“Being that we all are interdependent and rely on shared resources there is no way that protecting my and your property is a simple thing. You set up your business upwind of me, upstream of me, or in the forest that I enjoy... or frankly anywhere in the world, and, if your business is sufficiently large/noisy/polluting/or resource using... then protecting your "rights" to your business is not sufficient. ...quickly my rights and your rights conflict and must be carefully balanced and negotiated. Conflicts can be resolved without government - but such *solutions* are only through force - not through ideals of equal opportunity rights to things that are not owned - like the air and water. Libertarianism should work fine in theory when population density is low and resources plentiful and evenly distributed... I submit that it cannot work in today's industrial, highly populated, and highly militarized world. ...and even when it can work, its lifespan is by nature short... because when resources are plentiful, population increases quickly to compensate. Such utopias do not persist. As we are the top predator and dominant animal in the ecosystem the only thing that stops us is other people... and that quickly becomes the primary issue to manage.”
I am not proposing an anarchy, and nor do I think it is possible to reach the ideal state a libertarian argues for- In short, I am not a fool. However, it is possible to extend the remit of property rights further than they currently spread, waterways and airspace can perfectly well be owned. So too can forest land be owned. Consequential pollution of the air or water supply should be seen as a matter for the courts, and class action suits against businesses that pollute are to be encouraged.
“Inherent in the Libertarian ideal is a contradiction. In the ideal one is to be left free to pursue their greed/ambition for business success/dominance to their heart's content - yet it is the greed itself that necessitates management - lest the strong take advantage of the weak and the powerful leave nothing for the rest. Remove the greed, and you would no longer be even talking about "property rights"... we would be in some kind of socialist society. Keep the greed, but don't regulate it and you end up with a brutish violent and exploitative society that is more like the wild west or gangland Chicago then it is a Randian paradise.”
Hence my minarchism. The property right cannot be maintained without policing of it, but with well defined property rights *there can be no conflict of rights*.
“Agreed - totally. Question is, how does a government that is far weaker and smaller and less well funded than any one corporation manage violence against others? The corporations (and similar organizations - Mafia, unions, churches, etc.) would be free to do what they want... In order to be effective, government must be stronger and more well funded and smarter than the groups it is policing lest it be overwhelmed”
Suppose the government were to set a level of taxation of 10% of GDP, and spend it exclusively on policing, the army, etc. Then you have a little under double the protection and armed forces spending of the UK, and I don’t suppose anyone is fearing the imminent over-throw of the UK government by business interests?
“And yes, I totally agree with that. Any insight into why most Libertarians, in the US at least, align themselves with social conservatives (who are hell-bent in involving themselves in other people's business based on "moral" concerns)?”
There is a big difference between what libertarianism is and what the American right calls libertarian. The American Right is really very annoying on that front.
“It's really easy to just stand around and say "hey your argument has a fallacy in it."
(Even if you *do* remember the name :P)
But that doesn't really mean shit does it?”
No, it really does mean shit. Take, as an example:
“John is to the right of Peter, Peter is to the right of Paul, therefore John is to the right of Paul”
This commits the Quaternio terminorum- four terms- fallacy. Most arguments have 3 terms, including a common middle.
Bob is a cat, cats are mammals, therefore Bob is a mammal.
Bob, cat, and mammal are the three terms.
However, in the previous example, we have four terms:
John
To the right of Peter
Peter
To the right of Paul
So there is no common middle, and indeed, they could be sitting around a round table. The deduction is flawed.
“"If you want an example, the Icelandic Republic is often described variously as minarchist and anarchist."
I can't believe you're still trotting out the example of the Icelandic Republic after it was comprehensively shot down in that previous thread.
The Icelandic Republic was over 1,000 years ago and there is very little reliable evidence to suggest how it worked in practice. Hence, it is NOT a useful example.
In any case it was certainly not an anarchist system, since it was basically a union of four smaller states, each of which did have a defined government and a leader. Not anarchy. Fail.”
It is a minimal state. I don’t claim it to be a perfect example, but to consider it necessary to provide one is to commit the fallacy of non-anticipation, anyway, so I have never tried very hard to find one.