No one is forbidding anything. What we are saying is that certain positions aren’t libertarian. By your argument I can never say that anyone is not a libertarian, without violating your principlel. Now, Gravel is different from Paul in several ways. For one, he supports more statist programs. For another, he is now calling himself a libertarian - Paul calls himself a conservative Republican. Compared to the company he keeps, Paul is very libertarian. Compared to the LP, which he is now a member of, Gravel is not libertarian. On the most crucial issues of the day, Paul and Gravel both agree, and both agree with the libertarian position.
If rain and sunshine can grow a tree, then surely air and night can shrink it?
It was a poor comment, you’re right. Still, there have been times in history where the size of government took a major hit outside of revolution, and there have been many, many times where various parts of government shrunk outside of revolution.
I don’t believe that it’s morally necessary to use elections, there is nothing wrong with using force against individuals who routinely rob you. At the same time, I can’t help but feel that using elections (for the time being) is the only viable choice.
Would you have voted for Ron Paul if he received the nomination, or would you have sat out?
On the contrary, the very essence of private property is the ability to discriminate against and among people seeking entry. That’s why the state outlaws discrimination.
Bostwick is correct: most anarchists do not actually want their vision realized, because they know full well that in a private property regime unassimilable minorities and other troublemakers are not given causes of action and their very own bureaucracies. Rather, they are escorted to the property line and told to start walking.
What private property are we talking about? I have no problem with people discriminating against whoever they want and disallowing them to come onto their private property. But by the wildest stretches of my imagination, I can’t see how a country can be seen as private property. Even if you accept that the government has a legitimate claim to whatever property they want in the name of the greater good (which I do not), if one person that those resources are held in trust for disagrees with how that property is used, they no longer have a legitimate claim to it being “the peoples property”.
Your last paragraph makes no sense to me, would you mind restating it?
In a stateless society, people will naturally organize into collectives and gated communities, some of which will be highly restrictive. This is perfectly compatible with the free market. When was the last time you heard a resort or country club or upper class subdivision advertising itself as “non-exclusive?”
This is an outcome many anarchists are uncomfortable with, because as they condemn the state for imposing any sort of discriminatory standards for immigration (and it does not seriously do so, actually), they likewise recognize that there is no right to travel in a stateless society. It will not be a border-less society, and thus my impression of most anarchists is that they are really just libertines agitating for a global anarchist regime which will enforce the same level of personal license everywhere.
I agree 100%.
You almost got somewhere that time, but it still doesn’t make sense. Your equating “public” state property with stateless private property. Not the same thing. Your ignoring the fact that free travel is part of the free market. You accept that in a free market society people will be able to allow or disallow who uses their property, but somehow coming to the conclusion that they would not allow use of their private property in the pursuit of trade. The argument that there is no right to travel is, I guess, what doesn’t make sense. I think the problem is that somewhere along the line the concept that there would be no government (public) property in a stateless society gave you the impression that all property would be privately owned. That just isn’t the case. All property will not only not be privately owned, I would say the majority of it would remain unowned. Without a government title to land, the only way to show ownership will be through the use and development of your property. You have to be able to physically assert ownership. The cost of doing that over long unused tracts of land will be cost prohibitive and impossible to enforce. In that case anyone that was using the land for travel could claim ownership of the property, because they are using it.
Back to the distriminatory standards for immigration, the government most certainly does do that. They accept more immigrants from certain countries than they do other countries. They require certain vaccinations to be able to travel. They require state paperwork to use their roads. They require federal paperwork to travel between countries. All of these things they can and do revoke to their hearts desire. To say that the government doesn’t discriminate in regards to standards for immigration is the craziest thing I have heard this week.
I don’t know what your definition of a border-less society is. Are you saying it won’t be a borderless society because I have a fence on my front yard? In that case I guess I would have to agree. My idea of a border though is a large unused tract of land that the state claims a monopoly over the use of.
Referring to goods and services: “The market enables where the state prohibits”. What’s the point of owning a production good (such as a road) if you’re not going to use it to produce? I can’t think of any other than “to be a jackass”. And I can’t think of many people willing to pay the opportunity cost of jackassery when there’s a tidy profit to be had by actually using it.
The paleo types like to do this: argue that the borders issue can be defended in terms of private property. Except they are rather eggregiously conflating states with private property. And they are assuming how people would use their private property (I.E. to not let them fereners in, even though clearly this is not a universal preferance among private property owners) and then advocating state policy mimicking this assumption. It’s rather vulgar. They are superimposing their value judgement as to how they would use their private property onto everyone else. There obviously is not unanimous consent as to how people prefer to use their private property, and no serious libertarian can justify person A or group A forcing person B within the “community” to not allow them evil fereners onto their property or selling them their property. “The community” does not have legitimate decision making power over how an individual within that community uses their property. Since no “community” is entirely uniform in preferences, no “community” in a free society is going to (sustainably or justly) be able to universally discriminate. So long as even one person on the margin within that community allows them evil fereners onto their property or sells them it or rents it out to them, everyone else (including bigoted retards who wish to shoot themselves in the foot economically by turning down customers) is SOL.
This is a highly disingenous straw man if I’ve ever seen one. “Libertines”, “global regime”, “universal license”. Nonsense. This charge of “globalism” towards open borders is frankly idiotic.
My impression of border fetishist libertarians is that they are vulgar statists agitating for their own personal preferance of exclusivity to be a communally enforced norm, enforced even against the individual within that community’s property rights.
Nevermind that pretty much any community in a free society is going to be a mixed bag cumulatively speaking, with each individual owner determining the criteria for themselves, and by no means with a universally accepted norm of keeping potential customers out.
My impression of “closed border” anarchists is that they are not anarchists at all, since they seem unwilling to accept the blatantly pluralist implications of a free society and even demand the state to mimick their preferences in the present.
Penn and Teller are “not” social democrats. They have a documentary show called “Bullshit” that is very entertaining and tends to support a non-coersive philosophy. Just type “Bullshit” into Youtube and you can see for yourself.
So many Ad Hominems. The best response you can muster is to give your explanation of how Byzantine thinks?
A national closed border policy is imperialism, but so is a national open borders policy. Byzantine makes the accurate statement that if the Fed did not control immigration many state and city governments would already have created stronger immigration quotas then we have now. Thats easy to see, just look at the rhetoric out there.
But what if the community is not a free society? Thats the issue. Would it be more libertarian to have the national government invade these people for forming the type of government they want?
In order for freedom and decentralization to exist, and to improve, people must be free to make the wrong choice. But in a society where decentralization and secession are held to be the most important ideal then any political “community” that existed would have to be homogenious. Who’s property would this anti-immigration policy then infringe upon?
This seems like an argument against city government. Why should either institutionalized immigration policy exist?
depends on how you define liberitarian, but it certainly wouldn’t be an agorist act to force people to act in accordance with your definition of freedom. If all the people in a community agree to use their property in a certain way (create their voluntary government) How is that not free interaction? I would have no problem with the united states government if everyone that was affected by it voluntarily participated under it.
How or why would a political community nessecarily be homogenous? I think it would more likely just need to possess a group of indiveduals with a “common ends”.
I’m not advocating any.
I’d have a problem with it; people are being exploited whether they realize it or not. I would not invade them, however.
Thats a matter of degrees. The point is that it is a universally voluntary relationship, so even if individuals disagree with a single policy they still agree to honor it in order to keep the other preceived benefits of belonging to the community.
How is no national border imperialism? I don’t understand.
And many would have less intrusive immigration policies, some might even have open immigration policies, but none of that matters. People are not allowed the oppurtunity to deal with immigrants as they choose. Either stronger or weaker immigration policies.
Than we would have the society we have now and libertarians would be opposed to having their rights trampled on. Freedom of association anyone?
???
It would not be the same. Thats the point.
Government will not be destroyed by advocating that governments behave properly, that they follow “good” policies. Freedom will only be achieved if the idea of secession is rehabilitated. The State will not fall one policy at a time, but one person at a time.
Wouldn’t the anarcho-capitalist position on immigration be to sell the state land to the highest bidder? Then, if the person who purchases the land is pro-immigration, he could let them cross, and if the owner is a nativist, he could sue them for tresspassing if they cross on his land. For example, a Lou Dobbs or Tom Tancredo could purchase land along to Rio Grande and use minute men to enforce tresspassing rules. Altenatively, pro-immigration types could also buy land along the border and use it as a gateway for immigrants to come.
Also, in response to the anti-immigration folks here, how do you think immigration would happen if every country in the world adopted a closed-borders policy? The net effect would be an anti-emmigration policy.
All this ignores the fact that any person who moves to another country because they will recieve more from the government treasury than they pay in is an intentional thief. They may not understand the full implications as well as we do, but that does not change the circumstance.
Immigrants would just drive on a road.
I’m not anti-immigration. Is that really all you took away from reading that?
This reminds me of how the term “liberal” lost its meaning, too. A liberal was at one time an advocate of freedom, individual rights and laissez-faire capitalism. Now, clearly, the term has changed and it appears as if the same is happening to ‘libertarian.’ Socialists, stop taking and distorting our words!! 