Actually, I didn’t ask the question to make a point. It’s a genuine question. I can’t think of anything, which is why I ask. I do suspect that there is no answer, though.
That’s a pretty easy one. Republicans talk most of the libertarian talk. Lower taxes… less regulation… the government’s the problem… smaller government… less gun control… and on and on. Of course they’re lying. But the rhetoric is there.
As P.J. O’Rourke put it, “The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then get elected and prove it.”
Other means of persuasion exist besides aggression, there are various economic and social ways of shaping or altering society. Anyone who claims to be a libertarian should obviously realise that.
I guess it depends.
For instance, let’s say that to “follow the church” means you believe that prostitution is morally wrong and that people that engage in that sort of thing will burn in hell (forever ?).
Or you think that divorce is morally wrong. Or watching porn is wrong. Or…
I would say passing that sort of judgment means you’re something different from a libertarian.
If you think that aggression is morally wrong, but you also put in the same category things which are not aggression at all, but rather are examples of free-trade, it seems that you’ve subverted the ‘morally wrong’ category and implicitly the libertarian category as well.
I suppose it’s also possible for people to consider themselves members of a church and yet to not follow the party line, though it’s probably uncommon.
What does afterlife beliefs have to do with libertarianism, it seems completely irrelevant?
So no subjective morals, even if they don’t contradict the NAP?
I really don’t see the dispute, one can find prostitution to be an example of free-trade and be sin. If I personally view prostitution to be a sin, yet still find it wrong to aggress against a prostitute, I’m affectively no different than one who sees nothing at all wrong with prostitution (and obviously wouldn’t aggress against one).
In my opinion they can still tow the line (unless the line advocates/commands aggression) and be a follower.
Yes you can. If you cant’ then we are all just busy body hens chuckling the merits of a system that will never be enacted.
I love you, in a heterosexual way. Not that there is anything wrong with homosexuality.
I am sure there will be much gnashing of teeth. The truth is, people who can’t socialize with others without getting confrontational, are of absolutely no use to a movement with a peaceful agenda. The very people who think they will have solidarity to back them in shunning others, may find they quickly become the shunned for not being able to interact with people in a pleasant manner even where differences of opinion exist.
I’m not a “marxist” of any sort. Neither are my objections to things such as racism mere political correctness - they are grounded in epistemology and methodological individualism.
Except my anti-racism is not a political policy position, it’s a social position. I don’t support affirmative action or orwellian limitations on freedom of speech. Hence, you’re conflating anti-racism as a social position with certain political policies.
You’re conflating the “preference” to separate with the epistemological assumptions that it’s based on. What I’m calling an error is the epistemology of racism. That’s right, the epistemology of racism. People have “preferences” for reasons. The reasons behind such preferences can be evaluated as true or false. The reasons why people favor racial separatism generally hinges on an epistemological or ontological premise about “races”. This has nothing to do with mere “political correctness” and everything to do with whether or not the actual assumptions of racialists are coherant or valid.
All of the following assumptions can be refuted via logic and empirical evidence:
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The assumption that “race” innately predetermines the logical structure of one’s mind, one’s psychology, one’s personality, one’s behavior, how smart one is, what one’s beliefs are, and so on - this the implied epistemology and ontology of both overt racism and “race realism”. This can be refuted in both scientific and existentialist terms.
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The assumption that excluding large swaths of people from society in order to create what reduces to a race-based cartel is economically beneficial or even remotely sustainable - this tends to be the assumption of racial separatists, I.E. that separatism is actually to their benefit. This can be refuted by austrian economics and common sense.
It’s a shame that racism actually contradicts Mises’s critique of polylogism. As for applied biology and sociology, it is not exactly accurate to conflate those disciplines as such with “race realism” - the bulk of contemporary scientists in those fields have come to reject “race realism” as the field has progressed. I consider the attempt to appeal to science to justify racism to largely be a correlation/causation fallacy and a misuse of science in the attempt to prove one’s philosophical presuppositions that are not inherently proven by the statistics. The fields of biology and sociology do not prove that certain psychologies or behaviors are innate to race. The claim that they do is a bastardization of the sciences.
This question is part of what’s wrong with a “thin” conception - because I’m not even talking about matters of aggression or non-aggression. Not everything revolves around aggression and non-aggression. Furthermore, there are plenty of non-aggressive activities that one can engage in that can, at least marginally, change the course of society. Education and the spreading of ideas is one; presumably noone here thinks that a libertarian social order just arises in a vacuum, in the absence of any people in society that accept libertarian ideas (and this is precisely part of what my talk of “thickness” is trying to point out: that the ideas of the people in a given society will have a role in determining how free and prosperous that society is; a society full of people that have no respect for individuals is not likely to end up being free or remaining free for long). And one can also take action (against things such as racism) through economic secession and the formation of mutual aid organizations that address the matter.
So I’m not going to play into the erroneous assumption that aggression is the only way to change things - if anything, such an assumption can be turned around against libertarianism in general (which, in order to suceed, depends on at least some degree of ideological change - this should be so obvious that I shouldn’t have to say it; libertarianism in general is a direction for society to move in, I.E. it inherently requires some kind of change), which would be bunk.
Exactly. Once we realize that libertarian advocacy isn’t a political position to be decreed but simply a persuasive endeavor, the thin-thick distinction loses its meaning. It is only if we imagine there is something to be decreed in an authoritarian manner that this would be an issue. Now if BP or other left-libertarians argue for something to be decreed or forced down people’s throats to any degree, they would be authoritarians to that same degree. If not, we’re all allies here as far as I can tell.
That is why I always say persuasion is to be meet with non-state forms of oppression. Argue and persuade through non-coercion as to why libertarian society requires additional implications other then the abolition of the state apparatus in order to properly function. I see in BP a lot of what Long implies so I’m guessing he would agree with the statement I just made.
No offense, but this statement is wrong. There are no additional objective implications outside of freedom, otherwise, the entire libertarian paradigm is false. You guys keep trying to square a circle, and that might play in LL circles, but it never has here, and I suspect it never will.
There are several catergories in which thin libertarianism is insufficient in maintaing a libertarian society simply by the NAP. Take for example the problem of conscription. Libertarians agree that is a coercive action that violates the NAP, however what of the individual who doesn’t believe it is against the NAP?
No.
Can you explain what the problem is with the person who doesn’t see it as against the NAP? Is he enforcing conscription, or selecting conscription for himself?
He/She could support institutions that ‘kidnap’ individuals into conscription. They themselves might not be coercive but employ proxies to carry out their agendas.
Are they supporting the proxies, or just not caring?