So, you don't think there's much corporate corruption?

...huh? On the contrary, there's plenty, the problem is that the law enforcement arm of government rarely opposes it and often facilitates it. That's the point that's been made; I know quite a few libertarians have their heads in the sand re: corporate corruption, but I think most of us here aren't arguing that there isn't corporate corruption, but rather that government helps to foster it instead of fighting it like it should.

When government tells lenders "Hey! Start lending to these low income, high risk people so everyone owns a home" and then acts all shocked when those same people default on their loans and they find out the lenders were spreading the risk around... Yeah, the government is really "stopping" anything. They not only facilitate and enable, they downright make corporate corruption a necessity.

Agree with Draugnar, but that being said their is a difference between stupid regulation and regulation.

Some regulation is good. I can sight how well regulated Canadian backs are as a good exmaple

>sight
>backs
>exmaple

Seriously though did you mean Canadian banks? because I can't follow that sentence.

In the abstract, sure, some regulation is good. Maybe in other countries it works. In America, though, "regulation" is done ultimately by Congresspersons and Presidents whose campaigns are bought by corporations. Their existence in office is literally due to corporate funding. You think they're going to be hard on their financial lifeline?

@pe-sorry, I was responding to ckroberts

PE, you're right, I shouldn't. But there are plenty of reasonable people who disagree, and it's as much for them.

@ckroberts
maybe this is a better analogy - what if you have brain cancer so you decide the solution is to cut off your head? We need to fix government not eliminate it.

SunZi, I like analogies! To stay medical, I would rather take my chances with the flu than have somebody tell me my humors are out of order and I need to be bled daily. Our knowledge of how to shape and order society is more analogous to ancient Greek doctors than to modern medicine.

That analogy was terrible, SunZi.

"No, it is not."

Yes, it is.

Imperfect information. Case closed.

This was in reply to those who disagreed with me when I said: "Austrian economics is bunk."

Also, libertarians, I'm upset that you took my genuine effort to have a discussion about libertarianism so harshly, just because I disagree.

I don't hold any caricatures about libertarianism, I just disagree hugely with the idea that small governments tend to be good governments.

I originally formed this idea in history classes in my young life, when I began to notice that strong, powerful, and from a geopolitical perspective, admirable empires always started out by "consolidating a strong central government" so, that's where my perspective originally came from.

That was a genuine attempt? Honestly, none of us could tell because you were espousing a load of blatantly obvious falsehoods/straw men in your original posts. I suppose it didn't help that the Putin wing showed up not long afterward, but asserting that all libertarians are Austrian School followers and that libertarians want people to "do whatever they want" after literally saying the exact opposite the sentence before isn't a good way to get us to take the thread seriously, especially when it's pretty clearly just a magnet to attack whatever straw men people want to prop up at the moment.

And then not actually replying to the understanding of human nature that many libertarians actually hold was just icing on the cake. Thread's a troll, attracting trolls, and that's pretty much the end of that.

I agree with Thucy. Historically, weak central governments have consistently fallen to stronger ones, no matter what the time period is.

I was just expressing my honest opinion, I didn't realize that was looked down upon.

"but asserting that all libertarians are Austrian School followers "

Aren't they? Perhaps I *do* have a poor understanding but I thought that without this you really aren't libertarian anymore, am I wrong?

I thought I did respond to the point about human nature, but I'd be happy to have another go, what question specifically were you looking for me to answer?

And don't worry I didn't read any of the shit in between when I posted and now so I missed all the "Putin-wing" (great neologism) posts, no worries.

Why is government responsible for the care of an individual's brain cancer?

@President Eden: All libertarians are Austrians because Austrians are the only school that is that right wing.

"Why is government responsible for the care of an individual's brain cancer?"

Because I don't want to live in a society where people with brain cancer are not helped to recover. Since many people are like me, and people form governments, this is what government does.

I'm just taken a bit aback because some of that was just... never mind. It doesn't really do good to bash without responding to the points in question when the person is actually looking for discussion.

Regarding Austrian School - nope. As an example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_Marxism

There's a fairly significant wing of libertarianism known as "left-libertarianism" that doesn't embrace right-wing economics. What it does embrace is anti-state socialism or other collectivist economic policies without state coercion. At the extreme are anarcho-communists, who wish to remove the state (particularly the current, neoliberal one) so that they can form their own individual communes.

The only tautologically correct statement one can really make about "libertarianism" is that it argues for the reduction of the power of the state. Why reduce that power? What replaces the state's provision of basic functions? Or does the state even reduce basic functions, instead just reducing perceived excesses in a variety of areas? Libertarians all answer these questions different ways - so assuming that we're all some Austrian hive mind is patently false.

"I thought I did respond to the point about human nature, but I'd be happy to have another go, what question specifically were you looking for me to answer?"

There wasn't a question to which you needed to respond - rather, your statement about libertarians' views on human nature (that we put too much faith in it) implied a question ("Why do we put so much faith in human nature?") that is loaded (not all libertarians have faith in human nature). I responded to that effect, and your reply -

"Libertarianism and other limited government philosophies want to increase personal freedom to an extreme level. If I'm not wrong libertarians are in favor of total personal freedom all the way up to doing harm to others, where they finally draw the line. And even then it's a hazy line.

How is this a pessimistic view of human nature? You want to let everyone do whatever they want? Call me an ass for this but that sounds like a recipe for disaster. Chaos, even."

- completely failed to address it, and asserted the usual libertarian straw man ("you want to let everyone do what they want"), one you yourself had just refuted ("...all the way up to doing harm to others"), in the process.

Libertarians don't necessarily want to increase personal freedom to an extreme level. What libertarians want to do is reduce the scope of government power. Why they want to do it is, again, a complex question.

Now, it is certainly the case that most libertarians also believe in a lot of personal freedom. But you'd pretty much need to address that with each libertarian personally, because again, there's a lot of variety within the umbrella "libertarian" term. Some don't.

For example, paleoconversatism is a subset of libertarianism, because it does argue for the reduction of government power, but they're not very "libertarian" in the "personal freedom maximization" understanding. Paleocons are basically the straw man Putin likes to beat up, and when he's talking about actual paleocons he is to a degree on-point, usual Putin nonsense aside. Paleocons' fight against the scope of government tends to be limited to the federal government; they're common in Southern states, and they are indeed the pond scum that panders to the KKK/JBS folks, arguing for strong "states' rights" and only fighting the federal government. Those who also fight the state and local governments' expansion of power typically envision the ideal America as a series of church-centric communities without (secular) strong government influence. Ron Paul is a paleocon, as is Pat Buchanan. Personally, I dislike paleocons a lot; my support for Paul is pretty much only based on the fact that he's running for federal office, because it does mean he'll fight to reduce federal power, which is the area where his and my philosophies overlap. If he were running for governor of Louisiana, I'd need to see what his platform was, but his current platform would really empower a hypothetical him running for LA governor to, say, ban abortion and gay marriage, which I would not like to see.

So there's one example of a libertarian ideology that you probably wouldn't consider "libertarian" on the face of it.

Meanwhile, these guys - who I align with much more closely - are probably more palatable to you philosophically:

http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/

As you'll quickly find out from reading, much notably different from paleocons, anarcho-capitalists, minarchists and the myriad other ideologies under libertarianism.
===
To wrap this up (sorry if this seems disorganized), libertarianism is probably analogous to progressivism - it's a very broad concept with very little in the way of specific properties, because it's a category for a variety of ideologies contained within. Indeed, progressivism and libertarianism aren't necessarily in conflict! I'd consider myself both "progressive" and "libertarian," and I think quite a few libertarians like me exist.

So, when you make a thread about "libertarianism," and then you start bashing random specific oddities of libertarianism that (a) aren't applicable to all libertarians and (b) seem unduly combative, you come off like our boy TC here in his complaints about "the left."

Hope that helps.

Fasces, read the above and please learn what libertarianism is before you comment on it. Thanks.

Thucydides, I think that it was mostly Putin who was responsible for any harsh feelings. The whole Austrian economics school debate isn't really what attracts me to libertarian ideas, so I don't have much to say about it. More important are reforming the various police state abuses, expansion of military spending and power, and reducing the degree to which the government aids and promotes powerful economic and corporate interests.

I do think this is interesting, though:
" I originally formed this idea in history classes in my young life, when I began to notice that strong, powerful, and from a geopolitical perspective, admirable empires always started out by "consolidating a strong central government" so, that's where my perspective originally came from. "

I am myself a historian, so I appreciate the opportunity to introduce a historical perspective. What I particularly note is that you use the terms "admirable" and "empires" together. This probably reflects a fundamental disagreement about the nature of society and the ideal shape thereof, because I don't use those words together unless it's something like "It was admirable how quickly this particular empire collapsed" or "This particular empire, being less evil than usual, is relatively admirable." Empires are bad, since they are by definition to coercive control of one group of people by another. Everyone talks about the glory of Rome or Alexander, how they spread civilization and order and so on, but they're simply obscuring the extent to which this reflects the work of power-hungry murderers and war-mongers.

There is nothing inherently evil about empires and personal motivation of emperors is irrevelant. An average Greek was much better off living in the Roman Republic than he had been in a city-state in a semi-permanent state of war with neighbouring city-states. You have to compare a situation with an without the empire, not with an empire with some ideal state.

Ulytau, you're actually comparing different empires, the relatively inefficient efforts by the Greek city-states to impose an empire on their neighbors vs. the efficient Roman Empire. If you have to pick, sure, pick the better empire. I'd much rather live as a subject of the British or French Empires than in somewhere conquered by the Nazis. I even admire Cyrus the Great, who built an empire by replacing harsh and cruel imperial rule with a relatively tolerant new order.

But that's a situation where you're choosing the lesser of two evils. Empire cannot be, by definition, meaningfully representative. Any political institution built on coercion and power, as opposed to the consent of the governed, will necessarily be tyrannical. To answer your last sentence, history is replete with people who would have much preferred to not be part of an empire. That's why empires have to kill or threaten to kill people to maintain control.

Okay, well that's interesting. I didn't know there were "leftist" libertarians. However in my mind the deciding distinguishing feature between the left and the right is the size of government. In that sense libertarian is far-right. These days "far-right" has connotations quite different, so the term is probably best not used, but yeah.

Okay well fair enough then about Austrian econ. Let's just talk about the state.

Oh well first let me respond to that bit on human nature again so as maybe to clarify. I wasn't attempting a straw man:

Perhaps it is true that there are some libertarians who do not embrace a large degree of personal freedom. If there are they should fight for a name change of libertarian imho lol but ok. However unless you want to seriously and unnecessarily complicate a debate on the size of government, the position I am questioning is the one which says the government's size and power should be reduced in favor of individual freedom. If you consider this a straw man which unfairly taints libertarianism as a whole, that's okay. I'm happy to use another term for this position if you like. MPF, we'll say - Maximizing Personal Freedom.

Anyway - I think that MPF has a too optimistic view of human nature.

Reason why: MPF trusts people to do the right thing by themselves and by others, and I just don't. You may be thinking that this isn't true, but let's look at it a bit.

MPF may allow for prohibition against people doing harm to others, this we grant. But their definition of that is so limited as to allow a great many problems.

I will now choose something I perceive to be a favorite MPF target: the security vs. freedom debate. I do so intentionally because I believe it demonstrates some flaws in their views.

MPFs may say that it is a breach of personal freedoms for the government to, for instance, search my car because of probable cause without a warrant, or perhaps pat me down at an airport, or set up a highway checkpoint.

I'm not saying that ALL do, but this is the KIND of thing I'm talking about. Just because every person's political views are slightly different is not in my opinion license to cry "straw man" at every attempt to discuss ideology. If you can agree that this position exists then we can go on, just know that that's what I'm talking about.

So they say it restricts personal freedom. Or how about phone-tapping? Same thing. Privacy debates are often a huge one for MSFs. Or, in other countries, maybe a curfew for a crime-ridden city (example: Juba, South Sudan).

MSFs call most of these an abuse of power. I am saying, no, that they are necessary sometimes. My ultimate justification for that is that I don't trust human nature.

Probable cause is a great example. I am a huge proponent, even if it means a rude cop can basically claim he smelled weed and search my car with no warrant. There are a number of reasons why it doesn't bother me:

1) it needs to be there for good cops who actually do it right, because if a cop looks in the back of a car and sees a bunch of shell casings, or whatever it is, he should be able to search the car, because, for example, there could be a corpse in the back

2) if you have nothing to hide you have very little reason to be upset about being searched

Now, before you present the standard arguments against 1 and 2, let me say that I am a guy who HAS at times had things to hide. This hasn't changed my position. Because, well, quite frankly if ever it is me who is tied up in someone's trunk, I don't want to have to wait around for the cops to get a warrant in a bid to protect the rights of my kidnapper.

The most common argument of all though I think would be abuse of power. Thucy, can't the cops abuse probable cause? Yes, they can, and do, and it's bullshit, and we should be vigilant and put pressure on police departments and so on and so on - I support ALL of that.

Government, yes, DOES abuse its power. That is, at least so far in our history with our culture, technology, environment, and genes so far, apparently a natural law of holding power - with power comes abuse.

I am saying, however, that it is worth it, and better than the alternative. Because you are right, you make a good point, these people in government are also people with horrible human nature too. What's to stop them from doing shitty things?

Well, hopefully, other people and good institutions, but again, though some are better than others, no system is perfect.

But the crux of my point about human nature was this: When you empower 300 million people to, if you will, "abuse" their personal freedoms to do harm (which you can actually *already* do in some cases), you get a lot of harm. You empower a few thousand people to abuse their power in a strong government which prevents the former, you get some serious problems, but, in my view, nothing like the problems of the former case.

And of course you have to strike a balance, it's not as though I don't believe in personal freedom. I just think that strong government is good. The balance of power between government and people in the US is about right, though admittedly tilted a little too far toward the government when you get to the federal level - a consequence of being a powerful nation. As goldfinger said too, powerful countries nearly always have strong central governments, correlation or causation, it is the way it tends to be.

Anyway I'm sorry that there was hostility generated at any point - it certainly was not my intent. I actually knew PE was libertarian and, as the subject itself had not in my memory had a devoted thread to be discussed in earnest on webdip, I made one thinking he and others would enjoy and profit from it. My apologies for any feelings hurt.

Interesting points about empires all.

The perspective I was coming from in that childhood assessment I recounted to you all was one that unity is better than division, peace better than war, and order better than chaos. That sentiment remains with me to the extent that I favor one-world government. Perhaps the libertarians ultimate nightmare? I wouldn't know. Hahahaha.

Anyway when I said "admirable" what I meant was admirable in their efficacy at running their empires well and being dominant over other competitors, a kind of objective performance measure absent my own moral judgments about the ethics of subjugating neighboring tribes or what have you.

I guess it's my opinion that people can do the greatest things when organized, and yes, to some extent, that means controlled. I agree ulytau in that I would much prefer to live as a peasant in Roman Iberia than as a peasant in Germany at the same time.

Just as now I would prefer to live in Singapore with its strong government than I would prefer to live in South Sudan, with a very weak government that barely exerts control over its territory.

Okay okay yes Singapore is richer too. So to be fair instead of Singapore I'll say Ghana. The point is that governments that are weak exist in countries where there is instability. Again we can play the correlation causation game but at the end of the day I want to live in a country with a strong government.