Libertarians - Thanks for the toddler Anglosphere
ThunderBunk
Shipmate
in Hell
With the noble exception of New Zealand and the Republic of Ireland, the whole Anglosphere is run by toddler governments with nothing to say other than "don't want to, can't make me". That is the direct result of libertarians with nothing more useful to contribute to life that these two mantras. Of this marketing exercise come Trump and Brexit, the shit from which we are now flinging at each other with a nice Covid-19 topping.
When are we going to be allowed to grow up, and have nice things again? When we can admit that something other than immediate individual whim may be more important that this currently deified force.
I completely despair at getting rid of the toddler governments, but we have to find a way in order to return to real life, rather than a constantly decaying nightmare.
When are we going to be allowed to grow up, and have nice things again? When we can admit that something other than immediate individual whim may be more important that this currently deified force.
I completely despair at getting rid of the toddler governments, but we have to find a way in order to return to real life, rather than a constantly decaying nightmare.
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Unfortunately a wide variety of countries, English-speaking and otherwise, appear to be afflicted with particularly bad governments at the moment.
He got less votes than even the UKIP candidate (who is a really unpleasant individual of the sort who favourably quotes Goebbels and other actual Nazis).
Trump is hardly a libertarian.
but he wraps himself very carefully in the rhetoric of personal freedom.
Trump represents the White Nationalist wing of the alliance. Though he is libertarian in the sense of believing he should be allowed to do or say anything he wants without repercussions, which is the usual internet definition of libertarian.
On some issues. But when, for example, he tried to cajole 3M to stop selling masks to Canada, it was the opposite of a libertarian stance. A libertarian would say that a private company has the right to sell or not sell to anyone they want.
And FWIW, there is nothing at all libertarian about saying you have a right to enter a store maskless against the wishes of the owners. As the holders of the property, they would be the ones who get to decide who enters.
Back to Trump, his trade policies aren't libertarian, either, being highly protectionist. And libertarians also tend to be open-border on immigration.
If anyone wants to get a better handle on libertarianism, and see how it differs from mainstream conservativism, I recommend taking a glance through the American movement's house organ, Reason.com.
In my experience scratch a libertarian and you find an authoritarian trying to get out.
That hasn't been precisely been my experience with libertarians. Obviously, if one believes that private property is the be-all-and-end-all, one will think that there should be a state in place to enforce property rights.
But unless you go beyond that, I don't think you're into the realm of authoritarianism. Most libertarians I've encountered, at least the ones who answer to that name, strongly support the legalization of drugs and prostitution, which are hardly authoritarian positions.
But, of course, the flip side of all that is that they would think that if someone develops an addiction to drugs, or gets an STD via prostitution, they should be left to pay for their own medical treatment, with no help from government, since subsidizing health-care is beyond the mandate of government to protect property. That I personally find this position heartless and brutal does not, in and of itself, make it authoritatian.
I'd also caution against conflating libertarianism with general pro-business ideologies, because while there are overlaps, there are also differences. When I was in uni, early 90s, the Objectivist Club(Ayn Randians) campaigned against a proposed anti-panhandling bylaw, on the grounds that the right to ask for or give money should be as protected as any other property right. I know for a fact that this bylaw was supported by the local Chamber Of Commerce-types and conservative columnists, because panhandlers were viewed as detrimental to the ease of doing business.
(And yes, an anti-panhandling law would certainly be an example of authoritarian politics.)
Though given National Review's own history of endorsing every asshole right-wing dictator in the world, I'd say Chambers had a bit of nerve to accuse anyone else of authoritarianism.
I find that criminals do that allot. It is a fantastic set of beliefs for them.
The swivel-eyed loons in charge of the Brexit project do tend to be of the libertarian variety. When half of them are responsible for Britannia Unchained there's definitely a libertarian streak alongside Farage's Trumpian White Nationalism.
I don't think we are seeing libertarian governments per se, it's something more akin to Berlusconism:
"If you vote for me you can do whatever you want to, as long as you don’t damage the interests of the rich. You can extend your house without worrying about permits. You can evade taxes. You can break speed limits – who cares about them? You can hire workers off the books ... By voting for me, you’ll keep in power someone who shares your intolerance for rules and limits. I’ll authorise you to do as you please, and you in turn will let me use the state to pursue my own private interests. You know it, I know that you know it, and you know that I know that you know it, and you know you’d better not fuck with me because I know it."
There's a sense in which a large part of the appeal of Johnson was that by voting for him you would - vicariously - get to break various rules without consequences.
Out of interest, where, in your experience, do Libertarians stand on trespass law?
One of the bits of the Conservative manifesto that has passed somewhat under the radar is the proposal to make trespass a criminal instead of a civil offence. It's framed as a defence against illegal Gypsy / Traveller sites, but given the amount of "public" space that turns out to be privately owned by developers, ISTM the implications, even if unintentional, are a lot wider and more restrictive.
Do these British libertarians oppose all restrictions on personal autonomy, or just the ones imposed by the EU?
For example, if it were proposed to them that the government should abolish the income tax, end all subsidies to arts, legalize all recreational drugs and prostitution, have as much private sector involvement with schools as possible, and decertify all unions, would they cheer, or scream in horror?
Not that I think all libertarians need to advocate that 100% of those things happen to the fullest extent within the next legislative season, but I think their views on each of the issues would have to be strongly in the direction I indicated.
For clarification, the restaurant-owner who thinks the government has no right to mandate that he have a requisite number of washrooms in his restaurant, because we can just let the market decide how many washrooms to have, but also thinks that the police should shut down the strip-club across the street, because it's scaring off the families who make up his customer-base, could not claim to be a genuine libertarian.
My assumption would be that libertarians thinks property owners, whether individual or corporate, have an absolute or near-absolute right to decide who can and cannot go onto their property. Whether they think this should be a matter of civil or criminal law, I wouldn't care to say, though would guess that a lot of them wouldn't have strenuous objections to the type of law proposed by the Tories.
Well they're definitely anti-union, and pro-school privatisation. They're anti-tax, but probably more flat tax than abolishing income tax entirely. The arts thing probably depends on whether the individual in question likes opera. Usually their thing is making swingeing budget cuts and then blaming other people for specific things being cut. I don't think they're bright enough to have considered drugs or prostitution as regards liberty; they're too busy denouncing British workers as lazy.
Well, if you were to ask them about drugs and prostitution, and they were to reply "No, that sort of filth needs to be kept illegal for the good of society", I don't think they qualify as libertarians, just old-fashioned pro-business conservatives.
And I'd even go so far as to say that if they've never thought about drugs or prostitution, that lacuna in and of itself probably shows that they're not libertarians, since those issues are pretty widely discussed among libertarians, and it would be odd for a libertarian not to have thought about them.
I think the libertarian position would be that bosses, as the owners of the property in question, have the right to hire and fire anyone they want. So, yes, the workers would have the right to go to the boss and ask to form a union, and he'd have the right to either say "Sure, let's start negotiating now" or "No, now get the fuck out of this factory and don't come back."
(And yes, in practice, that would lead to very little unionization, since very few bosses are going to allow employees to form a union if the law doesn't support the workers right to organize.)
To give an example of just how much of an outlier the ideology is, at one of the recent Libertarian Party conventions in the US, their presidential candidate, Gary Johnson, was asked if he thought people should be required to pass a driving test in order to drive a car. He replied yes, and got booed for it.
Yes, that is exactly what I would expect from a party formally bearing the name Libertarian. But my concern was that on this thread, the word is being used as if it were synonymous with something like "the current generation of anglosphere conservatives", which it is not.
If nothing else, I am sure we'd all agree that there are currently very few people in the British Conservative Party or the American Republican Party who support drug-legalization, even as a long-term goal. You do have the Ron Paulites in the GOP, but they're a minority, and nowhere near having their views at the top of the party agenda.
American libertarianism is a thin veil of lex talonis over a seething mass of rule by the rich for the rich of the rich, all wrapped up in a tissue-thin wrapped stamped "freedom".
The libertarian's concept of individual autonomy is rooted in private property, the anarchist's isn't.
An anarchist would construe the large corporation which owns the abandoned warehouse as another instance of an institution impinging on human freedom, and say that people have the right to challenge their monopolizing of what should be common space. Ideally for the anarchist, that might take the form of politivized squatting, which ultimately forces the government to recognize the department warehouse as common space.
Well, I don't think positions such as supporting drug legalization and opposing the War On Terror really qualify as policies designed to help the rich, if for no other reason than that the organizations usually dedicated to advancing the interests of plutocrats rarely endorse such views.
That said, anyone claiming to be libertarian but aligning himself with the Republican Party is, at best, a dupe. Because the Republican Party, or indeed most of the major conservative parties today, have almost zero commitment to libertarianism.
I don't think that's quite the libertarian view, since they do think that the protection of property is one of the very few, if not the only, legitimate functions of govetnment.
Though certainly they would almost all agree that the right to take up arms against someone who has unlawfully entered your property and won't leave when asked, is an inalienable one. With the police being an option for those not so inclined.
Oh, and when you say "the kind of USians who protest strongly about this", do you mean people who protest FOR an armed citizenry and AGAINST gun control?
That's probably the case with a lot of them, in terms of how they personally would handle it. But my remarks were in reply to Enoch, who seemed to be suggesting that that they would think that should be the only way of handling it.
The libertarian view on this would probably be comparable to the view most of us take on direct self-defense. If someone jumps out from an alley with a knife pointed at me and yells "This one's for you, asshole!!", we'd probably all agree that I should have the right to pick up a bottle lying on the ground, aim it at his forehead, and fire away. But I can also choose not to do that, and just call the police after it's all over with.
Libertarians would extend this menu of options to situations where, in their view, the mere presence of someone on my property uninvited can be construed as a threat.
(And for the record, I have been mugged twice. The first time, I "stood my ground", ie. chased the guy down the street, and ended up getting the shit kicked of me by his gang. The second time, I surrendered to the brutal attempt at wealth confiscation, ie. gave them my wallet containing ten dollars.)
No, it probably couldn't be. Then again, I would not normally describe a common street mugging as "wealth confiscation", unless I was writing a semi-serious, self-deprecating riff on my own experience with violent crime.
(The main point was that, in contrast to the kind of person who defends his property with a shotgun against trespassers, I'm pretty milquetoast when it comes to stuff like that. Though I will admit that, twenty years later, I'm still pretty proud of having chased that little punk for five seconds. If he's gonna get my briefcase anyway, might as well make him work for it.)
Unless, of course, they're black.
yep.
I'd sooner have them living next door to me than people who would take someone's life to acquire property. At least the former will leave me alone if I leave them alone.
I appreciate that you don't get it, but it's a very short step between killing to defend to your property and killing to take it. It's not about the property. It's about the attitude to human life, and your neighbour already sees yours as worth less than things.
I lock my doors.
I don't see it, no. There's an entire moral canyon between keeping ones own property and taking someone else's, and that remains true regardless of the specific means and methods used.
All the more reason to (a) not try to take his things and (b) be prepared to defend myself in case he tries to take mine.