Political Matrix

[kishnevi]

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.

Churchill, wasn't it?

However, the argument you give only carries you so far. That a system is the best yet invented is not an argument that we should not try to find a system that is even better.

Also, you are not giving enough attention to the true problem of democracy: tyranny of the majority, which is the point of the political cows illustration.  Power wielded by one person over many is tyranny; but so is power wielded by many over one.

[Scarpia]

Also, you are not giving enough attention to the true problem of democracy: tyranny of the majority, which is the point of the political cows illustration.  Power wielded by one person over many is tyranny; but so is power wielded by many over one.

You say that as if it is a notion that has not already received the attention it is due.  U.S. democracy addresses tyranny in the constitution by delineating rights that cannot be abridged, even by federal law. 

If you want to avoid the "tyranny" of the municipal zoning board you can find a place to live in an unincorporated area.  Some people chose to live is as much isolation as they can find.  I don't think it is healthy for our society. 

[kishnevi]

You say that as if it is a notion that has not already received the attention it is due.  U.S. democracy addresses tyranny in the constitution by delineating rights that cannot be abridged, even by federal law. 

In theory.  Practice is quite another thing--take, for example, the Jim Crow laws (picking something that is both fairly obvious and (we hope) safely in the past) a century ago.
Ultimately, a Bill of Rights is worthless if the majority is not willing to have it enforced against themselves.

If you want to avoid the "tyranny" of the municipal zoning board you can find a place to live in an unincorporated area.  Some people chose to live is as much isolation as they can find.  I don't think it is healthy for our society.

And even in some unicorporated areas you'll find zoning boards or their equivalents. 
And I would reject your phrasing in the last sentence.  It's not what is "healthy for our society" but what is "healthy for the individuals who live in our society"--although of course what you mean by "health of our society" feeds into the "health of the individuals who live in our society".  Or to put it differently, a healthy society is one that is populated in the main by healthy individuals.

[Florestan]

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

Love, maybe. But self-sacrifice? A soldier who covers up his comrades so that they can escape an ambush while he dies, or someone who saves a person from a building fire and burns himself badly in the process, or Jan Palach, the Czech student who immolated himself in protest to the Communist dictatorship --- how do they fit in "their own good tied up with the good of others" scheme?

Your argument assumes that the good things government does can only be done by government. 

Not at all. I'm all in favor of the free-market. But it's a strange thing that for libertarians anyone should be free to enter the market but the 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.

Putting aside the fact that businessmen have showed no inclination that I am aware of to build opera houses from scratch --- that they may endow already existing buildings and personnel with donations is nevertheless true --- it's highly unlikely that the like-minded individuals here on GMG would have the financial means to build one by voluntary cooperation. Just as it's highly unlikely that a community living nearby a flooding river would have the financial means to build a dam by voluntarily cooperation.

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.

I'm glad you don't, because it's sheer lunacy: whomever can afford to pay gets his own private police, justice and army. Welcome back to feudalism, but without any of its redeeming features.

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.

There are tested and working methods for fighting them. There are also tested and working methods for limiting the abuse of power.

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.

Well, history has also shown that when the abuse of power was no more bearable, people overthrew that government. But curiously enough, not even after overthrowing an extremely abusive government did the people choose to have a minarchic government.

  History teaches that governments do much more harm than good, unless they are severely limited.

You libertarians are enamored of abrupt statements with no nuances, aren't you?

A much more historically accurate position is this:

History teaches that governments can do just as much harm as good, or even more, , unless they are 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).

IOW, a vast majority of people, including some, if not most, of the greatest minds ever, were either just brainwashed dimwits unable to see, and act for, their own good, or just voracious predators whose hunger for power was paralleled only by their capacity to abuse it. The world lay in darkness and ignorance until libertarians came to save it from itself.

Can society farm or build a house? Of course not--only individual people can do that.

Can an individual start anew what's preceded him? Can he build the Parthenon again? Can he write Shakespeare's plays again? Can he compose Mahler's Ninth again?

Each individual is born in a world not of his own making. He is born in a specific time and place and in a society with a culture, customs, traditions, mores and manners, everything that makes up civilization, that are the result of centuries of evolution. Of course he is free to reject some or all of them but this doesn't make the society less real anymore than an individual breaking up all ties with his family makes that family non-existent.

That they may act in a concerted fashion does make the sum of those individuals something greater than them.

Seems we have another point of agreement.

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.

An idea being abused is no indication about its veracity or falsehood.

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.   

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but... do you mean in that world of yours I'll have to pay a fee to cross the street to the other side, or to walk down the Main Street?

How about the air we breathe, or the Mississipi River, or the Atlantic Ocean? Who's going to own them?

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

Why exactly! Finally you reached the crux of the matter: even Disneyland is more real than Libertarianworld.

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,

So it's really government's fault, not the fault of those many uneducated and irresponsible citizens who throw their garbage wherever they so please: streets, beaches, parks etc.

and the government has been unable to correct the situation.

Precisely because the government is weak. A strong government would do without both Mafia and garbage-throwers. Why do you think Munich or Stockholm are much cleaner and safer than Naples?

Churchill, wasn't it?

At least he's credited with saying it.

That a system is the best yet invented is not an argument that we should not try to find a system that is even better.

Agreed but we are talking here not about a better car or a better aerial navigation system. We're talking about organizing a human society --- and any attempt at doing that by fiat, disregarding or discarding both the practical wisdom that we gained in centuries of history and the inherent, built-in limitations of human beings results in disaster, as the Communist experiment showed clearly. Libertarianism is no different in this respect, since the type of man it preaches is no less imaginary than the type of man Communists wanted to create.

Also, you are not giving enough attention to the true problem of democracy: tyranny of the majority, which is the point of the political cows illustration.  Power wielded by one person over many is tyranny; but so is power wielded by many over one.

This sounds very good rhetorically. However, may I ask you when was the last time that a tyrannical majority forced you by their vote to do something you wouldn't do voluntarily and what was it about?

Don't get me wrong: I fear tyranny as much as you do (I know by personal experience what it means), but I think anarchy is no better, since it will finally result in tyranny as well. Steering the middle course between these two extremes by pragmatic corrections and adjustments seems to me the most rational way. Think of it this way: in this real world of ours there will always be power and authority and the most pragmatic scheme that's been devised for its limitation is to have a single one, called government, resulting from periodic, free and fair elections, and which is both reasonably strong to make sure the rules that have been agreed upon in respect to what constitutes a civilized and humane society are known and enforced and reasonably weak not to try to modify these rules or discard them altogether without the consent of the governed ("to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed"), whose exercise is decentralized as far as possible and whose aim is to make possible, assist and protect what we call "the civil society", free-market (of which I am a supporter) included.

[Florestan]

take, for example, the Jim Crow laws (picking something that is both fairly obvious and (we hope) safely in the past) a century ago.

Let's imagine we live in Libertaria, where there is no such thing as public property and society, and everything is privately-owned. Furthermore, only those actions or behaviors that result in direct physical harm to anyone, or in a violation of his property rights, are illegal.

In that land, a pub-owner who forbids black people to enter his pub has every right to do so, since by prohibiting them to enter his lawful property he neither violates their own property rights nor does he physically harm them in any way.

In that land, a bus driver who refuses to carry black people or confines them to the backseats only has every right to do so, since by imposing these rules on his lawful property he neither violates their own property rights nor does he physically harm them in any way.

In that land, a school board that refuses to admit black children has every right to do so, since by prohibiting them to enter its lawful property it neither violates their own property rights nor does it physically harm them in any way.

I could go on like that ad infinitum.

As an aside, may I ask what do you think of Adam Smith?

[Florestan]

I certainly agree being labeled capitalist

Actually I must ammend this: I am more of a free-marketeer than a capitalist for the obvious reason that free-market and capitalism are not always friends; actually, they are mostly enemies, since the golden dream of most capitalists is twofold: (1) to produce cheap and sell expensive and (2) to eliminate his competitors --- two things which are strongly resisted by a genuine free-market.

[kishnevi]

Love, maybe. But self-sacrifice? A soldier who covers up his comrades so that they can escape an ambush while he dies, or someone who saves a person from a building fire and burns himself badly in the process, or Jan Palach, the Czech student who immolated himself in protest to the Communist dictatorship --- how do they fit in "their own good tied up with the good of others" scheme?

Because they value the specific benefit so highly that they consider giving their own lives a worthwhile exchange, or, in a negative way, they consider the loss of something to be so bad that they would rather die than live without it.

Not at all. I'm all in favor of the free-market. But it's a strange thing that for libertarians anyone should be free to enter the market but the government.

Government has two unique qualities--it sets up the conditions in which the market exists, and it can apply force at its discretion without fear of being opposed by counterforce.   Both of those mean it can not compete as an equal in a free market. 

Besides, the role of government is not to participate in a market--it is to make sure the market can operate fairly.

. There are also tested and working methods for limiting the abuse of power.

And all of them have at some point failed to limit the abuse of power--usually because in gaurding against one form of abuse, they allow other forms to develop unimpeded.

Well, history has also shown that when the abuse of power was no more bearable, people overthrew that government. But curiously enough, not even after overthrowing an extremely abusive government did the people choose to have a minarchic government.

There is at least one instance where they have done so--the Articles of Confederation which constituted the formal basis for the United States of America prior to adoption of the current Constitution.  The story of how the Constitution replaces the Articles is  long and sometimes sordid one, but the most pertinent fact here is that, despite the propaganda of the Federalist (pro-Constitution) side of the debate, which has been adopted almost wholesale in the texts most students read in high school history, the government of the US under the Articles was by no means a failure or in danger of collapsing.   

History teaches that governments can do just as much harm as good, or even more, , unless they are limited. 

And they all end up losing those limits.

IOW, a vast majority of people, including some, if not most, of the greatest minds ever, were either just brainwashed dimwits unable to see, and act for, their own good, or just voracious predators whose hunger for power was paralleled only by their capacity to abuse it. The world lay in darkness and ignorance until libertarians came to save it from itself.

Rhetorical overstatement.  Replace what I have placed in italics in the above with this:
normal people who over time gradually explored political philosphy   rather like people took two millenia or more to understand that the earth revolves around the sun and not vice versa.

Can an individual start anew what's preceded him? Can he build the Parthenon again? Can he write Shakespeare's plays again? Can he compose Mahler's Ninth again?

No, but that is not because of "society".  That's because Phidias sculpted, Shakespeare wrote, Mahler composed--in other words, individuals did those things.

Each individual is born in a world not of his own making. He is born in a specific time and place and in a society with a culture, customs, traditions, mores and manners, everything that makes up civilization, that are the result of centuries of evolution. Of course he is free to reject some or all of them but this doesn't make the society less real anymore than an individual breaking up all ties with his family makes that family non-existent.

Seems we have another point of agreement.

Sorry, but we don't.  I didn't realize it until I read your reply, but I mistakenly left out a "not" in that sentence, so what I mean was the exact opposite of what you thought I was saying.  Mea culpa mea culpa mea maxima culpa.

That does not mean society exists as anything more than an aggregate of individuals.  It's a logical impossibility for it to exist like that.   Take away all the individuals who compose the society in quesiton and you get--nothing.  If society was something more than the aggregate, you would have something remaining over after all those individuals were taken away.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but... do you mean in that world of yours I'll have to pay a fee to cross the street to the other side, or to walk down the Main Street?

Possibly.  More likely you would belong to a co-operative, and pay dues, from which dues the street would be kept in good repair;  and if it was a street you did not normally walk or drive on,  you would pay a transient fee of some sort.  And if you did not, you would not have the right to use that street.

Libertarian world would be a lot like many small towns--but the "government" would exist through willing co-operation among neighbors, not because of any coercive element.

How about the air we breathe, or the Mississippi River, or the Atlantic Ocean? Who's going to own them?

The air-- no one.  Rivers and seas or oceans have shores; the shores have owners, and the owners set the rules about who can access the rivers and oceans and how they can do so, for those that wish to access the rivers and oceans through that particular shoreline.

So it's really government's fault, not the fault of those many uneducated and irresponsible citizens who throw their garbage wherever they so please: streets, beaches, parks etc.

Think of it this way:  they are leaving the garbage on the street because of how badly government has messed up .

Precisely because the government is weak. A strong government would do without both Mafia and garbage-throwers. Why do you think Munich or Stockholm are much cleaner and safer than Naples?

Government here in the US is rather definitely a strong government, but it can't really control either the Mafia or the garbage throwers--which suggests that other elements are at work.  After all, in the minds of many people, Germans are  among the peoples of the world least likely to litter--a dreadful lack of order if you are the German of the popular imagination.

Agreed but we are talking here not about a better car or a better aerial navigation system. We're talking about organizing a human society --- and any attempt at doing that by fiat, disregarding or discarding both the practical wisdom that we gained in centuries of history and the inherent, built-in limitations of human beings results in disaster, as the Communist experiment showed clearly. Libertarianism is no different in this respect, since the type of man it preaches is no less imaginary than the type of man Communists wanted to create.

Libertarianism in fact tries to base itself upon a very realistic view of  human nature, and tries to resolve the problems of government revealed by history.

This sounds very good rhetorically. However, may I ask you when was the last time that a tyrannical majority forced you by their vote to do something you wouldn't do voluntarily and what was it about?

Dozens of things.  Any time a government entity to which I pay taxes spends money gained from taxes, it'squite possibly  forcing me to finance something I am against.  The US invasion of Iraq is one example.  [I don't know your view of that matter.   But the relevant point here is that I am forced to contribute to the war effort through my taxes even though I have always opposed it.]   There is a slew of such actions I could list for you from all levels of government, national down to local.

Don't get me wrong: I fear tyranny as much as you do (I know by personal experience what it means), but I think anarchy is no better, since it will finally result in tyranny as well. Steering the middle course between these two extremes by pragmatic corrections and adjustments seems to me the most rational way. Think of it this way: in this real world of ours there will always be power and authority and the most pragmatic scheme that's been devised for its limitation is to have a single one, called government, resulting from periodic, free and fair elections, and which is both reasonably strong to make sure the rules that have been agreed upon in respect to what constitutes a civilized and humane society are known and enforced and reasonably weak not to try to modify these rules or discard them altogether without the consent of the governed ("to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed"), whose exercise is decentralized as far as possible and whose aim is to make possible, assist and protect what we call "the civil society", free-market (of which I am a supporter) included.

No argument there, except to say that the only form of government that could actually provide what you express there is a minarchist government.

So you're a libertarian but just don't know it

[kishnevi]

Actually I must amend this: I am more of a free-marketeer than a capitalist for the obvious reason that free-market and capitalism are not always friends; actually, they are mostly enemies, since the golden dream of most capitalists is twofold: (1) to produce cheap and sell expensive and (2) to eliminate his competitors --- two things which are strongly resisted by a genuine free-market.

I'm curious as to how you define the term "capitalist". 

[kishnevi]

Let's imagine we live in Libertaria, where there is no such thing as public property and society, and everything is privately-owned. Furthermore, only those actions or behaviors that result in direct physical harm to anyone, or in a violation of his property rights, are illegal.

In that land, a pub-owner who forbids black people to enter his pub has every right to do so, since by prohibiting them to enter his lawful property he neither violates their own property rights nor does he physically harm them in any way.

In that land, a bus driver who refuses to carry black people or confines them to the backseats only has every right to do so, since by imposing these rules on his lawful property he neither violates their own property rights nor does he physically harm them in any way.

In that land, a school board that refuses to admit black children has every right to do so, since by prohibiting them to enter its lawful property it neither violates their own property rights nor does it physically harm them in any way.

I could go on like that ad infinitum.

The answer to all your examples is, with one small modification, yes, they could discriminate. 

The modification comes in the third example:  in Libertarianworld, there would be no school board,  only private schools in competition with each other.  So for "school board" substitute "school"..

But remember that you would be free to give your business to a competitor who does not discriminate, and advocate publicly that people should not patronize businesses that discriminate.  You just could not force someone not to discriminate.

And you'd be free to donate to schools that don't discriminate as your way of helping make sure that poor/minority households are able to provide their children with good educations.

Here's the real point: a laws that mandates segregation is merely the reverse of a law that mandates integration.  One forbids you to associate with people you might want to associate with; the other forbids you from not associating with people you might not want to associate with.  Same sword, so to speak, just cuts different ways.

Just to make clear--my reference to Jim Crow was in response to a post by Scarpia.  He posted that constitutions/bills of rights could always be counted on to keep minorities from being discriminated in some way.  I posted to point out one very obvious and large scale episode which the US Bill of Rights should have rendered null and void, but did not.

As an aside, may I ask what do you think of Adam Smith?

Good write, with mostly good ideas, but sometimes he is more attached to the idea of government than the facts warrant.

My aside: are you familiar with the "Austrian" school of economists, also known as the "Chicago school"?

[Florestan]

Government has two unique qualities--it sets up the conditions in which the market exists, and it can apply force at its discretion without fear of being opposed by counterforce.   Both of those mean it can not compete as an equal in a free market. 

Government does this, government does that... What is government more than a sum of people? It's like your idea of society: government cannot do anything, people who hold governmental offices do.

Government doesn't set up anything. Legislatures do. And in most civilized countries there is a clear separation between the two. A government may submit a law project to the parliament, but the ultimate responsibility for its adoption or rejection lies entirely with the latter --- which is not the government.

Maybe you should stop lumping everything under government's umbrella, since it is obvious that by government you mean the executive power, and start seeing things in a more nuanced and realistic way.

I mean, your fear and distrust of governmental power might have been in place in 16-th century Spain, or in 18-th century Prussia, or in Mussolini's Italy --- but we've come a long way since then.

Besides, the role of government is not to participate in a market--it is to make sure the market can operate fairly.

We agree on that (with the qualification from my part that some governmentally supplied services are legitimate and necessary), but we disagree on how fairness is defined.

And all of them have at some point failed to limit the abuse of power--usually because in gaurding against one form of abuse, they allow other forms to develop unimpeded.

And what guarantee do libertarians offer that in their world power will not be abused? What guarantee do you have that people craving for power, which will always exist, will not crawl their way in the army, the police and the courts --- which will still exist --- and use them to increase their power? What guarantee do libertarians offer that a president, or prime minister, or chief of staff, or commander-in-chief of the marines will not use the military power at its disposal to overthrow the libertarian order and establish a socialist dictatorship?

More: what if a community, be it a city or an entire state, by the voluntarily association of its members, decides to set up a fascist dictatorship and to extend it at country's level? I suppose they'll be met by force but if they are stronger they will prevail and then you can kiss Libertaria good-bye.

There is at least one instance where they have done so--the Articles of Confederation which constituted the formal basis for the United States of America prior to adoption of the current Constitution.  The story of how the Constitution replaces the Articles is  long and sometimes sordid one, but the most pertinent fact here is that, despite the propaganda of the Federalist (pro-Constitution) side of the debate, which has been adopted almost wholesale in the texts most students read in high school history, the government of the US under the Articles was by no means a failure or in danger of collapsing.

Not being American I'm familiar only at a vey basic level with that story, but I suppose that the American Congress wasn't struck with instant madness and decided to replace a working and succesful form of government just because they so fancied.

Now, if you imply that somehow the Federalists wanted more power, and prevailed --- that is a historical proof that even a libertarian order of things, such as you suggest it was defined in the Articles of Confederation, has no built-in guarantees for enduring and not being overthrown.

Sorry, but we don't.  I didn't realize it until I read your reply, but I mistakenly left out a "not" in that sentence, so what I mean was the exact opposite of what you thought I was saying.  Mea culpa mea culpa mea maxima culpa.

I suspected that actually. Just wanted to be sure.

That does not mean society exists as anything more than an aggregate of individuals.  It's a logical impossibility for it to exist like that.   Take away all the individuals who compose the society in quesiton and you get--nothing.  If society was something more than the aggregate, you would have something remaining over after all those individuals were taken away.

So, literature, fine arts, music, architecture, laws, folklore, bridges, monuments, philosophy, religion etc --- all these amounts to nothing for you?

By this logic, the Athenian society during Pericle's time, or the Roman society during Octavian's reign, or the Elizabethan society, or the Golden Century Spanish society are just figments of imagination --- because all the individuals that were supposed to form them are dead since long ago.

Possibly.  More likely you would belong to a co-operative, and pay dues, from which dues the street would be kept in good repair;  and if it was a street you did not normally walk or drive on,  you would pay a transient fee of some sort.  And if you did not, you would not have the right to use that street.

I suppose then that every street would have barriers at both ends where each passerby or driver would stop for being checked (by whom?) for his street residence permit, absent which he will be charged (how?) the corresponding fee, absent which he will not be allowed (how? by whom?) to walk or drive down the street. Possibly the barriers would even go alongside the whole street, since one side of it would belong to the association of odd-numbered houses and the other side to the association of even-numbered houses.

Do you really not realize how impractical and outright absurd is this?

Libertarian world would be a lot like many small towns--but the "government" would exist through willing co-operation among neighbors, not because of any coercive element.

And who or what guarantees that (a) willing cooperation will exist and (b) it will endure?

The air-- no one.  Rivers and seas or oceans have shores; the shores have owners, and the owners set the rules about who can access the rivers and oceans and how they can do so, for those that wish to access the rivers and oceans through that particular shoreline.

This is already happening.

Think of it this way:  they are leaving the garbage on the street because of how badly government has messed up .

I disagree completely. Anyway, let me ask you this: is there under the sun an evil for which the government is not responsible?

Libertarianism in fact tries to base itself upon a very realistic view of  human nature,

Ok then, please explain me the libertarian conception of human nature in general, with no reference to politics and economy.

Any time a government entity to which I pay taxes spends money gained from taxes, it'squite possibly  forcing me to finance something I am against.  The US invasion of Iraq is one example.  [I don't know your view of that matter.   But the relevant point here is that I am forced to contribute to the war effort through my taxes even though I have always opposed it.]

You might have something here. For the record, although I think Saddam Hussein's overthrow is a good thing in itself, I see the Second Iraq War as neither legitimate nor necessary and certainly its enormous human and financial costs and its basically zero achievements make it a disaster.

But my question was formulated this way: when did a tyrannical majority forced you by their vote to do something you wouldn't do voluntarily? AFAIK, there was no popular vote about (a) going at war with Iraq and (b) supporting it by taxes.

I might be mistaken, but I am under the impression that G. W. Bush went to war without the approval of the Congress, which would be a clear violation of the US Constitution and a good reason for the Congress starting the impeachment procedure. That the Congress tacitly aquiesced and made no such move only aggravates the matter. But, in this situation, why didn't libertarians and other people who opposed the war sue Bush and the Congressmen for violating the Constitution? Isn't there in the US some sort of court whose purpose is to defend the constitution and see to it that each and every law or executive action respect it? This is the case in most European contries, Romania included, and in not a few instances the Romanian government has been forced to renounce some action or to withdraw a law project from the parliament because they were unconstitutional.

So you can't blame the Iraq blunder on democracy: had it been subjected to popular vote it would have been certainly rejected out of hand. Blame it on a government and a parliament who disregarded the very same constitution under whose provisions they were supposed to operate.

No argument there, except to say that the only form of government that could actually provide what you express there is a minarchist government.

No it isn't. The government which most resembles my description is found in the cantons system of Switzerland, with the landen system in Germany and Austria coming close. Neither of these governments is minarchic.

Besides,  there is no universal solution and what works wonders in a country can spell the ruin of another as history has shown in a most blatant way in the case of the First Spanish Republic (1873-74). It devised a rather libertarian cantonal system which resulted in both a civil war and a revolution that brought about the almost complete dissolution of the country. Only the restoration of a strong, centralized monarchic government saved Spain from being wiped off the map.

So you're a libertarian but just don't know it

There was a time, in my younger years, when I flirted with libertarianism because personal freedom and free market operating under a strong moral order are two ideas which I cherish. But the more I read libertarian political theorists, the more I began to understood that it is an utopia, that it has no resemblance whatsoever to the real world, that it is in fact an inverted marxism and that it wouldn't work. So I parted with it.

If I were to define myself politically, I would say Christian-Democracy suits me best and  it's basically the type of liberalism Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn expounded and vindicated in "Menace of The Herd" and "Liberty or Equality".

[Florestan]

I'm curious as to how you define the term "capitalist".

Someone who has the financial and material means to set up, manage and operate a business, be it a bakery, a car factory or a cell phone network.

[Florestan]

Just to make clear--my reference to Jim Crow was in response to a post by Scarpia.

I am aware of that, but what I suggest is that you as a libertarian have no moral ground to oppose Jim Crow laws, because (a) they have been created and enacted by the voluntary association of Southern constituencies, (b) don't violate anyone's property rights and (c) don't harm anyone physically.

Good write, with mostly good ideas, but sometimes he is more attached to the idea of government than the facts warrant.

Thank you. I asked that because I've met libertarians who held him as one of their own, just because of the "invisible hand" metaphor. My impression is that by strict libertarian standards Adam Smith is a socialist --- but then again I suppose so am I.

My aside: are you familiar with the "Austrian" school of economists, also known as the "Chicago school"?

The Austrian School is not quite the same thing as the Chicago School, is it? The former preceded the latter by half a century, IIRC.

I'm not an economist so I can't say I'm familiar with them, since economical arcanes that goes beyond what my own limited degree of common-sense, reason and thinking can understand elude me --- but I've read some Hayek and Mises; actually Mises Institute's website is still in my bookmarks list.

Good write, some good ideas, but they are much more attached to the economical side of the human beings than the facts warrant.

Case in point: Mises' "consumer king", which is as reductionist a view of man as Marx's "proletarian".

A you have noticed by now, I view society as more than a strictly functional space where consenting adults voluntarily associate in order to perform this or that economical activity --- and in this respect I find their views on man and society rather narrow-focused and unrealistic. But then again, that is what I, as a non-specialist, inferred from reading not their strictly economical works, but their more politically oriented ones. I might be wrong.

An economist which is much closer to my own views is Wilhelm Roepke. I'm aware that none other than Mises himself considered Roepke to be an "Austrian" but IMO he was none such. Consider these paragraphs from Roepke's "A Humane Economy", with which I completely agree:

"The questionable things of this world come to grief on their nature, the good ones on their own excesses. Conservative respect for the past and its preservation are indispensable conditions of a sound society, but to cling exclusively to tradition, history, and established customs is an exaggeration leading to intolerable rigidity. The liberal predilection for movement and progress is an equally indispensable counterweight, but if it sets no limits and recognizes nothing as lasting and worth preserving, it ends in disintegration and destruction. The rights of the community are no less imperative
than those of the individual, but exaggeration of the rights of the community in the form of collectivism is just as dangerous as exaggerated individualism and its extreme form, anarchism. Ownership ends up in plutocracy, authority in bondage and despotism, democracy in arbitrariness and demagogy. Whatever political tendencies or currents we choose as examples, it will be found that they always sow the seed of their own destruction when they lose their sense of proportion and overstep their limits. In this field, suicide is the normal cause of death.

The market economy is no exception to the rule.Indeed, its advocates, in so far as they are at all intellectually fastidious, have always recognized that the sphere of the market, of competition, of the system where supply and demand move prices and thereby govern production, may be regarded and defended only as part of a wider general order encompassing ethics, law, the natural conditions of life and happiness, the state, politics, and power. Society as a whole cannot be ruled by the laws of supply and demand, and
the state is more than a sort of business company, as has been the conviction of the best conservative opinion since the time of Burke. Individuals who compete on the market and there pursue their own advantage stand all the more in need of the social and moral bonds of community, without which competition degenerates most grievously. As we have said before, the market economy is not everything. It must find its place in a higher order of things which is not ruled by supply and demand, free prices, and competition. It must
be firmly contained within an all-embracing order of society in which the imperfections and harshness of economic freedom are corrected by law and in which man is not denied conditions of life appropriate to his nature. Man can wholly fulfill his nature only by
freely becoming part of a community and having a sense of solidarity with it. Otherwise he leads a miserable existence and he knows it. "

(Wilhelm Roepke, A Humane Economy. The Social Framework of the Free Market, Henry Regnery Co., Chicago 1960, pp. 90-91). Online here

Doesn't sound very "Austrian" to me.

[kishnevi]

I am aware of that, but what I suggest is that you as a libertarian have no moral ground to oppose Jim Crow laws, because (a) they have been created and enacted by the voluntary association of Southern constituencies, (b) don't violate anyone's property rights and (c) don't harm anyone physically.

Actually, both (a) and (b) are incorrect. 
A very large group (the newly freed blacks)was prevented, much of the time through force, from voting; which voids the voluntary association part.  To have a voluntary association, it's not enough that people do not need to join if they do not wish to, but it also requires that those people who do wish to join can do so.
Segregation laws violated the right of association and the right of property.  Suppose you have a businessman who wished to serve customers of both races, but was prohibited from doing so by the Jim Crow laws.  (Granted, probably few white businessmen in that era would probably match that description, but there must have been some who would have felt that being able to serve customers of both races would help profitability due to local circumstances--and I would assume that any black business owner would have been very happy to serve both races.)  His right to associate with customers of both races, and his right to invite people of both races onto his own property, were thereby violated.

Thank you. I asked that because I've met libertarians who held him as one of their own, just because of the "invisible hand" metaphor. My impression is that by strict libertarian standards Adam Smith is a socialist --- but then again I suppose so am I.

I think "collectivist" is the currently preferred term, since it covers a variety of "sins" including racism.

I will be investigating Herr Roepke.  I should mention that in the quote you provide, the only part I would dissent from is the last two sentences--and that primarily as a result of my own quirky psychological nature.  I am extremely introverted,  with a much lower need for interaction with other humans, and in fact, a much lower tolerance of human interaction, than average.  I find those times when I am not part of a community to be very enjoyable, indeed.

A you have noticed by now, I view society as more than a strictly functional space where consenting adults voluntarily associate in order to perform this or that economical activity --- and in this respect I find their views on man and society rather narrow-focused and unrealistic. But then again, that is what I, as a non-specialist, inferred from reading not their strictly economical works, but their more politically oriented ones. I might be wrong.

I think it's more correct to describe my view as thinking of society as a strictly functional space where free invidivuals voluntarily associate to achieve certain ends according to their individual preferences--which are certainly not limited to anything economic or even political.

And, to be clear, I am as likely to talk about society, but not when I need to be precise about it.   Society is simply the aggregate of individuals in a given space and time, and the supposed actions/needs/etc. of society are really just the aggregate actions/needs/etc. of those inviduals.    Athens in the age of Pericles (to take an example you mention in one of your other posts today) produced a lot of high quality philosophy, art, and literature, but all of that was the work of inviduals.  Athenian society did not sculpt the Athena of the Parthenon--Phidias did that.  Athenian society did not think out the philosophy of Plato--Plato did that.  Athenian society did not write Oedipus Rex--Sophocles did that.
It's rather like one of us referring to a thread on this forum.  We call it a thread, but that's really just a shorthand term for the accumulation of posts by various individual GMG members on the thread topic and spinoffs therefrom.  So it is with the term "society"--just a shorthand way of referring to the accumulation of people in a specific time and place.

[kishnevi]

Government does this, government does that... What is government more than a sum of people? It's like your idea of society: government cannot do anything, people who hold governmental offices do.

Government doesn't set up anything. Legislatures do. And in most civilized countries there is a clear separation between the two. A government may submit a law project to the parliament, but the ultimate responsibility for its adoption or rejection lies entirely with the latter --- which is not the government.

Maybe you should stop lumping everything under government's umbrella, since it is obvious that by government you mean the executive power, and start seeing things in a more nuanced and realistic way.

We are perhaps not using the word "government" to mean quite the same thing.   I know in Britain at least there is a usage that uses the word to refer to the Prime Minister and Cabinet.  I am not using it that way. The usual American meaning includes the legislature and judiciary as well as the executive, and that's how I am using it here.  Another definition is derived from Ayn Rand, who used the word to refer to the entity/entities which have the monopoly of legal violence in a given area.  That would include, for instance, the police.

In fact, I would go a little farther than that. One definition I came up with was
on this order--Government is the set of institutions which protect individuals of a certain time and place from aggression (that is, unlawful force or fraud), which allow the market to function and provide structure for human interaction.  That would include such things as central banks, the bodies which oversee stock exchanges, labor unions and professional associations, etc.  It could even include such things as FIFA and whoever organizes the weekly book reading club, if you want to stretch it.  The key point is that some things have formal rules and are acknowledged to wield power, while others are not, but just as effectively protect rights and mediate disputes within their own sphere of action.

I mean, your fear and distrust of governmental power might have been in place in 16-th century Spain, or in 18-th century Prussia, or in Mussolini's Italy --- but we've come a long way since then.

Unfortunately not far enough.

And what guarantee do libertarians offer that in their world power will not be abused? What guarantee do you have that people craving for power, which will always exist, will not crawl their way in the army, the police and the courts --- which will still exist --- and use them to increase their power? What guarantee do libertarians offer that a president, or prime minister, or chief of staff, or commander-in-chief of the marines will not use the military power at its disposal to overthrow the libertarian order and establish a socialist dictatorship?

No such guarantee is offered.  People will always try to gain power over others.
But what libertarianism offers is this:  such power grabs won't be for much.    Limit government as much as possible, and not only will the propsect of grabbing power be much less enticing, but the things that could be done with power are that much less.
Stalin could kill millions because he had the resources of the Soviet state at his beck and call.   Suppose he came to power in a state that did not have those resources?  The death toll would have been far less--if it even began, for it is possible the state would have been so week that it would not be able to implement a totalitarian program.

Not being American I'm familiar only at a vey basic level with that story, but I suppose that the American Congress wasn't struck with instant madness and decided to replace a working and succesful form of government just because they so fancied.

Congress did not decide to replace anything.  The Congress that existed uner the Articles of Confederation was, as the result of a concerted political campaign, persuaded to call for a constitutional convention to work out amendments to the Articles.  The convention met and in disregard of the congressional mandate, decided to produce an entirely new constitution to replace the Articles and then persuaded the various thirteen ex colonies to ratify their constitution.   The men behind this movement wanted a a strong central government, the existence of which would benefit most of those that speculated in western lands (western meaning in modern terms the Midwest) and creditors, especially creditors of the state and national governments--both groups would benefit from a stronger central government.
There is a considerable amount of literature on the subject, which is often labeled revisionist.   I don't know of a single source to suggest to you to cover the entire matter, but I would recommend what are called the AntiFederalist papers--the folks who didn't think a new constitution was needed and tried to block ratification of the new document.

So, literature, fine arts, music, architecture, laws, folklore, bridges, monuments, philosophy, religion etc --- all these amounts to nothing for you?

By this logic, the Athenian society during Pericle's time, or the Roman society during Octavian's reign, or the Elizabethan society, or the Golden Century Spanish society are just figments of imagination --- because all the individuals that were supposed to form them are dead since long ago.

See my answer to your other post on this aspect.

I suppose then that every street would have barriers at both ends where each passerby or driver would stop for being checked (by whom?) for his street residence permit, absent which he will be charged (how?) the corresponding fee, absent which he will not be allowed (how? by whom?) to walk or drive down the street. Possibly the barriers would even go alongside the whole street, since one side of it would belong to the association of odd-numbered houses and the other side to the association of even-numbered houses.

Do you really not realize how impractical and outright absurd is this?

Not as impractical as you think.  I don't know about Europe, but automatic toll collecting via electronic cards, etc. is in use in many places here in the US, and would only need some further refinements to carry the matter to the level you are speaking of.

I disagree completely. Anyway, let me ask you this: is there under the sun an evil for which the government is not responsible?

Plenty of things can not be blamed on government, but often enough government intervention will be seen after the fact to have made the problem worse, or at least not improve matters.

Ok then, please explain me the libertarian conception of human nature in general, with no reference to politics and economy.

A free individual who is able to choose his own goals for himself and act to achieve those goals without interference from anyone else so long as he does not use force or fraud to achieve those ends.

You might have something here. For the record, although I think Saddam Hussein's overthrow is a good thing in itself, I see the Second Iraq War as neither legitimate nor necessary and certainly its enormous human and financial costs and its basically zero achievements make it a disaster.

But my question was formulated this way: when did a tyrannical majority forced you by their vote to do something you wouldn't do voluntarily? AFAIK, there was no popular vote about (a) going at war with Iraq and (b) supporting it by taxes.

I might be mistaken, but I am under the impression that G. W. Bush went to war without the approval of the Congress, which would be a clear violation of the US Constitution and a good reason for the Congress starting the impeachment procedure. That the Congress tacitly aquiesced and made no such move only aggravates the matter. But, in this situation, why didn't libertarians and other people who opposed the war sue Bush and the Congressmen for violating the Constitution? Isn't there in the US some sort of court whose purpose is to defend the constitution and see to it that each and every law or executive action respect it? This is the case in most European contries, Romania included, and in not a few instances the Romanian government has been forced to renounce some action or to withdraw a law project from the parliament because they were unconstitutional.

So you can't blame the Iraq blunder on democracy: had it been subjected to popular vote it would have been certainly rejected out of hand. Blame it on a government and a parliament who disregarded the very same constitution under whose provisions they were supposed to operate.

I suppose in Europe it might be possible to overestimate the number of Americans actively opposed to the war in Iraq;  just as now it might be possible to overestimate the number of people in the "Tea Party" movement.

However, while Congress did not issue a formal declaration of war,  Congress did approve the invasion in a way that satisfies any legal requirements, and a large majority of Americans also supported it.    And indeed, when some supporters lost their enthusiams, it was because of the incompetence with which the war was originally run.   People may have approved of the war, but did not like the way the war was prosecuted. as time went on. 

No it isn't. The government which most resembles my description is found in the cantons system of Switzerland, with the landen system in Germany and Austria coming close. Neither of these governments is minarchic.

Besides,  there is no universal solution and what works wonders in a country can spell the ruin of another as history has shown in a most blatant way in the case of the First Spanish Republic (1873-74). It devised a rather libertarian cantonal system which resulted in both a civil war and a revolution that brought about the almost complete dissolution of the country. Only the restoration of a strong, centralized monarchic government saved Spain from being wiped off the map.

Suppose the country had divided up.  What would have been the bad consequences of such an act.    It sounds like your assuming a unified Spain would be a good thing;  I'm not.

If I were to define myself politically, I would say Christian-Democracy suits me best and  it's basically the type of liberalism Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn expounded and vindicated in "Menace of The Herd" and "Liberty or Equality".

Ah, another name to look up.  Thank you.

[Florestan]

Actually, both (a) and (b) are incorrect. 
A very large group (the newly freed blacks)was prevented, much of the time through force, from voting; which voids the voluntary association part.  To have a voluntary association, it's not enough that people do not need to join if they do not wish to, but it also requires that those people who do wish to join can do so.
Segregation laws violated the right of association and the right of property.  Suppose you have a businessman who wished to serve customers of both races, but was prohibited from doing so by the Jim Crow laws.  (Granted, probably few white businessmen in that era would probably match that description, but there must have been some who would have felt that being able to serve customers of both races would help profitability due to local circumstances--and I would assume that any black business owner would have been very happy to serve both races.)  His right to associate with customers of both races, and his right to invite people of both races onto his own property, were thereby violated.

Fair enough. But racial seggregation is morally wrong not --- or not solely --- because it violates property rights and the right to voluntary association, but first and foremost because it violates the innate, God-given dignity of each and every human being and reduce an entire group of people to the status of sub-humans or worse still, objects, to be treated and disposed of as their masters so please. This essential, God-given dignity of a person does in no way whatsoever depend on that person's property rights, because even an Indian lepper beggar who owns nothing is still a human being, nor on that person's right of association, because even a hermit living in the woods and avoiding any contact with the world is still a human being.

How about voluntary slavery, that existed in ancient world? According to libertarian standards, if John agrees voluntarily to be the slave of Jack, then this is no more slavery, but a contract between two consenting parts, and as such perfectly legal and moral. According to my philosophy, it might very well be legal but it will still be immoral.

I will be investigating Herr Roepke.

Please do. He's worthwile reading, even if you disagree with him. Besides, Roepke was the man behind West Germany's post-WWII economic boom, so he might know a thing or two about free market.

A good starting place is here: you can find a large online collection of his writing (hosted at Mises Institute, of all places  ) and some well-written essays about him and his vision.

This is interesting as well.

I should mention that in the quote you provide, the only part I would dissent from is the last two sentences--and that primarily as a result of my own quirky psychological nature.  I am extremely introverted,  with a much lower need for interaction with other humans, and in fact, a much lower tolerance of human interaction, than average.  I find those times when I am not part of a community to be very enjoyable, indeed.

Well, maybe this is one reason you are a libertarian, since libertarianism is in tune with your innate dispositions.

For the record, I'm not much of a gregarious person myself.

Society is simply the aggregate of individuals in a given space and time, and the supposed actions/needs/etc. of society are really just the aggregate actions/needs/etc. of those inviduals.    Athens in the age of Pericles (to take an example you mention in one of your other posts today) produced a lot of high quality philosophy, art, and literature, but all of that was the work of inviduals.  Athenian society did not sculpt the Athena of the Parthenon--Phidias did that.  Athenian society did not think out the philosophy of Plato--Plato did that.  Athenian society did not write Oedipus Rex--Sophocles did that.

Of course, but Pericles, Phidias, Plato, Sophocles did not appear out of the blue sky in Athens. They were born, raised and educated in a society which valued laws, sculpture, philosophy and tragedy, which viewed them as some of the loftiest goals that a man can pursue and which encouraged them to carry on their creative urges. Had Plato been born in contemporary Afghanistan I very much doubt he would have had any idea of philosophy, let alone engaged in it himself.

[Florestan]

The usual American meaning includes the legislature and judiciary as well as the executive, and that's how I am using it here.

Thanks for clarifying.

I'm not familiar with American-style politics so I speak only from an European poiint of view.

In most European counries, the executive, the legislature and the judiciary are strictly and clearly separated, they have different purposes, they act in different ways and, at any given time there is both overlap and tension, if not outright conflict, between them. Accordingly, it is meaningless and contrafactual to lump together all the three branches under the term "government" and say "government does this or that".

For instance, and this happens especialy in presidential or semi-presidential republics such as France or Romania, not infrequently the executive is right-wing while the majority in the parliament is left-wing, or the other way around. This result obviously in conflict between these two powers, as a law that the parliament pass might be opposed by the president or prime-minister or a particular cabinet member, while an executive law proposal or action might be opposed by the parliament. Should we say then, accoridng to your view, that "the government" is both in favor of, and strongly opposed to , a certain law or action?

Another definition is derived from Ayn Rand, who used the word to refer to the entity/entities which have the monopoly of legal violence in a given area.  That would include, for instance, the police.

Ayn Rand is one of the libertarians that turned me away from libertarianism. Her ideas are so far-fetched, when not outright contrived, her books are imbued with such a simplistic and reductionist moralism, her characters so static and unreal that it can be safely stated that having such advocates libertarianism needs no more critics. 

In fact, I would go a little farther than that. One definition I came up with was
on this order--Government is the set of institutions which protect individuals of a certain time and place from aggression (that is, unlawful force or fraud), which allow the market to function and provide structure for human interaction.  That would include such things as central banks, the bodies which oversee stock exchanges, labor unions and professional associations, etc.  It could even include such things as FIFA and whoever organizes the weekly book reading club, if you want to stretch it.  The key point is that some things have formal rules and are acknowledged to wield power, while others are not, but just as effectively protect rights and mediate disputes within their own sphere of action.Unfortunately not far enough.

By this point of view everything is government, including the Libertarian Part US. Forgive me for being blunt, but this is sheer nonsense.

No such guarantee is offered.

Thanks for acknowledging it.

But what libertarianism offers is this:  such power grabs won't be for much.    Limit government as much as possible, and not only will the propsect of grabbing power be much less enticing, but the things that could be done with power are that much less.
Stalin could kill millions because he had the resources of the Soviet state at his beck and call.   Suppose he came to power in a state that did not have those resources?  The death toll would have been far less--if it even began, for it is possible the state would have been so week that it would not be able to implement a totalitarian program.

Since army will continue to exist in Libertaria, and it would actually have to be a very strong, well-equiped and well-trained one, since Libertaria's neighbors are more likely than not to view it as an easy prey, because of its weak government and weak social structures and ties, there will always be the prospect of a military dictatorship lurking around the corner.

Congress did not decide to replace anything.  The Congress that existed uner the Articles of Confederation was, as the result of a concerted political campaign, persuaded to call for a constitutional convention to work out amendments to the Articles.  The convention met and in disregard of the congressional mandate, decided to produce an entirely new constitution to replace the Articles and then persuaded the various thirteen ex colonies to ratify their constitution.   The men behind this movement wanted a a strong central government, the existence of which would benefit most of those that speculated in western lands (western meaning in modern terms the Midwest) and creditors, especially creditors of the state and national governments--both groups would benefit from a stronger central government.
There is a considerable amount of literature on the subject, which is often labeled revisionist.   I don't know of a single source to suggest to you to cover the entire matter, but I would recommend what are called the AntiFederalist papers--the folks who didn't think a new constitution was needed and tried to block ratification of the new document.

I'll investigate the matter more deeply. Thank you for the reading suggestion.

I don't know about Europe, but automatic toll collecting via electronic cards, etc. is in use in many places here in the US, and would only need some further refinements to carry the matter to the level you are speaking of.

In Europe as well, but it's one thing to pay a toll every 200 miles on a highway and quite another to pay a toll every 10 feet, as you cross the street or change the lane.

A free individual who is able to choose his own goals for himself and act to achieve those goals without interference from anyone else so long as he does not use force or fraud to achieve those ends.

Admitting that such an individual ever existed at all (which I doubt) there will always be infants, children, teen-agers, or mature disabled people (physically or mentally) that will escape this definition. So, I stand by my main point: libertarianism rests on a utopian view of man.

Suppose the country had divided up.  What would have been the bad consequences of such an act.    It sounds like your assuming a unified Spain would be a good thing;  I'm not.

Aside from the fact that a libertarian should recoil in horror at the very idea of civil war or revolution, much more so of both of them taking place simultaneously, since it means (a) massive and systematic physical harm inflicted on people and (b) gross violations of the rights of property and association, it can be infered from the above that for you not only such thing as "society", but also such things as "country" and "fatherland" are imaginary constructs. It can be infered from the above and from your advocating the idea that cities and towns be turned up in nothing more than a patchwork of private properties, that for you such concepts as "social bonds", "civic solidarity", "loyalty to one's community or country", "common history", "national cultural heritage" or indeed any concept having to do with anything other than explicitly agreed upon contracts between consenting parties, is equally imaginary and you have no use for it. If this be the case, then, unfortunately for you and for libertarianism at large, it is exactly these concepts you reject that have shaped the human history since its inception till today and they are also the reason why libertarianism will never be more than a fringe movement: it goes against experience and reality.

FWIW, contemporary Spain, who managed to survive the catastrophy of 1873-75, is almost a federal state, granting high degrees of autonomy for its constituent provinces.

Ah, another name to look up.  Thank you.

You're welcome.

A good summary of his thinking, written by himself, can be found here.

Here by scrolling down to "External links" you can find online his two books I refered to in my previous post. They are rather lengthy but worthwile reading, even for a libertarian.

Curiously enough, they are hosted by the same Mises Institute and this puzzles me, because he was a devout Catholic, a proud aristocrat and a staunch monarchist heaping praises on the old Austrian empire --- IOW, anything but a libertarian.

NB I will be away from internet in the next three days so please be patient about my replies.

[kishnevi]

Thanks for clarifying.

I'm not familiar with American-style politics so I speak only from an European poiint of view.

In most European counries, the executive, the legislature and the judiciary are strictly and clearly separated, they have different purposes, they act in different ways and, at any given time there is both overlap and tension, if not outright conflict, between them. Accordingly, it is meaningless and contrafactual to lump together all the three branches under the term "government" and say "government does this or that".

For instance, and this happens especialy in presidential or semi-presidential republics such as France or Romania, not infrequently the executive is right-wing while the majority in the parliament is left-wing, or the other way around. This result obviously in conflict between these two powers, as a law that the parliament pass might be opposed by the president or prime-minister or a particular cabinet member, while an executive law proposal or action might be opposed by the parliament. Should we say then, according to your view, that "the government" is both in favor of, and strongly opposed to , a certain law or action?

I think what this boils down to is simply that what you refer to as government we Americans think of as one of the three branches of government--the executive branch.  We wouldn't generally speak of "the government" being for or against anything, except possibly in foreign relations, when dealing with foreign countries  ("Ambassador X presented the views of the United States Government to President Z in a frank discussion.")

Ayn Rand is one of the libertarians that turned me away from libertarianism. Her ideas are so far-fetched, when not outright contrived, her books are imbued with such a simplistic and reductionist moralism, her characters so static and unreal that it can be safely stated that having such advocates libertarianism needs no more critics. 

To be very accurate,  Rand was not a libertarian, and she heavily criticized the libertarian movement several times, mostly because libertarians took some of her ideas and rejected others, and allowed themselves to associate with People Of Whom Ayn Rand Disapproved.
Her philosophy is Objectivism, and I think it fair to say that some of the best arguments in Objectivism are simply pointing out what self proclaimed Objectivists do.   I agree with your opinion of her novels, and I find most of her philosophy self important bosh, but she did have some very good insights, and her nonfiction, even though it is self important bosh, was well written from the standpoint of literary style--she is one of the best polemicists I have ever read--while no one else has come forward with anything even close to convincing as a defense of the free market and capitalism  which does not involve God and therefore appeals to atheists--so her influence remains.  If you haven't read some of her non fiction work--her essays, such as the collection The Virtue of Selfishness--I urge you to do so, simply as a matter of literary enjoyment.  The substance may make you want to throw the book against the wall from time to time--so throw it against the wall, pick it back up and continue to read. 

By this point of view everything is government, including the Libertarian Part US. Forgive me for being blunt, but this is sheer nonsense.

No need to apologize; you do have a valid point.  I should mention I developed this definition while arguing with the anarchist capitalists--the ones who think we don't need to have a government.  I was trying to point out to them that even if one abolished all formal government, there would still be institutions and entities who would carry out the functions of government (police and courts, for instance)--an informal government, if you will--and that all things considered, it is far better to have a formal government than an informal government.

Since army will continue to exist in Libertaria, and it would actually have to be a very strong, well-equiped and well-trained one, since Libertaria's neighbors are more likely than not to view it as an easy prey, because of its weak government and weak social structures and ties, there will always be the prospect of a military dictatorship lurking around the corner.

Libertarian thinking on this point is conditioned by the original American set up in which the primary military defense was the militia--that is, the citizens of a community are the army.   The army would be the citizenry, so a potential military despot would not have a body of soldiers distinct from the public at large.  There would those on active duty and those on reserve duty and those too old or too young to do anything beyond serving as a home guard, and the organization would obviously be geared to defensive aims, not offensive warfare.  Nor would the neighboring countries find Libertaria easy pickings, either to be conquered or to stay conquered.

In Europe as well, but it's one thing to pay a toll every 200 miles on a highway and quite another to pay a toll every 10 feet, as you cross the street or change the lane.

Don't know how widespread it is yet in Europe.  Here we have systems coming into use by which one has what is in effect a dedicated debit card and an electronic transponder on the car.  Drive by a toll location, the transponder does its thing and the amount of the toll is deducted off the debit card.  All you need to do is to keep track of the account and make sure you have money in the card.   Those that use the toll roads set up this way without paying that way end up being traced by traffic cameras and fined.

Admitting that such an individual ever existed at all (which I doubt) there will always be infants, children, teen-agers, or mature disabled people (physically or mentally) that will escape this definition. So, I stand by my main point: libertarianism rests on a utopian view of man.

You doubt such people exist?  Don't you, every day of your life, choose goals, and act in a way that will help you achieve those goals?
The existence of people who are not ready, or not yet ready, to act as freely choosing inviduals no more challenges libertarianism than they do any other moral system, except those of a totalitarian nature which see all inviduals as wards or property of the state

.
Aside from the fact that a libertarian should recoil in horror at the very idea of civil war or revolution, much more so of both of them taking place simultaneously, since it means (a) massive and systematic physical harm inflicted on people and (b) gross violations of the rights of property and association,

Valid point,  but I was merely questioning what seemed to be your premise--that a non-unitary Spain was a bad thing, even if obtained through peaceful means.

it can be infered from the above that for you not only such thing as "society", but also such things as "country" and "fatherland" are imaginary constructs. It can be infered from the above and from your advocating the idea that cities and towns be turned up in nothing more than a patchwork of private properties, that for you such concepts as "social bonds", "civic solidarity", "loyalty to one's community or country", "common history", "national cultural heritage" or indeed any concept having to do with anything other than explicitly agreed upon contracts between consenting parties, is equally imaginary and you have no use for it. If this be the case, then, unfortunately for you and for libertarianism at large, it is exactly these concepts you reject that have shaped the human history since its inception till today and they are also the reason why libertarianism will never be more than a fringe movement: it goes against experience and reality.

Not so.  People are free to relate to each other however they wish, including shared culture, etc.  What libertarians insist on is that however you analyze it, it boils down to individuals choosing to associate in that matter.   If you want to hand out the national flag for reasons of patriotism, you should be free to do so.  But everyone should have the right to refuse to take that flag, and no one should force you to give out that flag if you do not wish to do so.
IOW, all these things are fine, but only up to the point where they become co-ercive.  It's the difference between "Would you please help us build a public library because of these good reasons 1, 2, 3, etc."  versus "You are obligated to help us build a public library because we have chosen to do so".

A good summary of his thinking, written by himself, can be found here.

Interesting, although a first read through suggests he places too much reliance on the idea of natural law, and trusts the idea of experts deciding technical matters too easily, and he doesn't seem to understand that separation of Church and State means you can't have a political set up which takes divine revelation as one of its foundations.

And thank you for the other material you pointed to.

NB I will be away from internet in the next three days so please be patient about my replies.

Considering all the reading you've pointed my way, I shall not be complaining

[kishnevi]

Fair enough. But racial segregation is morally wrong not --- or not solely --- because it violates property rights and the right to voluntary association, but first and foremost because it violates the innate, God-given dignity of each and every human being and reduce an entire group of people to the status of sub-humans or worse still, objects, to be treated and disposed of as their masters so please. This essential, God-given dignity of a person does in no way whatsoever depend on that person's property rights, because even an Indian lepper beggar who owns nothing is still a human being, nor on that person's right of association, because even a hermit living in the woods and avoiding any contact with the world is still a human being.

Nothing in that paragraph a libertarian would dissent from.  Except the atheist ones would probably omit "God given". 

How about voluntary slavery, that existed in ancient world? According to libertarian standards, if John agrees voluntarily to be the slave of Jack, then this is no more slavery, but a contract between two consenting parts, and as such perfectly legal and moral. According to my philosophy, it might very well be legal but it will still be immoral.

There are four+ basic libertarian attitudes to this.
1)Yes, voluntary slavery is possible.  So what?
2) Yes, voluntary slavery is possible, but I'm not comfortable with that idea at all.
3) Voluntary slavery is simply another form of employment contract, and comes with all the protections of such a contract, so it's not really slavery.
4) Slavery is the total subordination of one human to another and therefore can not legally exist.

Although I include it as a possibility, I know of no one who actually takes attitude 1.
3 is the most common.  Imagine a contract in which A makes himself into B's employee for one year.  A's wages will be paid to his family or put in trust for the end of the year.   A gives up, as part of the contract, all power to make choices of his own and gives B absolute right to make all decisions for him.  B agrees not only to pay wages but to provide room and board and clothing when needed.  A reserves the right to cancel the contract on grounds of physical abuse, non performance by B, etc. or the controlling local law does so alread in the case of all employment contracts.  Thus, a contract as close to slavery as possible but with a set duration.

Do you think such an arrangement is morally acceptable, and if so, how do you differentiate it from an similar contract whose duration is set as the life of A. 

Of course, but Pericles, Phidias, Plato, Sophocles did not appear out of the blue sky in Athens. They were born, raised and educated in a society which valued laws, sculpture, philosophy and tragedy, which viewed them as some of the loftiest goals that a man can pursue and which encouraged them to carry on their creative urges. Had Plato been born in contemporary Afghanistan I very much doubt he would have had any idea of philosophy, let alone engaged in it himself.

As true as that may be, it still does not make "society" more than a handy word to describe a group of individuals.

[Florestan]

I think what this boils down to is simply that what you refer to as government we Americans think of as one of the three branches of government--the executive branch.  We wouldn't generally speak of "the government" being for or against anything, except possibly in foreign relations, when dealing with foreign countries  ("Ambassador X presented the views of the United States Government to President Z in a frank discussion.")

Hey, but that's exactly what you've been doing all along: lumping legislature, executive and judiciary under the general term "government" and saying: "government does this", "government does that", "government sets up" etc. Now I'm really confused.

To be very accurate,  Rand was not a libertarian, and she heavily criticized the libertarian movement several times, mostly because libertarians took some of her ideas and rejected others, and allowed themselves to associate with People Of Whom Ayn Rand Disapproved.
Her philosophy is Objectivism, and I think it fair to say that some of the best arguments in Objectivism are simply pointing out what self proclaimed Objectivists do.   I agree with your opinion of her novels, and I find most of her philosophy self important bosh, but she did have some very good insights, and her nonfiction, even though it is self important bosh, was well written from the standpoint of literary style--she is one of the best polemicists I have ever read--while no one else has come forward with anything even close to convincing as a defense of the free market and capitalism  which does not involve God and therefore appeals to atheists--so her influence remains.  If you haven't read some of her non fiction work--her essays, such as the collection The Virtue of Selfishness--I urge you to do so, simply as a matter of literary enjoyment.  The substance may make you want to throw the book against the wall from time to time--so throw it against the wall, pick it back up and continue to read.

Thanks, I'll give it a try. I do enjoy well-written books even if they are otherwise worthless.

Libertarian thinking on this point is conditioned by the original American set up in which the primary military defense was the militia--that is, the citizens of a community are the army.

Yes I did infer that. Actually, I believe this is the main reason why libertarianism is so uncommon in Europe: one cannot reasonably adopt as valid and practical in the contemporary world a political philosophy which rests on the peculiar social and economical conditions of a country in the late 18-th century.

.Don't know how widespread it is yet in Europe.  Here we have systems coming into use by which one has what is in effect a dedicated debit card and an electronic transponder on the car.  Drive by a toll location, the transponder does its thing and the amount of the toll is deducted off the debit card.  All you need to do is to keep track of the account and make sure you have money in the card.   Those that use the toll roads set up this way without paying that way end up being traced by traffic cameras and fined.

That's all fine, but my main objection is to the very idea of paying your way through a patchwork of private properties in order to go buying fresh fruits or fish in the market. Libertarianism notwithstanding, a city is not "an aggregate of individuals" who just happen to live in the same time and place. It is not a mere network of streets and homes. In Europe at least, it has public places such as large squares and parks, oftenly featuring public monuments such as statues, fountains, churches etc, where people can meet, walk, talk, have a drink, read a book or a newspaper or whatever else constitute a communal civilized life; these public spaces and the corresponding monuments are oftentimes centuries old and have been planned and build by, horribile dictu, the government of the time. Who's going to own them? Am I going to have to pay a tolll not only for walking around, say, Piazza della Signoria in Florence, but also for glancing at the statues therein? And how is the communal life to survive if each and every walk to one's favourite pub downtown results in a cumulated toll of much more than just the two beers one planned to have?

You doubt such people exist?  Don't you, every day of your life, choose goals, and act in a way that will help you achieve those goals?

Of course I do. But think of it this way. No individual was ever asked, let alone gave consent, whether he agrees to (a) being born in a specific ethnicity, (b) being born in a soecific time and place, (c) being born in a specific family, (d) being raised in a specific language and (e) being educated (if at all) in a specific language, by a specific person teaching one or more specific branches of knowledge. Thus, long before an individual reaches the age of consent, he is subject to (1) a multitude of influences from factors which are both inescapable and completely outside his control, and (2) a multitude of interferences from a variety of individuals --- all these factors and individuals concurring to instill in him certain values and shape in his mind a certain worldview. In whatever he will do in his adult age he will always be influenced one or way or another by them and in this respect it can be argued that an individual's choices are never completely free from external influences and interferences. There is no such things as an absolute freedom, neither of choice nor of thought nor of action: freedom always operate within a certain context, i.e. within certain limits. (Mind you, I said nothing about innate inclinations, which no doubt play their part as well in the overall character of an individual)

To illustrate my point, let's take our personal cases: you were not born a libertarian more than I was born a christian-democrat. We did not invent these philosophies --- we discovered them, and chose to adhere to them, in specific times and places, after receiving a specific education and going through specific life experiences, which include social circumstances and a host of individuals, alive and dead. Perhaps had you been born a Romanian in 1972 and I an American in..., our thinking would have been inverted; and certainly had we both been born in Somalia we would have been none of the above.

Valid point,  but I was merely questioning what seemed to be your premise--that a non-unitary Spain was a bad thing, even if obtained through peaceful means.

That was not my premise at all, you misunderstood me. I only pointed out that a political scheme which worked extremely well in a country --- case in point, the cantonal system in Switzerland --- spelled ruin and misery for another and its people, Spain, as it plunged it into both a bloody civil war and a bloody revolution. And it did so precisely because the people's character and the social, economical and religious conditions in these two countries were completely different in 1870s (and they remained so until today). There is no universally valid political system.

I have no problem with non-unitary countries which resolved peacefully to be that way. Spain in 1873 was just not one of them.

People are free to relate to each other however they wish, including shared culture, etc.  What libertarians insist on is that however you analyze it, it boils down to individuals choosing to associate in that matter.

See my reply about freedom of choice. Have you ever chosen to be associated with the American and Jewish culture?

IOW, all these things are fine, but only up to the point where they become co-ercive.

Well, being born a Spaniard, or a Jew, or a Romanian is indeed extremely coercive, since (a) you were not asked to give consent and (b) you can't escape it.

It's the difference between "Would you please help us build a public library because of these good reasons 1, 2, 3, etc."  versus "You are obligated to help us build a public library because we have chosen to do so".

That difference should be made clear by education. Think of it this way. A public library benefits not only its subscribers, but also those who will never read a book in their whole life, since they will be better off, including physically and propertywise secure, in a society where at least a critical mass of citizens is educated (including through books) about the value and importance of life, liberty and property, than in a society where, because a critical mass of citizens refuses to spend their money on a library that they will never use, such education is missing.

Interesting, although a first read through suggests he places too much reliance on the idea of natural law

As becomes a devout Catholic.

, and trusts the idea of experts deciding technical matters too easily,

Well, certainly the surgery one needs for a heart condition and the techniques and instrumentary thereof, are technical matters to be decided by experts, regardless of the opinion of the one in question, right?

and he doesn't seem to understand that separation of Church and State means you can't have a political set up which takes divine revelation as one of its foundations.

He doesn't advocate the total separation of Church and State. Actually he rejects it plainly, see paragraph 17. What he advocate against is the identification of Church and State. But his terminology is indeed rather confusing on this point.

[Florestan]

Imagine a contract in which A makes himself into B's employee for one year.  A's wages will be paid to his family or put in trust for the end of the year.   A gives up, as part of the contract, all power to make choices of his own and gives B absolute right to make all decisions for him.  B agrees not only to pay wages but to provide room and board and clothing when needed.  A reserves the right to cancel the contract on grounds of physical abuse, non performance by B, etc. or the controlling local law does so alread in the case of all employment contracts.  Thus, a contract as close to slavery as possible but with a set duration.

Do you think such an arrangement is morally acceptable, and if so, how do you differentiate it from an similar contract whose duration is set as the life of A.

That's not even close to slavery, it's an imaginary contract whose clauses are self-contradictory. Can you point me to one single real instance of such a contract?

Real slavery means that A is the property of B and B can do whatever he sees fit with A, including physically abusing or plain killing him, without any contract or third party interfering. That was, and in certain parts of the world still is, a harsh reality.

As true as that may be, it still does not make "society" more than a handy word to describe a group of individuals.

If this be the case, please explain me the difference between the group of individuals in contemporary Massachussets and the group of individuals in contemporary Afghanistan.