8 ms·

You're right. Zed is confused. Libertarianism is NOT Anarcho-Capitalism. Libertarianism advocates that the government should be reduced to the minimum which is

• halo 18y ago
  But that can quickly devolve into arguments as to what counts as a 'right': the most obvious examples being food, water, shelter, healthcare and education. That 'minimum' is an arbitrary line.
  • Rod 18y ago
    You made a very good point. I don't know what to answer. Defining what a "right" is and what it is not would lead to endless discussion. In any case, I would say that instead of discussing in rather vague terms whether more government is better / worse than less government, it would be sensible to think of what kind of government. By principle, I believe that goverment bureaucracy and interference should be kept to a minimum. However, I would rather live under a Scandinavian-like government (even though it's big government) than in a Somalia-like anarchy. We all agree on the goals: freedom, prosperity, etc. Sometimes we disagree on how to get there. I vote for pragmatism over ideology.
    • mseebach 18y ago
      > However, I would rather live under a Scandinavian-like government [...] We all agree on the goals: [...] prosperity, etc. Yes, I've totally cut up your point, and I'll take this over Somalia any day. But Scandinavian government (Denmark in this case) couldn't care less about prosperity. Right out of college, you're in the top tax bracket, paying 63% on everything above $64.000 annual income (and just under 50% on everything below). Buying a car? 180% registration tax, and slap 25% sales tax on top of that. But yeah, we've got worse schools than Portugal and free mediocre healthcare, but most importantly: we have high economic equality. So no, unfortunately we don't agree on the goals.
      • Rod 18y ago
        With all due respect, compared to 90% of the world's population, Danes are pretty prosperous IMHO.
        • pelle 18y ago
          More than 50% of people in working age in Denmark work for the government or make their living through some sort of welfare program. This means more than half the population of Denmark is prosperous exclusively because of income taken from the productive part of population. Denmark and most of the rest of Scandinavia used to have a very classically liberal (~libertarian) mind set. It is the work ethic that has maintained much of the prosperity. Many of Denmarks large successful export businesses come out of this period. As I like to say. Denmark is prosperous despite their welfare state and not because of it.
        • mseebach 18y ago
          Absolutely, we are. But Denmark is, along with the rest of "old Europe" going to wake up pretty soon and realize that the half bln. Chinese and Indian citizens that are moving into the middle class these years, are going to send their kid to college, and the white collar jobs are going to go the same way the blue collar jobs did over the past 20 years. Without a strong focus on wealth creation, instead of the constant preaching to the mediocre and the "good enough", we're not going to have much to show once the Chinese and Indians get started. In short: Prosperity is not a goal to attain, it's a continuous effort, and we just stopped trying.
          • Rod 18y ago
            A few years ago I spent a Summer in Copenhagen, so I know a tiny bit of Denmark. I remember talking to Danish friends on how ridiculously high the taxes were. Yes, I was amazed that you guys pay 180% tax on cars. On the necessity of wealth creation, I fully agree with you. I think the Germans, Danes, Swedes (etc) will soon find out that they will have to work a whole lot more than their parents to enjoy the same standard of living their parents could enjoy. It's not a pleasant thought, but then, the prosperity that Old Europe has enjoyed over the last few decades is pretty much an historical anomaly. I could not agree more that prosperity is a continuous effort. I suppose the old Europeans are just a bit blasé and refuse to look at the facts. The world has changed.
    • eru 18y ago
      If we agree on the goals we can try Social Policy Bonds (http://socialgoals.com/ http://socialgoals.com/).
    • laut 18y ago
      Somalia is not an anarcho-capitalist society. In Denmark there is less violation of property rights, so you could say Denmark is more libertarian than Somalia. The Seasteading project might result in some anarcho-capitalist societies: http://www.seasteading.org/ http://www.seasteading.org/
  • gaius 18y ago
    The classic answers are that a government should protect its citizens from attack (the military, the police) and should act as a neutral ajudicator in contractual disputes (the courts) and that's it. What about "the poor"? The classic answer is "you will not be prevented from helping them".
    • cchooper 18y ago
      It's those 'classic answers' that are the important part of Libertarianism. If you get rid of them then Libertarianism just becomes 'The government should be the size required to do whatever it should do, and be neither bigger nor smaller', which would be completely vacuous.
  • mseebach 18y ago
    > what counts as a 'right' Freedom from coercion, baby. Simple as that. For a more thorough discussion, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights
    • cia_plant 18y ago
      That's not "simple" at all. Coercion has always been part of human relations. People have conflicting interests, and when these rise to the level of open conflict, there needs to be some sort of coercive solution. What libertarians propose is that all coercion be in defense of property ownership. This seems "fair" until you realize that "property ownership" is itself a complex historical object. The feudal system is named after a form of property ownership - the feodum or fief. The colonial system created property for Europeans by appropriating it from natives. The system of slavery was also based on a certain kind of property definition. Saying "don't use coercion except to defend legitimate property rights" is like saying "don't use military force except to defend against legitimate threats." It seems like common sense, but all the complexity of politics is swept under the rug in these phrases "property rights" or "threats". In my view, no one is born with a "right" to property, property is just a concrete representation of the political equilibrium that exists at a certain time.
      • mseebach 18y ago
        The problem of property ownership is inherent in any society that (obviously) permits ownership of property. Most property in the world can be traced back to an original owner, from whom it was stolen (war, colonization and similar events). That original owner might have stolen it from someone else. But that is a completely different point, that really has nothing to do with libertarianism, or any reasonably capitalist society, where property ownership is permitted. It's my impression that a symptom of a mature capitalist society is that historical property disputes are settled in a sense that can be considered fair. That someone might not accept property rights is an interesting discussion, and it certainly rules out any form of capitalist system, but it doesn't really apply in this discussion. Nobody is born with a right TO anything, but rather a right to NOT be coerced. The consequence of this is that you have the right to do whatever you want with your property (which includes your body and anything you do with that, i.e. work), as long as you don't interfere with other peoples right to do the same - i.e. coerce them. One important distinction between libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism is how to resolve conflicts that will inevitably be over property. A-C doesn't accept any state-like structures like police and courts, but libertarianism does, and the only people that get to coerce other people physically are the police, answering to the courts.
  • dantheman 18y ago
    libertarians only acknowledge negative rights; you can't do X to me. There is no such thing as a positive right; you must give X to me.
    • yummyfajitas 18y ago
      Some (such as myself) also believe it legitimate for the government to provide public goods: goods which are nonrivalrous and nonexcludible. Protection from contagious disease falls into this category, for instance.
      • steveplace 18y ago
        And that's being known as a "practical libertarian"
        • olefoo 18y ago
          No, it's known as being a socialist. //not that there's anything wrong with that.
          • yummyfajitas 18y ago
            This is probably the first time since adulthood that I've ever been called a socialist (I was a socialist for a short time during my teenage years).
          • steveplace 18y ago
            I'd actually like to define it as extreme moderatism.
        • william42 18y ago
          Actually it's being known as "having taken econ 101".
      • thomasmallen 18y ago
        That's where I stand. I want a small government, and I think it's crazy that a government as hulking as ours doesn't provide something as essential as healthcare. On the other hand, I'm against social security and think that a general welfare system will do fine to take care of poor people, young or old.
• cchooper 18y ago
  Maybe his point is that the amount of government required to protect rights is actually quite large. There's a general assumption in Libertarianism that it would be small, and he's disputing this.
  • mightybyte 18y ago
    This argument is actually interesting, but I didn't get the slightest hint that it was what Zed was really talking about.
    • cchooper 18y ago
      It's probably not, but it would make sense of why he describes libertarians as "corporatist". He's driving a wedge between small government and the defence of natural rights, and assuming that libertarians would choose the former over the latter.
• stcredzero 18y ago
  If you need proof that Anarcho-Capitalism doesn't work, just play Eve-Online for a year in 0.0 security space.
  • corentin 18y ago
    I too kill people and do a lot of very nasty stuff in video games. But for some mysterious reason, I don't do them in real life.
    • narag 18y ago
      But for some mysterious reason people does that in real life.
    • stcredzero 18y ago
      You completely missed my point. At the time I played Eve, success for organizations in 0.0 space in Eve depended on the establishment of a logistical infrastructure. It's economics. I've witnessed groups of players hobbling their own economies and logistics by making short-sighted decisions. I've also seen all manner of scams and Ponzi schemes. From what I've seen in that particular simulation, you really do need the rule of law for capitalism to work well. Killing people and blowing up ships is completely irrelevant. The game could be about planting trees and picking flowers, and the same principles would apply.
      • corentin 18y ago
        I've also seen real-world governments ruin their own economies by making short-sighted (or just plain stupid) decisions. And I've seen Ponzi schemes in a lot of government plans as well.
        • stcredzero 18y ago
          In those cases, too, the rule of law is not quite working. The letter of the law is often being obeyed (and there is some debate about even that concerning things like the establishment of the Fed) but the system is being gamed. What it comes down to is this: is the general populace comfortable enough to engage in open economic activity? You can see that there is a lot less confidence in the US and the rest of the world, in large part due to various stupid decisions. But this doesn't prove that anarcho-capitalism works. It just shows that corrupt capitalism doesn't work well either.
• deleted 18y ago
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• Prrometheus 18y ago
  >"Libertarianism is NOT Anarcho-Capitalism." Anarcho-capitalists would consider themselves libertarian, and many famous ones are also leading lights of the libertarian movement. Murray Rothbard is clearly a libertarian, and Lysander Spooner belongs to the classical liberal tradition that the libertarians adopt as their forefathers. The problem is that "libertarianism" is a medium-sized tent. So when you criticize "libertarians" for position X, well some hold that position and some don't.
  • pelle 18y ago
    Also by definition we are at liberty to believe whatever we want. Kind of by definition we don't have any leaders to define what we think, even though many of us read lots of stuff by Rothbard, Mises, Hayek, Rand etc. Me I am definitely a libertarian, classical liberal, randian, anarcho-capitalist and several other labels that I might invent. But in reality we all have our different ideas of whats important and what isn't. And we do laugh at ourselves about this. Check out Peter Bagge's great comic about what happen when Libertarians gather... http://www.reason.com/news/show/28655.html http://www.reason.com/news/show/28655.html
• tjic 18y ago
  No, anarcho-capitalism does not say that corporations should replace government. Anarcho-capitalism merely says that government should go away. 90% of everything that government does wouldn't get done at all in a free society, and the other 10% would be done by multiple competing firms.
• natmaster 18y ago
  My thoughts: Most scientists (myself included) tend to prefer models that accurately predict the future: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfascZSTU4o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfascZSTU4o What Zed describes is in no way libertarianism. What the following to understand exactly what it is (HINT: It's the opposite of Libertarianism.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ticytEUvVhQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ticytEUvVhQ
  • anewaccountname 18y ago
    Funny, Peter Schiff was totally wrong about the Euro. Dean Baker also predicted the housing meltdown, you're falling into the trap of anecdotalism.