Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Second Amendment Is the Libertarian View Valid?

What you say of libertarianism is true. (Actually, what I've been describing is sort of toward the capitalist-anarchism side of libertarianism, which somewhat surprises me, since I thought I was a minarchist.)

It was also true, at one time, of automobiles, airplanes, and American-style democratic republicanism.

Develop naturally? Well, I suppose it depends on how you mean that. Perhaps historians would say that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution "developed naturally," as a reaction to the political environment from which they sprang; but there was a lot of sweat, risk, and blood required from those involved. Liberty has always required more work than slavery, which is a mind-bending concept when you think about it. But the free-market aspects of libertarianism mean that most of the work can be motivated by narrow-minded self-interest (of which there always seems to be plenty available) rather than selfless altruism, which is in much shorter supply.

All it really needs to get going, I think, is something like the Free State Project. (Have you read about it?) If we're right about the prosperity of real liberty, then it should require only a decent foothold to take hold and spread like kudzu (through capitalist competition, not violent conquest).

As to the maintenance issue, I think you have a point and I'd appreciate hearing you elaborate on it. The Constitution has turned out not to be a particularly effective guardian of liberty. I think more effective has been our national tradition of liberty, which has been dwindling to almost nothing as the generations march on. How does a people keep a tradition of liberty alive? Is there a better way to preserve liberty? What do you think?

Well, first of all, I think liberty is sort of a relative thing. It must be balanced against the legitimate need for a government which possesses some degree of coercive power. Its coercive power, so long as it operates under the rule of law, however, need not substantially interfere with liberty. Read Heyak's The Road to Serfdom for more details.



As for maintaining a tradition of liberty, we had it until very recently in this nation. One historical event that did great violence to it (but didn't nearly destroy it) was the Civil War, which largely set the stage for a massive increase in federal power at the expense of state autonomy, which autonomy was an important force for maintaining individual liberty. State power, you see, was an important check on federal consolidation of power, and consolidated federal power has always been the major threat to liberty.



After the Civil War, it seems, the federal government took its victory as one over states rights, and we really seem to have become a different system since then even if, at least in print, we retained a similar constitutional structure. The Civil War amendments, in a sense, turned our system on its head, making the federal government supreme in many respects; not by their words (necessarily), but rather (mainly) through gradual judicial interpretation, uncheckable any longer by the states, which no longer had direct representation in the central government (firstly due to half the states losing representation due to reconstruction and, secondly and more finally, by the 17th Amendment in 1913). The Constitution gradually, to a large extent, came to "mean" the opposite of what it said, via activist judicial interpretation, which was no longer checked by the states.



This point represents the start of the federal war on the American system established by the Founding Fathers. The federal government took ground little by little, after subjugating the Southern states, which previously had the strongest tradition (among the several states) of state autonomy. However, the tradition of personal liberty generally survived in the people, who had not yet forgotten their heritage stemming from the War For Independance.



Then came a succession of leftist presidents, starting with Wilson who codified into law the notion that an individual's income was somehow the business of the federal government. The Great Depression was seen as an excuse by leftist president FDR to institute the New Deal (which would not have been possible were it not for the work of Wilson). The remaining checks against this usurpation at first seemed to work (if only due to the tradition of limited government surviving in the minds of the members of the Supreme Court), but gradually Supreme Court justices retired, and others just decided to yield to the president's will, and the New Deal became law. This was followed by the Great Society of LBJ, and the rest is, as they say, history.



Few any longer even remember an America where the federal government did not pretty much run the whole show, but some do (Read, e.g., When I Was a Kid, This Was a Free Country by G. Gordon Liddy), and others can read about it. Our failure was, I think, a lack of perception that we were even in a war. The two major combatants were, at one time, the autonomous states (within their proper spheres of power) and the central government. The Civil War was the "hot" manifestation of this war, and the states lost. Liberty has been in a slow fighting retreat ever since. So, gradually, under everyone's radar, the Supreme Court was transformed into a check on the power of the states, instead of a check on the power of Congress and the President, as it had been designed to be. The system for preserving liberty became broken, because in order for a check to work, it has to work both ways. For example, at the federal level, the Supreme Court could check the Congress, but the Congress could also check the Supreme Court. Not so as between the Supreme Court and the States, or between Congress and the States, or between the Executive and the States. It became a one way road.



This one-way-road relationship especially became the case when Senators, in 1913, came to be popularly elected instead of being chosen by state legislatures to protect state interests in the federal government. So Senators, who were designed to be checks for the states against federal usurpation, became direct representatives of the people (subject to populist demagoguery), just like Congressional Representatives (see Article I, Section 3 and the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution). No longer did enough people think it necessary for states to have any direct representation in the federal government, and we are paying the price today. The system of checks and balances which was designed to keep the power of the central government limited, and to preserve general liberty, gradually broke down. The Civil War paved the way. Populist demagoguery and judicial activism did the rest. States, as states, no longer had any direct influence on the process.



How one prevents that process from happening is beyond me (How does one, looking backwards, prevent any course of historical events?), but one thing's for certain: had we largely stuck to the program established in 1789 (with, maybe, a couple of tweaks), we'd still be a free country today. Perhaps we should never have established an amendment process for the Constitution. It's a thought anyway.



One addition to the Bill of Rights should also have been the right of state secession. This would have served two purposes: firstly, it would have preserved the union (no legislation would pass which would disenfranchise a state or group of states, for fear of secession), and secondly, the Civil War would never have happened. Our system would therefore largely remain the one we were given in 1789. Slavery would almost certainly have been outlawed in the several states by the turn of the 19th Century, as, even in the pre-civil-war South, there was a growing sense that its days were numbered. There were more active white abolitionists in the South than in the North, at that time.

This is probably the nut of our disagreement, right here. I'm curious to find out why you believe that a coercive government is necessary; but before you tell me that, there's something else I'd like to know. Whatever it is that you hope to achieve with a coercive government...if it could be demonstrated to your satisfaction that the same result (or a better one!) could be achieved without government coercion, would you be willing to get rid of the government, or would you still want it around as a backup in case you unexpectedly needed some heads busted?


The root problem seems, at least to me, that maintaining one's liberty is an expensive process. For those to whom liberty is vitally important--namely, those who have at great personal cost seized it for themselves--the price of eternal vigilance is a very small one to pay. However, for the great grandchildren of those folks, who take their liberty for granted, and whose time is largely occupied exploiting the blessings of that liberty, it's much easier to simply hire somebody else to take care of guarding liberty so as to concentrate on more interesting, profitable, or entertaining things. That, as I'm sure we agree, is where it starts.

How do we keep that from happening? Obviously, a piece of paper isn't the way to go: it's been tried.

Here's an interesting idea. Judaism has been kept alive and reasonably unified (much more unified than either Christianity or American politics) for several thousand years, by traditionally relegating its preservation to a mostly-hereditary Orthodox sect whose job it is to keep diluting and dissipating influences from corrupting the core doctrine. Reform and Conservative Jews disagree, in large part, with Orthodox theology and practice, but they're still glad the Orthodox are there, doing their thing, keeping Judaism pure for future generations.

I wonder if some sort of parallel practice would work better than the Constitution has when it comes to the preservation of liberty. Certainly there are folks around who wouldn't mind spending their lives being the "high priests of liberty," as long as they could make a moderately decent living at it.

Whatever the plan, of course, it can't be imposed from above. It can be suggested, of course, but if it's going to work it's going to have to be initiated and supported from underneath.

It is important to keep in mind that the only way humans have ever been able to rise above the state of nature (where there is no law) is under what we term government. Anyone who is not within that covenant remains in the state of nature. Now, in the state of nature, you are not protected by any law, and since you deny yourself the protection of the law, you cannot complain when someone comes to take your property. You are free to do your best to use violence in its defense, but so is the other free to use violence in its taking. In order to put a stop to this state of nature, we institute governments, which establish and enforce laws. Government would be of little use if it could not use force, or its threat (i.e., coercion), to establish or preserve order. Without governmental capacity to exercise coercive power, we are in the state of nature. So long as it is not used arbitrarily, however, it is not tyranny.

You neglect to mention here, unless you view it as errata, that FDR had to pack the Supremes in order to get much of his "New Deal" legislation to pass constitutional muster. After portions of his "New Deal" were found to be unconstitutional by the 7 member Supreme Court FDR, with the acquiescence of the Senate, increased the size of the court to 9 and appointed 2 not quite impartitial justices which ensured him a 5-4 majority vs a 3-4 minority in future challenges.

Had the Senate refused to go along with increasing the size of the court or simply refused to confirm the additional 2 justices most of FDR's ambitions wouldn't have been realized and although we would still be struggling today we would be in considerably better shape. Prior to FDR the federal government was still relitively small. FDR ushered in the modern era of "big government" and it's propensity for injecting itself in areas it does not belong.

We agree that force is sometimes necessary. But why must you have the force applied by a government instead of by a private entity? A coercive government is only required for offensive force, not defensive force.

Imagine a libertarian home and life insurance company. The policy you'd sign would constrain you in certain ways that would probably amount to you agreeing not to willfully initiate force against anyone. The insurance company would agree to provide sufficient force to prevent your property from being stolen, or your person or family attacked--in the event, of course, that you actually abode by the policy you signed. If your property was stolen anyway, the insurance company would be responsible for replacing it; if you or a family member was killed or injured, the insurance company would be liable for health care and/or income replacement, plus whatever you could get in a civil suit, if you could convince the right people that the company was negligent.

The company would have men with guns to protect its customers; it would have an investigative division to track down criminals and recover from them as much of its liability as possible; it would have a legal division to make sure its activities wouldn't get lawsuits levied against it. Some or all of these services might be outsourced from still other companies. And the premium you paid for the service would be A) less than you pay now for insurance and police protection, because there'd be less redundancy, and B) even less than that, because there'd be several companies competing to find the fastest, best, and cheapest way to earn your dollar. (Earn your dollar. Doesn't that feel refreshing, as over against politicians competing to find the fastest, best, and cheapest way to confiscate your dollar?)

There's not a single dime's worth of government in the whole picture, no taxes, and no initiated force. Everybody concerned is constrained only by free-will agreements, and pays only what he has (personally!) agreed to pay. Except for the criminals who do initiate force, of course. Those who are not either killed outright or deemed not worth pursuing would be hunted down and arrested (even today, it's legal for private citizens to arrest criminals) and processed through a privately-operated libertarian penal system. (I can describe that too, if you want, but it's long enough that I don't want to do it now.)



The problem is that since governments have the ability to legally initiate force, they are by their very natures arbitrary. Simple human nature means that power corrupts--and the power to legally initiate force is, qualitatively, just about all the power there is. You can try to keep government so small that even if it's corrupt it can't do too much damage; and that can work until the government takes for itself the power to confiscate people's money. Once that happens, as we've seen, pretty much all hope is lost.

So...if you can accomplish governmental functions in the private sector, and if you can do the job better, faster, and cheaper than government can, then why do you need government again?

Barak, here's the problem with your vision of a libertarian utopia. Since there is no higher authority than the insurance companies, there is no one preventing the more powerful insurance companies from using force to take over the less powerful. Once this is done, they can dictate their terms to you, the customer, establishing a nice little tyranny for themselves. You can't escape the need for government. Since it's necessary, might as well make it limited and divided, checked and balanced, subordinate to the rule of law and answerable to the people.

Barak, read www.thenewamerican.com/tna/2001/08-13-2001/vo17no17_neoconservatism.htm

I thought you were conservative! The old "evil big corporations" line is what you usually hear from liberals--who will then also go on to demand that the government be used to keep said corporations in check.

The problem, of course, is that it is government that gives evil big corporations their objectionable power. The money at the command of large corporations allows them the political influence to commit unfair business practices, such as getting an opponent's property rezoned or instituting licensing fees that are prohibitively expensive for the little guy. More government simply means more powerful evil big corporations, as soon as their lobbyists figure out how to turn the new laws in their favor.

Without government, the large company's money doesn't give it any political power over the small company. It can still do things like use loss leaders to run the small company out of business, but of course that assumes that the small company's product is no better than the large company's product...and if that's the way things are, it's difficult to make a case for why the small company should succeed.

Yes, it's possible that a large company might develop a monopoly of some kind; but in my experience, such companies quickly get fat and slow and lazy and begin to produce an inferior product, and a small, fast-moving, innovative company comes up behind them when they're not looking and eats their lunch for them. I've personally been laid off by two different large companies, in two different industries, that found themselves in just such a situation. One of them was CompuServe--eaten by America Online and Worldcom.


But how do you propose to do that? Are you smarter than the Framers? They had some pretty innovative ideas, but even they didn't work--not long-term. Do you think that if you could just start over again, using only the right kind of people, and making them promise to avoid the particular historical pitfalls you know about, you could make it work this time? I hope not: that sounds a lot like jmartin.

As a conservative, I believe that whatever you call the particular power interest, if it is unchecked, it will become abusive. You choose to call the power interest a "corporation," but if there was no government, your "corporation" would very quickly come to resemble a tyrannical form of the state. Nature abhors a vacuum. There will always be a governing authority. If you do nothing, it will be a purely parasitical governing authority. If you establish it properly, it will be less parasitical, and more a tool for sustaining ordered liberty.



As for your point about monopolies in general, I agree with Milton Freidman. If government only prevents the use of force, without giving advantage to any corporation, then it is true that monopalies will not be long lived, and for the reasons you've stated. This is quite apart from your position that there need not be a governing authority, answerable to the people, to ensure that corporations do not use force to eliminate their competition.

I didn't have time to read it from beginning to end, but I scanned it.

I wish you good fortune in your struggle, but you have to understand that the argument you're having with the neocons appears to me much as an argument between a beef fan and a pork fan would appear to a vegetarian.

Are you in favor of taxes? Taxes are statist. Just that much is enough to make it tough for you to "get me on your side," so to speak.

Are you in favor of a flat or progressive income tax? If so, then while you might not call yourself a socialist, you're socialist enough that your quibbles over who is more socialist, while mildly amusing from an academic point of view, have no intellectual or emotional traction with me.

I'm not trying to insult you or dismiss you, you understand. I find debating you stimulating and educational; I'm hardly xenophobic. But in-house arguments between conservatives pretty much fly over my head. A Jew might be interested in debating with a Christian over whether Jesus was the prophesied Jewish Messiah; but faced with a Catholic and a Protestant arguing over the doctrine of Transsubstantiation, he'd be reduced to simply shaking his head bemusedly.

Barak, you are not only smart, but funny. Unfortunately, here, you are not making any sense (even if you remain funny). Naturally, conservatives are opposed to taxes on an individual's or a family's private income and/or private property. For the federal government to operate within the original constitution, it would require very little in the way of funds, anyway. All it would need could be collected via taxes on foreign trade, that is to say, on foreign corporations who would like the privilege of trading in the United States. Call it a market access fee if you prefer. States can sustain themselves however they like (so long as they are answerable to their citizens), but naturally, a conservative would favor, in his state, that said government fund itself by taxing trade, not an individual's or a family's private property or income. A conservative state government would be so small anyway that a 1% sales tax would easily cover its expenses.



I don't mean to insult you either, but you don't seem to understand the meaning of the word socialism. Socialism is the use of government as a tool for wealth redistributioin, the goal being a leveling of society so that no one lives substantially better than anyone else. No conservative has ever advocated that (which is its opposite), so I'm afraid you're all wet there.



P.S. I cannot blame you for not actually reading the article. It would be difficult to sustain your view of the meaning of the word conservatism if you did, and it is never pleasant to be shown that one's basic presumptions were in error.

You're not addressing the issue. Obviously people find it most beneficial and efficient to arrange themselves within some sort of hierarchical structure under some form of governming authority. Many species of animals do the same thing.

But you still haven't answered my question from way back: what's magical about a coercive governing authority that makes it better than a consensual governing authority?


There's a nomenclature issue here. Without government, there can be no such thing as a corporation--at least, not as we know it today.

When you say force, do you mean fraudulent business practices, or do you mean physical force, such as killing or maiming key folks in the competing company? How would that be different from any other violent act? Why would it be more likely to succeed?

Also, keep in mind that your government also has an ugly history of killing and maiming opponents in order to eliminate competition and cover up embarrassments. Maybe libertarianism would effectively eliminate such activity, and maybe it wouldn't; but all it has to do to win over the present situation is reduce it. Also keep in mind that any company, including a large one, has to be able to persuade people to give it the money it runs on. Developing a reputation for strong-arm tactics and dishonest dealings may not bother a government, but it's no good for a company's market position.

Wow, I thought I addressed this. What you refer to as a consensual governing authority is no authority at all. It is the state of nature. How can we operate in a society where adherence to laws is strictly voluntary (i.e., the opposite of coerced)?

I apologize, then. I had no idea you were opposed to income tax. Bravo.

We still disagree, I expect, on whether coercive taxes are ever just; but not all statism has to be socialism.


Isn't that exactly what a flat or progressive income tax is? It's pretty much an incarnation of the "From each according to his ability" half of the Marxist ideology. A tax that confiscated the same amount of money from everyone, regardless of his income...that would still be statist, but it wouldn't be socialist.


Pretty shrewd of you; but I'll decline the bait, I think. Thanks anyway. Whether you're a "neoconservative" or an "authentic American conservative" or any other kind of statist doesn't affect my desire to convert you to libertarianism, if possible, or at least give you the opportunity to examine the issues involved in an unbiased manner, if not.

And I thought I addressed this.

Consensual government is not the state of nature; it's what I described above with the libertarian home and life insurance company. And it's not adherence to the laws that's strictly voluntary: it's choice of the laws.

If you want to take the responsibility of defending your own life, liberty and property completely on yourself, then all you have to do is refrain from initiating force or fraud against anyone, and you're fine. But if you want to convince someone else to help you, then you're going to need to sign some sort of a contract with him in which you agree to live within a few (or a lot, depending on your taste) more constraints. You get to decide whether or not to sign the contract, and which contract you wish to sign; but once you've signed, adherence to the contract is mandatory, not voluntary. If you break the contract, you initiate fraud, which according to the NAP is the same as initiating force. Treating a heavily-armed insurance company like that would definitely be a career-limiting maneuver. If you were smart, you'd want a contract that specified agreed-upon penalties short of death for various anticipated possible transgressions. On the other hand, if you were an insurance company trying to attract business, you'd want a reputation of dealing fairly in good faith with people who made honest mistakes.

The same, of course, applies to all other walks of life as well, not just property defense. Contract negotiations would be a highly developed art. Technology would be very useful in keeping track of all the relevant contracts and maintaining privacy and security.

Let me see if I have this straight. According to you, any advocacy of the need for government amounts to "statism". Is that correct? According to my dictionary, however, the word statism means the practice or doctrine of giving a central government control over economic planning and policy, so you could not mean that, as this is the very opposite of conservatism, which is about preserving and/or restoring free-market capitalism. Last I checked, central economic planning and free market capitalism were precisely opposite to oneanother. Are you sure you haven't confused your terminology?



Perhaps, however, you are alluding to Mr Nock's definition of the state, which is a governing authority that is parasitical in relation to society, i.e., always (by its nature) seeking to expand at society's expense. But he distinguishes this from government, does he not? Government is that system which restrains the power of the state and maximizes the power of society. It does this by strictly limiting the scope and degree of the governing authority's power in relation to society to that only which society is unable to do without a governing authority. Government is a necessary instrument of justice, while the state is a perversion of government. The state, in Nock's terminology, exists when governmental power is used to benefit some (i.e., those with political connections) while disadvantaging others (i.e., the rest of society).



Perhaps, however, you have some other meaning in mind. At any rate, I am not aware of any definition of "statism" which is in any way compatible with conservatism.

Conservatives are opposed to any form of collectivism. Funding necessary government is not collectivism, however. Government should be funded, ideally, by charging a fee for the benefits government provides. That is to say, we may only conduct business profitably because government enforces laws which create an environment in which the conduct of business is practical and sustainable. For this they charge a fee called a sales tax (and/or a tax on import). The money from this fee goes to supporting necessary government, without which said business would be impractical and unsustainable.

Perhaps the clearest dichotomy we can make is between coercive government and consensual government. We both seem to understand what both of those terms mean. Sorry to be confusing.

You say you oppose collectivism,

and then proceed to endorse it! You're saying that the government is entitled to the fruits of its collective extortion because it provides collective benefits, aren't you?

But I don't think you're really opposed to all forms of collectivism. I know I'm not. For example, my family is much closer to operating under economic collectivism than economic capitalism--internally, I mean. We all have our individual responsibilities, and when we fulfill them, everyone is fed, clothed, and sheltered. There is very little capitalist activity inside the family.

There are circumstances under which collectives work much better than capitalist competition. But they're all small--very small. Small enough that each member can know all the other members and hold them individually accountable.


It might be. Funding techniques differ, and so do people's opinions of what constitutes "necessary government."


And if you decide you don't need or want those services? Is it just for the government to assess you for them anyway? How about if you use more government services than the next guy: should you be charged more or less than he is?


Can you explain why you believe this? Why do you need a coercive government to help you conduct business?