choose who leads your country.
I hate how Libertarianism just now means AnCap.
I don't want the break up of the US, but I fully believe it's the right of a state to secede if the people of it wants to.
realistically this is what i want to be afforded to the states, i just see the logical end result being a US with greatly diminished stature.
im supposed to be mostly unbiased being the OP and all but if someone legitimately believes in rothbard's "you should have the legal right to not feed the child" get the fuck out of my thread immediately i have no time for your shit
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