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

Please look up a definition of collectivism. Then we will talk.







I believe we were speaking of governments, not families, in this context.







Yes, that's why we have representative government, i.e., so we can come to an approximation of a consensus on the matter. The more decentralized the government structure, the more likely any individual will live under a local government that shares his view of what "necessary government" is. The Constitution sets the limits for the federal government.







Well, if you are entirely self-sufficient, I suppose you will have no need to ever pay sales tax. If, however, you choose to benefit from the trade environment, then you pay as you go.







I believe we've covered this one ad nauseam already.

Why settle for the approximation of a consensus when you can work for the real thing? --especially since, judging from the arguments you make, from your viewpoint the current approximation must be really execrable.


You're telling me that if it weren't for the government I wouldn't be able to trade with my neighbor? How does that work? I barter with my friends and neighbors all the time, I don't pay sales tax, and the government has absolutely nothing to do with any of it.


...while I don't believe we've covered it at all. You've asserted that a coercive government is necessary. I have explained that it's not, using the first scenario that occurred to me, that of the insurance company. (Of course, it's entirely possible that in real life someone would come up with an even better solution and make scads of money.) You've asserted that that would never work because the evil big corporations would unfairly freeze the little guys out. I've pointed out that it doesn't work that way without a government. You expressed limited agreement with me in the area of monopolies. And suddenly you're back to repeating your assertion that coercive government is necessary, without further support.

If you'd like to stop arguing, I entirely understand. But let's acknowledge that we're going to stop arguing, rather than intimating that the argument is complete.

Complete consensus is just not possible, in the real world, on any large scale. Rather than composing my own explanation, however, let me refer you to the words of someone possessing a far loftier stature in the field of political science than my poor self, viz.,











If it were not for government, you'd be in the state of nature where your neighbor could kill you for what you have, so long as he could catch you by surprise, or overwhelm you will sufficient numbers. You seem not to appreciate this fact.







I believe that if you look at my previous posts you will see that I have addressed this. If you disagree with what I've said, that is your prerogative. There is no point in going round and round in circles on this topic. Simply put, governments require coercive power so as to enforce laws, keep the peace, prevent injustice, restrain evil, etc.,.







My part of that particular argument is complete (defense rests). If you have more to say on the matter, feel free to do so. I have certainly not conceded the point merely because I have concluded my argument.

Actually, given the title of this thread, I'm the defense. You're part of the prosecution.

I have no objection to letting things percolate for a bit...

Point taken. Although I am also a defender of libertarianism (in the sense of the classical liberal component of conservatism), just not pure libertarianism in the modern sense, as I understand it.

Actually, I was only referring to the coercive government aspect of our debate (I don't know what else I can say in that regard), but if you would like to call it quits altogether, that's fine with me. I was, however, looking forward to your response to Locke.

I can't disagree with the quote, but it's not relevant. I'm not talking about consensus among thousands of parties: I'm talking about simple agreement between two parties. We know that's possible; people sign and are held to contracts every day.

Let's see, I asserted that funding necessary government was not collectivism, after you had suggested it was. Then you said that different people will have different opinions on what functions of government are necessary, thereby implying that government by consensus was problematic. Then I said that there could be an approximation of a consensus at the local levels on that question, as conservative government is decentralized. Then you asked, wouldn't it be better to have perfect consensus, to which I answered that this was not practical in government, and provided a quote from Locke arguing the point. Then you said what is contained in the quote above. Puzzling.

Perhaps I haven't been clear enough. Consensual government is government by contract. Contracts are formalized agreements between two parties. Generally, such a contract will consist of a number of separate clauses of agreement, along with prescribed courses of action should each clause be violated by one party or the other, or become irrelevant or overcome by events.

If force is initiated between two parties in a way not foreseen by their contract, and if the violation is not covered by some overarching super-contract that has also been agreed to by both parties, then with respect to one another they are in the "state of nature" you described earlier. In general that would be seen to be an undesirable situation and would mostly be avoided where possible.

Anyone who wishes to have the benefits of government has exactly as many benefits as he is willing to submit to and can afford to pay for; anyone wishing to remain in a state of nature is free to do so. Any unforeseen needs that might crop up will be quickly met by the free market, driven by the motivation to make a buck.

That's what I mean by consensual government.

Is anything still unclear?

In the event that the parties involved in the contract disagree as to whether or not the terms of the contract have been violated, how is that disagreement resolved without implied, if not actual, violence or a legal system capable of enforcing tort law?

This is a problem in need of a solution. In a real-world Libertopia, the free market would supply a range of solutions to it, some good and some bad, and the good ones would crowd out the bad ones. It's impossible to predict or control the free market (which is why socialism can never work), but various ancaps have brainstormed about this issue anyway, and come up with a number of ingenious possible solutions.

Most of the solutions I've read involve a choice: two parties with a grievance between them can decide that they will deal with it in Hawkeye's "state of nature," or they can agree on some more civilized way of resolving the conflict. Respectable arguments have been made that anyone with any sense of self-preservation at all will tend to shy away from the state-of-nature option (essentially, it's difficult or impossible ever to take revenge carefully enough to exactly "get even" in everybody's eyes, and in the state of nature, any perceived "unevenness" is enough to get you killed).

There are several more civilized options discussed in the literature. One of them, for example, would involve both parties agreeing on a particular private judge to hire, with each party paying exactly half the judge's fee (even if the parties' ability to pay is widely disproportionate). Part of the judge's contract is that the two agree a priori to abide by his decision. The aggrieved parties are motivated to hire the judge and abide by his decision by the desire to stay out of the "state of nature," and the judge is motivated to render an absolutely fair and impartial decision by the desire to maintain and enhance a good reputation so that he can get more business and make more money. He is also going to have a contract and a decision that is so painstakingly clear that it will be obvious to all concerned whether a provision of that contract is broken or not, otherwise he'll get a reputation as a judge whose decisions are appealed a lot, which will not be good for business.

Robert Heinlein has written a couple of good books about libertarian societies; probably the best is The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, which also contains an interesting plan for organizing a rebellion. L. Neil Smith has written a number of almost-as-good books about libertarian societies, including Pallas, Forge of the Elders, and The Probability Broach.

I don't get it. Sorry. And the thing is, I don't think I ever will, so you don't have to explain it again. Good luck with all that.

You haven't actually answered the question. Instead you've talked around it. Having discounted the "state of nature" option you've suggested several other options which all hinge on both sides argeeing as to method and being bound. Since the problem was a lack of agreement in the first place why would you expect them to agree on a method of resolving their disagreement and further to be bound by it when they can't even agree whether or not the contract has been violated?



Heinlein also espoused the opinion that only those who have served government should have a voice in it. Surely you're not saying that you agree with that.

It was late when I read your post, so excuse the surliness of my first reply. I have read your explanation multiple times, and all I see is chaos. Where is the final authority who is going to make a ruling and enforce it on the parties? That's what I don't get. The whole community has to have 1) agreed on a final authority, and 2) has to have given that authority the power to use coersion to enforce its rulings. The alternative is the "range wars" of the old west.

It's the stakes that does the trick.

Let me present a scenario. I won't even use a contract, on the premise that a no-contract situation should be even blurrier than a contractual one, so if the no-contract situation can be resolved, then any contractual issue that should crop up ought to be resolvable as well. If you disagree, we can talk further.

Imagine that you and I live near one another. I have done something to my property that you contend reduces the value of your property. Pink flamingos, perhaps, or a mirror ball, or old couches on the porch or rusty cars on blocks. Maybe something else. Anyway, my position is that I'm free to do whatever I want with my property on my property. Or maybe it's that my pink flamingos are far enough away from your place that they don't have any effect on your property value. At any rate, I disagree with you, and arguing isn't getting us anywhere. You say that me reducing the value of your property is the same as stealing from you, and stealing is an initiation of force. A finding of objective fact is out of the question, because it would require you to actually sell your property and note the selling price, which you don't want to do.

Is this a reasonable example scenario for your objection? (If it's not, I may make you come up with the next one.)

You have two choices.

You can take the state-of-nature route and apply retaliatory force to me--perhaps sneaking onto my place at night or when you're pretty sure I'm not at home and stealing my flamingos, or vandalizing my rusty cars, or whatever. This is very risky for you, though, because I am liable to perceive it as initiated force; if so, now it's my turn to "get even." Heck--I might even catch you in the act and shoot you as a trespasser. (For various reasons, it has been speculated that in a libertarian society shooting trespassers might develop into a competitive sport, with points awarded for style and poise.) Even if I don't catch you in the act, it might be tough to convince a private judge and/or a jury, either or both of which you may find yourself facing, that theft or vandalism doesn't constitute initiated force.

So if you're not making any headway with me one-on-one, but you decide it's too risky to revert to a state of nature, then you might suggest to me (in front of witnesses, preferably) that we hire a private judge to arbitrate the issue between us.

Now the situation has changed. If I say no, then it can only be for one of two reasons: either I think you're simply trying to harass me with frivolous nonsense, or I'm actually afraid you have a point and the judge will agree with you. The former is very unlikely, even if you're considerably richer than I am and can afford frivolous judge's fees, for reasons of self-interest that we can get into later, if you like. Essentially, except in extraordinary circumstances, for me to refuse such a proposal would be pretty much the same as admitting guilt--in which case I have implicitly also agreed (in public) that retaliatory force on your part is justified. I haven't signed anything, of course, but it will still look suddenly bad for me now if I were to shoot you on my property or otherwise try to "get even" for your retaliatory force. Suddenly the state-of-nature threat has flipped around and is working for you and against me. So I'm unlikely to refuse your suggestion of arbitration. At the very least, I'll probably make some sort of counter-offer ("I'd love to, but I have to clip my toenails that day, so I can't. However, I was just thinking this morning that that mirror ball would actually look a lot better in the back yard. Have you ever seen my back yard? Come on out and tell me what you think."), and negotiations will be off and running again.

If we do agree on arbitration, the judge will be very specific about exactly what he expects to be done (having his decision "appealed" to another judge for lack of precision would be bad for his professional reputation; there might even be a money-back guarantee for such cases), and we will both already have signed a contract agreeing to abide by it scrupulously. Any deviation from it on either side will be very clear and obvious breach of contract, or initiation of fraud, which is a form of initiated force, and here comes the whole specter of the state of nature again.


You're talking about Starship Troopers? That was a great book, although the movie they made from it sucked (except for Denise Richards, of course). I do reserve the right (just as I'm sure you do) to agree with some of Heinlein's opinions without being forced to accept all of them; but aside from that, I did not understand that book as an argument that the franchise should be restricted to military veterans. I understood it as an argument that universal suffrage is a dumb idea from at least a couple of different perspectives--with which argument I do agree. I believe he has a character say in the book that he's not sure the way they do it is the best way, but simply that it hasn't done too badly so far. I'm not sure what the best distribution of the franchise would be; but then I think we can do without a state entirely, and there's no need for state elections without a state, so the question's moot.

I still think that you're talking around the question instead of answering it. Part of the problem is that you seem to be judging your hypothetical opponent by your own standards and values. You seem to leave out the facts that there are plenty of people in this world who would just as soon kill you as look at you and that there are plenty of unreasonable people in this world who don't give a tinker's damn (or anyone else's for that matter) what the consequences of their actions would be. You seem to subscribe to the theory that man is inherently good and because of that things will always work out reasonably in the end. Using your example, what if I simply murdered you and your entire immediate family, firebombed or otherwise destroyed your mirror ball, pink flamingos, old couches and rusty cars and annexed your property to mine. While I may have to face the consequences of my actions somewhere down the road, that fact wouldn't do you much good, would it? Further, after demonstrating a willingness to use force and violence and an utter lack of regard for human life, the property of others and future consequences, who do you think would want to call me to task? Without a higher secular authority to restrain my actions, what makes you think that I wouldn't get away with it.

Yeah, I just keep picturing each side hiring his own private judge, and getting opposing rulings, followed by each side hiring different private police agencies to enforce their respective rulings with armed private police. Just seems like chaos to me if there is no authority that the whole community has agreed to ahead of time. Not the kind of thing that can readily be done ad hoc, seems to me.

Oh, that one's easy. (I thought you'd be interested in something a little more academic and difficult.) In that case, you simply take a bullet in the back of the head from the next guy to run across you, who is then incapable of buying his own drinks for the next couple of months. Then whatever of your property can't be returned to its rightful owner is scavenged on a first-come-first-served basis. Dangerous predators like you can't be tolerated in a polite society, and nobody will be afraid to kill you (or even kidnap you and torture you to death) because he knows everybody will agree that you had it coming.

The state of nature is a b*tch. Most people will want to stay the heck away from it; but those who don't will provide the rest of us with occasional sport.


I believe this is the third time I've said this on this thread: libertarianism is not based on the assumption that man is basically good, it's based on the assumption that man is basically interested in preserving his own skin. It doesn't work well with folks who want so badly to kill others that they're eager to die in the attempt; but then neither does anything else.


That problem is a common one to all human experience: dead is dead.

You're being unfair, and you know it. I'm surprised at you.





Predicting the free market is begging for failure, but my suspicion is that mercenary groups like that wouldn't be particularly profitable in a libertarian society. Most dispatching of predators would probably be done by local folks, because they'd be the ones convinced of the justness of their cause.





I wouldn't have a problem with such an authority, if one existed. (Obviously not: I, being part of the community, would have agreed to it!) But I think that's much more farfetched than anything I've suggested, in any community bigger than a family.

Barak, what's not fair? If it's all about the free market, what's to stop one side, after getting a "bad" ruling from a mutually agreed upon judge, from hiring another judge to get a "good" ruling to counter the first one? Are there laws to prevent this? If so, where did they come from? Even if this was some sort of contract violation, couldn't he hire a "sympathetic" police agency to enforce the new judge's ruling regardless? Who's to stop him? I am assuming that free market police agencies are free to contract with whomever they like, no? What if the wealthier party, who lost, could hire a more powerful police agency than the guy who won at the first trial? Aren't we back to the state of nature, but on a larger scale? Since the profit motive is now the supreme law, what's to prevent this?



Seems to me that greater force will always win out, if there is no government. Yes, government too is force, but it is force agreed upon by all, and limited in scope by its constitution and the rule of law, apart from which it becomes, in Nock's terminology, not government any longer, but pure state.



I know you are a smart guy, and have thought all this through, but somehow I just cannot digest it. You never know, however. It could very well be that my mind is overly rigid, and your notions are so completely alien to it that my mind just simply cannot find a place for it to settle. In other words, I still don't get it. I cannot see it working. This could, of course, be my failing, not yours but, you see, I can see real libertarianism working, because real libertarianism works within the context of limited government. It makes government a servant instead of master. What you are advocating, however, is not libertarianism, but anarchism (i.e., no government) which just, to me, seems unworkable ab initio. Maybe, however, I just don't get it. My powers of comprehension are not, after all, limitless, even if nearly so. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Life isn't fair, its just hard; and when you refuse to face reality its harder.

Your bullet to the back of the head theory is ok as far as it goes but its not exactly fool proof. Some people are capable of violence and some aren't. Some are good at it and some aren't. All it takes is a few who are good at it to subjugate the vast majority who aren't. What you continue to cling to was tried in the middle ages and it didn't work particularly well then. What makes you think it would work any better now. My response to your scenario is the response that a medieval warlord would have made. Most of them died quite comfortably in their own beds of natural causes. A fine working example of what you propose is available right now. Its called Somalia. No functioning government, no civil authority and run by private enterprise. If that's how you prefer to live, have at it. Just wanting to be left alone doesn't make it happen. There will always be someone who is perfectly willing to cause you grief. Power abhors a vacuum and some would be strongman will always try to fill it. You really need to get out and about and see what living without a functioning government is like. There are actually only two kinds of people; predator and food. Take away government and its law enforcement function and you'll soon find out which you are. I hope for your sake that you're a predator. If you're not you'd better hope no one is hungry.