What Did Che Guevera And Kim Il Sung Have In Common?

[camberiu]

People like Ajo might think differently about Libertarians if they'd get off their immigrant-Russian-turned-novelist (among other things) kick and realized that neither Republicans nor Democrats (nor Communists, et al) can protect all the people equally. But of course, how can that happen when they have their proverbial heads shoved so far up their smelly dark place that all they can hear are echoes of their own prejudices.

Best way to explain libertarianism: Non-initiation of force. All interactions should be consensual and no one should be forced (coerced) into doing what they don;t want to do, even (and specially) if it is in the name of the "collective good".

 

[ElQueso]

[...]
At the same time, libertarians also take issue with the extreme opposite, where you go from mandated segregation to mandated integration. The key word here is mandated. Mandated means "do this or we will apply force on you until you comply". As I said before, libertarians believe that force or the threat of force should never be initiated, but only be used as a response to someone else using force against you. So, when the government says "do this or else", be it in terms of segregation or integration, libertarians will always be against it.

One of the basic tenets of Libertarianism, as Camberiu mentions, is the freedom to associate with whom you want to associate. Don't force me to associate with someone I don't want to.

On the surface, it seems so rife with possible racism - but look at how racism in the US started to begin with. The poor Africans who were brought over by force, sold often by their own race at least, and sometimes their own countrymen, to slavers, certainly didn't want to associate with those white devils from Europe and the New World!

The Southern States wanted to disassociate themselves with the Northern States and the Northern States wouldn't allow it. Ostensibly to defeat slavery, but go back and re-read your history and one will see Lincoln wasn't such a champion of freeing slaves as he was terrified of the US splitting up. Look at all that came out of that, as force tore the country apart, killed hundreds of thousands, destroyed economies and so on. who the hell is going to be happy about something like that? The Southern States knew they couldn't continue with slavery. but they had their asses handed to them and after the war the carpetbaggers came and made things even worse than all. So the ex-slaves are caught in the middle.

People say that we needed laws to first segregate and then integrate "black" people into schools and such? I wonder how many black people wanted to actually associate with white people after all that had happened. Maybe if they were allowed to live peacefully in their own society instead of being continually harassed, beaten and killed by jealous white folk, they wouldn't have so much pent-up rage today!

All through history, all one has to do is look at the events where people are forced to associate with others, who force them to behave how they think they should behave, to see how it completely screws up the lives of a large number of people, all in the name, supposedly, of doing good. When will people realize they can't force others to act as they see fit without consequences!

And all of this - imagine the Southern States had not been forced to stay in the Union, or perhaps even the Articles of Confederation were the law of the land instead of the current Constitution. I doubt very much there would be such a huge, over-reaching, nearly unbalanced power as the US is today to screw with so many other people around the world. Don't know what there would have been, but the US foreign policy has helped to influence the violence and the direction things took afterward, certainly since WWII, and to a large extent, even, well before that.

 

[camberiu]

ElQueso's long text summed up into two images:

 

[sleslie23]

Only in a very superficial way, like drinking booze on the streets and baking racist cakes. But that is not due to some underlying fundamental belief in freedom, but simply because none of those things are social taboos, so no need for the state to coerce people into not doing it.
But overall, Argentina is as anti-libertarian as it gets. Price controls, heavy taxation, import controls, heavy bureaucracy, mandatory finger printing and national ID, incredibly byzantine labor laws, weak property rights, etc....

Ha ha, touché

 

[ElQueso]

Best way to explain libertarianism: Non-initiation of force. All interactions should be consensual and no one should be forced (coerced) into doing what they don;t want to do, even (and specially) if it is in the name of the "collective good".

Yep - NAP - the Non-Aggression Principle. Edit: but i don't find it a good way to explain Libertarianism because you have to work your way up to understanding all of the ramifications of this very simple principle before you can understand Libertarianism and what it wants to accomplish.

It is developed by examining what is the most basic, fundamental "property", or "right" that a living human being has, that no one else should be able to take from him or her. Obviously it is yourself. Your body, your mind, etc. It is the ONLY thing we are born with that can be said to be fundamentally the property of each and every one of us (and yes, to an extent, this applies to children as well, but this is a complex subject). It is the fundamental thing that no one else has any right to force anyone (again, children are more complicated) into anything that the individual objects to.

From that basic right are extruded property rights, and is much more complicated as well, but very workable.

And in fact, I read a lot of people talking about Libertarianism before I ever became a Libertarian. I had a lot of problems with Libertarianism. But I didn't become Libertarian until I read some fundamental works, including a lot of Murray Rothbard and others who lay out these propositions and show how it could actually work. (and no, A.R. was not one of those fundamental sources, Ajo).

And then, not too long ago, I was reading about the American "Wild West". More re-written history, that, in the popular sense. Government won that one, and it gets to write the history and show how "bad" and "wild" things were before government "saved the day". What a bunch of crap. In fact, people organized themselves in a very Libertarian fashion by creating contracts amongst themselves, electing people to keep the rules decided on by all, and if someone decided that they didn't like the way things were going, they had the right to be bought out by the rest of the settlers, or wagoneers, or what-have-you. It wasn't until government started entering the picture that a lot of injustices started occurring as power was concentrated in large batches. Edit: It often started with people who had a vested interest in seeing the government come in (because they had been promised something, for example) and fought against the people who were already occupying the place because they didn't want no stinkin' government.

Now, having said that, the "Wild West" wasn't a Libertarian ideal either, it just helped to show how people can indeed organize themselves for their well-being and economic benefit without needing a government to enforce things. The people who settled the West weren't professed Libertarians, and many injustices to peoples like the indigenous Americans happened. But even then, the majority of those problems were caused by the US government moving West and claiming more and more land (concentration of power enabled this). Many of the settlers lived in peace with indigenous Americans until the US government started slaughtering them under pretexts and lying and stealing from the indigenous and the indigenous.decided they had to do something about it and saw all "white mean" as the same.

Thing about Libertarianism is that people hear the word "anarchy" and immediately think of chaos. When what it really means is "lack of government" and to be more specific, lack of a formal government in which people are forced to participate. Not chaos at all.

 

[ajoknoblauch]

There is a HUGE difference. Many libertarians were very much against the Jim Crow laws and against the civil rights act. That is a perfectly logical position.

The Jim Crow laws had a strong element of forced/coerced segregation. Interracial marriages were illegal. Business were prohibited from offering integrated services and blacks and whites were taxed the same, but had differentiated government services (i.e., segregated schools, public bathrooms, etc...)

When the state coerces people from doing what they want (i.e. a black woman marrying a white guy) libertarians take a huge issue with that.

At the same time, libertarians also take issue with the extreme opposite, where you go from mandated segregation to mandated integration. The key word here is mandated. Mandated means "do this or we will apply force on you until you comply". As I said before, libertarians believe that force or the threat of force should never be initiated, but only be used as a response to someone else using force against you. So, when the government says "do this or else", be it in terms of segregation or integration, libertarians will always be against it.

Libertarianism is fundamentally contradictory and illogical.

 

[ElQueso]

Many of my personal beliefs coincide with "libertarianism." However, I think this conversation highlights what I think are one of its flaws when applied to a large, pluralistic society like the US. You can't have any set of laws that all of the people will agree to. And, ultimately, you will have to force a certain sector of the population to abide by some laws.

Actually, a conversation about a pluralistic society should contain talk of fewer laws, rather than more which force people to behave in certain fashion.

Too many people see themselves as the "majority" (even when they're not, they often think they "should" be) and think they have everything right and want to force everyone else to do what they think is right. This often really screws everyone up because very rarely does a politician know what the hell to do to fix things. Too many political decisions are made from emotional decisions, because emotions are the one thing the majority of us have in common, and something that politicians can use to bend us.

We all hate to see someone starving on the street, therefore it is very important that Joe Smith over here get a group together to force everyone they know to cough up money for the poor guy starving in the street.

Of course, there are so many things tied up in where the starving guy came from to begin with and why he is starving. He may be a criminal, for all we know, who has robbed and killed his way into town but spent all his money before he ever got there and fell in the street there, a starving, deserved wreck.

He may be a saint that was nearly crucified in the previous town and just barely made it to "safety".

He may be a drunk who doesn't want to work, that now becomes a burden to everyone who is forced to support him.

But now we have two groups who think they know how to deal with this guy. The first one wants to pick him up, feed him and maybe give him some work. The second group wants to pick him up, beat him some more because they "know" he's a bad guy.

Given all the information that I laid out, you couldn't make a decision as to what to do with him if you were being honest about it and not reacting to your own, and everyone else's, prejudices. But both groups want to force everyone else to treat him the way they want everyone else to treat him.

So the NAP serves very well here. Why not let Joe Smith feed the guy if he feels like it should be done? In fact, if Joe Smith wants to feed him and get him up and working, why not get some other like-minded individuals together to help him accomplish that? It would actually make Joe Smith a pretty interesting guy that he is so concerned about the welfare of others, and in fact, if Joe Smith believes in a Christian God, he may well figure that he's helping himself earn a place at the right of his Lord by his righteous actions.

But if he leaves the guy in the street, dying, and works on getting everyone else forced to help the poor guy out - what does he accomplish? A lot of kilombo, a lot of bad feelings from those who don't want to help, and certainly no kudos from God for his Christian help (forcing others to do what you think should be done hardly counts as charity, after all). And hell, the guy could even die while Joe Smith is trying to get everyone organized!

And for the other guys who want to do the guy damage? Again - NAP. If anyone does anything against the guy, they are violating a basic tenet of Libertarianism. If he's lying on someone's property, that person has the right to move him. If the guy keeps coming back, the owner has the right to continue to move him. The owner can even get others to help deal with the guy in some other fashion (even locking him up until he promises to stop coming back). but he can't beat him, or kill him - it's not NAP. He can't keep him as a slave or prisoner without worrying about violating NAP and having the community come down on him as well.

This is all very simplified and out of this actually come private police forces and courts that people can subscribe to, and all of which have jurisdiction based on their clients (not necessarily location), and all of whom work together, etc, to provide order and justice.

 

[ElQueso]

Libertarianism is fundamentally contradictory and illogical.

Prove it.

 

[ElQueso]

I do find your [Camberiu's] recent statements someone what in contrast to our earlier discussion with "you know who" about racism in Argentina. I would think that Argentina is in many ways a libertarian's paradise. I can walk down the street and drink a beer without getting arrested. In fact I was on the 59 earlier and two young tourists were drinking a bottle of white wine in the middle of the bus. I have seen people make U turns in the middle of Libertador in front of the police who do nothing. And if one wants to bake and sell racist cakes, one can do so without being sued, boycotted, or causing a riot.

I can see how it may seem like this.

But remember, when talking about Libertarianism, anarchy does not mean chaos.

A lot of what you see in regard to what you describe is related to the society itself. There are laws here against drinking in public, but what good does it do? society here accepts that, even as others try to make laws against it. There are ways to shame people into either accepting what people around them think is appropriate behavior, or people who can't fit in will eventually leave to find a place more to their liking - particularly if people aren't making excuses for them and enabling their behavior by giving them ways to live without working hard for their living.

the idiots drinking wine on the bus - the government here has obviously decided to be tolerant of idiots and make excuses for them. If not for the laws of the land, the driver of the bus, or owner of the bus line, could kick those idiots off his bus if he didn't like it. People who like tourists getting drunk on their bus would be free to find a bus line who that didn't bother. People who didn't like that the bus line didn't do anything about it would be free to find a bus line that did care. people of either persuasion who couldn't find a bus line that behaved the way they wanted would be free to start their own bus line (and not worry about taxes and licenses, etc).

As far as the cars turning around in the middle of Libertador - people in a Libertarian society would be free to create their own roads and enforce their laws as they see fit. This is all complicated and seems unnatural, and I'm not going to lay all this out here, but the fact is that economy and social pressures restrict people more than laws do, until the laws become repressive and counter-productive.

Argentine society is about as far from Libertarian as you can get, simply because the society is so strongly shaped by its government, concentration of power, over many decades, and not be free market or social pressures (aside from social pressures given to the people by their masters). And it's societies like this that people often point to when they say "but that's how a Libertarian society would devolve into." I say it's not a given. It's up to the people that make up the society how that society will be, and without a central government to enforce its will, people would be free to leave if they didn't like it and find a place they did like.

 

[ajoknoblauch]

Prove it.

Parallel lines never meet. It's axiomatic.