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Yeah, the though experiment I play out always has a bunch of libertarians living together in a community in the frontier lands somewhere. One of the new settle

Yeah, the though experiment I play out always has a bunch of libertarians living together in a community in the frontier lands somewhere. One of the new settlers is an industrialist who brings their enterprising attitude and chemical plant with them during the move to this new exciting city. They graciously bring bootstrappy job opportunities for the locals around the new city to much applause. Anyway fast forward a few years and because disposing of PFAS chemicals is hard, they've just been dumping them in a local wetland to keep costs down and profits up. Lots of kids and many adults start finding it tough with all that cancer they need to pay for, but the local coffin maker is doing a great trade. After a while the regular libertarians look to confront the plant owner about the waste and dumping asking for a cleanup and compensation for the damage to people and property. Well hearing that people are upset, the plant owner has a town hall with the folk, they get rowdy and emotional. The plant owner get's defensive and thinks about the possibility of a down quarter for his victimized chemical plant. Everyone leaves a bit upset. Some more than others. Later that night the plant owner sits in his home and reads about a new libertarian utopia that's started. They go to bed that night with a plan to pack up leave this ungrateful town. A month later the plant over leaves with most of the towns job, the PFAS stays and everyone else is too sick or poor paying for someones sickness to be able to be a libertarian anymore. Ta-da, the aristocrats.

progrus 4y ago
Maybe that first community should have done a better job of regulating itself? All you’re really arguing for here is more engagement in local politics.
- dsr_ 4y ago
  In Libertopia, the only regulations are contract enforcements. It's a lot like cryptocurrency and DAO schemes: it turns out to be really really hard to get people to accept that a bug in the law means a bad outcome for them, and nobody writes non-trivial bug-free code.
  - dahfizz 4y ago
    > In Libertopia, the only regulations are contract enforcements. That's disingenuous. There is plenty of libertarian literature on negative externalities. Milton Friedman, notably, was happy to use taxes and regulations to protect the environment. The reasoning is simple: by polluting my land / poisoning me with PFAS, you have violated the NAP. This kind of pollution is illegal in "Libertopia".
    - boomlinde 4y ago
      I have polluted your land and poisoned you simply by driving past your window with my combustion engine on my neighboring property. That you draw the line at PFAS is completely arbitrary, which usually becomes clear when you ask libertarians what they believe constitutes an aggression.
      - dahfizz 4y ago
        Does every single Democrat agree about every minute detail of policy? Expecting unanimous consensus is an unfair bar you only apply to positions you already know you don't like. The same can be said about your arbitrary argument. Why are the fine schedules set to $X today instead of $X+1? Why do we get drivers licenses at 16 instead of 17? Do you oppose Obamacare because it has such an arbitrary income limit? Everything about the specific implementation of laws is arbitrary. The important thing is that it is reasonable, and on solid moral ground. A libertarian government would scale the fines / punishment / taxes in accordance with how grevious the crime was.
        dsr_ 4y ago
        A fictitious government is always better than a real government for the purposes of argument.
        boomlinde 4y ago
        What is the basis for saying that the kind of pollution you describe is illegal in Libertopia, then? You say that it is, because of NAP. That's a simplistic answer which you now admit isn't necessarily true. I am exactly not expecting unanimous consensus, which is why statements like "this kind of pollution is illegal in Libertopia [because of NAP]" seem dubious to me.
- lovich 4y ago
  There are no regulations in Libertarianville. If you are unfamiliar with their philosophy, they have this concept called the NAP(non-aggression principle). The generally(this might be too strong a word to use with Libertarians) accepted interpretation of the NAP is that as long as I do not initiate violence against someone, my behavior is acceptable, and that violence is only acceptable against someone if they break the NAP first. This breaks down in Libertarian communities as they cannot agree on common deductions of things like what counts as “someone”, what counts as “violence”, whether you have rights to the land if you’re not using it(Georgists/homesteaders), or if indirect damages like pollution are a violation of the NAP. The idea that a libertarian community would let someone dump toxins into their neighborhood and leave without cleaning it up or compensating the hurt is completely plausible. Half of the community would not believe he directly caused the cancer unless he injected it into you, and you should have been more careful about what water you drink, and the other half’s only recourse would be to fight the first half.
r721 4y ago
>Yeah, the though experiment I play out always has a bunch of libertarians living together in a community in the frontier lands somewhere. You might be interested in this review of an another book on a related topic: >The Town That Went Feral >When a group of libertarians set about scrapping their local government, chaos descended. And then the bears moved in. >... This is the so-called Free Town Project, a venture wherein a group of libertarian activists attempted to take over a tiny New Hampshire town, Grafton, and transform it into a haven for libertarian ideals—part social experiment, part beacon to the faithful, Galt’s Gulch meets the New Jerusalem. These people had found one another largely over the internet, posting manifestos and engaging in utopian daydreaming on online message boards. https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-int...

progrus 4y ago

Maybe that first community should have done a better job of regulating itself? All you’re really arguing for here is more engagement in local politics.

dsr_ 4y ago
In Libertopia, the only regulations are contract enforcements. It's a lot like cryptocurrency and DAO schemes: it turns out to be really really hard to get people to accept that a bug in the law means a bad outcome for them, and nobody writes non-trivial bug-free code.
- dahfizz 4y ago
  > In Libertopia, the only regulations are contract enforcements. That's disingenuous. There is plenty of libertarian literature on negative externalities. Milton Friedman, notably, was happy to use taxes and regulations to protect the environment. The reasoning is simple: by polluting my land / poisoning me with PFAS, you have violated the NAP. This kind of pollution is illegal in "Libertopia".
  - boomlinde 4y ago
    I have polluted your land and poisoned you simply by driving past your window with my combustion engine on my neighboring property. That you draw the line at PFAS is completely arbitrary, which usually becomes clear when you ask libertarians what they believe constitutes an aggression.
    - dahfizz 4y ago
      Does every single Democrat agree about every minute detail of policy? Expecting unanimous consensus is an unfair bar you only apply to positions you already know you don't like. The same can be said about your arbitrary argument. Why are the fine schedules set to $X today instead of $X+1? Why do we get drivers licenses at 16 instead of 17? Do you oppose Obamacare because it has such an arbitrary income limit? Everything about the specific implementation of laws is arbitrary. The important thing is that it is reasonable, and on solid moral ground. A libertarian government would scale the fines / punishment / taxes in accordance with how grevious the crime was.
      - dsr_ 4y ago
        A fictitious government is always better than a real government for the purposes of argument.
      - boomlinde 4y ago
        What is the basis for saying that the kind of pollution you describe is illegal in Libertopia, then? You say that it is, because of NAP. That's a simplistic answer which you now admit isn't necessarily true. I am exactly not expecting unanimous consensus, which is why statements like "this kind of pollution is illegal in Libertopia [because of NAP]" seem dubious to me.
lovich 4y ago
There are no regulations in Libertarianville. If you are unfamiliar with their philosophy, they have this concept called the NAP(non-aggression principle). The generally(this might be too strong a word to use with Libertarians) accepted interpretation of the NAP is that as long as I do not initiate violence against someone, my behavior is acceptable, and that violence is only acceptable against someone if they break the NAP first. This breaks down in Libertarian communities as they cannot agree on common deductions of things like what counts as “someone”, what counts as “violence”, whether you have rights to the land if you’re not using it(Georgists/homesteaders), or if indirect damages like pollution are a violation of the NAP. The idea that a libertarian community would let someone dump toxins into their neighborhood and leave without cleaning it up or compensating the hurt is completely plausible. Half of the community would not believe he directly caused the cancer unless he injected it into you, and you should have been more careful about what water you drink, and the other half’s only recourse would be to fight the first half.

r721 4y ago

>Yeah, the though experiment I play out always has a bunch of libertarians living together in a community in the frontier lands somewhere. You might be interested in this review of an another book on a related topic: >The Town That Went Feral >When a group of libertarians set about scrapping their local government, chaos descended. And then the bears moved in. >... This is the so-called Free Town Project, a venture wherein a group of libertarian activists attempted to take over a tiny New Hampshire town, Grafton, and transform it into a haven for libertarian ideals—part social experiment, part beacon to the faithful, Galt’s Gulch meets the New Jerusalem. These people had found one another largely over the internet, posting manifestos and engaging in utopian daydreaming on online message boards. https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-int...