Flaws in libertarianism

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Riggerjack
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Re: Flaws in libertarianism

Post by Riggerjack »

Some land is valued as wilderness to be a hunting field, or maybe just to look at it. What do you use to say it's not value.
Or more clearly, part of the planet, that in a wilderness state, contribute to lot to keep this planet hospitable for us (which is value for everyone)
I want to focus on this. But first, let me tell you a story. I live on a rural island, and this is about two of my neighbors, Gary, and Larry.

Gary moved here in the 80's and he's a self employed heavy equipment operator. A bit of a conspiracy theorist, and lots of fun. He bought the old farmhouse that belonged to the pioneer family my street was named for from the last of that line. He had more land than he needed, so he subdivided, and put a view easement on the 10 acres he sold to Larry.

Larry is a hippie. Not the practical, back to the land hippie, but the donkey riding, pot smoking, permaculturing, mega-trampoline building, poorly executed alternative housing type of hippie, also, lots of fun

They get along, but not real well. Larry doesn't like cutting down trees, and Gary expects to see the Puget Sound from his living room. Every few years, Gary let's Larry know that the new alders are getting in the way, and Larry doesn't do much about it. About every 5 years, Gary gets in a bulldozer, and knocks down Larry's saplings, after giving him notice.

So where is this going? Property rights. When Larry bought the property, there was a view easement across it. Presumably, he got a better price, because of this. Gary was willing to accept less money, and keep his view. Gary paid for the right to his view. What did you pay?

Gary has view property, so his tax appraisal is higher. He pays more property tax each year. What did you pay?

Gary has to fire up his bulldozer every 5 years or so to maintain his view easement, what did you do?

Even though Gary has paid, continues to pay, and has to maintain his view, this only affects the one lot. If Walmart buys the land across the sound, and builds a store in the middle of Gary's view, he is effectively without recourse.

People who have timberland in Washington, who let the trees growing, get a property tax break. A big break. But, they have to have a harvest plan, that they give to the assessor, and stick to. Then they pay 5% of the tree crop value to the state. Members if the public who used to enjoy looking at that stand of trees invariably start to complain when those trees get harvested, but the harvest is required. The public was compensating for their view rights with tax breaks. But then, the state will always want it's money more than its citizens happiness. Both as a stand of trees and as a clear-cut, the land is fine habitat, just for different life forms.

So, you see, we already have systems in place to deal with wild lands, view rights, etc. It's not ideal, but it works. The value is already established. There is no need for soul searching over the value of a view, or whether a private property rights system can protect the environment. As near as I have been able to tell, it is the only way of protecting the environment that actually works. Give the environment a value, and compensate the owners for their service, even if it's only a tax break.

Riggerjack
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Re: Flaws in libertarianism

Post by Riggerjack »

Also on the subject of pollution and property rights, my property has about 1500 feet of county road frontage, every few years, I will take a wheel barrow out, walk the line, and pick up the litter. Coke and beer cans, shampoo bottles, even tires thrown in my wetlands. There is no effective way to enforce property rights in such a way as to stop litterbugs. Though I occasionally think a heavy metals exchange might be the most satisfying solution...

But even at my most extreme, I don't think the death penalty for littering is justice. Though I wonder why, if it's tourist season, we can't shoot them. :twisted:

bryan
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Re: Flaws in libertarianism

Post by bryan »

ThisDinosaur wrote:
Just a logical justification for private property that doesn't result in people having to be violent.
A cat pees on a fence to claim its property. A male gorilla intimidates other gorillas to claim what's his. "Civilized" people write contracts and laws to enforce those contracts. Its all essentially the same thing. You own your property about as much as the cat owns that fence.
And I would say that the concept is part of the evolution of the species. No doubt our understanding of "private property" will continue to evolve.
Spartan_Warrior wrote:There is no private property without violence. Private property is a man-made legal concept specifically upheld by the state (aka threat of violence, by any libertarian's definition).
Sounds like you are using a specific definition for private property, that I don't quite agree with. Granted it's not like I can put it into better words than wikipedia.. Simply put "mine" vs "his" vs "ours" vs "theirs" etc.

Mediating "private property" conflicts we can easily see how violence may become involved (we are competing, after all), but it is not an inevitability or a pre-requisite of private property. Consider the programming of machines (computers, humans, etc) that are able to verify attestations of ownership against a canonical ledger entry.. boom, private property without violence (yay Bitcoin..).
Solvent wrote: That is, property rights are something determined within society, and subject to society's needs. You can argue for a particular definition that fits your worldview, but the libertarian's version of strong property rights is not more logically sound than many other, different, versions, and they're certainly not more just.
Agreed, but what determines which version is more "just" or logically sound? :D @Spartan_Warrior might say it is decided by he who has a bigger stick? I don't think it is inevitable.. (though I admit it may be a good reduction for animals' history)

BRUTE
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Re: Flaws in libertarianism

Post by BRUTE »

ThisDinosaur wrote:You own your property about as much as the cat owns that fence.
this fucking guy^^

money quote right there :)

BRUTE
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Re: Flaws in libertarianism

Post by BRUTE »

Jean wrote:I'm [..] looking for [..] a logical justification for private property that doesn't result in people having to be violent.
there isn't one. libertarians pull different ones out of their asses because they like going to logical extremes. they make up shit like natural rights or "property rights from first principle". brute says this as probably the biggest libertarian on this forum (no offense Rigger). yes, brute knows what Praxeology is, brute loves LVM, brute can probably compare Mises to Hoppe to Rothbard like few others can. brute accepts that humans born in the 1880s made mistakes and Human Action is not the divine word of god.

the problem with this critique is that it's true for every system. is there a logical justification for public property that doesn't result in the necessity for violence? no. is there a justification for communist property, anarchic property?

therefore, the original question is a straw man. it's just a solution that parts of current society ended up with because it kind of worked - even though there's thousands of special cases like federal land, state owned land, different kinds of property rights, etc.

brute thinks it's helpful to define property: property means the "moral right" (as opposed to might-makes right aka cat peeing on the fence) to prevent others from using certain resources.

intuitively, most humans support some property rights - the right over their own body, for example. few humans would argue that it's violence to prevent random humans from having sex with one's own body, or that this violence would not be justified.

as a slight extension of the human body, property that a human acquired very directly, i.e. picking a wild apple, or making a tool from a rock, is also pretty much accepted as ok by most humans.

the more distant and abstract the connection between the human body and the property becomes, the more humans will question it.

libertarians are simply the faction that values property rights in most things more than most other factions. syndicalists or communist anarchists are probably the other extreme, where any toothbrush not currently in use is free for all.

in reality, there is no objective moral code, and therefore, no objective, "fair" system of distributing resources. thus, all systems of property, non-property, shared property, whatever, necessitate violence to enforce. and in reality, might does make right, so the logical derivation of some dead libertarian from the Bronx doesn't really matter.

brute would like to end with a quote by one of his favorite post-libertarians:
Whoever knows how to take, to defend, the thing, to him belongs property.

Riggerjack
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Re: Flaws in libertarianism

Post by Riggerjack »

We started with violence. Every system is enforced by violence. the state is defined by violence. History has shown a strong rule of law and property rights empowers individuals to resolve issues without violence in most cases, and requires the least violence from the state. Probably some sort of authoritarian dictatorship would be next for more violent.

And of course it's a toss up between Socialism, and hunter/gatherer/anarchy for most violent. The body count for socialism is in the high tens of millions, or low hundreds of millions, but archaeological digs show an astounding number of violent deaths in prehistory. In either case way more than dictatorships, and libertarianism doesn't even register on that scale.

I find the people most critical of libertarian concepts to also be the ones least inclined to solve their own problems. If your preferred resolution is to refer to committee, or appeal to authority, or form a coalition, individual rights and actions are more likely to be problems for you than solutions. Not that there's anything wrong with that. We need people who can function better as part of a group. However, a group working together is just another form of strength. If might makes right, numbers add might, not right. If history is any guide, numbers tend to divide right, and substitute righteousness.

BRUTE
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Re: Flaws in libertarianism

Post by BRUTE »

in his old age, brute's a pretty pragmatic libertarian. for him, it basically boils down to something like this:

for any given problem X, is it better solved by free markets and individual liberty? -> prefer libertarian solution. this is the default for brute, both because it's more moral and because it's usually more efficient.

can it be demonstrated with a very high certainty and confidence that problem X is better solved by non-libertarian means? -> fine, but plz revisit decision after certain time frames because circumstances change.

is it unclear which solution is preferable? encourage small-scale experimenting, but default is libertarianism - not hitting humans and not taking their stuff just seems like a good default stance.

"failure to convince" counts as unclear. for example, this is brute's stance towards climate change. it's probably happening, it's maybe somewhat human made, but brute has not been convinced that any of the suggested government programs would be of any benefit. same for assault rifle bans. until it can be demonstrated to brute how assault rifle bans would make a difference while 90% of gun homicides involve hand guns, no action shall be taken.

appeal to anecdotes and emotional manipulation pretty much instantly disqualify. some little old lady can't get to the grocery store because she chose to live in a place that can't be served profitably by any private road building company? well, sometimes actions have consequences. why does the little old lady force the rest of the planet to suffer for her?

bryan
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Re: Flaws in libertarianism

Post by bryan »

Well, lots of folk are "libertarian in the streets, progressive in the sheets."

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Jean
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Re: Flaws in libertarianism

Post by Jean »

I just tought I spent enough year thinking about these issues and wanted to see if someone was able to get trough it.
Apparently no, but I'm fine with it.

BRUTE
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Re: Flaws in libertarianism

Post by BRUTE »

brute also spent years trying to find the "logical explanation", then he just gave up. property really rests on rights, which rest on morality. so the answers are to be found in the philosophy department, and there certainly don't seem to be any objective or neutral answers about morality there.

Spartan_Warrior
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Re: Flaws in libertarianism

Post by Spartan_Warrior »

Some of the comments in here are kinda funny. I didn't think I'd ever see the "toothbrush" thing in the wild. For the record, no, communists are not interested in taking every toothbrush not currently in use. In leftist thinking, personal property (toothbrushes, residences, consumer goods) is typically not considered the same as private property (capital, productive land, means of production). The consideration of the two concepts as being exactly equivalent is rather a specific feature of capitalism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_ ... e_property

Likewise, it would be interesting to see sources for the "hundreds of millions killed by socialism". Curious whether those figures include literal Nazi propaganda like the "Holodomor" famine, in which Stalin notoriously commanded the clouds not to rain over Ukraine. Also curious why such figures are so rarely put in the context of, for instance, the 18 million who die in systemic poverty thanks to capitalism every single year. Or the 100 million African slaves and tens of millions of Native Americans killed in the name of America. I mean, I can understand not comparing the figures to libertarianism, since a libertarian nation has never existed...

On that note, I wonder why. It's a sensible enough political ideology, what could go wrong? :D

BRUTE
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Re: Flaws in libertarianism

Post by BRUTE »

that's why brute attributed the toothbrush to syndicalists and communist-anarchists, not communists ;) Spartan_Warrior needs to get his categories right :D

humans killed by socialism shouldn't be too hard. hundreds of millions brute isn't sure he can do from memory, but tens for sure.
- national socialists
- mao
- khmer rouge
- stalin

BRUTE
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Re: Flaws in libertarianism

Post by BRUTE »

Years ago, a central banker killed my partner.
libertarianism in one sentence

Riggerjack
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Re: Flaws in libertarianism

Post by Riggerjack »

Likewise, it would be interesting to see sources for the "hundreds of millions killed by socialism". Curious whether those figures include literal Nazi propaganda like the "Holodomor" famine, in which Stalin notoriously commanded the clouds not to rain over Ukraine. Also curious why such figures are so rarely put in the context of, for instance, the 18 million who die in systemic poverty thanks to capitalism every single year. Or the 100 million African slaves and tens of millions of Native Americans killed in the name of America. I mean, I can understand not comparing the figures to libertarianism, since a libertarian nation has never existed...
ok.

Soviets, 61M
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/USSR.TAB1.1.GIF

Chinese: 73M
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/CHINA.TABIIA.1.GIF
or 115M, depending on where you draw the lines.
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/CHINA.TAB1.1.GIF

Nazi Germany: 23.5M
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NAZIS.TAB1.1.GIF

Cambodia: 4M
In proportion to its population, Cambodia underwent a human catastrophe unparalleled in this century. Out of a 1970 population of probably near 7,100,0001 Cambodia probably lost slightly less than 4,000,000 people to war, rebellion, man-made famine, genocide, politicide, and mass murder. The vast majority, almost 3,300,000 men, women, and children (including 35,000 foreigners), were murdered within the years 1970 to 1980 by successive governments and guerrilla groups. Most of these, a likely near 2,400,000, were murdered by the communist Khmer Rouge.
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP4.HTM

Post WWII Eastern Europe: 1.8M
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DBG.TAB12.1.GIF

North Korea: 1.4M
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DBG.TAB15.1.GIF

Now, clearly the numbers are in the 100's of millions, but there is always hair splitting to be done. Are the Chinese communists really responsible for the deaths caused by a civil war with northern warlords (sponsored and advised by Soviets)? Can't we just agree that Germany's National Socialist party were not REAL socialists? Blah, blah. So, to cut it short, lets count socialists as responsible for 1/3 of the deaths caused by socialism, you know, as if socialism could be responsible for anything. 65M in less than a century of peace and love for the common man. The other 100M we can call, what? Acceptable overhead? Whatever.

By any count, the high tens of millions is a reasonable approximation. And by whatever definition of Socialist you use, it still fails on the opposite side from Libertarian. When you empower the state, rather than the individual, it inevitably leads to death of citizens. It doesn't matter if the state leader is called Der Fuhrer, Uncle Joe, or Franklin Roosevelt.
Also curious why such figures are so rarely put in the context of, for instance, the 18 million who die in systemic poverty thanks to capitalism every single year. Or the 100 million African slaves and tens of millions of Native Americans killed in the name of America.
Yeah, I got it, you have a bit of progressive inspired self loathing. It's natural. I did too. As you get more experience in the world, it gets better. The key is to not compare apples to oranges, as I just did above. Nobody knows how many of those ~165M would have died violent deaths without socialism. There is going to be death in any revolution, and my preference would be to just avoid revolution. But I'm soft like that.

The ugly truth is that poverty is the natural human experience. The vast majority of history is just a few leaders and masses of the impoverished led. That we are down to only 18M/year dying in poverty out of a global population of 7B is a success. Yes, it could be better, but if that's all it is, then it is the end of a long line of improvement! Capitalism is the only force consistently improving the lives of common men. Though I have high hopes for birth control putting us over the top.

But the real reason, when talking about Libertarianism, we don't compare the Socialist death toll with the 18M who die in poverty, or slave deaths, or Native American deaths, is nobody is endorsing reintroducing Slavery. Nobody is endorsing 19th century Indian policies, (although we still fund a BIA to keep pushing Native Americans to sell reservation resources to corporations.). Nobody is endorsing increasing poverty, with the eventual goal of pushing up deaths by poverty. Yet, there is a constant push for more Socialist solutions. As though we didn't have a century of experience to map out exactly where that leads. Death. Poverty. Environmental Disaster. But hey, everyone get an equal share! :roll:

Riggerjack
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Re: Flaws in libertarianism

Post by Riggerjack »

BTW, my links from above are to a website of an author of a book based on death by government. He is anything but a neutral source. But then, I have a hard time thinking anyone who categorizes all the deaths caused by different forms of government could rationally stay neutral on the subject.

Spartan_Warrior
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Re: Flaws in libertarianism

Post by Spartan_Warrior »

*Puts quarter in laptop to activate keyboard.* :D

@Riggerjack:

As I suspected, RJ Rummel is the source of your figures. His numbers are shaky to say the least. More on that, and an attempt at comparing capitalism to communism using a similar methodology here: http://www.petersaysstuff.com/2014/05/a ... eath-toll/

(I do see you replied before me to note he may not be the most reliable source.)
But the real reason, when talking about Libertarianism, we don't compare the Socialist death toll with the 18M who die in poverty, or slave deaths, or Native American deaths, is nobody is endorsing reintroducing Slavery.
By this same reasoning, when most of us are talking about socialism, nobody is endorsing reintroducing the gulag, either. If you're going to tout sensationally inflated numbers that include deaths tangentially related to any policy or circumstance that occurred under socialist governments, it seems fair to do the same for capitalist ones. If communism caused bread lines in Havana, then capitalism takes the blame for lead water in Detroit. If socialism as an ideology is responsible for the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge, then capitalism (or even libertarianism specifically with its emphasis on property rights, which of course was the justification of slavery) may as well be held responsible for slavery, poverty, robber barons paying pennies to eight-fingered kids to work 18 hours in a factory that dumps sludge in their drinking water, etc.

So, I don't think I'm comparing apples to oranges any more than you or Rummel. If anything, my position is more that such broad-brush strokes tend to ignore significant nuance on either side. It's the same kind of error I see in statements like this...
Capitalism is the only force consistently improving the lives of common men.
...which seems unjustifiable IMO when applied to a firm understanding of what capitalism, specifically, actually is. It could be argued that the industrial and technological revolutions have improved the lives of common men greatly, as has the globalization and trade that's resulted from the era of nation-states. Capitalism was the historical path of most of the western world to reaching this state, but it does not strike me as an intrinsic or necessary factor.

bryan
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Re: Flaws in libertarianism

Post by bryan »

Spartan_Warrior wrote:Some of the comments in here are kinda funny. I didn't think I'd ever see the "toothbrush" thing in the wild. For the record, no, communists are not interested in taking every toothbrush not currently in use. In leftist thinking, personal property (toothbrushes, residences, consumer goods) is typically not considered the same as private property (capital, productive land, means of production). The consideration of the two concepts as being exactly equivalent is rather a specific feature of capitalism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_ ... e_property
Thanks for pointing to where you are coming from! That link is kinda funny to me (being raised in the USA). No wonder some socialists come across so looney with what they are saying.. very opposed definitions. It certainly seems like the capitalist equivalence of the two terms is more logical. For instance, how to classify 1) my brain 2) my hands 3) my computer 4) my energy/thermal storage (e.g. full batteries). Obviously I used the personal possessive here... but all of these could be seen as means of production..

jacob
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Re: Flaws in libertarianism

Post by jacob »

This subject reminds me of Ego's objection wrt living according to label theory. Specifically, the problem of this thread arguing theoretical constructs which are black and white via the use of practical examples which tend to be gray.

This creates a high risk of attribution error!!

Fun fact: One of the questions on the US civics/citizen test is about what the economics system of the US is? The test-answer you need to provide is something along the lines of "capitalist market economy" which is technically correct but also rather one-dimensional. If you ask the average American about what the economics system of the EU is, the answer will likely be something along the lines of "socialism", similarly crude. However, the US government eats up 37% or so of US GDP whereas the generic EU country government eats up 47% of their respective GDP. Based on numbers, the two systems have far more things in common than they have differences. They're a lot closer to each other than they are to 0% or 100% and differences come down to details. However, for ideological differences, we must insist that differences are grave when it comes to theory and correctly answering test questions.

I think labels are excellent when it comes to trying to frame a question in the hope that it might explain something [that one might otherwise be unaware of]. However, I think (and agree with Ego) that it's not smart use it to constrain a strategy rather than to expand the inquiry.

This [way of thinking] of course has material impacts. For example, if you ask most Americans a series of questions in order to determine what kind of health care system they'd prefer, it turns out that most Americans essentially wants in practice what is a single-payer system that draws enough services from the private sector to prevent public system waste and enough services from the public sector to prevent private sector profit-seeking. Basically a system where individuals don't have to pay $50/pill for aspirin or $700/pill for rare diseases once some fratboy manages to corner the patent market, nor $10000 for an MRI trip but neither a system where everybody gets a "full scholarship ride" whenever they sneeze or sprains their pinkie. In other words,the average American actually wants a European (or Canadian or Japanese, etc.) system. However, in the US, such a system is known as "socialism" and therefore inconceivably unpossible (even if it is technically a mixed-economy scheme)---we can't have it. So here we are with the mess we have because while we want a certain thing, actually having it would require some ideological concessions. IOW, there's an ideological brand-barrier that prevents the desired solution because we're compelled to demand a solution-structure according to our theoretical ideology even if it's not optimal.

The way I've come to think about such brands ... or frameworks is ... to apply them where they're pragmatic; and in the instances where they aren't I apply another framework.

ThisDinosaur
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Re: Flaws in libertarianism

Post by ThisDinosaur »

I just tought I spent enough year thinking about these issues and wanted to see if someone was able to get trough it.
Apparently no, but I'm fine with it.
I think the roadblock you have is confusing how the world (1)*Is*, with (2)how it *should be*, with (3)how humans *pretend* it is for practical purposes.

Libertarianism is best understood as part of that third category. 1)The universe at large doesn't care how you came to "own" something. Either you stole it, someone gave it to you, or you got it in exchange for currency that you obtained through labor. 2)You "should" get to keep what you earn so long as you didn't hurt someone or take something they didn't want to give you. But, if you have eminent domain, it still could be yours. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain
3)If we didn't agree somehow that individuals have certain property rights, no functional economy could exist. Why would anyone manufacture anything or provide any service to strangers if there was nothing to *exchange* because neither party owned anything to exchange?

Libertarianism is, like money, a very practical fiction. Useful, but not Universal.

BRUTE
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Re: Flaws in libertarianism

Post by BRUTE »

jacob wrote:Basically a system where individuals don't have to pay $50/pill for aspirin or $700/pill for rare diseases once some fratboy manages to corner the patent market, nor $10000 for an MRI
this has zero to do with free markets but with patents and other IP. these are state-imposed monopolies on thought that are rejected by serious libertarians.

the sad truth about health care is that it doesn't matter if single payer, free market, or ACA, it's expensive and it sucks. the different systems just shift the cost around, but it can't be magically wished away. the secret to cheap health care is to have a young population of physically active humans that eat a traditional diet, sleep a lot, and have great social structure and healthy family relations. good luck putting that in the AHCA or whatever they are calling it now.

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