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The Libertarian ideal also says "do what you want as long as it doesn't harm someone else". Multiple companies causing financial harm to citizens by deceiving t

The Libertarian ideal also says "do what you want as long as it doesn't harm someone else". Multiple companies causing financial harm to citizens by deceiving them through fraudulent products actually goes against the Libertarian ideal. In other words, it's not black-or-white, just like any other political ideal. If the world operated on such a strict "Libs/Dems/Cons must only do exactly what their parties' ideals say" then we wouldn't have had Obama's administration targeting innocent civilians with drone strikes, and Bush Jr. wouldn't have increased federal spending by 60% during his term.

dgudkov 10y ago
Definitions of harm are very subjective. And biased when there is a commercial interest.
- tracker1 10y ago
  This is effectively lying and fraud... That would still be illegal under libertarian ideals. The current system isn't the libertarian ideal and still isn't working... And while civil actions may be limited, that doesn't exclude the Govt coming in with more teeth when it comes to systemic fraud. Also, with more clear marketing and without unfair advantages, competing products and companies should be able to enter the market.
riskable 10y ago
How does libertarianism deal with shell companies and dumping? It only takes five minutes to setup a shell company under a false name, sell your toxic waste to it for $1 (or some amount that "looks real") and just dump it all under the new company's name. You can't really sue to recover damages in such a situation and you can't assume that a paper trail will be accurate or even kept. You could hold the people at the tail end of the pipeline responsible but they may have been deceived as well. Also, what do you do when it's all robots?
- nickik 10y ago
  Well, first of all, with the exception of anarchist libertarians still support policy. This seems to be a case of illegal dumping. If the person that is harmed needs to go to the policy and they need to investigate. Once you find out who it was, they need to pay. Also in cases such a pipelines and rivers, everybody can sue the person higher up and you will eventually arrive at the source. For rivers this system has actually worked quite well. River property rights system were quite common in Britain and in the US. There is also direct comparison of rivers without such system and rivers with such system, and the property rights based once were much cleaner. This of course changes when we are talking about dumping in the ocean. That another problem.
  - nommm-nommm 10y ago
    You seem to believe everyone has infinite time to spend in court.
    - nickik 10y ago
      The hole point of a legal system is to prevent people from doing something because they fear being sued. So by definition you only sue in special cases. Also if somebody dumps huge amounts of waste on your property, or waste flows threw your river, then you have a intensive to go to court. Also, in a well designed legal system you can do much better. Take the river example. If I don't like the waste flowing threw the river but I don't care all that much since I just use it as a cooling source, I might never bother to actually sue. However if somebody wants to make a water sports related thing, he has a huge incentive to sue. So he sues the guy who uses the water for cooling. The cooling guy will say, he 'its not my waste, how about I give you my legal claim'. In some cases you might sell the legal claim for money. The cooling guy improves his situation and makes a small amount of money for little effort and then does not have to be involved anymore. The water sports guy now has double the incentive to win the lawsuit, because if he wins he has two claims. This is actually historically quite common. Most of the time you don't do much yourself, you just hand of your claims for a specialist.
TeMPOraL 10y ago
The difference between ideals and reality is that in the real world, the "as long as it doesn't harm someone else" part flies out of the window. If you can't enforce good behaviour through some mechanism, it takes a single bad actor to start behaving badly to either dominate everyone or force them to misbehave in order to keep up. Ideal libertarianism is like ideal communism and - like every other ideal concept - works perfectly in theory, falls flat on its face in reality.
- morganvachon 10y ago
  > Ideal libertarianism is like ideal communism and - like every other ideal concept - works perfectly in theory, falls flat on its face in reality. That's exactly what I said: In other words, it's not black-or-white, just like any other political ideal.
- nickik 10y ago
  Stop making utopia arguments. No libertarians believes in what you claim. Libertarians believe market and legal based system perform better not perfect. Your argument is simply terrible. "Assume bad player wins, other players have to go along" I could make the same argument for any system. It would still have no argumentative value.

dgudkov 10y ago

Definitions of harm are very subjective. And biased when there is a commercial interest.

tracker1 10y ago
This is effectively lying and fraud... That would still be illegal under libertarian ideals. The current system isn't the libertarian ideal and still isn't working... And while civil actions may be limited, that doesn't exclude the Govt coming in with more teeth when it comes to systemic fraud. Also, with more clear marketing and without unfair advantages, competing products and companies should be able to enter the market.

riskable 10y ago

How does libertarianism deal with shell companies and dumping? It only takes five minutes to setup a shell company under a false name, sell your toxic waste to it for $1 (or some amount that "looks real") and just dump it all under the new company's name. You can't really sue to recover damages in such a situation and you can't assume that a paper trail will be accurate or even kept. You could hold the people at the tail end of the pipeline responsible but they may have been deceived as well. Also, what do you do when it's all robots?

nickik 10y ago
Well, first of all, with the exception of anarchist libertarians still support policy. This seems to be a case of illegal dumping. If the person that is harmed needs to go to the policy and they need to investigate. Once you find out who it was, they need to pay. Also in cases such a pipelines and rivers, everybody can sue the person higher up and you will eventually arrive at the source. For rivers this system has actually worked quite well. River property rights system were quite common in Britain and in the US. There is also direct comparison of rivers without such system and rivers with such system, and the property rights based once were much cleaner. This of course changes when we are talking about dumping in the ocean. That another problem.
- nommm-nommm 10y ago
  You seem to believe everyone has infinite time to spend in court.
  - nickik 10y ago
    The hole point of a legal system is to prevent people from doing something because they fear being sued. So by definition you only sue in special cases. Also if somebody dumps huge amounts of waste on your property, or waste flows threw your river, then you have a intensive to go to court. Also, in a well designed legal system you can do much better. Take the river example. If I don't like the waste flowing threw the river but I don't care all that much since I just use it as a cooling source, I might never bother to actually sue. However if somebody wants to make a water sports related thing, he has a huge incentive to sue. So he sues the guy who uses the water for cooling. The cooling guy will say, he 'its not my waste, how about I give you my legal claim'. In some cases you might sell the legal claim for money. The cooling guy improves his situation and makes a small amount of money for little effort and then does not have to be involved anymore. The water sports guy now has double the incentive to win the lawsuit, because if he wins he has two claims. This is actually historically quite common. Most of the time you don't do much yourself, you just hand of your claims for a specialist.

TeMPOraL 10y ago

The difference between ideals and reality is that in the real world, the "as long as it doesn't harm someone else" part flies out of the window. If you can't enforce good behaviour through some mechanism, it takes a single bad actor to start behaving badly to either dominate everyone or force them to misbehave in order to keep up. Ideal libertarianism is like ideal communism and - like every other ideal concept - works perfectly in theory, falls flat on its face in reality.

morganvachon 10y ago
> Ideal libertarianism is like ideal communism and - like every other ideal concept - works perfectly in theory, falls flat on its face in reality. That's exactly what I said: In other words, it's not black-or-white, just like any other political ideal.
nickik 10y ago
Stop making utopia arguments. No libertarians believes in what you claim. Libertarians believe market and legal based system perform better not perfect. Your argument is simply terrible. "Assume bad player wins, other players have to go along" I could make the same argument for any system. It would still have no argumentative value.