I would if I weren’t so tired. I used to think highly of Rand, and named my first kid after her. Then the real world hit. That zompist link pretty well gives my objections.
I see libertarianism as a Garden of Eden “ism.” If only we cast out the Serpent of Government, then all will be okey-dokey. The problem is, humans need government or we degenerate into packs of quarreling monkeys, with the bananas going to the strongest.
To prevent that, we must cooperate with each other in our country (community) and there are impositions upon our complete freedom which will occur. If we study our history lessons, we learn that certain types of situations lead to bad results.
To that end, we have mandantory education, welfare, military, and regulation. No human civilization has ever existed and thrived with stability without government and regulation. Too much government power, and we have a bad situation.
Theoretically, you can say some goobers right to use meth does not affect me, but it does. It is my house the SOB will break into. It is his children who will be a drag on society, whether we take over the kids and feed and raise them, or if we leave them to starve.
Look on one of these links and you have the Libertarians admitting the 1890s was like a Golden Age. The lessons of history have been forgotten. The libertarians are like the Taliban. Dang, if we could just go back to 700’s, life was perfect.
parsy, who don’t play that game. Life is just more complex than that
Points taken. But a few clarifications. The thinking libertarian does not want to cast out government completely, just confine it. It’s ridiculous to say there will be no government, but hey, let’s split the difference between no government and what we have now, and I’d say that’s a good start.
Turning to the idea of Garden of Eden. All politics should be about what “should” or what “ought” to be, so I don’t accept the idea that we are all supposed to be so jaded, that if we are aspiring to a government confined to certain functions, that it is necessarily a utopian approach. Of course humans need government, no one is saying no government, we are saying government as a specialized tool, i.e. that minimum amount of government that liberates individuals to succeed or to fall.
Of course we must cooperate, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that government is the only vehicle of cooperation among individuals. Quite the opposite. Government is the instrument of coercion, i.e. the act of compelling by force. Coercion and cooperation can be argued to be opposites. One is an arrangement entered into by two willing parties. The other is an arrangement imposed on one party by another using the threat of force, so I would like to explore further the premise of your assertion that to cooperate means to be coerced by a government, because I think that’s a critical distinction.
The rest of your argument turns on that point. Because we must be coerced, therefore these are the things we must be coerced to do: mandatory education, military, welfare, and regulation.
Let’s explore that. Why should education be mandatory? If a person does not have to good sense to get educated, then why should the state spend resources educating him? Its been my experience that education becomes more efficient and productive at the moment when the individual realizes what role the education will have in his life. Its is at that moment that education takes on meaning, and becomes inspired and productive. Can you imagine the resources we use forcing people to sit in classrooms that really have no business being there? If a person truly wants the consequences of no education, I say we let that person have those consequences. Subsequently, if they realize the need, they will return to the endeavor supremely motivated.
I think the idea that less government means you legalize drugs or you don’t legalize drugs misses the point. Its not about drugs. Its about the individual dealing with the consequences of his actions. Right now you have an entire generation, a culture if you will, of people who have come to expect to be supported by the government as their right from god.
Going to your next point. I don’t understand how the goober’s kids will be a drag on society if we leave them to starve. I didn’t quite understand how that would work. If they starve then in fact they wouldn’t be a drag on society.
The 1890’s were not a golden age. They had certain problems. One of those problems was the increasing culture of need, and the increasing role of government within the culture of need. There was something fundamental and philosophical growing within the capitalist system. I think that’s where you are misinterpreting things, even though you named a child or a dog Rand.
In all seriousness, serious minded libertarians are not yearning for the past. We are trying to form a philosophical basis for the future. The problem with modern Conservatism is that liberals (generally) have conservatives in a philosophical corner. More about that later. I am off to bed. Although I’ve enjoyed your posts, and look forward to continuing the conversation.