Political Matrix

[Todd]

Reality.  It's usually fairly easy to decide if something is a threat to life or not.  Even if it isn't, it will always boil down to a question of facts.

Interesting.  You now supposedly believe in the value of facts.  Yet when asked to provide facts to support your economic and historical assertions earlier in this very thread, you failed to do so. 

You try to disguise your purely ideological outlook as something rooted in "reality."  How silly.

[Florestan]

we've emerged from the arguments over porn (and thank you for the PM)

You're welcome. I hate it when filth takes precedence over truly important and normal things, such as how a society should be best organized. 

I'll answer to your points later this week-end. Please stay tuned.

[Philoctetes]

Interesting, if we didn't have the diner I wouldn't even know that you are a raving loon.

That has a broader application. Being a loon is a prereq for posting or even reading the diner.

[Florestan]

I certainly agree that the government should be as unobtrusive as possible with respect to things to go on in private.

This is indeed the crux of the matter and I'll come back to it. For the time being, I posit that making the distinction between private and public space and behaviours is THE landmark of a civilized society

But people equally do not want other peoples private or intimate choices to intrude on their lives, and are willing to concede the right to behave certain ways in public in return for the assurance that others will abide by the same rules.

QFT.

[Philoctetes]

Returning further back to a topic widely discussed in this topic: the 'great' recession, and the cause or non-cause of it.

Some recent news in regards to the housing, more specifically Fannie and Freddie, and the non-fix of it's structural integrity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S_3hZ7FOv8&feature=sub

"Guarantees produce moral hazard, risk, and excessive risk taking," says Anthony Sanders

[kishnevi]

You can type as many philosophical justifications for your "libertarian" philosophy as you please.  I am willing to bet my last dollar that almost no one would be willing to actually live in the "Utopian" paradise you have imagined.  They would flee from it and seek a place where reasonable social norms are enforced.  And I am quite sure that in the unlikely event that such a country ever comes into being, you would not want to live there either.  That is why you have to pay top dollar to buy a house in a community with an active city council that requires people to have neatly trimmed lawns, and why you wouldn't even feel comfortable driving your car through a community where people have sex on their front yards amid piles of garbage. 

You are merely proving that plenty of people like being told what to do.  But the fact that plenty of people like something does not mean it is morally right.  And there are plenty of people who would move to such a place.  As an indication, I know of people who, when purchasing a house, purposely look for clunkers in the yard, etc, because that indicates the community in question has loose zoning rules.

And you seem to be missing something important:  while Mr. Mayor has no right to tell you what to do with your garbage, your neighbors do.  Enforcement should be with them, and not with the government, and only if they choose to do so.  Government should intervene only if there is no other way to protect life or liberty, and then do so in the least intrusive way. 

You are right that I wouldn't want to live in a neighborhood with garbage on the lawns--because to me that indicates the people that live there have no respect for themselves or their neighbors.   I don't want a government that enforces these things because that means the government can also force me to do other things I don't want to do, like painting my house a certain color or operate a business out of my house.

If you want to live in a community where all the houses are a matching color, that's fine by me.  (In fact, I live in a such a place.)  But don't let it be because the city zoning board limits the colors to whatever palate pleases the city zoning board.  Let it be because you and your neighbors have agreed among yourselves that matching colors are a good, or at least pleasant, thing to have.

I certainly agree that the government should be as unobtrusive as possible with respect to things to go on in private.  But people equally do not want other peoples private or intimate choices to intrude on their lives, and are willing to concede the right to behave certain ways in public in return for the assurance that others will abide by the same rules.

But they don't need a government to do that.  Think of it this way: do you want your neighbors not to leave garbage on their lawns because they respect you, or do you want them not to leave garbage on the lawn only because they don't want to be fined by the local zoning board?

I'm leaving out the public sex because, unlike garbage on the lawn, I don't know of places where that actually happens.  But if you can give me some good reasons why public sex directly harms the life and liberty of other people,  I'll accede to you on that issue.

Interesting, if we didn't have the diner I wouldn't even know that you are a raving loon.

If I am mad, then may the whole world become mad like me.

[kishnevi]

Interesting.  You now supposedly believe in the value of facts.  Yet when asked to provide facts to support your economic and historical assertions earlier in this very thread, you failed to do so. 

You try to disguise your purely ideological outlook as something rooted in "reality."  How silly.

Well, you demanded I produce a case in which government did not intervene.  Since (as you ought to know, if you don't) government always intervene,  it's not possible to produce such a case.  And you also trotted out the scare scenario which was used to justify TARP, without acknowledging just how speculative that scenario actually was.

And I referred you to the interventions made by President Hoover in the period 1929-31 (by the Hoover, not by the Fed).  That's part of the historical record.  Read up on it if you aren't familiar with it.

[Florestan]

Reality.  It's usually fairly easy to decide if something is a threat to life or not.  Even if it isn't, it will always boil down to a question of facts.

Reality and facts show that accumulating pile upon pile of garbage in the streets is a serious threat to the health (i.e, life) of citizens. I suggest you take a half-hour walk in Naples to witness directly libertarianism in action with regard to throwing garbage.

On the contrary, it's the complete answer:  people in power like power and will use any excuse to stay in power.

That's an unwarranted generalization. History is full of people in power who renounced it voluntarily for one reason or another.

Enforcing morality is a handy excuse for staying in power.

Agreed. But that doesn't make enforcing morality a bad thing per se, just as fighting terrorism being a handy excuse for violating civil rights doesn't make fighting terrorism a bad thing per se. There is use and abuse and what should be feared is not power in itself but its abuse.

But it's taken most of history to get to the point where we can recognize that morality is merely an excuse for power and not a justification for it.

Strange. On one hand, libertarians view people as moral, rational and enlightened persons, oriented voluntarily towards their good and that of their fellow men; on the other hand, their morality, rationality and enlightenment ceases when they happen to hold an office in the government, in which case they turn into predators bent on consolidating their power by all means and at any cost.

What libertarianism recognizes is that only physical harm can be known as a matter of hard fact to be harmful.

I refer you again to Naples and the proven hard fact of garbage in the streets being physically harmful.

Besides, hard facts that goes contrary to libertarian claims are oftenly ignored. It's a hard fact that libertarianism was largely rejected by each and every society since recorded history. It's a hard fact that the Libertarian Party US has won, since its founding in 1971, between less than 0.1% and 1.1% of the popular vote in the presidential elections. It's thus a hard fact that the vast majority of people, since the dawn of civilization up to our present days, had and has no use for libertarianism. Yet libertarians are still busy at trying to convince them otherwise. It's like trying to break down the whole Great Chinese Wall with one's head.

Society is an imaginary construct, and it can never be more than the sum of its individual members. 

You could as well say that a Mahler syphony is an imaginary construct and it can never be more than the sum of its individual notes.

And only in a libertarian society can you 1) decide for yourself what the best thing in life are 2)decide to how to obtain them  and 3)obtain them without being prohibited by any one else.

Society being, as you just stated, just an imaginary construct, it follows that a libertarian one is just a mindgame among others. Ok, let's play it.

Even in such a society what you say wouldn't be true, because, regardless of the social and political arrangements, there will always be people who:

1) decide for themselves that the best things in their life belong to others

2) decide to obtain them by removing them from their owner

and this clearly prevents them from

3) obtaining them without being prohibited by anyone else

since they will always be prohibited doing so by policemen and judges.

Being the result of a democratic process is does mean an act of government is justified.  In this case, I'd answer that the city council has no right to prohibit garbage.  The garbage thrower's neighbors can sue him for nuisance, but that it's, because no one else is being harmed by his actions.

IOW, the pestilence and disease-spreading risks associated with garbage piling in Naples, both well-noted hard facts, harm no one but the garbage-thrower and his neighbours. Are you being serious?

As for Switzerland--if a country protects child molesters (ie Roman Polanski) and assists in hiding Nazi loot, then you'll forgive me if I don't admire it.

Welcome to the real world, where there are no perfect countries.

I'm not familiar with the legal technicalities of Polanski's case so I can't comment about it. But if your reference to Nazi loot is an allusion to the Nazi Swiss bank accounts, then this is an issue where the behavior of both banks and Swiss government strikes me as libertarian by the book.

Setting up and operating a bank account is a voluntary contract betwen two consenting parties. The secrecy of the account is part and parcel of that contract and another part violating it would be a clear intrusion in the private business of the former two. Unless, of course, a legally-constituted court of law, to whose pronouncements both contracting parties have voluntarily agreed to subject themselves, decides that not revealing the details of the said bank account is a clear and present threat to physically harm someone.

AFAIK, this is far from being the case with the Nazi bank accounts.

In fact, the anti-littering is a sign of petty minded tyranny.

If promoting and preserving a clean and healthy environment for its citizens makes a government petty-mindedly tyrannic then I pray for this tyranny taking over my country ASAP.

[Scarpia]

And you seem to be missing something important:  while Mr. Mayor has no right to tell you what to do with your garbage, your neighbors do.  Enforcement should be with them, and not with the government, and only if they choose to do so.  Government should intervene only if there is no other way to protect life or liberty, and then do so in the least intrusive way. 

You want to live in a neighborhood where there are no rules, except what you neighbor takes it into his mind to try to enforce on you?   What if your neighbor decides to operate a business out of his home, you don't want a zoning restriction to forbid this?  You want to go out there and tell him that you don't like being woken up at 3am by the sound of a pneumatic wrench.  How are you going to "enforce" that if he tells you to go screw yourself?  What if your other neighbor, the one operating a brothel next door tells you your Mozart interferes with his scheduled orgies (buzz kill effect)?

In any case, it is very easy to advocate for a system which has never been implemented in civilized human history (except perhaps in contemporary Afghanistan) and claim it is morally superior.

As I said, you're securely in the category of raving loon.

[Florestan]

do you want your neighbors not to leave garbage on their lawns because they respect you, or do you want them not to leave garbage on the lawn only because they don't want to be fined by the local zoning board?

I want my neighbors to abide by the law. None of them is dutybound to respect me, but all of them are dutybound to observe the law. That they do so because they have a civic sense stemming from their own conscience and developed by education or simply because they fear being fined makes no difference to me as long as the streets are clean and safe.

[Daverz]

Think of it this way: do you want your neighbors not to leave garbage on their lawns because they respect you, or do you want them not to leave garbage on the lawn only because they don't want to be fined by the local zoning board?

Actually, I'd rather take my chances with a municipal government.  They usually have more constraints put on them than the little tinpot dictators that typically run HOAs.  The power that HOAs weild is pretty scary.

[kishnevi]

Reality and facts show that accumulating pile upon pile of garbage in the streets is a serious threat to the health (i.e, life) of citizens. I suggest you take a half-hour walk in Naples to witness directly libertarianism in action with regard to throwing garbage.

Actually, the situation is Naples is a result of a government backed monopoly: government limits competition and then can not ensure that an acceptable level of service is maintained.

That's an unwarranted generalization. History is full of people in power who renounced it voluntarily for one reason or another.

And even fuller of people who refused to renounce it or renounced it only when force was applied.  Cincinnatus was celebrated because he was unusual.

Agreed. But that doesn't make enforcing morality a bad thing per se, just as fighting terrorism being a handy excuse for violating civil rights doesn't make fighting terrorism a bad thing per se. There is use and abuse and what should be feared is not power in itself but its abuse.

Let me ask you a question:  Who gets to choose the morality, and why is it moral for someone to be allowed to choose and then impose that morality on other people?
I would submit that imposing--that is, enforcing, a morality on someone else is itself an immoral act. 

Strange. On one hand, libertarians view people as moral, rational and enlightened persons, oriented voluntarily towards their good and that of their fellow men; on the other hand, their morality, rationality and enlightenment ceases when they happen to hold an office in the government, in which case they turn into predators bent on consolidating their power by all means and at any cost.

I struck out a phrase in your original post (see strike-through) to point out the more accurate way of describing the libertarian position--people work for what they see as their own good, which may or may not coincide with the good of others.  If they do good for others, it is either because they view their own good tied up with the good of others or because achieving their own goal happens to produce good for others.
And since people act for their own good, it's easy to see why libertarians don't trust people in power:  they act for their own benefit, which normally means increasing their power and authority. 
Libertarians don't assume that people are moral, rational, enlightened, etc.  Because people are not necessarily moral, we must guard against power being asserted over other people; and the best way to safegaurd that is to limit the amount of power they can wield in the first place.

Besides, hard facts that goes contrary to libertarian claims are oftenly ignored. It's a hard fact that libertarianism was largely rejected by each and every society since recorded history. It's a hard fact that the Libertarian Party US has won, since its founding in 1971, between less than 0.1% and 1.1% of the popular vote in the presidential elections. It's thus a hard fact that the vast majority of people, since the dawn of civilization up to our present days, had and has no use for libertarianism. Yet libertarians are still busy at trying to convince them otherwise. It's like trying to break down the whole Great Chinese Wall with one's head.

May I suggest that we devotees of classical music not use the popular appeal of an idea as a standard to judge things by?
As to your main point--libertarianism as a movement and political philosophy may have its roots in the nineteenth century but it actually is a product of the twentieth century--in fact, within the lifetime of many people now living.  It's not strange that is has spread so little, but rather that it has spread so far within one generation.

You could as well say that a Mahler syphony is an imaginary construct and it can never be more than the sum of its individual notes.

No, because a symphony is not composed of individuals acting independently of each other.

Society being, as you just stated, just an imaginary construct, it follows that a libertarian one is just a mindgame among others. Ok, let's play it.

Even in such a society what you say wouldn't be true, because, regardless of the social and political arrangements, there will always be people who:

1) decide for themselves that the best things in their life belong to others

2) decide to obtain them by removing them from their owner

and this clearly prevents them from

3) obtaining them without being prohibited by anyone else

since they will always be prohibited doing so by policemen and judges.

I have alluded to the limits of individual rights--no harm to others.  It's expressed formally in libertarian literature as the Non-initiation of Force--you can not initiate force against each other.  So the robber would violate the rule, but those defending themselves and their property against him would not be, since the use of force was started by him.

IOW, the pestilence and disease-spreading risks associated with garbage piling in Naples, both well-noted hard facts, harm no one but the garbage-thrower and his neighbours. Are you being serious?

Well, they certainly harm the neighbors, don't they? 
And if they harm someone is not a neighbor, the garbage thrower will find himself sued by someone who got sick from that garbage.  Remember, a government that does not enforce morality will still help people defend their own rights, by having an impartial court system.  Just because there is no zoning board to fine him does not mean others would not be able to make him stop or pay damages.

Welcome to the real world, where there are no perfect countries.

I'm not familiar with the legal technicalities of Polanski's case so I can't comment about it. But if your reference to Nazi loot is an allusion to the Nazi Swiss bank accounts, then this is an issue where the behavior of both banks and Swiss government strikes me as libertarian by the book.

Setting up and operating a bank account is a voluntary contract betwen two consenting parties. The secrecy of the account is part and parcel of that contract and another part violating it would be a clear intrusion in the private business of the former two. Unless, of course, a legally-constituted court of law, to whose pronouncements both contracting parties have voluntarily agreed to subject themselves, decides that not revealing the details of the said bank account is a clear and present threat to physically harm someone.

AFAIK, this is far from being the case with the Nazi bank accounts.
If promoting and preserving a clean and healthy environment for its citizens makes a government petty-mindedly tyrannic then I pray for this tyranny taking over my country ASAP.

The Polanksi case boils down to this: the US asked them to extradite him because he is a fugitive from justice, having fled to Europe to avoid being sentenced for molesting a teenage girl.  The Swiss refused to do so on grounds that are preposterous on their face.

The Nazi bank accounts boils down to this:  the banks knew, or should have known, that the funds deposited with them were the results of looting, graft, and extortion.  They were therefore aiding and abetting a criminal enterprise, and privacy and contract law does not shield them for not acting appropriately.  And failure to reveal the names results in a threat (actually, it continues a threat already put into practice) to property rights of the people who were originally robbed by the Nazis.

[Florestan]

Actually, the situation is Naples is a result of a government backed monopoly: government limits competition and then can not ensure that an acceptable level of service is maintained.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by that.

And even fuller of people who refused to renounce it or renounced it only when force was applied.

That's human nature and no political scheme will change it.

people work for what they see as their own good, which may or may not coincide with the good of others.  If they do good for others, it is either because they view their own good tied up with the good of others or because achieving their own goal happens to produce good for others.

How about love and self-sacrifice, two hard facts of history that fall completely outside the above criteria?

And since people act for their own good, it's easy to see why libertarians don't trust people in power:  they act for their own benefit, which normally means increasing their power and authority. Libertarians don't assume that people are moral, rational, enlightened, etc.  Because people are not necessarily moral, we must guard against power being asserted over other people; and the best way to safegaurd that is to limit the amount of power they can wield in the first place

This fear of power and authority which borders on phobia strikes me as completely irrational. Power in itself, devoid of any context, is a meaningless concept. Power can be used for good things (such as building opera houses or maintaining public order) or for bad things (such as emprisoning people who speak against the government or going at war with a nation that never attacked you). History shows that usually the good and the bad are mixed. A rational and pragmatic approach would be to maximize the good and minimize the bad --- of course, to the extent that the built-in limitations of human beings permit. This means checks and balances, constitutions, laws, elections and, last but not least, the will of the people to abide by the rules. But just because people in the government might do bad things is in no way a legitimate reason to take from them the power to do good things.

.May I suggest that we devotees of classical music not use the popular appeal of an idea as a standard to judge things by?

Your analogy doesn't work.

Classical music is not a political ideology but a very real thing, a hard fact of history that's been around for almost 1,000 years. One can expect it will continue its existence as long as our civilization will survive.

Governmental power in one form or another (against which libertarians argue and wish to do without) is another very real thing, a hard fact of history that's been around since recorded history. One can expect it will continue its existence as long as mankind will survive.

It is exactly in this sense I say that libertarianism has been rejected by practice: no society has ever had a government of the type libertarians advocate.

As to your main point--libertarianism as a movement and political philosophy may have its roots in the nineteenth century but it actually is a product of the twentieth century--in fact, within the lifetime of many people now living.  It's not strange that is has spread so little, but rather that it has spread so far within one generation.

1.1% at its highest isn't that far. Anyway, I believe it will spread only thus far as many people are out there with an inclination to disregard history and its lessons and to think that the libertarian utopia is the cure to all the problems we face. My estimate is less than 5%.

For balance, I hasten to add that the socialist utopia, equally blind to the lessons of history, is apparently much more succesful. A puzzling fact indeed.

No, because a symphony is not composed of individuals acting independently of each other.

Neither is a society, libertarian wishful thinking notwithstanding.

And if they harm someone is not a neighbor, the garbage thrower will find himself sued by someone who got sick from that garbage.  Remember, a government that does not enforce morality will still help people defend their own rights, by having an impartial court system. 

Well, of course if my neighbor throws garbage on my lawn and doesn't cease to do so after my friendly request I'll sue him. This is common-sense. But this also suppose there is a law prohibiting throwing garbage in any other place than the one specifically designed for this purpose, on the basis of which a court will fine him and force to remove the garbage. Following libertarian logic, just because my neighbor voted no such law himself and signed no specific contract binding him to observe it means he will reject out of hand the law itself and the court that upholds it. Such a law being voted by anyone else than he is a violation of his right. At this point I can already hear you: by throwing garbage on my lawn he violated my property. Certainly. But whose property is an entire street or avenue? Whose property is a park?

The Nazi bank accounts boils down to this:  the banks knew, or should have known, that the funds deposited with them were the results of looting, graft, and extortion.  They were therefore aiding and abetting a criminal enterprise, and privacy and contract law does not shield them for not acting appropriately.  And failure to reveal the names results in a threat (actually, it continues a threat already put into practice) to property rights of the people who were originally robbed by the Nazis.

Then the most libertarian way to deal with it is for the real owners of those funds or their legal inheritors to sue the bank where they are deposited for violating their property rights and obtain a court injunction for restoring them to their legal owner. The Swiss government has nothing to do with it and is dutybound to take action if and only if a bank refuses to complain with such an injunction.

[Todd]

Well, you demanded I produce a case in which government did not intervene.  Since (as you ought to know, if you don't) government always intervene,  it's not possible to produce such a case.

And I referred you to the interventions made by President Hoover in the period 1929-31 (by the Hoover, not by the Fed).  That's part of the historical record.  Read up on it if you aren't familiar with it.

To the first point, if you admit that it is not possible to produce such a case, on what do you base your assertion that the market would clear "all at once"?  You are basing your policy suggestions/preferences not on any empirical evidence, but rather on misplaced religious faith.  And once again, I must say that you have steadfastly refused to define what "all at once" means.  Why is that?

To the second point about the actions taken by the Hoover Administration, you really should provide the evidence to support your case; you are the one offering this as a basis for your argument.  The fact that you do not clearly illustrates that you are not familiar with the historical record and do not understand how economic policy works.  If you dare to write about what the Hoover adminstration did, it will only serve to demolish your so-called "libertarian" philosophy further.  (I'm especially interested in things other than Smoot-Hawley, incidentally.)

Facts can certainly be pesky in that they tend not to support ideological positions very well , and that is why you absolutely refuse to rely on them in any of your arguments.

[Florestan]

Sorry, I missed this one.

Who gets to choose the morality,

Reality and human experience. It has been noted (since the history began and in almost all societies) that man is a social animal. It has been noted that certain behaviors and actions are likely to produce such harmful effects in the society that, had they been given free way, no sooner than that society would have collapsed completely. Empirical evidence, practical experience and hard facts being thus recorded and reflected upon, it has been concluded that some sort of barrier must be effected against certain behaviors and actions if human civilization is to flourish and endure. Usually, the barrier has been twofold: educate the people about the harmful effects of the said behaviors and actions and coerce those who would not give them up voluntarily to do so. Depending on particular religions, worldviews and time frames, different societies have had different approaches to these two tasks, from brutal to mild, from tolerant to repressive and from aristocratic to democratic and everything in between --- but there never was and there never is a society under the sun that did / does without them altogether.

[Franco]

Hoover is not my example, much like Obama embracing and expanding Bush's government spending, FDR took Hoover's start and ran with it.  That depression lasted until WWII.

Harding I think is a better model, for Libertarian principles - there was a depression in 1920-21 he cut spending, cut taxes, allowed business losses to occur but the market corrected (including lower unemployment) much faster than what happens under Keynesian policies. 

[Florestan]

being a democratic process does not justify a law that impinged on the rights of other people.   Such laws are merely the signs of a tyrannical majority.
To quote the definition by Cows:
PURE DEMOCRACY
You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY
You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the
milk.

I don't claim that democracy is a perfect system. Actually I reject the very existence of such a system other than on a purely theoretical level. But fairness requires that democracy, a real system operating in the real world, be not compared with ideological constructs bearing no ressemblance whatsoever to the reality, but with other equally real systems operating in the real world. And such a comparison favors it by a wide margin. Not in that it yields the best results, because certain highly aristocratic / authoritarian regimes such as Venice or Prussia resulted in much good for their people, but in that it prevents the worst results (as far as human limitations allows).

Democracy, as it has been said so well, is the worst political system with the exception of all others.

[Todd]

Hoover is not my example, much like Obama embracing and expanding Bush's government spending, FDR took Hoover's start and ran with it.  That depression lasted until WWII.

Harding I think is a better model, for Libertarian principles - there was a depression in 1920-21 he cut spending, cut taxes, allowed business losses to occur but the market corrected (including lower unemployment) much faster than what happens under Keynesian policies.

Finally, something a bit more substantive.  The Great Depression did indeed last until the war, though by every economic measure things started improving, albeit too slowly, in 1933, and continued improving until the second dip came in 1937 as new taxes hit and the New Deal was pulled back.  The fact that trade was not addressed appropriately didn't help.  (Of course, by the mid-30s, it was too late politically.)  Hoover's policies did not become expansionary/activist (or whatever term one prefers) until after the 1932 budget, complete with tax increases to balance the budget, was passed. 

The contrafactual argument that the economy would have done better if the government had done less, and preferably nothing, is simply hollow.  The Hoover administration's not even tepid response, and the protectionist bent in Congress, contributed to years of decline before anything was done.  The economic reality of the war years shows more clearly what should have been done all along: vast expansion in aggregate demand in the form of government spending, on a scale far larger than was contemplated by even FDR.  Of course, it should not have been on war making capacity, at least ideally, but the results are pretty clear.  The 1948 depression that was inevitable as war spending was pulled back, was minor compared to what came before (eg, both in 1920-1921 and the Great Depression), and despite continued government involvement in the economy, or perhaps because of it, it was quite short.  It is also worth pointing out another incontrovertible fact: downturns have been far milder by pretty much every measure since the 1946 Employment Act passed was passed.  Only length of unemployment can really considered to be worse, and then only when not compared to the 30s.

The 1920-21 situation is a bit different.  I've seen several references to it in the last several months, as though it offers some kind of particularly useful guidance for what we are going through now, or some type of meaningful refutation to Keynesian policy in economic downturns.  One major problem is that the scale of the problem didn't match what started in 1929, and that was partly caused by one other significant difference.  In 1920, the financial system was nowhere near as leveraged and intertwined as it was at the end of the decade.  Now, whether one wants to attribute the vast increase in leverage and complexity to avaricious banks, or to ineffective government, or both, or neither, it happened.  It is not really possible to state that the policies followed by Harding offer a model for anything, or that a similar policy response to the Great Depression would have worked.  (Incidentally, cutting taxes in a downturn is quintessentially Keynesian, even though the term did not exist in the early 20s.  Of course, reducing non-military government expenditures even more than taxes is not Keynesian.)  Also, I don't know if one can say that the policies that helped create the financial situation of 1929 are worth emulating. 

[kishnevi]

That's human nature and no political scheme will change it.

Libertarianism recognizes that, and attempts to minimize the effect this particular trait  of human nature--the lure of power--has in the real world. 

How about love and self-sacrifice, two hard facts of history that fall completely outside the above criteria?

I wrote:they view their own good tied up with the good of others  I consider that statement to include love and self sacrifice. 

This fear of power and authority which borders on phobia strikes me as completely irrational. Power in itself, devoid of any context, is a meaningless concept. Power can be used for good things (such as building opera houses or maintaining public order) or for bad things (such as emprisoning people who speak against the government or going at war with a nation that never attacked you). History shows that usually the good and the bad are mixed. A rational and pragmatic approach would be to maximize the good and minimize the bad --- of course, to the extent that the built-in limitations of human beings permit. This means checks and balances, constitutions, laws, elections and, last but not least, the will of the people to abide by the rules. But just because people in the government might do bad things is in no way a legitimate reason to take from them the power to do good things.

Your argument assumes that the good things government does can only be done by government.  Whereas in fact, they can be done as well or better by voluntary cooperation among like minded individuals or by businessmen operating in a free market--building opera houses is one such thing.
The only exception to this would be defense of individual rights against aggression--police, military defense, and a court system to mediate/arbitrate/judge disputes among individuals.  There is one wing of libertarianism (anarchic capitalism) which believes that even this does not need to be done by government, but can adequately supplied by businesses operating in a completely free market.  I don't agree with that one.  The other wing is minarchism, which believes that only government can adequately perform those jobs, but nothing more.  That's the wing of libertarianism to which I adhere.

But by limiting government in such a fashion, one would get rid of the bad uses of power.

Your analogy doesn't work.

Classical music is not a political ideology but a very real thing, a hard fact of history that's been around for almost 1,000 years. One can expect it will continue its existence as long as our civilization will survive.

Governmental power in one form or another (against which libertarians argue and wish to do without) is another very real thing, a hard fact of history that's been around since recorded history. One can expect it will continue its existence as long as mankind will survive.

Crime and disease are also hard facts of history.  I'm sure you don't think that would serve as a sufficient argument for keeping them around, if we had a choice.

It is exactly in this sense I say that libertarianism has been rejected by practice: no society has ever had a government of the type libertarians advocate.

I'll turn the argument around the other way:  history has shown that all governments end up abusing power and denying individual rights, even if they don't start that way. 

1.1% at its highest isn't that far. Anyway, I believe it will spread only thus far as many people are out there with an inclination to disregard history and its lessons and to think that the libertarian utopia is the cure to all the problems we face. My estimate is less than 5%.

History teaches that governments do much more harm than good, unless they are severely limited.    The fact that a vast majority of people don't recognize this should not be surprising when you remember that the education system and mass media are geared to promote the view that government is good (partly by design, especially with education, partly by accident or by motives that reinforce the result although not actually linked to any design to promote the role of government).

For balance, I hasten to add that the socialist utopia, equally blind to the lessons of history, is apparently much more succesful. A puzzling fact indeed.

Well. at least we agree on one thing!

Neither is a society, libertarian wishful thinking notwithstanding.

Can society farm or build a house? Of course not--only individual people can do that.  That they may act in a concerted fashion does make the sum of those individuals something greater than them.
A further thing that guides libertarian thinking in this matter is the use that the idea that society is a thing separate from its individual members is the abuse done to the idea of society to justify almost every dictatorial and totalitarian regime.

Well, of course if my neighbor throws garbage on my lawn and doesn't cease to do so after my friendly request I'll sue him. This is common-sense. But this also suppose there is a law prohibiting throwing garbage in any other place than the one specifically designed for this purpose, on the basis of which a court will fine him and force to remove the garbage. Following libertarian logic, just because my neighbor voted no such law himself and signed no specific contract binding him to observe it means he will reject out of hand the law itself and the court that upholds it. Such a law being voted by anyone else than he is a violation of his right. At this point I can already hear you: by throwing garbage on my lawn he violated my property. Certainly. But whose property is an entire street or avenue? Whose property is a park?

Well, in Libertarianworld, there would be no such thing as public property.  The streets and parks would be owned by specific individuals, or a group of such individuals, who would pay for the upkeep and would be at liberty to charge others for the right of use.  This might be one single person, or a group of people cooperating in ownership--for instance, all the people who live on Street A might be members of a co-op which owns the street and which shared out the expenses for upkeep.  And that owner/owners would enforce their rights against a garbage throwing individual.   
Note alos that in Libertarianworld, there would be no law such as you are speaking of, so the idea of consenting to it is irrelevant.

Then the most libertarian way to deal with it is for the real owners of those funds or their legal inheritors to sue the bank where they are deposited for violating their property rights and obtain a court injunction for restoring them to their legal owner. The Swiss government has nothing to do with it and is dutybound to take action if and only if a bank refuses to complain with such an injunction.

True.  But we are not talking about a hypothetical situation in Libertarianworld, but what actually happened in real life.

As for Naples and its garbage, here's a very short version:  government restricted competition in the waste removal business;  the Mafia piggybacked on that state of monopoly, and then did not deliver anything more than the most minimal level of service, and the government has been unable to correct the situation.

[kishnevi]

Sorry, I missed this one.
Reality and human experience. It has been noted (since the history began and in almost all societies) that man is a social animal. It has been noted that certain behaviors and actions are likely to produce such harmful effects in the society that, had they been given free way, no sooner than that society would have collapsed completely. Empirical evidence, practical experience and hard facts being thus recorded and reflected upon, it has been concluded that some sort of barrier must be effected against certain behaviors and actions if human civilization is to flourish and endure. Usually, the barrier has been twofold: educate the people about the harmful effects of the said behaviors and actions and coerce those who would not give them up voluntarily to do so. Depending on particular religions, worldviews and time frames, different societies have had different approaches to these two tasks, from brutal to mild, from tolerant to repressive and from aristocratic to democratic and everything in between --- but there never was and there never is a society under the sun that did / does without them altogether.

Agreement with most, if not all of that.  But you have not come close to proving that government is the only way that can be accomplished, or even the best way of being accomplished.  Also note that minarchist libertarianism does essentially adopt that view, but limits the enforcement to morality only to those that things that have direct harm to the rights of others.  The fact that adultery makes for bad consequences does not mean government or anyone else has the right to prohibit it.