Libertarianism: The Official Thread Of Freedom As An Ideology.

Abhorsen

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Eh, agree on libertarianism but the NAP isn't THAT hard to argue against. Most stuff isn't. It boils down to "Why not?" and "I don't care".
I mean, that's exactly what an axiom is. Something that's accepted as true not because of a reason, but because it's 'obvious' or 'on faith' or 'because it sounds right' or 'is useful'.

The reason why the NAP is useful though is that arguing against it is hard. Do you believe a person should morally be able to walk up to you, hold you at gunpoint, steal your wallet, then shoot you in the head? For almost everyone this is a no. Now why is that wrong? You can answer that various ways, but many of those are the NAP or can lead to the NAP or are obviously fucked morality (e.g. it's wrong cause it's me being harmed. The other way around would be fine though).
 

Abhishekm

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The reason why the NAP is useful though is that arguing against it is hard. Do you believe a person should morally be able to walk up to you, hold you at gunpoint, steal your wallet, then shoot you in the head? For almost everyone this is a no. Now why is that wrong? You can answer that various ways, but many of those are the NAP or can lead to the NAP or are obviously fucked morality (e.g. it's wrong cause it's me being harmed. The other way around would be fine though).
True true. Just saying that always back to Would they do it anyway? No? Why not? NAP? What if they don't care? Trust them? No.

Or alternatively. Should I have the right to walk up to someone and take their shit? No? Why not? The NAP? I don't care.

Stuff like that's got to be mutual is what we all know and people always wiggle to their advantage in those.
 

ParadiseLost

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@Abhishekm

This. I think that just about every highly intelligent, sane, ethically-minded person would agree with the NAP in theory.

The problem is that in reality most humans are not highly intelligent, a significant minority are not sane, and most people are only considered with ethics to the degree that allows them to feel like a good person, whatever that is.

Enforcement of the NAP ends up like a tragedy of the commons: breaking it gives you a competitive advantage, but your gain is less than the groups loss.
 

Abhorsen

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True true. Just saying that always back to Would they do it anyway? No? Why not? NAP? What if they don't care? Trust them? No.

Or alternatively. Should I have the right to walk up to someone and take their shit? No? Why not? The NAP? I don't care.

Stuff like that's got to be mutual is what we all know and people always wiggle to their advantage in those.
How is this an actual objection? Obviously politics has to be mutual, that's true with any society based on any system: there has to be mutual values, or it doesn't work. And all morality systems also are eventually rooted in axioms.

And as a morality system, there's no need for it to be mutual, which is in line with most systems. I don't need other people to act a certain way for me to act morally.

How about this: Try naming a morality or political system that isn't based on an axiom somewhere. Trust me, you probably can't.
@Abhishekm

This. I think that just about every highly intelligent, sane, ethically-minded person would agree with the NAP in theory.

The problem is that in reality most humans are not highly intelligent, a significant minority are not sane, and most people are only considered with ethics to the degree that allows them to feel like a good person, whatever that is.

Enforcement of the NAP ends up like a tragedy of the commons: breaking it gives you a competitive advantage, but your gain is less than the groups loss.
So first, The NAP is self enforcing as it only bans attacking. If someone steals your wallet, you are totally justified in shooting them, or even paying a guy to hunt him down lethally to get it back. So as a morality system it doesn't have that problem.

But as a political system, that isn't enough by itself to deal with the problem of warlords, as a fairly small minority who want to warlord can snowball their way to success.

Hence why in my initial post when talking about libertarianism as a political system, I pointed out that compromises in the NAP were needed:
Libertarianism as a political effort is trying to create a society that implements the NAP, which of course requires compromising the ideal to make it feasible.

This results in libertarians advocating for anything from a nightwatchman state to minarchism (which has its own large range of what a minarchist state is) to smaller government than what we have now. All of these are basically systems designed to deal with the two major flaws in AnCapdom: childcaring duties and warlords.

*Though I will note as an aside is that Libertarianism does have a solution to almost all tragedies of the common: get rid of the commons, and have it be privately owned.
 

Abhorsen

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Bottled Oxygen for sale! Don't worry, my price are not unreasonable.
I mean, there's not much of a way to make money off of that as there is no shortage. But if you look at water shortages, yes, that would be helped solved by full on water rights ownership, at least over the entire watershed. It's almost like it works for food. I mean, the very first thing that would happen would be Dasani moving out of California, because WTF would they pay so much for water when they could get it somewhere else for cheap.

But yeah, if oxygen was scarce enough to bottle, I'd like a price on it that would drive the manufacturing of more oxygen, and also a non-linear increasing price to shaft people hogging it.
 
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Scottty

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I mean, there's not much of a way to make money off of that as there is no shortage. But if you look at water shortages, yes, that would be helped solved by full on water rights ownership, at least over the entire watershed. It's almost like it works for food. I mean, the very first thing that would happen would be Dasani moving out of California, because WTF would they pay so much for water when they could get it somewhere else for cheap.

But yeah, if oxygen was scarce enough to bottle, I'd like a price on it that would drive the manufacturing of more oxygen, and also a non-linear increasing price to shaft people hogging it.

What I meant, is that the atmosphere is a "commons".
 

Abhorsen

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What I meant, is that the atmosphere is a "commons".
Sure, but it is one that isn't experiencing a tragedy though. Libertarian thinking can solve a "tragedy of the commons", but here there is no problem to solve. There's no reason to spend your time trying to control a resource that has such excess supply, it's oddly worthless.

But if you did want to parcel out the atmosphere for something like this, one could still solve it with property rights. Instead of being given a right to a certain section of the atmosphere, one would be parceled out the right to breathe a certain amount of oxygen every day. If you wanted to have a dog, you'd have to buy more, and if you wanted to save money, maybe do less physically draining activities.

This would lead to people trying to produce more oxygen to make a profit as well as people trying to save oxygen.

Such a solution would be best for something like a mars colony: a large number of people who all need oxygen in a place where there isn't a natural abundance. This would basically be another utility bill.
 
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JagerIV

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I sometimes wonder if there's a bit of an issue with freedom/libertarianism as an ideology is in many contexts freedom is a means, not an ends.

This is an issue I was pondering a bit with the idea of democracy after watching the Adam/Sitch debate with the Distributist, where they seemed utterly confused by Distributist's position of agnostism on Democracy vs Monarchy, saying both had their merits and his goal was human flourishing and he would go with whatever was more advantageous.

Democracy is so often talked about as the goal in and of itself, that it barely computed to think of it in terms as just a tool, a means to achieve some goal to be used on a case by case basis. However, the pro democracy stance also often seems to dry up immediately whenever some shape of democracy delivers an outcome counter to the broader goals: those who champion democracy often seem to be championing it as much as it furthers the desired End.

Freedom, especially in the bounds its discussed in Libertarianism, is I think more often than not a means, not an end. The end is some desired community and lifestyle. Freedom should thus be allowed where freedom is advantageous to the end goal, and disallowed where it doesn't further the end goal. Or, as I would probably prefer the framing, Freedom should not be limited unless it is harmful to the "common good".

All the interesting and important discussions are over the ends, and what is justified in the pursuit of those ends. Libertarianism qua libertarianism doesn't seem to say a whole lot on those. Which I think is one reason you can get so many varieties of Libertarianism, which all are fairly meaningful indevidually, but don't really sum to an overall ideology.

Like, a Christian Libertarian believes in a Christian end, and believes a libertarian methodology would be effective to achieve that end, and their belief of that end informs where they think the boarders of that methodology lie. A Christian, for example, is likely not going to be in favor of particularly liberal divorce laws. A Marxist Libertarian makes a sort of sense, in they think they can achieve their anarchist goals through libertarian means, and would likely not be in strong favor of muscular enforcement against squatters.
 

Scottty

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The whole "everything should be privatized" thing is where I draw the line, personally. Part of why I call myself a "small l" libertarian, actually. ;)

Well, yes.

Also, the real test of any society according to both CS Lewis and George Orwell - how does it defend itself in case of war?

In the case of extreme Libertarianism - it doesn't. Because getting killed is never in your own personal self-interest.
 

Free-Stater 101

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Well, yes.

Also, the real test of any society according to both CS Lewis and George Orwell - how does it defend itself in case of war?

In the case of extreme Libertarianism - it doesn't. Because getting killed is never in your own personal self-interest.
...That is a weird statement to make. Are you saying that all men should expect war to be a sacrifice of their lives or that a society of libertarians would be unwilling to make sacrifices for war?
 

Abhorsen

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Freedom, especially in the bounds its discussed in Libertarianism, is I think more often than not a means, not an end.
You clearly don't understand Libertarianism. This is yet more evidence.
The end is some desired community and lifestyle. Freedom should thus be allowed where freedom is advantageous to the end goal, and disallowed where it doesn't further the end goal. Or, as I would probably prefer the framing, Freedom should not be limited unless it is harmful to the "common good".
See this concept of common good? "Desired lifestyle"? None of those are libertarian things. Now you can design a philosophy around such a thing, but that philosophy is not libertarianism. The idea of limiting a persons freedom for some kind of common good almost certainly violates the NAP, for example.

And later, you somewhat recognize this by saying that Christian libertarians want a Christian society which they find as a common good. That's the Christian in them, not the libertarian. Also, on top of this, Christian libertarians won't limit freedom to achieve a common good in violation of the NAP, or they quite simply aren't libertarians. Which is of course why Marxist libertarians either aren't Marxists, or aren't libertarians.

The Distributist? Not a Libertarian as far as I can tell. So his opinion? Entirely orthogonal to what libertarianism is as a moral/political philosophy. Now he might side with libertarians on many issues because we agree on stuff, but that doesn't make him a libertarian.

I think the Chinese might disagree with you about that...
They don't lack oxygen. Maybe they have too many pollutants, but that's about it.
Well, yes.

Also, the real test of any society according to both CS Lewis and George Orwell - how does it defend itself in case of war?

In the case of extreme Libertarianism - it doesn't. Because getting killed is never in your own personal self-interest.
Again, an AnCap society doesn't have this, but most libertarians aren't trying to remove the military. In pure AnCapDom, you could get something similar by having mutual defense treaties and hiring military contractors (though this has some obvious flaws, namely what if the ones you hired decide they want to take over?)
 

Scottty

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...That is a weird statement to make. Are you saying that all men should expect war to be a sacrifice of their lives or that a society of libertarians would be unwilling to make sacrifices for war?

"No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."
General Patton.
But going into war, there is always the possibility that you might get to be the poor bastard.

Which means that the soldiers have to be fighting for something they are willing, if necessary, to sacrifice their own lives for.
 

JagerIV

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You clearly don't understand Libertarianism. This is yet more evidence.

We have different understandings of Libertarianism. Which one is more accurate I believe is up for debate. Or, maybe more accurate, which understanding is more useful is up for debate. My sense is your much more focused on the spherical cow definition of libertarianism, while I'm much more concerned with how libertarian plays out in practice as, well, a practical ideology. Then again, all models are going to be somewhat abstracted, so it comes down to, well, who's abstraction is more useful. A point we obviously disagree with.

See this concept of common good? "Desired lifestyle"? None of those are libertarian things. Now you can design a philosophy around such a thing, but that philosophy is not libertarianism. The idea of limiting a persons freedom for some kind of common good almost certainly violates the NAP, for example.

But the above are all necessary cores for a practical philosophy. And Libertarians cry they do have them with the declaration that Libertarians are not anarchists and believe in the need for some coercive state. And thus their belief in "the idea of limiting a person's freedom for some kind of common good".

Practically, both in how libertarians define themselves, and in many of their arguments (freedom here will increase public good is a common libertarian argument for things), Libertarians implicitly adopt the idea of a common good. Some common good exists that needs a public entity (a state or similar such organization) to manage that unprivitizable commons. Freedom will lead to good outcomes, which means there are other goods besides freedom, which the necessity of the state suggests these other goods can be weighed against freedom, and less freedom can be more benifitical than more.

And later, you somewhat recognize this by saying that Christian libertarians want a Christian society which they find as a common good. That's the Christian in them, not the libertarian. Also, on top of this, Christian libertarians won't limit freedom to achieve a common good in violation of the NAP, or they quite simply aren't libertarians. Which is of course why Marxist libertarians either aren't Marxists, or aren't libertarians.

Once you recognize the public good, or even some idea of good things besides freedom, recognized by the need for collective action through the state or other options, you need an ideology that deals with that common good and other goods.

Even below ideological completeness, on simple practical organization you need to be able to point your people to some common vision to push for. I agree Libertarianism in its pure form doesn't have that, which puts them in the same problem the post-modernists had where declaring there are no meta narratives doesn't give you anywhere to go. So, despite them theoretically being opposites, the post-modernists after declaring no meta narratives then need to sneak Marxist meta narratives, because without it all you can do is how many angels on a pin navel gazing. And thus the non-Marxist postmodernists have mostly seemed to become irrelevant.

I believe Libertarian has the same issue: its missing so many core needs for a functional ideology, such as adding clarity to what that common good is and what freedom working looks like, that it inevitably needs to be mixed with some other ideology to be something whole and functional.

Once you recognize a common, you need some theory of how that common should be managed. Should the common be managed at the lowest practical level, with the goal of maximum subsidiarity? Localist Libertarians. Or is it better to have as big a ruler as possible, to maximize uniform and fair rules, a globalist Libertarianism, like Yaron Brooks seems to argue for in some of his pro-EU discussions?

That is just one issue that, practically, needs some resolution, and by very specifically trying to be agnostic on the question of what the common good is and how they should be governed, Libertarianism doesn't directly provide much in the way of answers. Thus, some other ideology becomes necessary to fill in those gaps, and often that other ideology is adopted unconsciously, creating denial and unself awareness of what is actually being argued for. You've heard this argument before in the "libertarians handmaid for socialism" thread, where I argued many libertarians practically have bought into a lot of socialist beliefs on what the common good looks like, mostly unconsciously, which leads them to pushing for socialist ends, even though the believe they can get there through non-coercive means. However, since Libertarian very explicitly states there are necessary exceptions to the non-coercion principle, those beliefs in socialist ends will inform their beliefs of where those reasonable exceptions will be, in a pro socialist direction.

And, to be clear, I am using Socialist to refer to the whole socialist/Communist/Rousseauian/Hegelian school of thought. Just to avoid confusion over thinking I'm referring to very narrow school of thought.

The Distributist? Not a Libertarian as far as I can tell. So his opinion? Entirely orthogonal to what libertarianism is as a moral/political philosophy. Now he might side with libertarians on many issues because we agree on stuff, but that doesn't make him a libertarian.

I'm not sure what point your making here: of course the Distributist isn't a libertarian: in his formal videos, proably a 1/3 to a 1/2 of them are specifically about refuting liberal/libertarian ideas, and he sees Libertarians as one of the major things holding the right back and letting socialists win.

My main point with bringing him up was that people in a debate he was in couldn't really wrap their head around the idea of freedom/democracy explicitly not being the primary, goal of a persons ideology.
 

Abhorsen

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My sense is your much more focused on the spherical cow definition of libertarianism, while I'm much more concerned with how libertarian plays out in practice as, well, a practical ideology.
No, your definition has no relation to actual libertarianism. This isn't a wishy washy thing. Libertarianism as a philosophy is defined by the NAP. It's like talking about moral Kantianism without talking about the Categorical Imperative. You can't delink the two.

Now there is a distinction between political Libertarians (as in the party) and libertarians, just like there are non-Conservatives in Canada's or Britain's Conservative Parties. This may be where your confusion is coming from:

And thus their belief in "the idea of limiting a person's freedom for some kind of common good".
No, see, it's not 'some kind of common good'. It's a specific good: individual freedom. There is no other good in libertarian theory. An attempt at a state is simply an attempt to maximize the amount of freedom individuals have.

Practically, both in how libertarians define themselves, and in many of their arguments (freedom here will increase public good is a common libertarian argument for things), Libertarians implicitly adopt the idea of a common good.
See, this is precisely why I think you are getting stuff confused, because you are mixing political and philosophical arguments.

A pure libertarian arguing from first principles never accepts a moral good other than personal freedom (there are some other variations, like private property, that also work and end up being equivalent, but we'll use personal freedom here).

But when a libertarian is arguing for a particular policy position, they are arguing politically, with the intent to convince others to adopt a position. The libertarian likes the position because it promotes individual liberty, but recognizes that others don't follow that philosophy, or at least value other things. So we point out that following libertarianism also has other benefits, and in this case will help do X or Y or Z, which presumably the listener likes.

And unusually for a philosophy, about 99% of the time, a libertarian is arguing politically, not philosophically, because we usually have a bone in the fight that has a chance of winning, while few people spend time attacking the NAP as a philosophical point.

Once you recognize the public good, or even some idea of good things besides freedom, recognized by the need for collective action through the state or other options, you need an ideology that deals with that common good and other goods.
See, and the rest of the argument doesn't apply here, because there is no other moral good but freedom in libertarianism. And so public goods don't have moral value, they are not needed by the philosophy of libertarianism.

Which is why much of the internal debate in libertarianism is what form of government (or lack thereof) is best at delivering freedom. But this is

Other goods can be considered by a separate philosophy an individual adopts, if they want to. But in order to be libertarian, the pursuit of those goods must be in accordance with the NAP.

Even below ideological completeness, on simple practical organization you need to be able to point your people to some common vision to push for.
No, we really don't need a perfectly common vision to push for, just mostly in agreement, and we have one. It's one where people aren't aggressed upon, or at least one where that is minimized. And to achieve this, there are people with varying opinions about the optimal end goal, but we all strive in the same direction, cause we all know we are nowhere near.

And, to be clear, I am using Socialist to refer to the whole socialist/Communist/Rousseauian/Hegelian school of thought. Just to avoid confusion over thinking I'm referring to very narrow school of thought.
See? Right here we have another problem. Rousseauian philosophy isn't socialist. He believes in Natural rights, social contract, and republican government, which socialism can't have. Now he has some leanings, but nothing close enough.

I'm not sure what point your making here: of course the Distributist isn't a libertarian: in his formal videos, proably a 1/3 to a 1/2 of them are specifically about refuting liberal/libertarian ideas, and he sees Libertarians as one of the major things holding the right back and letting socialists win.
Ah, then the argument still has no relevance. It's anecdotal evidence about one guy not understanding a world view that they don't hold. Sorta like you right now, not understanding libertarianism. And that's fine, it's not your job to understand everything about libertarianism, especially with the understandable confusion between political arguments and philosophical arguments.
 

JagerIV

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I think you might be confused by my criticism of Libertarianism, because your mostly restate that the complained about flaws exist, but seem to believe in the restatement of the flaws that this is proof of their nonexistence. I think this because you don't perceive them as flaws, and that your listing the philosophy's strengths rather than weaknesses, but it suggests a great deal of confusion over what the argument was.

Your distinction between arguing politically or philosophically also seems somewhat of a restatement of my earlier statement: your counter arguments seem to have been mostly arguments of the spheres, philosophical abstract arguments, which I have stated are not particularly interesting or compelling to me, and I much more care about practical philosophy, which seems to be roughly what you mean by politics. I don't particularly care whether the father and son in the Trinity are coequal parts of a whole, or the son comes from the father in an Arian conception if it has no practical significance.

Likewise I understand Libertarianism can be a very clean, tidy solution as long as you assume a spherical cow: as long as the only goods concerned about are moral goods, and the only moral good is freedom. This is self evidently false however, and since Freedom is one competing good among a great many competing moral and physical goods, I don't see much utility in so single mindedly cutting down the mental model of complex reality to 1 relatively minor axis.

Some additional clarifications

1) What definition am I providing that "has no relation to actual libertarianism "? I have not really provided a definition, since this conversation did not require one. I did not discuss the NAP because I assumed it was an already known concept, and its exact formulation was not relevant to the criticism?

2) Is Libertarian not about maximizing the greatest freedom for the greatest number of people? Going into greater detail about the common good looked for does not seem to transform it from being a common good all the sames.

3) Your contention seems to be that maximizing freedom as the only relevant value is enough for you, therefore that being the only stated value is not a problem with the philosophy. Would you believe such a philosophy would be enough for people at large, or is Libertarianism as this pure philosophy you describe something no more than 1% of the population would ever find useful for any practical need?
 

Abhorsen

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There's a lot wrong here, so I'll only point out the big problem:

Your distinction between arguing politically or philosophically also seems somewhat of a restatement of my earlier statement: your counter arguments seem to have been mostly arguments of the spheres, philosophical abstract arguments, which I have stated are not particularly interesting or compelling to me, and I much more care about practical philosophy, which seems to be roughly what you mean by politics. I don't particularly care whether the father and son in the Trinity are coequal parts of a whole, or the son comes from the father in an Arian conception if it has no practical significance.
The problem is that you quite simply aren't talking about libertarians, yet use non-libertarians to complain about libertarianism:
Freedom, especially in the bounds its discussed in Libertarianism, is I think more often than not a means, not an end. The end is some desired community and lifestyle.
Freedom, especially in the bounds its discussed in Libertarianism, is I think more often than not a means, not an end. The end is some desired community and lifestyle. Freedom should thus be allowed where freedom is advantageous to the end goal, and disallowed where it doesn't further the end goal. Or, as I would probably prefer the framing, Freedom should not be limited unless it is harmful to the "common good".
See, no one who holds the above views are libertarians. You try to complain about libertarianism as 'practically applied', but aren't looking at any libertarians. To extend your analogy about Trinitarianism, you are criticizing the concept of Trinitarianism by pointing at Arians and saying "Look, they're not Trinitarians!" No duh.

You can't make some distinction here between practical effects of libertarianism if you don't look at any libertarians.

The political/philosophical difference I make only applies to arguments made by actual libertarians. If the person making the argument isn't coming from a libertarian viewpoint, they aren't a libertarian. If the person is only after freedom as a means, not an end in and of itself, they aren't a libertarian. They aren't a 'practical libertarian', they aren't a libertarian at all.

And in b4 No True Scotsman:
There's a simple, consistent definition of a libertarian: one who follows (or tries to, humans aren't perfect) the NAP above other considerations. I haven't changed this definition, which would be the NTS fallacy.
 

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