I’m looking for concise, pithy reasons. I’m not very good with words, so I’m looking to pickup some handy phrases for use in quick arguments when there’s not a lot of time to go into detail.
My own opinion is pretty much as follows - that a libertarian society can stomach the practise of all other political philosophies without getting indigestion but not vice-versa.
In a free society you can have your commune, you can get together with your friends and pool your resources for healthcare or education or whatever. You can give 50% of your income to whomever you appoint as your ‘government’ and none of this wobbles the foundation of libertarianism one jot. In fact it’s perfectly fine. The reverse is definitely not true, and libertarianism is poison to all other systems.
I think it’s most easily understood if you stick to the voluntary vs. force aspect. That’s easy to understand and no one likes to be forced to do anything. As pointed out in this article, even children have an innate sense of justice.
Start with the fact that there really are only two ways to do anything…voluntarily, or forced. The only force that is justified is in defense of the active force (i.e. aggression) propagated by another. In essence, it is immoral to be the initiator of force (I admit this gets tricky in the case of children, as most things do…but we’re talking about general societal conduct. There is a case to be made for being able to make decisions for children you are the guardian of.)
But really all you have to do is break it down to the fundamentals of what they’re arguing…when you get down to it, what they are saying is that it’s okay for the 51% to enforce its whims on to the 49%. Take any case, and it can be broken down to that. And the return argument will be something like “but it’s for the good of everyone” or “it’s for your own good.” All you have to do then is propose more of the same. A lot of religious people believe the only way to salvation and a better world is through religion. And scientific studies have shown that religious people tend to be happier and live longer. By that logic, we should be forcing everyone to go to church. It’s for their own good.
Have fun with it. You could come up with all sorts of things that could be considered “for your own good.” And the bottom line is, what you’re talking about is one person deciding “what is good for” another person. (And as Milton Friedmansaid, how it tends to end up in practice is even worse…that A and B end up deciding what C shall do for D.) And the idea that someone else is going to decide for you, what is for your own good, is insane. Anyone who thinks otherwise only has to be put on the receiving end of that arrangement to see the error of their ways.
Conflict of interest (Hoppe): The State is the monopolist of dispute-resolution and insists that all disputes must be decided by its courts, even disputes involving itself. Liberalism insists that arbitration and other legal services is a market like any other and no one should be permitted to monopolize these services because conflict of interest becomes inevitable.
Dual-morality (double-standards): What’s good for the goose is good for the gander… liberalism is the only philosophy which actually sticks to this moral rule. Liberalism requires the abolition of all forms of personal or official privilege beyond those privileges which are lawful (such as the privileged position you hold with respect to your body and the other property you own).
Who had it first?: Liberalism assigns ownership of previously unowned resources to the first person to put it to use. The State order permits a privileged class to hold quasi-ownership of all unowned resources and the auction or otherwise parcel them out according to arbitrary (usually not so arbitrary) whim. Even pre-verbal children understand the idea that if I’m holding and using a toy that I picked off the floor or the toy box where no one had been using it, the toy is mine until I freely put it down or give it away.
What do you think the response of the environmentalists would be if the federal government
“opened” up the west again? Would it be delirium or some kind of psychotic break?
That’s it, that’s the most concise statement on this topic. Libertarianism is the only ideology which states that force is negative and should not be resorted to as a form of societal order except against the use of force itself.
To be honest, I don’t consider libertarianism to be morally superior. But that’s because I don’t consider moral superiority to exist in an objective sense. Certainly people can think that libertarianism (or some other moral theory) is morally superior, but that’s where it ends.
That said, I do think libertarianism is most in line with actual human nature. Also, if you seek a universalizable moral theory, you’ll most likely end up at libertarianism.
Morality is a horrible argument for anything. Any one individual morality can not be applied to everyone. Morality is a singular right or wrong argument. I think the better term is Ethical, which is the subject of a thread I had posted.
I think you’re splitting hairs on the difference between “morality” and “ethics”; the connotations of these two words seem to vary from person to person. In any case, the contrast being highlighted here is not between morality and ethics - whatever those two are taken to mean differently - but between morality/ethics and utility/outcomes. Rothbard’s view was that moral/ethical arguments are superior to utility arguments since utility arguments are subject to the ever-shifting definitions of what is “practical.” It might not yet be practical to have a society without private property but this is a mere speed-bump if we all agree that it is morally superior to have a society without private property to a society with private property. Then, the problem is just reduced to a technological/academic search for solutions to the practical problems preventing us from having a society free of private proeprty rights.
Had you read the thread I later linked in response to a similar questioning, you would understand why I make this distinction. Everyone here makes similar distinctions when discussing Keynesian and Neo-Classical Economics. They are similar, but not the same thing. That difference is what makes them completely different concepts, and thusly any rational line of logic must be made with the distinction’s of the two clearly evident. To do otherwise is to be irrational and base the reasoning upon fallacies.
It is though, as the connotations made for the argument are based upon a false prmise in the first place. You can not end up with a Mona Lisa, if you start out with motor oil and food coloring on a bedsheet. What you end up with may be a close representation of reality, however it’s clearly missing the clarity and definition of quality oil paints and heavy canvas.
Rothbard was human, take his Individual thought’s on the matter with a basic understanding that he was just as flawed as the rest of us. With that out of the way, I can actually post s rebuttal on this. I have read some of Rothbard’s work. Not all of it, because I tend to page by the Political based stuff.
Rothbard’s primary flaw in this reasoning, is that moral values change just as frequently as practical values. Had he lived long enough to see how the USA has changed in the past 10 years alone, I’m sure he would agree with this. Morality is flawed in the same way I stated before, because it’s based on individual conceptual view’s on specific situation’s. It’s extremely conditional, and any concept like that is prone to catastrophic failure.
Eliminating Private Property right’s is neither Ethical, or Practical.
Put it this way. I own a rifle that I can accurately shoot out to 800 meters with relative consistency. What would be ethical about having my neighbor use this rifle, that he’s never fired, go to a range where he is likely to shoot someone from lack of knowledge on it. What’s Practical about letting him have free usage of the same rifle if he’s likely to damage it, or injure himself? Crude basic example of why eliminating Property Right’s is absurd at best.
Either way, both Utility and Ethical considerations should always be evaluated by the Capitalist in their endeavors to avoid backlash from public scrutiny, or the overexpenditure of resources for a lousy idea. To do otherwise is to invite greater risk of failure.
