spun's Journal: Libertarianism: horrid yet banal

I posted this yesterday, it's my best anti-libertarian screed yet, so I thought I'd save it in my journal.

Hey, if you do not like the social contract you were born into, you are free to leave and find a country where you can be your own selfish self. Similar to how, in a libertarian/anarcho capitalist world, people who aren't of the owning class are free to leave and support themselves somewhere else. Of course in this world, as it exists only in the fantasies of libertarians and anarcho capitalists, due to some magical unexplained process, everyone is and always will be a member of the owning class, and no one will ever have to sell themselves into slavery just to have a place to sleep.

Libertarianism is based on a falsehood. The inalienable property rights espoused by libertarians are just as authoritarian and represent just as much of an initiation of force as anything done by a government. Before you mingle your labor with a thing, there is no justification for you to call that thing your own. Yet in order to mingle your labor with a natural resource, you must first claim it as your own. yet you do so without justification. As that natural resource was freely shareable by all, you have stolen from all by your taking. That is initiation of force, and libertarianism is founded on it.

It is based on another falsehood: that every individual is an island unto themselves, and that barring some kind of court challenge, nothing anyone does can be said to impact anyone else. The fact is, everything you do impacts everything else. Therefore, any decision or action you take is the concern of every other human being on the planet. You have a responsibility to the rest of humanity, because we all need to live together and cooperate to make society work.

Libertarianism seems to be designed as a system for keeping the have-nots from challenging the supremacy of the haves. It is a philosophy (and I use that term loosely) that places selfishness as the ultimate good, and denies that the individual has any responsibility to society.

It bases it's ideas of Rights on the fallacy of appeal to authority, rather than acknowledging that rights come not from Nature or your invisible friend in the sky, but from people's agreement to uphold those rights in others. Rights derive from society. Without society, there would be no need to even speak of rights.

It appeals to intellectual snobs who see themselves as better than the common person. These people feel their brilliance is not properly rewarded, and they are being imposed upon by all the lesser men around them. Libertarianism tells them they are correct, and that they are valient individualists fighting Authority by pursuing their selfish fantasies.

In short, libertarianism is an evil and destructive philosophy of selfishness that appeals to snobs with an over-inflated sense of their own importance. It's practitioners posses a level of intellectual dishonesty and hypocricy that I've only ever seen before in Scientologists. It has taken the noble roots of anarchism and twisted them into something unfathomably horrid, yet banal at the same time.

So...

[Stargoat]

So by your logic, rights are derived from society, so we should not have any rights at all. If we have rights, we should be thankful that we have them, and not demand more. All righty then.

OR.

We have certain rights based upon the fact that there are people (obviously not yourself) who are willing to fight for these rights. Justification for these rights are based upon the threat of the gun in the hands of the people and the use of the vote in the hands of the masses.

It seems what you are really

Re:

[spun]

Perhaps I wasn't clear. The concept of rights is meaningless outside the context of society. If it weren't for other people, you wouldn't think of "rights" at all. You would think of power, as in do I have the power to do this or not? Rights are derived from other people's willingness to fight for those rights. If people are not willing to stand up and defend the rights of others, the whole concept is meaningless. People can talk all they like about where their rights derive from, but that is just pointles

I agree

[HomelessInLaJolla]

> if you do not like the social contract you were born into

If that social contract, rather than the Constitution and the concepts of the Pledge of Allegiance, would be taught in the first twelve years' of government regulated schooling, then I would agree with you. Since the schools teach the Constitution and the concepts of the Pledge of Allegiance, you're full of .

I'm okay with the difference between the way it should be and the way it is. Just don't waste my taxpayer dollars lying to me, and my

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[SatanicPuppy]

There is a difference between the libertarian point of view, which is (among other things) that basically all services should be paid for out of pocket by those people who use them, and saying that you don't agree with the curriculum of the public school system.

For libertarians, it's not just the schools...It's the schools and the hospitals and the roads and the food stamps, and everything else that benefits people other than themselves.

Public school is there for people who can't afford private school, and

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[HomelessInLaJolla]

> It's about what's good for the country as a whole

And how is deliberately miseducating a vast majority of the public good for the country as a whole?

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[SatanicPuppy]

This just says the system needs reform, not that it's a bad idea.

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[spun]

I always like to try to make the argument in terms of self interest. You hint at the issue when you state, "And to have a population who understands those things is extremely important for us as a nation." It is important, to each individual in the nation, and that is the beginning of the argument. Everyone benefits from living as a part of an educated populace. An educated populace is an efficient populace. The better educated your fellow citizens are, on average, the cheaper your products will be. The bet

Jesus, that's great!

[Philip K Dickhead]

Every thing I ever thought on the topic, articulated so very well. Thanks.

"You're not the boss of me now, You're not the boss of me now..."

Property is a Positive Right

[Morosoph]

Old JE [slashdot.org].

Anarchism is the real deal, but that involves getting social respect for your would-be property, which is no longer guarunteed. I'm not saying that it would work, but that is the true direction of freedom, given a society that would sustain it...

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[spun]

Nice essay. I agree, property is a positive right. That Coase theorem is interesting, I'd not heard of that. In the normative case, it argues that property rights should be allocated to those gaining the most utility from them. I've not thought it through completely, but I think I can get behind that.

I also agree that under real anarchism one would need to get social respect for would-be property. I feel this is just and fair, precisely because property is a positive right. I consider myself, when forced to

Anarchism

[Morosoph]

I agree with your criticism of the libertarians, but I've never approached the whole anarchism thing from the left or the right. Political Compass. [politicalcompass.org]

I predict that the property equilibrium under an anarchist society would satisfy neither modern-day leftists or rightists. It would neither be absolute, nor would it be shared by default. The equilibrium would be very natural, IMO, and would approximately reflect efficiency, but neither of today's main anarchist camps would be happy with it. The reason for

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[spun]

I used to be quite anti free market, but I've gotten a little less strident as I've gotten older, and I've seen that, where the free market works, it works very well. I would be quite happy with something in between syndicalism and libertarianism, with some private ownership of natural resources, some income and property ownership differential, and a high degree of participatory democracy.

I get irate with libertarians because they think like me, but not completely. I have an easier time forgiving liberals a

Funny

[HomelessInLaJolla]

> Libertarianism seems to be designed as a system for keeping the have-nots from challenging the supremacy of the haves

This is exactly why I'm currently homeless... and it happened under the current social contract.

Given a choice I'd take the one where I get to keep my money.

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[spun]

Hey man, I've been there. Homeless in San Francisco for a year and a half doing activist work, living in my van (down by the river!) and crashing on friend's couches. But in a libertarian world, you would be a slave. Everything would be privately owned, and I mean everything, even the sidewalks and streets. You wouldn't have anywhere to go, and the owning class could do literally anything to you by making you sign away absolutely anything or any right in exchange for the right to have someplace to simply be

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[HomelessInLaJolla]

> But in a libertarian world, you would be a slave

As opposed to just being a wage-slave under today's socialist regime? What's the difference?

> Everything would be privately owned

Not everything. Libertarians like their governments the way most computer scientists like their kernels: small and only the necessary functionalities.

Think about why window decorations aren't built into (regulated by) the kernel and then have another look at the US Federal Government.

> the owning class could do literall

Heh

[Captain Splendid]

Nicely put. I always say Libertarians are either liberals who want to look cool, or conservatives who want to be able to do lots of blow and hookers.

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[spun]

You forgot the most commonly seen type on teh intarwebs: the socially inept computer nerd who wants to reduce the messy complexities of human interaction down to a few simple, absolute rules. A tempting strategy, to be sure, but unfortunately, the real world is a messy, messy place, and absolutes, as comforting as they are, are useless in the face of that much complexity.

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[Captain Splendid]

Ah, that would explain why Libertarianism is so popular here on /.