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[–] TheRedArmy 9 points (+9|-0) Edited

Great question! I've been wanting to post things like this explaining Libertarianism in general, but writing is hard, and takes time.

Before answer directly, it's worth noting that, like any political position, there's a good bit of granularity in there - some people go further one way or the other, but I can talk about where I land on that spectrum.

Many libertarians swear by the Non-Aggression Principle, which I think is a decent starting point, but probably ends up lacking in a few areas. Below, I'm going to talk about the philosophical side of Libertarianism more than the practical side. While I agree the practical ideas are sound, in general, the philosophy is what really convinced me that this was the best philosophy so far discovered.

The general rule I (and many others) use is this - as long as your actions do not interfere with the life (physical well-being), liberty (freedoms we enjoy, whether natural rights or granted by the state), or property of other people, then there is not a legitimate justification for preventing you from doing something within your own value system.

So, let's give some basic examples. Alice and Bob get into an argument over a certain piece of land, and are disputing who is belongs to. At some point, Alice gets fed up with the argument, and decides to end it immediately, so she kills Bob. Obviously a crime, in violation of above, taking Bob's life, in this case. It would be the same if she kidnapped Bob until he agreed to give her the land (liberty), or if she tried to burn Bob's house down (property). In all cases, Alice is infringing on Bob's rights to life, liberty, or property, and so it's appropriate for the state to intervene to protect Bob and punish Alice in these instances.

Some people get tripped up or appalled at the idea of individuals being allowed to do things that they find grotesque or morally wrong, but since they don't actually harm other people, most Libertarians would argue there's no legitimate justification for stopping the action. The most obvious and modern case of this is marijuana. Obviously it's quite easy to smoke marijuana alone (or with others), in the privacy of your own home, in a way that endangers nobody. The only possible risks are taken by the people smoking themselves. To any Libertarian, the laws criminalizing the use of marijuana are clearly unjustified. I personally don't smoke. I don't see any appeal in it. But I have friends who do, and they see the appeal in it.

The big question is: should some citizens be allowed to use the government to force their morality onto other citizens? Is it OK for homosexuals to be denied the right to marry because the Christians and other religious types don't like that behavior? Is it OK to criminalize playing violent video games, because some think it's wrong to play those kinds of games? Should pornography be outlawed because some groups see it as degrading to women? You probably already have an opinion on all these things; and that's fine. But do you think it's fine for the government should enforce that particular morality onto its citizens? Because if it can enforce morality one way, it can enforce morality the other way too.

I should mention at this point that third-party effects - when people outside of the "agreement" are affected - are different. So me smoking alone in my house is fine. Me intentionally blowing second-hand smoke into people's faces are not. Besides being exceedingly rude, there's real harm that can come from that, so there's some justification for making me stop in order to protect other people. Think also about a river, and there's someone at the top of the river that dumps all their trash into it, and the people further downstream have to deal with it all the time. That's also a third-party effect - in this case, the people downstream would have a clean river, but for your carelessness/not giving a shit in dumping trash into it. While the river may be on the dumper's property for a time, it's obvious anything he throws in will affect everyone else further down, and so he is harming others through his actions. The environment is also something that deserves some protections - deciding exactly how and when to protect things is obviously the hard part, but there is a case, to some extent, for the state to get involved in that as well.

Now, as for your last question, how would society remain cohesive? I mean, how does it remain cohesive now? It's not like we have anyone telling us what to do all the time. The last time I spoke to a government bureaucrat was 2 years ago, when I got my driver's license renewed. People generally know how to go about their lives decently well. Most of us follow a few simple guidelines -

  • we generally act in our own self-interest, to get what we want out of life
  • we generally go about our business without actively trying to harm other people
  • we generally try to keep ourselves relatively safe

When you have a job, you make the choice yourself whether to go or not each day. You decide for yourself whether its any good or not. You make the decision whether something is a good purchase or not; whether a movie is worth your time or not; whether a potential partner is a good match or not. Entrepreneurs decide whether starting a business is a good idea or not; whether they should pick this location or that location; how much they should advertise; how much they should charge for their goods or services. The vast majority of people make almost all of the really important decisions in their life on their own already.

It's worth noting that this was basically how things were for the first part of the United States' history - until the New Deal during the Great Depression (1930's), by and large, government was almost a non-factor in people's lives. It actually wasn't that important who the president was, or what Congress did - part of that was the era, and distance, and all that, but it was also because the federal branches just didn't really have a ton of power in the first place. As a simple measure, government spending at the federal level, on average, was about 3% of the national income - government spending at all levels was about 10%. People were free to live their lives as they chose - and it's worth noting that was the period of the greatest growth in our history, when people streamed to our shores from all over the world, in the hope of creating a better life for themselves and their families. Many of them were successful as well. I don't think a state being involved in its citizens lives is as important as you maybe think it is.

Great topic! If you want to know more, please ask away. I'm happy to talk about it.

EDIT: I see now in your reply to Mattvision you're talking about national unity, and identity, and that kind of stuff. I can get to that in another post, I'll take a break for now.

[–] Mattvision 7 points (+7|-0)

Can you define cohesive?

Without knowing what you mean, the best answer I can give you is that it wouldn't necessarily remain cohesive, but it wouldn't necessarily not either. It depends on the density of people who would naturally behave this way in your society. But they must do it voluntarily, of their own will.

Is it something you think people truly can't do without being forced to by an involuntary state? Could a voluntary state or institution of some kind not incentivize people to behave this way by choice?

If so, is cohesiveness really so valuable that you must threaten people with violence to comply with it? Would you be willing to enforce this yourself, by arresting people who don't comply, and even physically harming or killing people who resist arrest?

[+] [Deleted] 5 points (+5|-0)
[–] Justintoxicated 5 points (+5|-0)

I have some libertarian leanings, some are described in @TheRedArmy's well put post.

I think the point where many people take crux with libertarianism is when the topic of taxes and privatization come up. I would think a moderate libertarian would agree that some taxes serve a relevant purpose however they would demand greater transparency on where the money is spent (which certainly does not exist in the federal budget) and accountability for tax dollars. A moderate libertarian may support the idea of some degree of privatization of some public services (for example public transit, most US cities have contracts with private companies to provide public transit) if they believe that the private companies can provide an advantage over the public option (efficiency, cost, innovation, etc..).

Now the extreme examples that are more commonly used are the extreme cases who do not believe in taxation for any purpose or do not believe in the idea of public funding (end all subsidies, social programs, etc..). Libertarians are an easy strawman because many of the core ideas are neither in agreement or disagreement with polarizing issues.