please help turn me into a full plumb-line libertarian

Economics Political Theory
1

since becoming interested in neo-classical economics, friedman/chicago school mainstream, lately ive been immersing myself in austrian economics (as much as a layman can handle) and libertarian political ideas (anarcho-capitalism) etc. I’ve been feeling natural sympathy as well as intellectual satisfaction from the general tapestry of this branch of ?practical philosophy?

through mises.org i have become particularly fond of the work of Dr W Block, for whom i now have an immense respect . one thing troubles me, I am having a hard time understanding the mechanisms which would come into play in terms of protecting innocents from abuse within a geographical region whereby anarcho-capitalism was the norm, and also about the conflict between aparrent duties (as imperfect as they may be) to aid citizens opressed within their own state sovereign borders from without (the anarcho region). furthermore, that the USA, UK, australian, georgian,spanish, etc. adventure abroad in iraq and afghanistan is an abhorrent crime, as so many libertarians believe, i have a hard time sitting with. I learn more to a christopher hitchens view on recent foreign history than Ron Paul say… Is the problem praxeoligical, (have i insufficient knowledge of the theory?) or is it evidential ( have i insufficient knowledge of the historical facts?) (or both?)

so in short, please help me to if not reconcile my concepts, to at least in the early stages, understand why this split is there for me. anyone up for the task?

p.s. i spent 30seconds on one of those shallow silly quiz things to get an idea where my thoughts are tending based against the quizmasters yardstick and according to quiz2d’s opinion, im pretty libertarian. I know Block is suspicious to the extreme about anyone claiming to be libertarian but holding my foreign policy (mis?)conceptions so i will refrain from labelling myself that for the time being.

2

As far as understanding how private secutity companies would work in a anarcho-capitalist, the recent book edited by Edward P. Stringham “Anarchy and the Law”, contains many important studies on this topic. I have yet to finish the book but I am working my way through it and it has been illuminating. I had some of the same questions my self, but this book contains arguments on both sides of the topic and is helpfull in facilitating an understanding of how free market security would theoretically work. It is impossibe to draw a blue print of how it would just the same as it is impossibe to draw a blue print of how other industries would function in a free market. If you could draw a blue print then that assumes that you could plan the results, and this in turn would support central planning.

3

Going to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan is not a crime per se. The problem is sending the government’s army there. Since the military is after all the biggest and most destructive socialist program, it would be no surprise that they would destroy both countries in its attempt to dominate the territory and establish itself as the state.

The honorable thing would have been for private volunteers to join up with the different factions fighting for freedom in their own country. Then this would not have been a war of conquest.

4

surely under the present law, the US government has a state monopoly on particular kinds of weapons, and even more so would not allow extra governmental organisations with a military bent to engage in what it may rightly or wrongly be its sphere of influence.

i.e. if i set up a defence agency, and asked for donations from concerned US citizens, and recruited willing US mercenaries for the task of going to iraq to first overthrow saddam and second to fight al-quada. wouldnt the US government interfere and stop me in my tracks. if so, does that mean a US libertarian has to sit idly by ?

to us a micro-analogy. in a US town where the police have a monopoly on law enforcement. it is illegal to be a vigilante and set things right even if the towns police are corrupt and sit idly by whilst real crimes are committed.

5

Wars are evil for two reason.

  1. Foreigners who have committed no crime are killed intentionally.
  2. Citizens are robbed to fund it.

In hindsight its easy to see that an Iraq governed by the US military is even worse for the Iraqis than was Saddam. But that just reinforces what we already knew about the evil nature of war.

Saddam’s ending up having no WMD just makes the war that much more of a fraud. But even if he had truly possessed WMDs, the war would have been equally illegitimate.

The Iraq War is indefensible.

6

you havent convinced me that the iraqwar is indefensible. though i am open to the possibility that it is, i will need better arguments before i can adopt that position in good faith. I’d like to point out before i address your points that I would have appreciated you addressing my earlier points, rather than your chosen method of response that was simply to answer the general question is war bad. a question no-one asked.

  1. foreigners who have committed no crime are killed intentionally.

depending on war mission and tactics, this could conceivably be rewritten > foreigners who have committed no crime are killed un-intentionally in violent accidents,

  1. citizens are robbed to fund it. > citizens are denied the opportunity to pay for it voluntarily so if its going to be paid for there is going to be some robbing.

heres a small anecdotal point. my dad earns more money than i do, and so the government steal a lot more money from him than i do. and he can look at his tax receipts and say, oh this is all bad, they’ve taken this for welfare, this for socialside medicine, this for monopoly on law enforcement. but hte part about fighting al-queda he is in principle ok about. even though he may rather be allowed to support it voluntarily. (just like he’d support charities in theory to do the other things on the list)

The US military arent ‘governing’ in iraq is a temporary phase, like their administration over germany and japan was. this argument is kinda like saying that a group of kidnap victims trauma might peak when a swat team bursts with flashbangs into the room to eliminate a violent kidnapper, and so the kidnap situation should not be intervened with. (also because such an entry has risks)

7

Wait, you seriously don’t see the problem in this? “Okay, I want to go raid that village over there. Since none of you can contribute voluntarily since I already rob you all, I will rob you even more to do this.”

?

8

I can’t give specifics until you do. What is legitimate about the Iraq war? Do you support war against terrorism or war for freedom? Time has proven the Iraq war to be about neither, so I’m not sure it matters.

Collateral damage is never accidental. Throwing bombs is at best gross negligence and at worse premeditated murder.

However I wasn’t even talking about collateral damage, I was talking about the intentional targets: soldiers. Soldiers are slaves to their governments(in the USA they happen to be willing slaves). They are only criminals after the war and murder has begun. If the people of Iraq need liberating from Saddam, than clearly Saddam’s drafted cannon fodder need it the most. Yet to our politicians, freedom means the bullet.

I do not volunteer to pay for it, so its evil in that regard.

If a person does volunteer to pay for it, that does no legitimize the war, it only turns that person into an accomplice.

If you think the war is just because its anti-criminal, than I think its from not understanding that the State has perverted the concept of justice. A truly just legal system would look almost nothing like our current legal system. In order to create ever more power for itself, the state has severed the connection between crime, victim, and punishment.

There are no victims in drug laws, minimum wage laws, speed limits, etc. In order to prosecute noncriminals the state has taken over the role of plaintiff, which had always belonged to the victim. While historically, criminals were liable to their victims. Today, criminals are liable almost solely to the government.

A libertarian justice system would have to not be retributive, but compensatory. A free market justice system would fulfill that requirement.

What legal claim does your father have against Saddam or any other Iraqi? Why does that claim supercede the right of every Iraqi to not be subjugated to violence and martial law?

9

@nirgrahamUK

You really need to go learn the definition of inflation and look into how wars are funded before commenting further. Go study all the wars from 1812 and up in the USA and you’ll get your answers as to why war is evil. How do you think Governments get all that money to pay for war? You think that’s all normal IRS collected tax dollars? If you went to the store and bought something today, congratulations, you just contributed to the war. War creates a need for credit ->which creates a need for debt ->which creates a need for money ->which causes it to be printed → which causes inflation → which causes prices to rise ->which consumers pay ->which sends the money to corporations ->which sends the money to banks for their debt → which pay the Central Banks and the Gov. —cycle complete— BEEP

War ends. Government contracts go down with corporations to zilch. Corporation has to go bankrupt and refinance debt with banks. Debt gets rolled over with more interest each time until it needs a government bail out. Which means more inflation (debt). Of course, sometimes the restructuring of the company includes giving shares of control to the Government, which basically means, the Company just became nationalized ( think Lockheed Martin).

Of course, if you keep perpetual war, the Banks, the people on top of Government contracts (Bank members on the board of Directors of the companies with Government NO-BID contracts) and all the politicians who pave the legislation to let it all happen; they make great money.

Are you starting to see how it works?

Don’t worry about being a LABEL. You don’t have to be a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian or other. Just be an individual who does his own investigating and makes his own decisions. Stay away from GROUPSPEAK.

10

Edit: i mean to say that later on i will return to try to address from my viewpoint some of the other comments addressed to me above.

i think i would get the most help at this time in seeing how the libertarian non-aggression principle plays out in simple cases of crime and crime prevention and enforcment within a mirco environment. however the point about defecit spending, and government taxes being THE REASON that the war against al-quaeda is bad.

two wrongs dont make a right

the wrong of cheating the american citizen without giving the american choice is not absolved/fairly avoided by merely allowing violent crime and coercion to go unchecked abroad,more so when that violence isincreasingly aimed at the poor overtaxed americans, who will eventually have suffered twice, too much tax, and death by fascist

11

Ever stopped to consider that perhaps increased violence abroad makes Americans even less safe? Luckily I am in the UK right now. :slight_smile:

12

Libertarianism is definately anti-war. But you don’t have to be an anarchists to understand that you are not allowed to kill a criminal’s entire family out of retaliation. War is not law enforcement, war exists solely as an instrument of the state.

There is no free market equivalent.

Under a libertarian regime people would only be arrest after they are legally convicted(or perhaps caught in the act). There would also be no penitentiaries and no death penalty. These things all spring from non-aggression. Any violence that would occur would likely not be institutional. It would either be crime or personal defense, but not after the fact retaliation.

Non-aggression means that if a person tells you, “I’m going to go buy a gun with which to shoot you” you can’t shoot them in the back as they walk away, as you are not in danger.

Non-aggression is the complete the opposite of preemption.