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Libertarians are in favor minimizing restrictions on voluntary interactions between consenting parties. Most are fully in favor of government intervention to de

Libertarians are in favor minimizing restrictions on voluntary interactions between consenting parties. Most are fully in favor of government intervention to deter private interactions which are not voluntary, like assault, or pollution. How the commons - which exist outside the purview of private property - are treated, is completely orthogonal to one's belief in libertarianism. For example, you can be a libertarian, and believe no pollutants should be allowed to be emitted into the atmosphere, because the atmosphere is part of the commons, and should be maintained in a way where it remains useful to humanity at large.

beaconstudios 5y ago
Voluntary interactions between consenting parties can still be extremely coercive if there's a power imbalance. In the Roman Empire, people used to sell themselves into slavery to pay off debts.
- mbg721 5y ago
  I've heard this sort of thing proposed as a way of paying for college.
  - emteycz 5y ago
    That doesn't make it a libertarian position.
    - ransom1538 5y ago
      Agreed.
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  No, it can't be coercive, by definition. If a jury of your peers deems that you did not provide informed consent, then the contract is void. A contract cannot be deemed both coercive and valid under common-law/libertarian principles. Coercion is when someone reduces your option set, by threatening violence (against the person or property of you or someone you love). An offer, that you are free to reject, and have the faculty to fully comprehend, cannot meet the definition of coercive. As for selling yourself into slavery, that calls into question whether the you that exists today has a right to the you that exists in the future to the extent that the current you possesses a right to sell that you's liberty away, and I am fairly a certain a court would rule you don't. But these extreme/fantastical scenarios are not what libertarians are arguing about. There are far more mundane examples of people's liberty being repressed by anti-libertarian laws, that anti-libertarian apologists cannot excuse, so they resort to these hyperbolic examples.
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    The example I gave happened with informed consent. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_slavery https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_slavery
    - CryptoPunk 5y ago
      Please see my edit where I address selling oneself into slavery.
      - beaconstudios 5y ago
        Your answer avoids the ethical dilemma by means of a technicality about temporal ownership; it's not a very good rebuttal. Also its just one example of how voluntary transactions can be coercive, here's a few more just off the top of my head: - demanding sex in order to give an actress a part in a movie - offering food to a starving man in exchange for his kidneys - buying all the food in the market to drive up the price from people desperate to not die - basically the entire American healthcare system
        CryptoPunk 5y ago
        It's a point about the ethics of exerting control over different versions of ourselves. It's not some procedural technicality. >demanding sex in order to give an actress a part in a movie There is nothing coercive about this. >offering food to a starving man in exchange for his kidneys Unless it's an emergency, where the starving man does not have the time to make/entertain offers on the wider global market, there is nothing coercive about this either. In an emergency situation, different rules apply, as a consequence of the physical space we each take, which displaces others. This exclusionary effect creates a duty to render help in an emergency, as opposed to abusing one's position in such a situation to exploit others. >buying all the food in the market to drive up the price from people desperate to not die There is nothing coercive about this, and in practice, it's impossible. This should certainly be guarded against by individuals, through means like securing long-term food purchase contracts through co-ops, or by growing one's own garden, but that doesn't imply that it's a form of coercion which we have an ethical right to employ coercion to remedy.
- imtringued 5y ago
  I have to mention that the silver/gold standard was introduced by many authoritarian rulers because they control the gold/silver mines. This includes the Roman empire. As the supply of precious is limited it concentrates at the top and this was very desirable for monarchies. The only way to get gold is to dig it out (mines owned by monarchs), borrow it with interest (which leads to the usual debt trap) or to sell your products and services to those who already have gold (which is heavily concentrated geographically and in the hands of the rich). If it is mandated that you must use a certain currency, then this automatically leads to a power imbalance between those who have money and those who don't. If you need to buy food or pay for shelter then you can't wait, but the rich have all their basic needs met, they can afford to wait until you are desperate to accept any offer. This is why Austrian economists are kind of right when it comes to competition among currencies. A terrible currency can ruin an economy. However, they still insist on the gold standard because they love playing the monarchy game, they even admit it themselves. Even in modern times the rich benefit from economic crashes because it means desperation and fire sales, in other words, discounts for those who already have more than they need for themselves.
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    Very true, and this is why right-libertarian ideas for increasing liberty are doomed to fail: all they ever do is change who's in charge, they never really question the system of putting people in power over each other.
TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
I’ve never heard this view about libertarians and the commons. I like it. Do you have a source where I can read more?
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  This seems to do a good job of describing the principle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_libertarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_libertarianism
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
> How the commons - which exist outside the purview of private property Ah, but that's the crux, isn't it? Because even the implication of this sentence is that that nature of "private property" and "the commons" is socially constructed - what can be private, what cannot be. If it is socially constructed (as it clearly is), then the scope of private property becomes a matter for public and political debate, and really with no limits. Should land ever be private property? Should resources in the ground ever be private property? Water rights? Should anyone be able to own a home? Libertarians (and many other people) may feel that the answers to such questions are either (a) obvious and/or (b) dictated by the rest of their political philosophy, but the moment you open the door to the possibility that there are some things that remain "in the commons" and other things that do not, you are forced to face the social construction of private property as a concept, and with it the question of what it should really be.
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  >>Ah, but that's the crux, isn't it? Because even the implication of this sentence is that that nature of "private property" and "the commons" is socially constructed - what can be private, what cannot be. It's socially interpreted, but I believe there is a natural justice, that promotes functional societies, that reasonable people can recognize, that will end up as the social interpretation via any process that is impartial and deliberative, like courts. Natural resources are not man-made, and thus are not true private property. But we recognize a right to appropriate a small portion of abundant natural resources for our own use, when one does this to reconfigure the appropriated matter into a much more valuable form, whether it's reconfiguring an apple into our flesh through digestive/metabolic processes, or a log and stone into a hand axe. We recognize the natural justice of allowing the person to have perpetual exclusive rights to this value-added portion of the matter of the universe, in order so that they may benefit from the value they created.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    This sort of approach breaks down as soon as any non-renewable resource, notably land, is involved. You would likely consider a house you have just built on a piece of land as value-added with respect to the land; other people may regard your work as having negative value with respect to the land itself, which is a natural resource, and thus not true private property. And even regardless of the value judgement, because the land is a limited resource, your control over it is necessarily exclusive to others. The same is true of your use of metal to forge an axe. While that may appear to be value-added to you, others may not share your assessment. However, the metal you used has now been removed from its natural condition (presumably in-ground ore) and is no longer available for anyone else to bring their own value-added use to, and thus your action has the potential to be a net negative to the rest of the population. It's not clear what rationale they might have for respecting your claim to have added value. There's no clear reason for land ownership given the notion that you should only own value added, but libertarian conceptions of society would be fairly lost without such ownership. Nevertheless, for most of human history, the concept that anyone could own land in perpetuity would have been quite strange. Likewise, the concept that one could has also been the source of many of the most bitter conflicts in human history. This doesn't make the idea of owning land particularly compelling, when looked at over the long arc of human history.

beaconstudios 5y ago

Voluntary interactions between consenting parties can still be extremely coercive if there's a power imbalance. In the Roman Empire, people used to sell themselves into slavery to pay off debts.

mbg721 5y ago
I've heard this sort of thing proposed as a way of paying for college.
- emteycz 5y ago
  That doesn't make it a libertarian position.
  - ransom1538 5y ago
    Agreed.
CryptoPunk 5y ago
No, it can't be coercive, by definition. If a jury of your peers deems that you did not provide informed consent, then the contract is void. A contract cannot be deemed both coercive and valid under common-law/libertarian principles. Coercion is when someone reduces your option set, by threatening violence (against the person or property of you or someone you love). An offer, that you are free to reject, and have the faculty to fully comprehend, cannot meet the definition of coercive. As for selling yourself into slavery, that calls into question whether the you that exists today has a right to the you that exists in the future to the extent that the current you possesses a right to sell that you's liberty away, and I am fairly a certain a court would rule you don't. But these extreme/fantastical scenarios are not what libertarians are arguing about. There are far more mundane examples of people's liberty being repressed by anti-libertarian laws, that anti-libertarian apologists cannot excuse, so they resort to these hyperbolic examples.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  The example I gave happened with informed consent. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_slavery https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_slavery
  - CryptoPunk 5y ago
    Please see my edit where I address selling oneself into slavery.
    - beaconstudios 5y ago
      Your answer avoids the ethical dilemma by means of a technicality about temporal ownership; it's not a very good rebuttal. Also its just one example of how voluntary transactions can be coercive, here's a few more just off the top of my head: - demanding sex in order to give an actress a part in a movie - offering food to a starving man in exchange for his kidneys - buying all the food in the market to drive up the price from people desperate to not die - basically the entire American healthcare system
      - CryptoPunk 5y ago
        It's a point about the ethics of exerting control over different versions of ourselves. It's not some procedural technicality. >demanding sex in order to give an actress a part in a movie There is nothing coercive about this. >offering food to a starving man in exchange for his kidneys Unless it's an emergency, where the starving man does not have the time to make/entertain offers on the wider global market, there is nothing coercive about this either. In an emergency situation, different rules apply, as a consequence of the physical space we each take, which displaces others. This exclusionary effect creates a duty to render help in an emergency, as opposed to abusing one's position in such a situation to exploit others. >buying all the food in the market to drive up the price from people desperate to not die There is nothing coercive about this, and in practice, it's impossible. This should certainly be guarded against by individuals, through means like securing long-term food purchase contracts through co-ops, or by growing one's own garden, but that doesn't imply that it's a form of coercion which we have an ethical right to employ coercion to remedy.
imtringued 5y ago
I have to mention that the silver/gold standard was introduced by many authoritarian rulers because they control the gold/silver mines. This includes the Roman empire. As the supply of precious is limited it concentrates at the top and this was very desirable for monarchies. The only way to get gold is to dig it out (mines owned by monarchs), borrow it with interest (which leads to the usual debt trap) or to sell your products and services to those who already have gold (which is heavily concentrated geographically and in the hands of the rich). If it is mandated that you must use a certain currency, then this automatically leads to a power imbalance between those who have money and those who don't. If you need to buy food or pay for shelter then you can't wait, but the rich have all their basic needs met, they can afford to wait until you are desperate to accept any offer. This is why Austrian economists are kind of right when it comes to competition among currencies. A terrible currency can ruin an economy. However, they still insist on the gold standard because they love playing the monarchy game, they even admit it themselves. Even in modern times the rich benefit from economic crashes because it means desperation and fire sales, in other words, discounts for those who already have more than they need for themselves.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  Very true, and this is why right-libertarian ideas for increasing liberty are doomed to fail: all they ever do is change who's in charge, they never really question the system of putting people in power over each other.

TedDoesntTalk 5y ago

I’ve never heard this view about libertarians and the commons. I like it. Do you have a source where I can read more?

CryptoPunk 5y ago
This seems to do a good job of describing the principle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_libertarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_libertarianism

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

> How the commons - which exist outside the purview of private property Ah, but that's the crux, isn't it? Because even the implication of this sentence is that that nature of "private property" and "the commons" is socially constructed - what can be private, what cannot be. If it is socially constructed (as it clearly is), then the scope of private property becomes a matter for public and political debate, and really with no limits. Should land ever be private property? Should resources in the ground ever be private property? Water rights? Should anyone be able to own a home? Libertarians (and many other people) may feel that the answers to such questions are either (a) obvious and/or (b) dictated by the rest of their political philosophy, but the moment you open the door to the possibility that there are some things that remain "in the commons" and other things that do not, you are forced to face the social construction of private property as a concept, and with it the question of what it should really be.

CryptoPunk 5y ago
>>Ah, but that's the crux, isn't it? Because even the implication of this sentence is that that nature of "private property" and "the commons" is socially constructed - what can be private, what cannot be. It's socially interpreted, but I believe there is a natural justice, that promotes functional societies, that reasonable people can recognize, that will end up as the social interpretation via any process that is impartial and deliberative, like courts. Natural resources are not man-made, and thus are not true private property. But we recognize a right to appropriate a small portion of abundant natural resources for our own use, when one does this to reconfigure the appropriated matter into a much more valuable form, whether it's reconfiguring an apple into our flesh through digestive/metabolic processes, or a log and stone into a hand axe. We recognize the natural justice of allowing the person to have perpetual exclusive rights to this value-added portion of the matter of the universe, in order so that they may benefit from the value they created.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  This sort of approach breaks down as soon as any non-renewable resource, notably land, is involved. You would likely consider a house you have just built on a piece of land as value-added with respect to the land; other people may regard your work as having negative value with respect to the land itself, which is a natural resource, and thus not true private property. And even regardless of the value judgement, because the land is a limited resource, your control over it is necessarily exclusive to others. The same is true of your use of metal to forge an axe. While that may appear to be value-added to you, others may not share your assessment. However, the metal you used has now been removed from its natural condition (presumably in-ground ore) and is no longer available for anyone else to bring their own value-added use to, and thus your action has the potential to be a net negative to the rest of the population. It's not clear what rationale they might have for respecting your claim to have added value. There's no clear reason for land ownership given the notion that you should only own value added, but libertarian conceptions of society would be fairly lost without such ownership. Nevertheless, for most of human history, the concept that anyone could own land in perpetuity would have been quite strange. Likewise, the concept that one could has also been the source of many of the most bitter conflicts in human history. This doesn't make the idea of owning land particularly compelling, when looked at over the long arc of human history.