tripu @tripu@social.cleverlibre.org
Technologist, Spaniard, male, 42
Joined May 2020
@ceoln is reading my mind often throughout this conversation 👍
/CC @bonifartius
We don't need to assume universal goodness, not the opposite. We just look at the distribution of the population. There's so much variation in there.
Both extremes (dictatorship and anarchy) are obviously wrong to me.
/cc @ceoln
But that's exactly what I did.
I deduced principles like pillage, theft and war from things other than “the king said so” or “some politicians decided that”. I deduced then from natural selection, survival, hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, and the fact that those “principles” got us humans so far until relatively recently forms of government, the law, human rights, etc were introduced.
Your own source:
> _based on a close observation of **human nature**, and based on values intrinsic to human nature that can be deduced and applied **independently of positive law**_
Oppression of the weak, rape, and expecting pain and death due to mysterious illnesses fit that definition perfectly.
(And that's precisely my point: rights based on natural law can be wrong.)
I think I'll get off the train soon because I don't think we're understanding each other, sadly. No offence, it may be a problem from both sides.
@ceoln pointed out that needing fewer or simpler “assumptions” is no indication that a political system is better than another, or even feasible in the first place. You asked how exactly the assumptions needed for libertarianism are incorrect. I then asked you to list all those assumptions in detail so we can proceed to discuss their merits.
And you answer with a single sentence, a platitude that is rather poetic and ambiguous.
I just don't know what to do with that.
“If everyone decides upon egoism and stands by it” is too big an “if” to base the viability of the system upon it.
What if many (or even most) people do not practice perfect selfishness, and feel the moral urge or the religious imperative to act to prevent what they see as disastrous outcomes, *as is actually the case in the real world*?
You know what else is “natural”?
The will of the strong upon the weak. Dying of diarrhea. Falling prey to a predator if one's short-sighted. Rape and pillage. Many degrees of servitude and slavery. Spoiling the river for everyone else downstream.
All that is far more natural than respecting the property of others and “contracts”. All that predates ideas such as ownership, non-violence and voluntary agreements, and is found throughout the natural world in both human and non-human animals. Yet we don't defend those things as good in any sense.
It's the “appeal to natural” fallacy what you're invoking.
Clearly enunciate all those “assumptions” of yours and we'll tell you how exactly they are “incorrect” or incomplete as basis for a peaceful and prosperous society.
/cc @ceoln
I talk about “prove” and “defend” in the sense of arguing convincingly (or better: demonstrating in practice) that a certain set of political and economic ideas are feasible and conducive to human well-being and flourishing — or at least that they are _better_ for that than _other_ sets of ideas.
“People being just left alone” sounds simple enough. But that is not #libertarianism, because many necessary ingredients are missing there (individualism, private property, the #NAP, voluntary contracts, etc). Also, it is trivial for anyone to formulate a political system with even fewer “assumptions” that we would all agree would be disastrous in practice.
Parsimony is definitely a virtue in descriptive natural science, but not necessarily in prescriptive social science. We're not discussing why homo sapiens came to be what it is, we're discussing what are the best ways to organise complex societies.
I “defend the existence of a state with armed goons coercing you into obedience” (not that I would phrase it that way) only insofar as that's a better state of the world than some given alternative. We don't know of a better alternative to liberal capitalistic social-democratic nations. Whoever defends that a different system would make a better society as a whole needs to provide much better arguments than “my idea requires fewer assumptions”, because the stakes couldn't be higher.
Thanks for the pointer. I've saved [this article](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-project-new-hampshire-libertarians-matthew-hongoltz-hetling) for reading.
My issue is with people who defend #anarchism (or fascism, or communism, or authoritarianism) as a viable system, as a recipe for human flourishing and well-being. There are many of those.
tripu
boosted
> _“You’d have a constant drain of value without anything in return because of taxation”_
Taxes would be avoided to a large extent if such community worked as I explained, obscuring much of inner economic activity. (Some taxes are evaded _outside_ libertarian utopias, after all.)
You say “drain” of value. What about the alleged increase in value (as per libertarian ideas)? What about all the things members could do on their own, and with each other, in such a community?
> _“They’ll find a reson to fuck with you”_
The onus is on defenders of #anarchocapitalism to prove that all those things have been tried in libertarian communities, and how _exactly_ the State or outer authorities stopped all that.
I get back to my short list of examples above.
> _“For a limited amount of time and in limited ways these things work rather well”_
If libertarian ideas work only within the very narrow confines of a music festival (a couple of days or a week at most, with only a few hundred quids per person at stake, limited to very specific activities), then it's further proof that libertarian ideas wouldn't work for society.
I don't understand your answer.
To reiterate: what exactly is preventing a group of hundreds or thousands of like-minded anarchocapitalists from implementing their ideas in a small closed community (within the boundaries of the law imposed by the parent jurisdiction)?
They could trade among themselves using zortskilfs as currency; hire, save and invest using zortskilfs; and convert to/from USD only when they absolutely need to interact with the outer world (eg to buy goods they can't produce internally). All that economic activity would be hidden from fiscal authorities, thus tax-free, since they all reject the authority of outer fiscal authorities and courts of law and nobody would denounce or sue their comrades.
Members in need of, say, a doctor, a teacher or a driving instructor would use the services of other members (regardless of whether they have the degree or are licenced to work).
Comrades who suffered illness or injury would rely on inner mechanisms (charity, a mutual insurance company) or simply resign to their bad fate — anything but relying on social services, well-fare, subsidies, etc.
Members could have guns at will. As long as they're used only internally and other members don't sue or snitch, that should be OK for all.
Violence, trespassing, theft, etc within the community would be handled internally (private court, fellow arbitrator, etc), not via State or Federal law, public courts or prisons, etc.
Why aren't they doing all that?
(#Anarchism is absence of hierarchies (we usually call that a State). A drug cartel is definitely _not_ hierarchy-free.)
That's my intuition too, yes.
I very much doubt that drug cartels function as free societies where members enter voluntary agreements, act according to the #NAP, and respect the property of others…
I just asked #ChatGPT (take this with a ton of grains of salt):
> _“Overall, the political organization of a Mexican drug cartel is **highly centralized and hierarchical**, with a strong emphasis on loyalty and obedience to the top leadership. The cartel leaders operate as quasi-political figures, exerting control over large territories and often engaging in **violence and corruption** to maintain their power.”_
In any case: if a Mexican drug cartel were the best example we had of a #libertarian society in action, then I rest my case.
As a “straight white cis man” myself, I don't feel welcome in lots of places where political discussions run rampant, so I should definitely find those “no politics” communities you mention.
Thanks for the tip!
~~But who would build the roa…~~
How would such a society handle driving licences (or lack thereof!)?
Even if courses, examinations, issuing documents, etc were done by private entities, wouldn't you need some kind of central authority to enforce some minimums?
What do you make of the lack of [significant experiments in the real world](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_anarchist_communities) (note that most examples on that page are collectivist societies, communist #libertarians, etc — not experiments where all property is private)?
I get that a modern nation doesn't sell a region or a province to a group of like-minded individuals to let them live and interact as they please, and that even if that were possible, such community would still depend on the “outer world” for lots of important things.
Still, isn't is suspicious that there aren't at least a bunch of long-lasting, functioning libertarian experiments where members voluntarily ditch outer courts and laws, shun subsidies and quotas of any kind, rely on an inner grey market to conceal income and wealth as much as possible, rely solely on voluntary agreements among them, etc?
With so many passionate supporters worldwide, why isn't that happening, at least to the extent it's feasible within the framework of existing jurisdictions?
Technologist, Spaniard, male, 42
Joined May 2020
