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Libertarianism is analogous to calculus limits in political philosophy. It's useful in terms of what you're approaching with regard to an ideal, but forever mi

Libertarianism is analogous to calculus limits in political philosophy. It's useful in terms of what you're approaching with regard to an ideal, but forever mismatched & inapplicable to the real world with initial conditions.

throwawaymaths 4y ago
My understanding is that as a doctrine libertarianism generally believes that there is a role for government in society and that its functions should be explicitly enumerated, not arbitrarily expanded without the consent of the people, and not infringe on certain guardrails (freedom of speech, consent, etc) notwithstanding rediculously claims about society that certain individual libertarians often make. Not sure how that's a "limit". Seems more like a "compromise" with anarchy.
- dsr_ 4y ago
  The only role they see is enforcement of contracts. By Libertarian definition, only governments can be oppressive; anything a corporation does is just the market acting the way it does: at worst, a temporary aberration that will be fixed soon by someone noticing an opportunity to make a profit.
  - Eisenstein 4y ago
    What happens when a corporation becomes large enough and powerful enough to enforce its will on the citizens under it? Is it is still 'the market'?
    - Ancapistani 4y ago
      That definitely happens, and there’s even a word for such an entity: a “government” :)
      - Eisenstein 4y ago
        So when free markets don't align with the philosophy then we just redefine words until they do?
        Ancapistani 4y ago
        I was only being trite. From memory, a government is a political entity with three distinguishing characteristics: * it claims a physical territory * it claims a monopoly on the *legitimate* initiation of force * it claims the moral right to levy taxes
        Eisenstein 4y ago
        I was referring to the free market. If the free market creates a government, then you have redefined free market to mean government when it was created by the market forces.
  - aswanson 4y ago
    Which is silly, because a corporation, in the end, is nothing more than a group of people cooperating. So a group of people agreeing to murder is just a market imbalance that will be corrected by market forces.
  - throwawaymaths 4y ago
    I think this is a limited view. Most libertarians would probably agree that collective defense, consent management, and management of rivalrous goods are the primary roles of the government, and the squabbling is mostly over what goods are rivalrous (is the environment rivalrous? Some would say yes and point to market based fisheries and nox/sox reductions as big successes, others not so much) and what exactly is consent.
Ancapistani 4y ago
As an ancap, I’d say this is pretty insightful, and reflects the way I interact with politics fairly well. Would I like no government at all? Sure - assuming society reflects that state of being. Removing our existing institutions tomorrow would be a terrible idea; all kinds of things depend on them. Instead, I’m all about reducing the size of government through consensus. I’ll ally with whichever party is in power to support that end. If I’m right, eventually government will have such a minor role in society that its dissolution would hardly be noticed. If I’m wrong, then an iterative approach limits the potential for societal harm.
- Eisenstein 4y ago
  You seem reasonable, which is an exception amongst the ancaps I have encountered, so I will engage. How do you respond to the notion that government is a way for society to protect itself the best way it can? How do you manage to deal with orphans, old, infirm, poor, disabled, etc? How do we collectively fund things that are usually terrible for private markets to control, like research, military, education, law enforcement, infrastructure, and ecological preservation? How do you deal with injustice? There are so many jet-airliner-sized holes in this philosophy to me, and I can't wrap my head around why anyone with any empathy and intelligence could follow it. Help me out here.
  - Ancapistani 4y ago
    > You seem reasonable, which is an exception amongst the ancaps I have encountered, so I will engage Well, thanks :). My experience shows that a lot of people who call themselves ancaps are mostly either after the “extreme” nature of it, or want to use it as an excuse to argue. I’m too old for that. > How do you respond to the notion that government is a way for society to protect itself the best way it can? So far, I’d say you’re largely correct. My position is that mankind has basically achieved a local maximum, and that the conditions that led us here have to change before we can search for a global maximum. > How do you manage to deal with orphans, old, infirm, poor, disabled, etc? The TL;DR here is “private charity”. I hold that charity is significantly suppressed because of the widely held belief that it’s “someone else’s problem”. I could write at length about the reasons I think that’s the case, and how state interventions exacerbate the scale of those problems today, but I’m sure you’ve already read those arguments elsewhere. > How do we collectively fund things that are usually terrible for private markets to control, like research, military, education, law enforcement, infrastructure, and ecological preservation? Of those, I hold that all are better left to private enterprise - for different reasons, for each. Law enforcement is the only one that really has much nuance. While many others have written about that topic (see my other partially-tongue-in-cheek post about PDAs), I’m not 100% convinced that we can really predict how it would be handled in a world where governments died of neglect - as opposed to power vacuums, which is how almost all anarchic societies today and in living memory have formed. > How do you deal with injustice? Ah, this is the big one - in fact, I’d say it’s a superset of all of the above. Injustice would existing in an ancap society, just as injustice exists today. In fact, because injustice exists today in a state-based society, my primary argument here is that it’s intellectually dishonest to insist that an ancap society must eliminate injustice to be acceptable. Specifically, though, I’d think a functioning anarchic society would place a very high value on personal honor. Reputation would matter, and that alone would provide significant incentive to work things out without drama. > There are so many jet-airliner-sized holes in this philosophy to me, and I can't wrap my head around why anyone with any empathy and intelligence could follow it. Help me out here. There are similar sized holes in the way we do things today, when you apply the same standards to it. Consider all of the grievous injustices that have occurred until our various systems of government: war, genocide, chattel slavery, enforced divisions based on religion, race, caste, etc. I think the biggest place where I diverge from “mainstream” Anarcho-Capitalism is that I don’t think it’s the solution to all of the world’s problems. I don’t think a society structured around it would be perfect, because I don’t think human beings are perfect (or capable of perfection).

throwawaymaths 4y ago

My understanding is that as a doctrine libertarianism generally believes that there is a role for government in society and that its functions should be explicitly enumerated, not arbitrarily expanded without the consent of the people, and not infringe on certain guardrails (freedom of speech, consent, etc) notwithstanding rediculously claims about society that certain individual libertarians often make. Not sure how that's a "limit". Seems more like a "compromise" with anarchy.

dsr_ 4y ago
The only role they see is enforcement of contracts. By Libertarian definition, only governments can be oppressive; anything a corporation does is just the market acting the way it does: at worst, a temporary aberration that will be fixed soon by someone noticing an opportunity to make a profit.
- Eisenstein 4y ago
  What happens when a corporation becomes large enough and powerful enough to enforce its will on the citizens under it? Is it is still 'the market'?
  - Ancapistani 4y ago
    That definitely happens, and there’s even a word for such an entity: a “government” :)
    - Eisenstein 4y ago
      So when free markets don't align with the philosophy then we just redefine words until they do?
      - Ancapistani 4y ago
        I was only being trite. From memory, a government is a political entity with three distinguishing characteristics: * it claims a physical territory * it claims a monopoly on the *legitimate* initiation of force * it claims the moral right to levy taxes
        Eisenstein 4y ago
        I was referring to the free market. If the free market creates a government, then you have redefined free market to mean government when it was created by the market forces.
- aswanson 4y ago
  Which is silly, because a corporation, in the end, is nothing more than a group of people cooperating. So a group of people agreeing to murder is just a market imbalance that will be corrected by market forces.
- throwawaymaths 4y ago
  I think this is a limited view. Most libertarians would probably agree that collective defense, consent management, and management of rivalrous goods are the primary roles of the government, and the squabbling is mostly over what goods are rivalrous (is the environment rivalrous? Some would say yes and point to market based fisheries and nox/sox reductions as big successes, others not so much) and what exactly is consent.

Ancapistani 4y ago

As an ancap, I’d say this is pretty insightful, and reflects the way I interact with politics fairly well. Would I like no government at all? Sure - assuming society reflects that state of being. Removing our existing institutions tomorrow would be a terrible idea; all kinds of things depend on them. Instead, I’m all about reducing the size of government through consensus. I’ll ally with whichever party is in power to support that end. If I’m right, eventually government will have such a minor role in society that its dissolution would hardly be noticed. If I’m wrong, then an iterative approach limits the potential for societal harm.

Eisenstein 4y ago
You seem reasonable, which is an exception amongst the ancaps I have encountered, so I will engage. How do you respond to the notion that government is a way for society to protect itself the best way it can? How do you manage to deal with orphans, old, infirm, poor, disabled, etc? How do we collectively fund things that are usually terrible for private markets to control, like research, military, education, law enforcement, infrastructure, and ecological preservation? How do you deal with injustice? There are so many jet-airliner-sized holes in this philosophy to me, and I can't wrap my head around why anyone with any empathy and intelligence could follow it. Help me out here.
- Ancapistani 4y ago
  > You seem reasonable, which is an exception amongst the ancaps I have encountered, so I will engage Well, thanks :). My experience shows that a lot of people who call themselves ancaps are mostly either after the “extreme” nature of it, or want to use it as an excuse to argue. I’m too old for that. > How do you respond to the notion that government is a way for society to protect itself the best way it can? So far, I’d say you’re largely correct. My position is that mankind has basically achieved a local maximum, and that the conditions that led us here have to change before we can search for a global maximum. > How do you manage to deal with orphans, old, infirm, poor, disabled, etc? The TL;DR here is “private charity”. I hold that charity is significantly suppressed because of the widely held belief that it’s “someone else’s problem”. I could write at length about the reasons I think that’s the case, and how state interventions exacerbate the scale of those problems today, but I’m sure you’ve already read those arguments elsewhere. > How do we collectively fund things that are usually terrible for private markets to control, like research, military, education, law enforcement, infrastructure, and ecological preservation? Of those, I hold that all are better left to private enterprise - for different reasons, for each. Law enforcement is the only one that really has much nuance. While many others have written about that topic (see my other partially-tongue-in-cheek post about PDAs), I’m not 100% convinced that we can really predict how it would be handled in a world where governments died of neglect - as opposed to power vacuums, which is how almost all anarchic societies today and in living memory have formed. > How do you deal with injustice? Ah, this is the big one - in fact, I’d say it’s a superset of all of the above. Injustice would existing in an ancap society, just as injustice exists today. In fact, because injustice exists today in a state-based society, my primary argument here is that it’s intellectually dishonest to insist that an ancap society must eliminate injustice to be acceptable. Specifically, though, I’d think a functioning anarchic society would place a very high value on personal honor. Reputation would matter, and that alone would provide significant incentive to work things out without drama. > There are so many jet-airliner-sized holes in this philosophy to me, and I can't wrap my head around why anyone with any empathy and intelligence could follow it. Help me out here. There are similar sized holes in the way we do things today, when you apply the same standards to it. Consider all of the grievous injustices that have occurred until our various systems of government: war, genocide, chattel slavery, enforced divisions based on religion, race, caste, etc. I think the biggest place where I diverge from “mainstream” Anarcho-Capitalism is that I don’t think it’s the solution to all of the world’s problems. I don’t think a society structured around it would be perfect, because I don’t think human beings are perfect (or capable of perfection).