Now you’re just being silly. Trotsky, a libertarian? A man who sincerely believed in wealth redistribution at gunpoint? I don’t understand why you’re so hostile to libertarian thought, but it’s obviously pointless to try to explain it to you.
Exactly, so I don’t think your “No, they don’t” is accurate. Trotsky felt that redistributing wealth at gunpoint was a fair way to balance individual rights. He felt that the right to have as much material wealth as someone else was more important than the right to be compensated in proportion to what you produce. He felt that was fair. I think that fairly balancing individual rights can only be restricted to libertarianism if you define fair to be “using libertarian ideals”. Which means you need to have a very subtle yet consistent and thorough definition of “fair”
My point all along has been that the talk of rights is more of a framework in which to articulate a philosophy than a philosophy itself. You need to actually go ahead and set forth which rights are absolute, and the hierarchy for the non-absolute ones before you have a philosophy.
Which has been done, by libertarians, for literally hundreds of years. Here’s a one-bullet-point summary for you, to make it easy:
The fundamental right from which all others derive is the right for all citizens to live lives free from coercion.
There are endless nuances, corollaries, and consequences of this right, but it really is the bedrock of libertarian thought. Think about it.
Funny thing about coercion: you can coerce someone if you have enough money to have power over that person.
So? That’s why you have governments. To protect you from abusive individuals, corporations, and foreign powers. Poor, rich, native, foreign, doesn’t matter.
Well, I think that does address the issue raised, because it is clear that it’s not just the government that can be coercive. Feudalism involved lots of coercion, certainly.
But once again the devil is in the details. Coercion is not restricted to force. The government uses coercion to stop coercion by other players. So, when does influence become coercion and stoppable by the government? Is a cartel coercive? A factory polluting a stream? A nightclub playing loud music? A deed that requires HOA membership?
Certainly it changes one’s perspective on the political issues when preventing coercion is the central ideal, but the real world calculus is not so different. Interests are weighed.
As a side note, would you say that Brown v. Board was protecting individuals from coercion?
Ah, I don’t think your definition of coercion is the same as mine. If you control enough resources, people will be forced to work for you, by the simple token that they’ll die if they don’t. I don’t think that’s seen as coercive by libertarians, as it’s based on a “voluntary” contract. Apart from that, however, libertarianism has to be internally consistent, so we’ll have to start thinking in the vein of Nozick and ask what legitimate ownership is, that puts people in the position of someone rightfully having something and someone else who doesn’t, so that there is no injustice. And it’s quite easy to figure out that legitimate ownership as proposed by Nozick is a complete impossibility.
That doesn’t make any sense though. No business exists in a void. No business has it’s own merits that can be judged independantly.
The economy of the united states is one interconnected system. Failures in one area can have effects that ripple outwards. Extreme failures can harm the whole system. Are you saying that if a serious economic collapse worse than any in U.S. history were to happen, you would be in favor of the government just ignoring it until it went away?
You know, I knew that pollution would come up. In these environmentally aware times, it’s often the first criticism levied against libertarian thinking, simply because most people continue to equate libertarian and anarch. This bugs me to no end… Anyway, let’s look at the polluted stream and the HOA as diametrically opposed examples.
A factory that damages the environment negatively impacts the lives of everyone there. They are a perfect example of the kind of abuse that government exists to stop. When an individual, corporation, or any other entity harms others to benefit itself, it is wielding power in ways that violate the social contract. Going back to the Holmes’ quote, the factory’s “swinging fist” is hitting a lot of noses. Time to step in and regulate/fine/imprison/whatever, based on the severity of the offense. By contrast, the HOA is entered into voluntarily by homebuyers, who could choose to live elsewhere. HOA’s, therefore, are perfectly ok from a libertarian standpoint.
Add the words “by a government” to your last sentence and you have the libertarian stance. Let the market decide the merits, or lack thereof, of businesses. If they fail, too bad.
That’s a great philosophy when things are rosy, but what about in a crisis situation? Again, I bring up the hypothetical economic collapse scenario. Things are bad, people are starving, should government not be intervening?
If they’re that bad, sure. But the original poster was saying the farm price supports are AOK all the time, not just during a universal crisis. Big difference.
Being utterly ignorant of Nozick, I can’t begin to address your post. Any other libertarian forum readers want to take a swing at it? I know of a couple other frequent posters (Ben Sones, Rywill), but neither has found this thread yet.
Okay, now we are getting somewhere. So we agree that a government has a right and a responsibility to intervene in the operations of a free market to resolve a crisis. Would that not also logically suggest that the governnment has a right and responsibility to regulate things so that such crisises are prevented from ever happening? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, etc.
In summary:
I. THE ENTITLEMENT THEORY
Nozick’s Entitlement Theory is based on the idea that only free market exchanges respect people as equals–for him, as “ends in themselves”. Indeed, even if a free market did not, for instance, produce the most overall well being on Nozick’s view, it would be justified. According to Nozick, the theory consists of three principles:
1. Transfer principle:Holdings (actually) freely acquired from others who acquired them in a just way are justly acquired. 2. Acquisition principle: Persons are entitled to holdings initially acquired in a just way (according to the Lockean Proviso). 3. Rectification principle: Rectify violations of 1 or 2 by restoring holdings to their rightful owners, or a "one time" redistribution according to the Difference Principle.
If people's current holdings are justly acquired, then the transfer principle alone determines whether subsequent distributions are just. Consequently, any taxation over the amount required to preserving institutions of just transfer, acquisition and rectification--that is, preserving entitlements--according to Nozick, are unjust.[…]
1. D1 (the distribution of wealth in a society) is just according to your favored pattern of distribution (stipulation).
2. If D1 is just, then each has an absolute right to her holdings.
3. If each has such a right, then any D2 which arises from D1 plus free exchanges is just.
4. D2 will be random with regard to any pattern of distribution.
5. Therefore, for any pattern of distribution in D1, any new pattern D2 derived from D1 plus free exchanges will be just.
[…]
Put simply, Nozick argues that if we own ourselves absolutely, then we own what we produce absolutely. But redistributive taxation takes some of what we produce without our consent and gives it to others. So redistributive taxation is inconsistent with self-ownership, and so is unjust.
Generally speaking, no. The key to free market economic theory is the thesis that the market itself is its own best regulator. No governmental body, no matter how well intentioned, can completely, fairly, and accurately evalute something as complex and as mathematically chaotic as the US economy. My contention is that attempts to do so tend to be counterproductive, expensive, and can actually cause additional, unintended crises.
I suspect further discussion on this topic will get us nowhere. I have no illusions that I’m sufficiently eloquent and persuasive to change the minds of those who believe in more or less managed economies, just as I also doubt you can convince me to abandon my free market fanboyism. If you want to try, go for it, but don’t expect results. :-)
I just think that in the real world it is not always so clear-cut who is nose and who is fist.
Exactly. Libertarians always want to have the same answer, no matter what the question is.
Which proves my point about it being an internally consistent philosophy!
More seriously, your generalization is far too sweeping. Like anything, libertarianism can be taken to extremes. There are pragmatic considerations and exceptions which I see that more doctrinal libs do not. Are all Democrats like Ted Kennedy or Al Sharpton? All Republicans like Pat Buchanan or Jerry Falwell? Etc.? Not a chance, and libertarians are less likely to fall into neat cookie cutter arrangements than any other body of people I’ve ever encountered because the philosophy, by its very nature, appeals to individualists, a notoriously hard-to-pigeonhole bunch.
Edit: which is not to say individualists are all libertarians, but that most libertarians are individualists. Express this set theory exercise in symbolic logic for bonus points.
With an implied “…by the government,” I take it? See, that sounds pretty good… I mean, how could you not be on board with that? But the reality is far more complex.