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Did you just rewrite atlas shrugged in 2 paragraphs?
I would rebut, and say the issues is socialized losses and costs while privatizing the profits/tragedy of the commons/extraction without due compensation/collusion/fraud/monopoly/rivers on fire/cancer clusters/disgusting food/dangerous drugs/pinkertons/unsafe air travel. To pretend that there are not serious and almost endless downsides to unregulated commerce and exploitation is crazy.
Classically, libertarians always seem to want all the benefits of a stable state with a monopoly on powers, as long as it doesn't realllllllyyyyy apply to them, and they don't have to pay for it. Laws for thee and not for me etc....rich people already kind of live that life, so it is an attractive philosophy for many, I run into them every day.
True believers can always move to the libertarian paradise that is Somalia!
As far as keeping a tax base of people that have immensely benefited from the state apparatus to generate their wealth. It is perfectly fair to incentivise them to keep some of their wealth in the place that helped create it. Again, wanting all of the benefits while shirking the costs.
The rest of your post is okay, but this kind of tired, low-effort sneer is not a good faith argument. Stick to your actual disagreements with your opponents and not recycled tropes. (Pointing out that Somalia is, in your opinion, the end state of an actual libertarian society is fine, but using it as a dunk is not.)
Would changing it from "You" to "True believers" work better? jeroboam listed places like soviet russia and california as approaching or end states of communistic collectivist societies full of spendthrift takers or "grasshoppers". I don't think my inclusion of Somalia as a counterpoint is particularly offensive, even if it is cliche. The ant and the grasshopper parable is equally boo outgroup insulting and also a trope at this point. He also is blocking me, so no need to worry about offending him.
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Libertarians often want a state powerful enough to create and enforce property rights, and to raise a defensive military when needed, and not really anything else.
This would need taxes, of course, but much less.
Somalia doesn't do a good job with maintaining property rights.
Maybe so. That is a terrible idea. I think I pointed out the pitfalls of a minimalist state pretty well in my previous post.
You did, hence why I'm the other upvote here.
That said, I don't know that I agree that all of those would be serious problems. I'll run through what I think of each.
This is only really a problem when there are commons. With expansive enough property rights, there would not be many commons, and so not much tragedy. That said, some things are hard to keep separate (like air). In such cases, while, strictly speaking, it may be regulated as an infringement on property rights, really it should probably just be treated as a commons with no property rights, and subject to regulation accordingly.
Not really a problem with good property rights, except in cases of bad decision making/desparation (and the market should sort out the latter).
Yup, this is a problem. It shouldn't get worse than monopoly pricing, but this isn't great, and regulation is probably reasonable here.
Yeah, I'd want this regulated. But I would assume that many libertarian states (should such exist) would care about things like this? Breaking contracts like this should fall afoul? Maybe violate property rights?
Yes, bad, though not always worth getting rid of, if the alternative is worse.
That said, I'm not sure that we'd have more of these. Competition should try to keep these away, and the reduced regulation should lower barriers to entry for competitors.
See tragedy of the commons.
The market might sort this out to some extent (in that people won't want to be in harmful situations, and so would have to be compensated accordingly should they know), but yeah, this is a problem.
What? There are no laws requiring that our food, as it exists today, tastes good. It tastes good because they want us to buy it. This wouldn't change.
Yup. I'm not a fan. I suppose libertarians could try to regulate nonconsensual use of them as a crime; it would be infringing on the rights of others?
Not okay. The state has the monopoly on violence. That doesn't change.
Well, airlines have a pretty strong incentive to make air travel safe: they want people to fly. I don't think this would be too large of a problem.
Overall, I don't think it's nearly as hellish as you suggest to go with the minimalist option, though there are several things that I would prefer be regulated.
Regarding the food, I'm thinking more along the lines of gutter oil and listeria outbreaks. The consumer simply cannot judge if a certain restaurant is safe to eat from, they will never have perfect information. That is the problem with a ton of libertarian policy ideas. LTs have to assume an almost omniscient consumer/citizen for most of their ideas to have even a small chance of working. There isn't enough time,energy, information, or intelligence in anyone's life to make choices like that, we need regulatory bodies of experts with enforcement mechanisms and bureaucracies.
Re: Air travel. The 787 Max kinda disproves your point there. Before regulation basically everyone who flew regularly eventually died flying. We probably shouldn't have to let 100 more planes crash before consumers decide that getting to california for cheap isn't worth going on a certain type of plane. Not to mention the ongoing issues due to regulatory capture and just underregulating/poor oversight that have lead to deaths and serious problems, it is getting so bad that it is undercutting national security and economic progress in a vital industry.
Thanks, those are both good examples.
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That Somalia line is a tired cliché that straight up ignores the Hoppean elephant in the room.
Libertarians are fine with authority, actually. So long as it's consensual and not tyrannical. We want our masters to compete to be picked, not ditch them altogether. That's anarchists you're thinking of.
Hoppe is quite fine with feudalism. And in my travels I've found lots of libertarians that actually did go to places like Hong Kong, Prospéra and the UAE that are clearly and obviously ruled by some authority but provide the basic entrepreneurial freedom and reasonable tax rates that are sorely lacking in the West. Better to be ruled by a fair autocrat than tyrannized by the people.
I myself have moved my permanent residence to Galt's Gulch, and it's really just fine living among civilized people that aren't trying to squeeze you for every last cent to give nothing in return under the guise of a social responsibility they abdicate every day. I recommend it.
Ah yes UAE home of literally modern day slavery and modern day monarchy with free money and sinecures for all true citizens and free or subsidized healthcare, education, and housing. An economy based on resource extraction they lucked into. Truly a beacon for humanity.
Hong Kong, a successful trading port run on British principles/laws for 100 years that is now being slowly bogged down by chinese nonsense, but hey you can still score a dog crate apartment (literally) for a reasonable price.
Prospera, I read a few think pieces about it a while ago. Seems like a good place to set up crypto scam companies and stem cell clinics. Also seems like the locals don't like it.
None of these "countries" are driving humanity forward, anywhere is already pretty nice if you're rich, and large stable governments are responsible for almost all recent scientific progress and will continue to be so. These little projects are sideshows at best.
I don't understand your final paragraph. Is there a Galt's Gulch project out there or are you saying you've moved to the UAE? Don't worry, we'll let you back in once the robots do all the work, just nice like that.
Edit: Had to look up recent Prospera stuff, as expected it is basically just a money/drug/crypto laundering scheme. Pretty funny, seems like they are about to be beaten down by the unrelenting might of the honduran government. (words that have never been said before in history)
https://theintercept.com/2024/03/19/honduras-crypto-investors-world-bank-prospera/
Still waiting on your SLS Block 2 Mr. Big Government, at this point it costs so much they're going to have to turn it over to Boeing. This used to be true, it hasn't been for a while. At best they give some of it back through grants now. The days of long term fundamental research spawning large awe inspiring strategic projects are long gone.
Hell, even military innovation is done by VC backed startups now. Where's the government's Attention Is All You Need?
Deterritorialization has won, as expected.
There are lots of myths in the specific descriptions of these places you pithily give. These are memes, not knowledge. I'm certain you've never actually gone there and checked.
And they're not the real reason you're objecting anyway. If you see any amount of freedom as a laundering scheme and worthless in comparison to such fictions as "progress" we're not going to see eye to eye. I for one do not support tyranny.
Nice try, but I'm not telling you who John Galt is.
More to my point that you've misconstrued here. Governments have in the past, and continue to, fund and do immense amounts of fundamental research. But that wasn't my argument.
I was attempting to point out that no entity public or private can do the kind of complex research and invention required today without a stable, relatively safe, relatively predictable government in charge that provides basic infrastructure and services. We aren't getting our best (or any) innovations out of Syria or Iraq, or Palestine, or Myanmar, or the or Prospera etc...etc... (these are not examples of gulchs, just unstable regimes.)
I'll be impressed if/when we have an actual libertarian "country" as case study that is outperforming more traditional current governance types. It is also just so damn hard to pin any libertarian minded person down on what exactly they believe and how that would translate into a governing body or country. I don't think I've once gotten a straight answer.
I guess that's fair and we're actually going to see this with Argentina and to some degree El Salvador.
I thought Hoppe was pretty damn clear, open and consistent, actually.
Personally I ideally desire Patchwork, also known as Feudalism, and an efficient and minimal guardian of my natural rights. And I'll settle for a destruction of central orders and a return to smaller and more personal forms of government, inasmuch as is pragmatically possible. You know, like Machiavelli.
This obviously makes us enemies inasmuch as you seem to desire greater levels of centralization and support Administrative States as inherently legitimate sovereigns. But that's what this place is for, right? Talking to people you disagree with.
I've seen some chatter that El Salvador should try to model itself on Singapore. I would say Singapore goes against pretty much every libertarian ethos except for being pro-business. It has about as heavy a hand as you can have as a government controlling society and citizens. Although I wouldn't class the UAE or Hong Kong as particularly libertarian either. So maybe we should start there. Clearly you have an affinity for the ideology, how do you square the circle regarding these regimes and personal freedoms etc...
As I have stated, I've never really nailed down a "libertarian" on what they actually believe and what a real world based on those beliefs would look like, even when I was the treasurer for our college libertarian society wayyyy back in the day (threw some good fundraising poker games). Maybe this is my chance if you're willing to go to bat.
I'm game. This being all under the caveat that libertarianism is a fairly large ideological tradition and many will disagree with me on specifics, either because they're anarchists or because they have different social views or views on power.
But they are moreso than the West, and it is really all that matters to me.
To understand why, a good guide is the conceptual frame of Hirschman's Exit, Voice and Loyalty. The basics of his view is that members of any human organization faced with the deterioration of the quality of the organization are faced with a dilemma if they want to address this problem. They can either use voice, which is to say that they can use the mechanisms of the organization to internally struggle to improve it. Or they can use exit, which is to say dissolving the relationship between them and the organization.
Libertarianism, in essence, is the ideology that favors exit paired with competition as the mechanism for solving social problems under the name of Freedom of Association. In this sense, libertarians do not care about political rights (voice) as much as liberals or socialists. But they care absolutely about exit rights. They are perfectly happy for organizations to provide services to them that they have no direct input in, as long as their ability to fully divest from such an organization is guaranteed.
Hans-Herman Hoppe is most famous for taking this lens, applying it to government and attempting to build over the years a view of a system of government that would rely on consent and still allow for the preferences of various different human groups to be addressed by free association.
In Democracy: The God that Failed, he excoriates universal suffrage (voice) as a solution to the political problem, much preferring to is the rise of natural elites, who would nevertheless be beholden to natural law. To this end, he envisions a system of "covenant communities" that would be able to exclude members that are undesirable to them. For an example he gives the idea of a village having a sign that reads "no beggars, bums, or homeless, but also no homosexuals, drug users, Jews, Muslims, Germans, or Zulus".
This is essentially how international cities function. You have no political rights. Law is applied swiftly and strictly. Undesirables are kicked out. Property rights are strongly guaranteed. Taxes are minimal. And private life is strongly separated from public life.
The west does not function like this. You are encouraged, if not forced to participate in politics. Law is loosely applied if at all. There are laws on the books against divesting yourself from essentially any group. Property rights are heavily conditional. Taxes are high. And the State is immensely interested in spying on and controlling private life.
Everything is more complicated that this in the details, of course, but I hope that I can at least give you a broad feeling as to how a libertarian might see these international cities as havens of freedom compared to, say, the European Union.
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I'm not a libertarian, personally, but I don't think libertarians have the goal of society of driving humanity forward or progressivism of any sort. Some of them do, but that is adjacent to libertarianism. They just want a government that can defend property rights from outsiders and arbitrate disputes between insiders. You can't make a critique of liberal morality to libertarianism because they consider it in the domain of the individual and not the government.
A libertarian will tell you if you want to change the world, become an angel investor, or if you lack the means, purchase stock in the most forward-thinking companies. Or even better, start your own. Not demand the government to do so. And this is entirely consistent within their world view. Just because you don't like it or clutch your pearls about the second order consequences doesn't mean it doesn't make sense to a libertarian.
That is fine. I just think is is a terrible way to go about governing (or not governing) a large population. No man is an island, we live in a society, there but for the grace of god go I, and the thousand practical benefits of helping and being helped by your fellow humans. yadda yadda yadda....
There also seems to be an expectation that anyone and everyone is perfectly healthy and intelligent and is capable of starting a business or being the locus of their own control, etc...etc... a huge section of humanity isn't cut out for that, and the rest certainly weren't when they were born and won't be when they are old.
Nobody is clutching any pearls, just pointing out some basic stuff.
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