Libertarianism in practice

[mickthinks]

Because you want your attacks on Marxism to look reasonable, and they clearly aren't if you can't or won't defend your "free market natural rights minarchy" against the same line of attack.

[henry quirk]

as I say: I'll answer your mimicry after you answer my original

both are snark, but both are legit questions

[mickthinks]

They are questions ...

[Sculptor]

What would a natural rights libertarian minarchy look like?

In no particular order...

Folks would be more self-responsible (cuz other than private charities, there'd be no social safety net).

They'd have to take their welfare into their own hands. And those hands would have guns in them.

More folks would self-employ (cuz there'd be no regs hobblin' self-employment, and who wants to work for somebody else when you can work for yourself?).

A world of faulty electricals, fake drugs, snake oil. Collapsing buildings made with inflammable cladding.
Malfeasance, bribery, fraud.
Bad builders. We calls em cowboys.
If a job's worth doing its worth doing wrong; with a screw too short and a nail too long.
If you don't like it You'd better have a bigger gun crew.

Gun ownership would be encouraged (cuz self-reliant men and women aren't inclined to trust others as the only safeguard against violation).

Murder, and banditry.

The population would be smaller than it would be in a similar community today (without a social security net, with only private charities, folks would be a mite more diligent in makin' babies only when they want, and can afford, 'em).

The population would soon consist of one boss with the biggest gun, and millions of drones attached to a chain gang.

Justice would be swift (there's only 3 laws and a handful of associated applications).

There'd be no law makers (folks would negotiate and finagle with one another in civil disputes with the court of last resort as the final, not first, solution).

Contracts would be simple (again, there's only 3 laws and a handful of practical applications).

Money would actually be money (what the market values).

That is the most stupid thing yet.
What the fuck do yo thing that is?

There, a start...have at it: ask questions, level criticisms, make me think and write more.

[henry quirk]

They'd have to take their welfare into their own hands. And those hands would have guns in them.

yep

A world of faulty electricals, fake drugs, snake oil. Collapsing buildings made with inflammable cladding.

kinda sounds like now, don't it?

Malfeasance, bribery, fraud.

ditto

Bad builders. We calls em cowboys.

ditto

If a job's worth doing its worth doing wrong; with a screw too short and a nail too long.

ditto

If you don't like it You'd better have a bigger gun crew.

same as it always was

Murder, and banditry.

no more, and probably less than, now

The population would soon consist of one boss with the biggest gun, and millions of drones attached to a chain gang.

why?

[FlashDangerpants]

It seems you aren't really envisaging any very complicated enterprises in your economy.

why? what makes various enterprises complicated?

I can't imagine anybody would domicile within your borders to carry out a multibillion dollar R&D programme when it seems unlikely that the contracts to supply funding couldn't be written.

those fancy-schmancy contracts wouldn't get written why? what multi-billion dollar R&D? why multi-billion dollar R&D?

But if they could then disputes are to be resolved with referrence to a one sentence law that only says not to deprive another of property without good reason.

is that what it sez? can you post the the three lines for me, flash?

And at the end of it all, as intellectual property theft doesn't deprive anyone of a property,

oh my...how did you arrive at that?

why there would even be an appeals process if those three lines are still the whole of the law I can't imagine.

mebbe cuz appeals is sumthin' outside of court?

How is one court supposed to be higher than another?

none would be

Your imaginary country would be at the mercy of neighbours with modern economies,

why? and why does my minarchy lack a modern economy (and what is a modern economy? why is it preferable?)

but it's hard to see what your exports would be other than perhaps agricultural ones.

why?

Enterprises that provide complicated goods or services are typically going to be more complicated in many ways than ones which provide limited range. A ball bearing factory is less complicated than a manufacturer of communications satellites mainly because they have fewer complex issues to navigate. Nobody makes their enterprise complicated for shits and giggles, they do it because it is necessary in order to make their product or provide their service.

You already said that all the lawyers would be dead, which presumably is hyperbole indicating that you don't need that profession. So why are you challenging me to explain why fancy contracts wouldn't get written?

Multi-billion dollar R&D projects are used to design and validate complicated products, that's why. Does Minarchy cure cancer? No. So perhaps you would like somebody to spend billions of dollars on somethin that does.

I don't see what having me post your 3 lines thing gains you, but whatever...

I-A man belongs to himself.

II-A man's life, liberty, and property are his.

III-A man's life, liberty, and property are only forfeit, in part or whole, when he knowingly, willingly, without just cause, deprives another, in part or whole, of life, liberty, or property.

That does amount to nothing more than saying you can't take stuff without good reason.


How the fuck is an appeal against a judicial ruling not a court matter?

[henry quirk]

Nobody makes their enterprise complicated for shits and giggles

and why would folks livin' in a minarchy be less serious-minded about their enterprises -- large and small, simple and complex -- than you or I livin' where we do?

why are you challenging me to explain why fancy contracts wouldn't get written?

you said (nobody) would domicile within (my) borders to carry out a multibillion dollar R&D programme when it seems unlikely that the contracts to supply funding couldn't be written. I asked, those fancy-schmancy contracts wouldn't get written why?. With less snark: why would a minarchy preclude contracts to supply funding?

Does Minarchy cure cancer?

mebbe someone livin' in one might.

So perhaps you would like somebody to spend billions of dollars on somethin that does.

seems to me: that's not my call.

That does amount to nothing more than saying you can't take stuff without good reason.

they do a damn-sight more than that: you have to unbox the contents and apply them

How the fuck is an appeal against a judicial ruling not a court matter?

I'm gonna put that one off for the moment...remind me when we get further down the discussion road, and I'll return to it.

[Sculptor]

Capture.JPG

[FlashDangerpants]

Nobody makes their enterprise complicated for shits and giggles

and why would folks livin' in a minarchy be less serious-minded about their enterprises -- large and small, simple and complex -- than you or I livin' where we do?

why are you challenging me to explain why fancy contracts wouldn't get written?

you said (nobody) would domicile within (my) borders to carry out a multibillion dollar R&D programme when it seems unlikely that the contracts to supply funding couldn't be written. I asked, those fancy-schmancy contracts wouldn't get written why?. With less snark: why would a minarchy preclude contracts to supply funding?

Does Minarchy cure cancer?

mebbe someone livin' in one might.

So perhaps you would like somebody to spend billions of dollars on somethin that does.

seems to me: that's not my call.

That does amount to nothing more than saying you can't take stuff without good reason.

they do a damn-sight more than that: you have to unbox the contents and apply them

How the fuck is an appeal against a judicial ruling not a court matter?

I'm gonna put that one off for the moment...remind me when we get further down the discussion road, and I'll return to it.

I assume there's other version of minarchism out there, so I'm not necessarily saying that none of them can support a diverse and complex economy. I am saying that your's can't because you have created a recipe for a capricious legal system.

Complex business entities have complex procurement arrangements with other complex entities. They have complex contracts safeguarding intellectual property, others for the demarcation and sharing of risks. They need to have these complexities because they also need complex financing arrangements which you can't get if there is not a predictable protection of intellectual property and quantifiable risk mitigation processes.

You can't do any of that if you can't refer to case law precedent to predict the outcome of disputes.

Consider the constitution of your own country that you live in today. It has a provision against unlawful search and seizure, but it has no specific provision for privacy. So an unwritten privacy guarantee was eventually, but controversially, inferred from the assumed intent of the search and seizure on among others.

Your thing is sort of doomed either to end up in that sort of quagmire or worse: to just end up being endlessly "unpacked" in whichever way whoever does the unpacking feels like doing it on that day.

[henry quirk]

...is: I never said it would be a utopia.

[FlashDangerpants]

The Utopian angle will come in later. For the time being the issue is poverty. You don't have a legal code that could provide certainty over very much of anything except land and stuff that is on that land right now with little regard for what is on any other land.

So it seems you have very limited capacity to provide complex services. So aside from agriculture, you might not have a lot else going on.

[henry quirk]

I am saying that your's can't because you have created a recipe for a capricious legal system.

It would be simple, robust, and largely incorruptible.

Complex business entities have complex procurement arrangements with other complex entities

Only reason any of it is complex is cuz somebody is lookin' to cheat.

They have complex contracts safeguarding intellectual property, others for the demarcation and sharing of risks.

There's no reason at all any of that has to be.

They need to have these complexities because they also need complex financing arrangements

ditto

You can't do any of that if you can't refer to case law precedent to predict the outcome of disputes.

You can do that (though there's no good reason to) if you have simple unambiguous law in place.

Consider the constitution of your own country that you live in today. It has a provision against unlawful search and seizure, but it has no specific provision for privacy. So an unwritten privacy guarantee was eventually, but controversially, inferred from the assumed intent of the search and seizure on among others.

I'm no fan of the constitution. The 3 lines cover eveything in, well, three lines.

Your thing is sort of doomed either to end up in that sort of quagmire or worse

It's doomed when the citizens fall away from the 3 lines, not in zealously adherin' to 'em.

being endlessly "unpacked" in whichever way whoever does the unpacking feels like doing it on that day.

They can't be. Try it yourself: take the three and try interpretin' each line in a way that simultaneously subverts them while preservin' them. It can't be done.

The Utopian angle will come in later.

I was referrin' to sculptor's pic, and -- no -- not from me it won't.

For the time being the issue is poverty.

Poverty is no more, and probably less, an issue in the minarchy than it for anywhere.

You don't have a legal code that could provide certainty over very much of anything except land and stuff that is on that land right now with little regard for what is on any other land.

Life, liberty, property (the individual's right to his) covers it all.

[FlashDangerpants]

I am saying that your's can't because you have created a recipe for a capricious legal system.

It would be simple, robust, and largely incorruptible.




being endlessly "unpacked" in whichever way whoever does the unpacking feels like doing it on that day.

They can't be. Try it yourself: take the three and try interpretin' each line in a way that simultaneously subverts them while preservin' them. It can't be done.

A large group of people with lots of money move into a small town and buy several plots of land.
They have now met the only standard of citizenship that I can imagine you are able to support?
At the spot nearest the border they use their plot of land to build and operate a meth lab that generates large profits from drug tourists who aren't breaking any rules as long as they don't do anything to any property.

After that it's boring to commit to one line of action for your imoral new neighbours. They can do stuff to make some people feel unsafe without harming property, that's quite easy if you control a horde of junkes. They can get the border closed if they ship enough narcotics over it, and with your whole country blockaded they can probably corner the now distressed property market as those who aren't quite so commited to the minarchy as they assumed when they moved in now cut their losses and look to move away (an aspect of human nature you can't really ignore). Let's say they do some of all of the above until they represent a slender majority of the town population. After that they can stack the jury in any case they want to, so everybody else in town now leaves because they now get to decide how the law is interpreted in all cases. Now they can do anything they want.


Your individualist paradise can be hijacked, subverted and corrupted by any sufficiently large group of people operating in concert towards that task. Limiting communal responsiblity to nothing but not depriving from others of property doesn't really unpack very elegantly.

[Immanuel Can]

Tell me how Liberty is supposed to work: paint me a picture of a working Libertarian community, society, nation if the citizens, workers, etc. got it right.

I don't wanna read theory, no: I wanna read your vision of application.

Over to you, henry.

Ah, the old switcheroo!

Henry asks you to provide a constructive vision of a Marxist future, and you don't really answer -- just mentioning a bunch of stuff you want gone, but without speaking of the mechanics of how the society would actually operate -- and then you flip the question to him, hoping to neutralize the critique.

I guess your assumption has to be, "If he has no fixed vision for Libertarianism, I don't have to have one for Marxism." Two wrongs make a right. Very amusing.

The problem with that strategy is twofold: first, that any defects in Libertarianism do nothing to patch up any holes in Marxism, and secondly whereas Libertarianism minimizes collectivist interfence, and leaves almost everything to the choices of the individual, Marxism is the opposite: the subsuming of everything to collectivist, government fiat. So there is a much greater need to specify the outcome in advance for Marxism, and much less for Libertarianism (although not none, of course).

So why don't you flip back to the Marxist thread, and try answering the question of HOW the "worker's paradise" is supposed to operate in practical terms, instead of just listing the high-fallutin' things you hope will magically resolve themselves?

[henry quirk]

A large group of people with lots of money move into a small town and buy several plots of land.

Why would anybody sell to these folks? I'm a property owner: I ain't sellin' 'em nuthin'.

They have now met the only standard of citizenship that I can imagine you are able to support?

Buyin' citizenship?

No, if you wanna be a citizen, you gotta be a signatory to this...

Charter of the American Free Zone

I-A man belongs to himself.

II-A man's life, liberty, and property are his.

III-A man's life, liberty, and property are only forfeit, in part or whole, when he knowingly, willingly, without just cause, deprives another, in part or whole, of life, liberty, or property.

To defend, and offer redress of violations of, life, liberty, and property, the following safeguards are recommended...

I-a local constabulary

II-a local court of last resort

III-a border patrol

IIII-militia

Establishing any or all of these safeguards, or variations of these safeguards, is at the discretion of individual communities, however: as citizens are the final safeguard it is strongly recommended no other safeguard be established without the oversight of militia.

At the spot nearest the border they use their plot of land to build and operate a meth lab that generates large profits from drug tourists who aren't breaking any rules as long as they don't do anything to any property.

Meth kills, meth makers are killers: assumin' they got that far, they'd be hung.

This is natural rights minarchy, not an ancap.

Limiting communal responsiblity to nothing but not depriving from others of property doesn't really unpack very elegantly.

If that's all you think is there, in the 3 lines, you've haven't unpacked 'em.

Should I explain them to you? I'd be divin' into principles, though: that might put me in violation of mick's opening instructions.

What say you, mick? Can I unpack the 3 laws for flash?