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While that's the official libertarian rhetoric, from experience talking to people who identify as libertarian, they're less about life and the pursuit of happin
by vacri 9y ago
While that's the official libertarian rhetoric, from experience talking to people who identify as libertarian, they're less about life and the pursuit of happiness, and more about liberty and the protection of property rights.
- WalterBright 9y agoIt's pretty hard to pursue happiness when you have no liberty and no property rights.
- vacri 9y agoThere are plenty of ways to pursue happiness with little emphasis on liberty and property rights. Check out buddhism, for example, which is big on finding happiness with what you've got. Private property is not a prerequisite for happiness (and certainly not to the degree that libertarians talk about it). For example, Americans are happy that the government prevents strangers from walking across their lands. Northern Europeans are happy that they have Right to Roam, allowing them to cross private lands as long as they don't damage them.
- WalterBright 9y agoYou're free to become a buddhist if you want. Telling others their prescribed avenues of pursuing happiness is not freedom.
- vacri 9y agoYou were prescribing me an avenue of pursuing happiness when you said property rights were required. This kind of hypocrisy is rife throughout libertarianism. If anything, by showing you additional ways to be happy, I was increasing the options available to you.
- WalterBright 9y ago> You were prescribing me an avenue of pursuing happiness when you said property rights were required. Not at all. I'm not telling anybody how to be happy. But I observe that most (nearly all) people need property rights to pursue the sorts of happiness they want. Even buddhists need property rights. After all, where would they get their temple from? Who would pay to maintain it? Who would feed them? Etc. Your right to cross other peoples' property is a property right, too.
- vacri 9y ago> Not at all. I'm not telling anybody how to be happy. Well, you were. You said it's hard to be pursue happiness without property rights. Anyway, you're conflating two aspects of property rights. First, the mere concept of property rights: property exists, people use it in some manner, therefore some sort of access right is involved. Second, the actual private ownership and enforcement of property. I've never seen a libertarian argue in favour of Right to Roam over private property (or any other kind of public access right). It's a simplistic philosophy wherein the right to private property trumps any concern other than the right to be free in action - it has no answers when dealing with real-world issues like scarcity of common goods such as water supplies. To be more specific then, when I say that libertarianism is overly interested in property rights, I don't mean the merest hint of humans interacting with property. I mean that too much of their central philosophy is based around control of private property and enforcement thereof.
- WalterBright 9y ago> I've never seen a libertarian argue in favour of Right to Roam over private property (or any other kind of public access right). Much of private property has easements on it for various purposes. Some of these are created by the landowner and sold, some are created by the government for various purposes using the power of Eminent Domain. I've seen easements for the purpose of a public trail. I don't see any particularly unlibertarian thing about it, though the government does abuse Eminent Domain from time to time. Property rights do tend to be complicated, that's why there are lawyers that specialize in it. One of my neighbors didn't read the title report on his house before he bought it, and discovered to his chagrin that the property behind him had an easement across his property for a driveway to access that lot when it got developed. Oops. It pays to read the title report.