Libertarianism in practice

[henry quirk]

Here's why, no matter how much I unbox (and I'll be gettin' back today) you'll never get it...

You still only have the rule about not depriving others of property unless they first deprive other others of property.

I can post the 3rd line multiple times, in the largest font, in the most obvious color, and you'd leave off life and liberty as though those words, what they are, don't matter.

And: you can't, or won't, see property in context.

Anyway: I'm gettin' too much into theory here...wouldn't want mick to get his panties in a twist.

I'll continue this in the unpackin' thread.

[RCSaunders]

What would a natural rights libertarian minarchy look like?

It won't look like anything because there will never be one.

Libertarianism, all flavors, has the same problem as all other social/political ideologies. It is not possible to make a society into the one you would like. It doesn't make any difference how big or small any society is, 20 or 20 million people, a society is whatever the people are the make up that society.

The only way you could make a society what you think it ought to be would require you to make all the people that are the society the kind of people that society would require. You can't change others and it would be wrong to do it if you could.

Your, "libertarian minarchy," is just another utopian dream detracting those bemused by it from persuing true freedom, which only individuals can establish for themselves.

[henry quirk]

So, RC, what would a society or community or nation look like if it only had the three laws I subscribe to?

[FlashDangerpants]

You don't think that anyone else has any sort of point being worried that you permit all sorts of cruelties and abuses on your territory, and just write it all off as the price of freedom?

So: how many folks with say-so are worried about the cruelties and abuses in China? Disney is in bed with them. Their products dominate markets. Govs support trade with 'em. China is a friggin' slaver-state folks with say-so turn a blind eye to and profit from but you'd have me believe the Free Zone would be the debbil everyone would rally to stop.

If the Free Zone were opposed it would be becuz of the freedom it offers. You can crow about abuses and cruelties of animals in the Free Zone all you like but till you amass on China's borders, till you sanction and embargo the world's preeminent slaver-state, you're just a hypocrite.

Maybe so, so but that's a bunch of whataboutism. That there's other people doing worse stuff than this doesn't make this good.

I have no illusion that our modern liberal democracy is perfect, nor perfectible. But I am a neoliberal incremental improvments type of guy, not the one flogging the 3 line panacea where the first two lines say virtually nothing and the 3rd not so much.

It doesn't seem like you have the legal framework that would provide contractual certainty for a complex armaments industry to work within though.

Yeah, you keep sayin that and keep failin' to demonstrate why this is the case.

You have no contract law Henry. You only have a one liner about property, where property is a mystical entity that needs unpacking.
You have yet to unpack it, merely offering bromides that you think it's obvious and you don't understand why others don't agree.
You have no body of case law, each new case is unrelated to any previous case.
You may or may not have some sort of appeals court, you aren't in a position to say as of now.
Last I knew, your idea of currency involved lugging physical objects such as precious jewels around to barter with.

You have concentrated very much on all the stuff of the modern complex society that you would throw away. You haven't done a lot to analyse the useful functions that any of it performs.

you definitely don't have the tax base to fund purchase of drones, satellites, etc for your militia, which appears to be self armed?

Since pop numbers haven't come up: this is baseless.

Pop numbers will come up soon enough.
But first ... what sort of taxation are you going to levy against your pop? That didn't seem like your bag at all, I must have missed something.
Are they collected by the militia? I don't see any revenue collection agency in your list of permissible government agencies.

And Musk loves us: we give him and others exactly what they need to develop reliable, robust, and comparatively inexpensive technology to get up and out. that's why we're establishin' a colony on the Moon and have begun capturin' and mining near Earth asteroids. The Orion-drive spacecraft (the whole reason we're on the Moon) we'll build will give us the Solar System.

Erm, I think you've missed a little something about Musk's business model. It is heavily reliant on state subsidies. his space stuff, heavily subsidised, his car company, bailed out by Obama.

But you have no framework for intellectual property protection other than some sort of local assembly where a guy has to argue his case afresh each time. You most likely have few international treaties with mutual obligations in this matter and thus likely aren't protected abroad either. Nobody is going to place their intellectual property within your boundaries, it would be commercial suicide.

And we haven't even delved into the importance of educational facilities to produce a technical workforce that can accomplish these tasks. Even primary education in your free zone is optional, costly, and as like as not done by the family, no?

You folks, you'll still be cryin' cuz you're leaders tell you we fuck dogs and smoke crank.

Well, that's likely to be true in some cases. But don't forget you can't do eminent domain land purchases to build sewer systems too and the roads are probably just trails in the dirt.

You'd be more like the Taliban than the Israelis.

Mebbe so.

Nobody would invest capital to build a complex pharmacuetical production facility in your region for the simple reason that you have no regulatory bodies to certify anything

That's exactly why they'd flock to us. We don't hobble and expensify their businesses: we free them up. The regulation is self-imposed cuz they understand if their product kills someone, they're on the hook.

Making it fundamentally illegal for any hospital in the rest of the world to prescribe medication made in your free zone for their patients. There's quality control rules for both manufacturer and customer, I don't think you quite get that.

They wouldn't be able to export any product

China, the preeminent slaver-state, has no troubles in that. The Free Zone wouldn't either.

China does on occasion have problems exporting product. Huawei telecoms equipment is not trusted in much of the world, many of their pharma factories are not certified and therefore are unable to export. But largely they participate in the quality control standards applicable to the product type in question and their certificatory system is fairly robust and thus their better companies are able to export complex equipment without using black market retail channels.

So did you take over a city...

I touched on that up-thread.

Is it not Utopian to assume that as these people face new challenges, none of them would waver in their commitment?

Touched on that up-thread.

Did you take over a city and force most of its population to leave, or did you take over a swamp and only allow the right sort in?

Is it not Utopian to assume that as these people face new challenges, none of them would waver in their commitment? Did your new politics create these perfected persons, or did you only admit the perfect to your heaven?

new politics...perfected persons

Freedom ain't new; the people aren't perfect (just free).

If they aren't perfect, how are you able to assume that they will never choose to leave to live a more comfortable life somewhere less free? Imperfect people make that choice all the time.

So far you haven't expanded from your 3 lines of law to cover very much.

Those three lines cover it all. I don't imagine, no matter much I unbox, you'll ever see that.

You haven't unboxed anything at all yet. So "no matter how much" is a bit of a stretch.
Consider the issue you will have dismissed above about hospitals not prescribing medications from an untrustworthy source. Something that I have mentioned before, years ago, is that your justice system is entirely consequence and revenge based. You don't offer anything by way of prevention other than fear of retribution. Can you not unpack a preventive solution for something from your 3 lines?

The role, nature and status of the appeal remains in question.

As I say: you've made me think...appeals is one thing I'm still mullin' over.

Ignoring the bad bits of human nature

I haven't. I've reframed them, put them in proper perspective. They're accounted for.

That's reminiscent of VA's regular claim that his arguments must be correct because otherwise somebody would have persuaded him they were wrong. Human fallibility has an immense array of ways to express itself, it's preposterous to account for them all with 3 lines of mysteries about property and an empty space where an appeals court might one day be inserted.

Your minarchism can admit no greed, malice, deception or cowardice

Sure it can. Your problem is all you see is greed, malice, deception or cowardice.

The slenderness of your legal framework, and the lack of oversight of all commercial activity in your free zone is like a giant beacon saying come to us you naughty bastards. You have to account for the simple fact that the environment you are proposing attaracts no only those with an overwhelming love of freedom because they wish to breathe free, but also those with a desire not to be subject to other laws such as the ones about who and what you can fuck.

In a sense your free zone would provide a service to the rest of the world. It would be an easy place to exile all the weirdos, perverts and creeps. Of course we're going to do that, it's cheap.

those are normal components of human nature.

But not the only components, and not the components evidenced by most folks, most of the time.

There is, of course, one slice of humanity dominated by greed, malice, deception or cowardice. I talk a little about them just up-thread, in my response to B. These are the ones who truly can't abide the Free Zone.

Unless ... and bear with me here ... they only follow rules as necessary but don't respect the spirit of them and break any they can if there's a profit in it. Which actually, is sort of what your ideal residents are used to doing as well.

[Skepdick]

gosh, what a clear, concise explanation of why libertarianism fails to scale up

thanks, guy!

Which of the million reasons do you want be to be clear and concise about?

There isn't any one specific root cause as to why it doesn't work - it's all of it that's junk. Positive principles withoug exceptions/limits/counter-balancing negative principles don't work in practice.

But one particular example is the harm principle. It's the only reason for which one's freedom/autonomy can be deprived.

So... should your society mandate vaccines to contain the spread of infectious diseases or is that not harmful enough to invoke the harm principle?

[RCSaunders]

So, RC, what would a society or community or nation look like if it only had the three laws I subscribe to?

Fairy land.

There can never be such a society or community. The whole thing is a big contradiction. Freedom is when the only limit on human choice and action are those limits imposed by reality itself. Any, "enforced," man-made law is a limit on individual human freedom.

I have no idea what the so-called, "three laws," are you subscribe to.

I know you wrote this:

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.

Is that what you call, "three laws?"

And here's how you described your minarchism:

A minarchism...

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

How is that different from any other government? Who chooses the constabulary, the judges for the court, the border patrol officers, and the militia soldiers. How are they payed and who pays them? Who tells them what to do (who to arrest and bring to trial, who to find guilty or innocent, who to keep out of the state, who to start shooting at), and who decides whether or not they are doing their job?

[The questions are all rhetorical, because every one of these things requires some kind of bureaucracy which will all become self-promoting agencies that will never remain "minimalist." Your pie-in-the-sky, utopian, "minimalist," government is just another form of social engineering run amuck.]

Sorry Henry. A minimalist government--"there just can't never be no such thing!"

[Skepdick]

Freedom is when the only limit on human choice and action are those limits imposed by reality itself. Any, "enforced," man-made law is a limit on individual human freedom.

From where you are looking every other human is reality to you. If other humans are imposing limits on you - that's reality limiting you.

If I limit your movement that's reality limiting you - because I am real.

[RCSaunders]

Freedom is when the only limit on human choice and action are those limits imposed by reality itself. Any, "enforced," man-made law is a limit on individual human freedom.

From where you are looking every other human is reality to you. If other humans are imposing limits on you - that's reality limiting you.

If I limit your movement that's reality limiting you - because I am real.

It's not the fact other human beings exist that limit one's freedom, it is when other human beings write their phony laws and use coercive force to intentionally interfere in others' lives that human freedom is limited.

[henry quirk]

whataboutism

Nope. In context: it's just pointin' out hypocrisy.

You have no contract law Henry

A contract is an agreement. At heart it's I'll use my resources, in a manner we both agree to, in service to our shared, and my individual, goals; you'll use your resources, in a manner we both agree to, in service to our shared, and your individual, goals.

Contract law, then, is an application of the 3rd line (note: I've continued unpacking).

currency...

...to be true money is backed by value, not faith. We don't print what we can't back with a tangible.

You have concentrated very much on all the stuff of the modern complex society that you would throw away.

Cuz that stuff is unnecessary and exists solely to flummox folks.

what sort of taxation are you going to levy against your pop?

I pay for what I need and want (don't you?). User fees.

Musk's business model. It is heavily reliant on state subsidies. his space stuff, heavily subsidised, his car company, bailed out by Obama.

I reckon he's equally regulated by The State. In the Free Zone he's regulated by the same 3 as everyone.

As for the Great Community Organizer: him bein' boondoggled by Musk is worth whatever it cost me in taxes.

you have no framework for intellectual property protection

Sure we do. Gotta ask though: what is intellectual property? I'm not sure we see it the same.

Precedent

I'm beginning to see the point of it, how it fits in the Free Zone. I'll address it and appeals in the morning.

education

Voluntary and varied. Traditional schooling, apprenticeships, etc. (and no women's or ethnic studies in the lot).

you can't do eminent domain land purchases...

We wouldn't: it's theft.

...to build sewer systems too and the roads are probably just trails in the dirt.

People pay for what they want and need. Our roads are no worse than yours, they go where folks need and want to go.

Making it fundamentally illegal for any hospital in the rest of the world to prescribe medication made in your free zone for their patients.

Free Zone-produced medicines wouidn't measure up, why? The incentive to profit is not sufficient to produce safe effective meds? I think the only nations who wouldn't buy Free Zone productions are those with unreasonable regs in place.

Did you take over a city...

I'm under no obligation to answer, you understand. The opening post request...

paint me a picture of a working Libertarian community, society, nation if the citizens, workers, etc. got it right

...doesn't include back story.

But, what the hell...

By the end of '22, with the emergency covid-19 suspension of the constitution and declaration of martial law by the houseplant, the lid blew off. A third of the citizenry frazzled by nearly three years of eroded liberties, and emboldened by 3 lines that bubbled up from the less respectable part of the net, went mencken on anyone thought to be responsible for, or thought to be abettin', turnin' citizens into cattle. '23 was bloody, vicious, the end of the union and the beginning of the American Nations: The Union of Socialist States to the west, The Amalgamated Socialist States to the east, The Midlands Democracies in the middle, the small American Free Zone hugging the gulf, and various Chinese satellites scattered in the interstices.

There, the beginning.

[FlashDangerpants]

what sort of taxation are you going to levy against your pop?

I pay for what I need and want (don't you?). User fees.

what sort of taxation are you going to levy against your pop?

[henry quirk]

How is that different from any other government?

The Free Zone has no legislators, hence no government

Who chooses the constabulary, the judges for the court, the border patrol officers, and the militia soldiers.

These all may be private agencies, under contract; or perhaps elected (only unanimous consent); some are just hired as in any other job. A mixture of all three, I reckon.

How are they payed and who pays them?

Employers pay employees, that's how it works, yeah?

Who tells them what to do(?)

Who tells an employee or proxy what to do?

who to arrest

Suspected murderers, slavers, rapists, and thieves.

who to find guilty or innocent

You're guilty if proven to be a murderer, slaver, rapist, or thief.

who to keep out of the state

Anyone can enter as a guest, after acknowledging, in writing, they understand and will abide by the 3 during their stay. After 90 days, they leave, reapply for guest status, or apply for citizenship. The Free Zone don't do refugees.

who to start shooting at

Invaders, of course: anyone who traipses across the border without acknowledging, in writing, they understand and will abide by the 3 during their stay.

who decides whether or not they are doing their job?

Their, on-the-job, superior or supervisor or commander.

[henry quirk]

So... should your society mandate vaccines to contain the spread of infectious diseases

Of course not. If you feel threatened by a debbil virus, stay home. If you feel you're personally endangered by someone not doin' what you feel they should to ensure your safety: take 'em to court and prove it.

Vaccines, medicines, etc. are available, as is all the info explaining 'em, but no one is obligated to get jabbed.

[henry quirk]

what sort of taxation are you going to levy against your pop?

I pay for what I need and want (don't you?). User fees.

what sort of taxation are you going to levy against your pop?

*sigh*

no taxation: user fees

[FlashDangerpants]

what sort of taxation are you going to levy against your pop?

I pay for what I need and want (don't you?). User fees.

what sort of taxation are you going to levy against your pop?

*sigh*

no taxation: user fees

erm...

you definitely don't have the tax base to fund purchase of drones, satellites, etc for your militia, which appears to be self armed?

Since pop numbers haven't come up: this is baseless.

Seems pretty based now.

[Skepdick]

Freedom is when the only limit on human choice and action are those limits imposed by reality itself. Any, "enforced," man-made law is a limit on individual human freedom.

From where you are looking every other human is reality to you. If other humans are imposing limits on you - that's reality limiting you.

If I limit your movement that's reality limiting you - because I am real.

It's not the fact other human beings exist that limit one's freedom, it is when other human beings write their phony laws and use coercive force to intentionally interfere in others' lives that human freedom is limited.

You are missing the point.

When other human beings write "phony laws and use coercive force to intentionally interfere" in YOUR life. That IS reality limiting YOU.

To draw a distinction between humans and reality is special pleading.