Silk Road forums
Discussion => Philosophy, Economics and Justice => Topic started by: most wanted on January 04, 2013, 12:35 am
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I know many of you will not like this, but I would really recommend you to read this. Whether you're a libertarian yourself or just struggle countering their "arguments".
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/faq.html
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The original intent of the founders has been perverted.
This is a libertarian argument that I can agree is stupid. First of all , I don't really give a whole lot of a fuck about the founding fathers. I mean, when the USA first came to be slavery was allowed, females couldn't vote, etc. It is insane to think that the founding fathers were highly into freedom, my limited understanding of the matter is that they primarily just did not want to pay tax to the British without political representation. Although they did have a few freedoms in mind, they are not a great example of libertarian minded people. I find that only a certain breed of libertarian holds the founding fathers of the USA and the founding principles of the USA in extremely high regards, after all it is not libertarian belief to think that it is acceptable to enslave black people.
The US Government ignores the plain meaning of the constitution.
Often this is presented as "The US wouldn't be so bad if the government followed the Constitution."
"Plain meaning" is a matter of opinion. A plain meaning one century can well be reversed in another, depending on popular usage, historical context, etc. Well intentioned people can disagree on "plain meaning" endlessly, as we see in any non-unanimous court decision. For practical purposes, the meaning MUST be decided one way or another.
Libertarian claims of "plain meaning" are often clearly shaped by their beliefs. Where this occurs, it's pretty obvious that their claims to "plain meaning" are not "common sense".
This is a ridiculous claim. The constitution is a document which as it was worded is set in stone unless those words are changed through the system provided by the constitution. The meaning of the constitution does not change with time or with different cultures living under it, if it did then it would entirely destroy the point of having a fucking constitution in the first place. Popular usage of words has absolutely nothing to do with what the constitution means! The primary beef I have with the government clearly violating the constitution is related to the possession of child pornography, which is clearly protected by the right to free speech and by the right to free press. The plain meaning of the right to free press is that anything can be published, the clear meaning of the right to free speech is that anything can be said. The Supreme court unconstitutionally allowed for the prosecution of people found in possession of child pornography by saying that the right to free speech and free press takes second seat to the good of the community. This blatantly disregards these constitutional protections. Another constitutional protection they routinely violate is governments being banned from favoring one religion over another. Sorry, it is plain and simply unconstitutional for the government to say people in some religions can use DMT but people in other religions cannot, or people in some religions can use mescaline but people in other religions can not. Plain and simple. It is a total violation of the constitution for this to be allowed, no matter the word games they want to play or the bullshit they want to pretend to believe, they are violating the constitution.
If the government followed the constitution as it is plainly explained, then we would indeed be in a better society, although by no means will it solve all of our problems. I find that it is the people who want to VIOLATE the constitution for their own ideological reasons are the ones who find ambiguity in the constitution.
The Declaration Of Independence says...
See my thoughts on 'the original intent of the founding fathers'
Libertarians are defenders of freedom and rights.
The foremost defenders of our freedoms and rights, which libertarians prefer you overlook, are our governments. National defense, police, courts, registries of deeds, public defenders, the Constitution and the Bill Of Rights, etc. all are government efforts that work towards defending freedoms and rights.
Libertarians frequently try to present themselves as the group to join to defend your freedom and rights. Lots of other organizations (many of which you would not want to be associated with, such as Scientologists) also fight for freedom and rights. I prefer the ACLU. (Indeed, if you wish to act effectively, the ACLU is the way to go: they advertise that they take on 6,000 cases a year free of charge, and claim involvement in 80% of landmark Supreme Court cases since 1920.)
It would be foolish to oppose libertarians on such a mom-and-apple-pie issue as freedom and rights: better to point out that there are EFFECTIVE alternatives with a historical track record, something libertarianism lacks.
Nor might we need or want to accept the versions of "freedom" and "rights" that libertarians propose. To paraphrase Anatole France: "How noble libertarianism, in its majestic equality, that both rich and poor are equally prohibited from peeing in the privately owned streets (without paying), sleeping under the privately owned bridges (without paying), and coercing bread from its rightful owners!"
Certainly libertarians are the defenders of rights. They defend our right to freedom of living, as do liberals to a certain degree, and our right to financial freedom, as conservatives have traditionally done to a certain degree. They take the best parts of liberalism and conservatism and cut out all of their freedom infringing communistic and fascist religious aspects.
The police are not defenders of our rights. That is simple as shit to see. The police want to throw me in jail for smoking a god damn plant for fucks sake. It takes a truly brainwashed statist to think that the police want to defend our rights. They want to control us. The Mafia will protect you from the Yakuza killing you and extorting you because they don't want the competition themselves. The government is the most powerful criminal organization in an area, they protect you from the other criminals so they can exploit you for their own gains. The courts are just as bad as the police! We wouldn't even need public defenders for ourselves if we were not god damn prosecuted by our corrupt government for causing harm to nobody, simply so they can extort money from us and enslave us to the prison industrial complex. What a fucking joke! National defense can be privatized! Also this person is the one who argues that the constitution is entirely open to interpretation, clearly the constitution is worthless for protecting the people who most need protecting, the people who the majority of society want to unjustly prosecute (in no small part thanks to intensive government indoctrination operations and propaganda, which by the way is funded with stolen tax dollars, leading me to....)
Taxation is theft.
Two simple rebuttals to this take widely different approaches.
The first is that property is theft. The notion behind property is that A declares something to be property, and threatens anybody who still wants to use it. Where does A get the right to forcibly stop others from using it? Arguments about "mixing of labor" with the resource as a basis for ownership boil down to "first-come-first-served". This criticism is even accepted by some libertarians, and is favorably viewed by David Friedman. This justifies property taxes or extraction taxes on land or extractable resources if you presume that the government is a holder in trust for natural resources. (However, most people who question the creation of property would agree that after the creation of property, a person is entitled to his earnings. Thus the second argument)
The second is that taxation is part of a social contract. Essentially, tax is payment in exchange for services from government. This kind of argument is suitable for defending almost any tax as part of a contract. Many libertarians accept social contract (for example, essentially all minarchists must to insist on a monopoly of government.) Of course they differ as to what should be IN the contract.
The first argument against taxation being theft sounds like it is straight out of The Communist Manifesto. Okay, so government forcibly taking my money is NOT theft, but me having money IS theft because I prevent another person from spending my money? That makes a whole lot of sense! Actually wait that makes no sense at all and it patently fucking absurd. Tax is a social contract that you are forced into? Oh that makes even more sense! Sorry contracts require two parties to agree to the terms. If I say that I have a contract that you will give me your house, you are not required to give me your house. Just saying that I have a contract that requires you to do something is completely meaningless unless you have agreed to the contract in the first place. Social contract is a euphemism in every sense of the word, a euphemism for extortion which is what tax really is. Taxation is the forcible taking of value from a person, that is the dictionary definition of theft and it doesn't matter if the person taking the value is the person with the biggest stockpile of guns, not a damn thing changes theft is theft. Guess what Mafia Extortion Rackets are 'essentially a payment in exchange for services from the Mafia', does that mean that they are not theft? Libertarians think that you should decide what to pay for yourself and get the services that you pay for, they are not fucking retards so they realize that if someone puts a gun to your head and threatens to blow your brains out unless you buy an apple from them for $100 , that you have been STOLEN from, not that you have 'essentially made payment in exchange for an apple'. Fucking insane that anyone could buy into that nonsense.
If you don't pay your taxes, men with guns will show up at your house, initiate force and put you in jail.
This is not initiation of force. It is enforcement of contract, in this case an explicit social contract. Many libertarians make a big deal of "men with guns" enforcing laws, yet try to overlook the fact that "men with guns" are the basis of enforcement of any complete social system. Even if libertarians reduced all law to "don't commit fraud or initiate force", they would still enforce with guns.
There is an explicit contract in Italy between store owners and the Mafia, that they will pay a percentage of the money they make from selling their goods to the Mafia in exchange for 'protection'. It doesn't mean that the Mafia is not initiating force when they show up and break the shop keepers fucking legs for not paying for protection ! What a stupid bullshit claim, the person who wrote this must either be in the government or a complete fucking moron.
Social Contract? I never signed no steenking social contract.
That argument and some of the following libertarian arguments are commonly quoted from Lysander Spooner.
The constitution and the laws are our written contracts with the government.
There are several explicit means by which people make the social contract with government. The commonest is when your parents choose your residency and/or citizenship after your birth. In that case, your parents or guardians are contracting for you, exercising their power of custody. No further explicit action is required on your part to continue the agreement, and you may end it at any time by departing and renouncing your citizenship.
Immigrants, residents, and visitors contract through the oath of citizenship (swearing to uphold the laws and constitution), residency permits, and visas. Citizens reaffirm it in whole or part when they take political office, join the armed forces, etc. This contract has a fairly common form: once entered into, it is implicitly continued until explicitly revoked. Many other contracts have this form: some leases, most utility services (such as phone and electricity), etc.
Some libertarians make a big deal about needing to actually sign a contract. Take them to a restaurant and see if they think it ethical to walk out without paying because they didn't sign anything. Even if it is a restaurant with a minimum charge and they haven't ordered anything. The restaurant gets to set the price and the method of contract so that even your presence creates a debt. What is a libertarian going to do about that? Create a regulation?
Again this person makes reference to the constitution , which he defines as whatever the hell he wants since it is written with words that can totally change in meaning on a whim. When you order food from a restaurant you are told the price that you need to pay for that good in advance. That is a verbal contract. I never entered into a written or verbal contract with anyone saying that I will pay taxes to the government or that I will not smoke marijuana. It is a failed comparison.
Extortion by the state is no different than extortion by the Mafia.
This is a prize piece of libertarian rhetoric, because it slides in the accusation that taxation is extortion. This analogy initially seems strong, because both are territorial. However, libertarians consider contractual rental of land by owners (which is also fundamentally territorial) ethical, and consider coercion of squatters by those owners ethical. The key difference is who owns what. The Mafia doesn't own anything to contract about. The landowner owns the land (in a limited sense.) And the US government owns rights to govern its territory. (These rights are a form of property, much as mineral rights are a form of property. Let's not confuse them with rights of individuals.) Thus, the social contract can be required by the territorial property holder: the USA.
So as soon as the Mafia overthrows the US government it will be okay for them to continue their extortion rackets? makes sense ! (owait not it doesn't lolol)
Why should I be told what to do with my property? That infringes on my rights of ownership.
This question comes up rather often, since absolute ownership of property is fundamental to most flavors of libertarianism. Such propertarianism fuels daydreams of being able to force the rest of the world to swirl around the immovable rock of your property. For example, there were trespass lawsuits filed against airlines for flying over property.
A good answer is: what makes you so sure it is yours?
What makes him so sure it is the governments????
Libertarians oppose the initiation of force.
How noble. And I'm sure that in a real libertarian society, everybody would hold to this morality as much as Christians turn the other cheek. [ :-( For the sarcasm-impaired.]
"Initiation of force" is another libertarian newspeak term that does not mean what the uninitiated might think. Libertarians except defense of property and prosecution of fraud, and call them retaliatory force. But retaliation can be the initiation of force: I don't need force to commit theft or fraud. This is a bit of rhetorical sleight of hand that libs like to play so that they can pretend they are different than government. You know: break a law (like not paying your taxes) and MEN WITH GUNS initiate force. Sorry, but you've gotta play fair: it can't be initiation for government and retaliation for you.
Like most other non-pacifistic belief systems, libertarians want to initiate force for what they identify as their interests and call it righteous retaliation, and use the big lie technique to define everything else as evil "initiation of force". They support the initial force that has already taken place in the formation of the system of property, and wish to continue to use force to perpetuate it and make it more rigid.
The National Libertarian Party membership form has "the pledge" on it: "I do not believe in or advocate the initiation of force as a means of achieving political or social goals." It's quite amusing to hear how much libertarians disagree over what it means: whether it is or isn't ok to overthrow the US because it has "initiated force" and they would be "retaliating".
Beyond this perceived class interest, libertarian dislike of "initiation of force" isn't much different than anyone else's. It may be humanitarian, defensive, etc.
Nice to see he has no idea what initiation of force means. Stealing my car is initiating force against me. Committing fraud against me is initiating force against me. He is taking force in the most literal way possible, and that is not the way it is meant by libertarians at all.
Okay there is a difference between me responding to someone stealing my car with force, and the government responding to me not giving into their extortion racket by forcing me to do so. Anyone who cannot see the difference is brain dead or washed, or works for the government. End of story.
God what a bunch of shit this guy spews. He really has no idea what he is talking about, he contradicts his own stated principles! pretty much his ideology can be summarized as "bend over and enjoy the nice long dick of the state, as you explicitly contractually agreed to do by being born!"
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That FAQ is just a strawman. Might as well say that Somalia is a libertarian paradise, as some conservatives are saying, as if libertarians endorse banditry of any kind, including by the state.
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kmfkewm, Thank you so much for contributing to these boards. You had added to my experience in a countless number of threads, more than any other poster, and it's not even close, thanks
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I also enjoy kmfkewm's posts. +1
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Thanks for posting OP.
The article points out some of the more obvious reasons why Libertarianism (in it varied forms) is failing to gain any real foothold in the current political landscape. Interesting article none-the-less.