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Lincoln
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Originally posted by Kidicious
How many Americans marched in the street to protest the sanctions? All of them? Are all Americans innocent? Bullshit! |
Of course not. They are all guilty! Didn't you read my post??
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Berzerker
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topeka, kansas,USA
May 1999
time: 23:27
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Aggie quote:
Here's an argument by a well-known Libertarian stating that the social contract is fundamental to Libertarianism |
Can you just quote the relevant part? Its a long article and I read down to the part where this Gauthier said he's not a libertarian. I want to know where this guy embraced your social contract where I am guilty for the actions of politicians you elected.
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Well, they should read the article. In any case it is obvious that Libertarians believe in some sort of social contract, otherwise they have no way of empowering their judiciary. |
As a libertarian my "social contract" is to respect the rights of others, that is not your social contract.
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Don't quibble. You know that I don't happen to think that judiciaries in non-democractic societies are up to much. |
Apparently they aren't much in democracies either because according to y'all there are a bunch of people in this country who are not being punished by the judiciary for their guilt.
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That is the essence of social contract theory. Even Locke, the primary source for modern Libertarianism has a social contract theory. |
Not your social contract.
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They are: they voted for them. |
No they didn't, they voted against them.
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It includes the people who voted otherwise because they voluntarily agreed, by the very act of voting, to accept the representatives of the winning side as the legitimate authority. If they didn't then they were voting fraudulently and could not have complained if they had won and the other side had ignored the result. |
The fact I vote does not mean those elected are legitimate. Anyone can read the Constitution to see just how illegitimate they really are. This is your social contract and I didn't find Gauthier claiming legitimacy is defined by my vote.
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In other words, if you vote, you accept the rules of the game by voting. |
The rules of the game mean the winner of an election enters office, it does not mean they get to do whatever they want in office or that those who didn't vote or voted against them are guilty when they commit crimes.
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If you don't vote, you must still accept the authority of the state to make laws and punish people, because if you didn't there would be no possibility of practically enforcing the law (since Libertarianism does not allow individuals to punish others, but only the state as the representatives of the general will). |
So people who don't vote are guilty because it makes it easier for politicians to govern?
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Of course they are, they should have voted. It is the responsibility of every citizen to vote. |
Why?
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If they don't they cannot complain about the goverment, but not voting does not magically absolve them of responsibility for their own government's actions. |
Why can't they complain? Not choosing between tweedle dee and tweedle dumb is still a choice - a 3rd choice. And why are they guilty? You said they are guilty because that makes it easier for politicians to govern. So what? Politicians could govern even more easily if we did away with our rights, if they did and you opposed them by voting for their opponents, why are you guilty when you lose and our rights are removed to ease governing?
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That's avoiding the question. Who pays when the government does someone wrong unintentionally? |
The people who did wrong should pay (I said that already). But if we assume that to make governing easier we all pony up, why does that mean we are guilty when politicians go abroad and intentionally wrong people? There is a disconnect between this guilt and the practicality of governing. Even you said the reason non-voters and opponents are guilty for the actions of those elected is to make it easier to govern, not because non-voters did something wrong.
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No. It is called democracy. |
Then democracy is loony.
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When you vote, do you expect that the voting process will be governed by rules of fairness such that your vote will count as much as anyone else's? |
Yes.
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If you say no, then you don't believe in democracy. |
I said yes and I don't believe in democracy.
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If you say yes, then you have agreed that the election is a legitimate decision making procedure and that any decision made by it is legitimate. |
Democracy is not 1 man, 1 vote, democracy is majority rule and that means the majority thru its elected officials get to make decisions about how others live their lives. I could care less who gets elected, its when they start speaking for the majority about how others get to exist that I have a problem.
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Therefore: if your side doesn't win, you must accept that the winners are the legitimate government, just as they must accept that your side is, if you win. |
Why?
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Therefore: they are your government and their actions are legitimized by everyone who voted, even if they voted against them (again, because everyone agreed to certain rules of fairness in the process). |
But you said non-voters and opponents are guilty because this guilt makes it easier to govern.
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Yes it does. Company boards (and political cabinets) assume collective responsibility for democratic decisions they make. Corporations also assume responsibility for decisions made according to their internal rules. |
Not true, when a business, e.g., Enron, screws people, the employees who had no part in the mis-deed are not punished - they are not guilty.
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If a company hires an incompetent as an employee, and the incompetent damages the property of the a person who has contracted with the company, the company is responsible for paying for the damage whether or not the incompetent person can pay for it. |
That's a device used by the business, not a requirement for justice. Justice would have the people who hired the employee pay the price, not other employees who did not hire them. When a court rules against a business, the court doesn't demand innocent employees pay up, just that the compensation come from the company and the manner of payment is left up to the business, i.e., who in the company pays.
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Similarly, if a body of people elect a government through a process they all agree is fair, and that government's agents commit some wrong to someone they contract with as the government, the owners of the government (i.e. us) are responsible for making recompense, whether or not the damage done can be compensated by the specific individuals who caused it. |
Who agreed its fair? Its rigged, its a system of legalised bribery with our freedom and property on the auction block awaiting the highest bidder.
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In extreme cases a corporation can disavow responsibility for a "rogue" employee, but you well know that such circumstances are rare and involve gross and unforeseeable events. |
And I'd call politicians who run around killing foreigners rogues. That's why they try to keep their activities abroad secret, not to keep the "enemy" in the dark, but to keep us in the dark.
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Nope. Wrong again. The social contract is the means by which freedom is secured. Everyone agrees to give up certain freedoms (the freedom to coerce others) to the state, in order that the state can punish those who violate the rights of others by coercion (i.e. execution, imprisonment). |
Nonsense, your social contract has little to do with freedom and more to do with an ideology of equalising people in violation of their freedom.
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Libertarianism allows you to kill in self defense, it does not allow you to conduct personal trials and executions of criminals who wrong you. Such things can only be carried out by legitimate authorities (courts), and that means by people whom everyone has agreed (either by consensus, or by agreeing to fair elections) to cede those powers. |
That isn't even true, a jury gets to decide if my actions were wrong, not politicians. Libertarians generally oppose the death penalty because they don't trust this legitimate government to employ it, but libertarians do believe it is okay to kill in self-defense.
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Which is exactly the reason you don't understand it. |
Your only attempt to prove libertarians accept your social contract is citing a guy who says he's not a libertarian. You didn't even quote the guy embracing your social contract.
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My position is simply that to have a functioning minimalist state in a Libertarian society, the citizens of such a society must agree to give up certain coercive powers to officials. If they don't do this, they will end up in a state of nature where no-one's rights are protected. |
So what? This is not your social contract.
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You can't just allow people to decide that the judicial system doesn't apply to them, for example. In order to make sure that people don't act that way, the judicial system needs coercive powers in order to punish people who do. |
Geez, I already said the judiciary in a libertarian system has the authority to punish people who wrong others. It doesn't have authority over people who simply reject the government.
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No Libertarian can disagree in principle with this scheme, because it doesn't violate anyone's natural rights. You cannot complain that a court is prosecuting you for violating someone else's rights, unless you don't have a say in who is on the court. If you do have an equal say, along with every other citizen, you cannot complain - the court was appointed according to the only fair and reasonable process available - a process you agreed to by voting. |
But your social contract does violate natural rights, so how can you claim libertarians accept it? And if I murder someone, it doesn't matter if I think the system is fair. What matters is my crime...
Molly quote:
Actually it isn't irrelevant- one doesn't justify having aided and armed the Somoza regime and then Contra terrorists by anachronistically justifying one's action based on what the Sandinistas did after they came to power.
At least not outside the looking glass world of Republican politics.
I was in fact asking where was the 'tribal slaughter' reference in the link you posted. Pardon me for not being more obvious. |
Why does Republican behavior mean the Sandinistas didn't slaughter Indians? That's why your comment about the GOP war on the Sandinstas is irrelevant.
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In any case all you're doing is catching up on the history I already knew about, and in more detail. Not all of us in the Nicaraguan Solidarity Campaign wore ideological blinkers. And note- that's 'Nicaraguan', not 'Sandinistan' solidarity. |
If all I'm doing is giving you information you already had, why did you ask for sources for the Sandinstas crimes? And that last bit is BS, the Miskito Indians never felt any "solidarity" with the Sandinistas. Nicaragua is essentially 2 countries with the Indians on one side and the "Spaniards" on the other. The conflict began when Sandinistas won their revolution and acted as if this was a green light to walk into Indian lands and run their lives.
Kid quote:
No you are changing my argument. Americans today are no different from Americans in the past who have hunted down Native American children like they were animals, enslaved African Americans, commited complete innocent Japanese to internment camps, dropped nukes on people, used violence against the working class for struggling for a living wage, deported and used violence against other peoples who they thought would contaminate their society, used our military to buly and force other nations to accept govts that were favorable, and more. Americans are not different today than they have been in the past. Don't tell me they are innocent. You know what they do. Yet you live your life like they don't do those things, and even defend them. |
I'll repeat myself again, "You didn't answer my question, you changed your argument. Tell me why a person who is opposed to "jerking off" is responsible when a person who says they oppose it and then does it."
If you can't answer that, don't go off on another rant and act like I changed your argument.
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Agathon
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Leafs 4TW!! - CPA
Dec 2002
time: 00:27
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See if you agree with this NYE. I've done my best in a short time to explain why Libertarians must in principle accept the idea of a social contract as a means of justifying legal authority:
Why Libertarianism must be a contractarian political system.
A contractarian political system is one in which either (A) the rights that people have, or (B) the institutions of political and legal power they are subject to are justified as being those to which all rational persons would voluntarily agree. The rhetorical device for capturing the essence of a system is to imagine a giant contract that everyone could sign.
Libertarians believe in natural rights, so they are not a group who imagine that rights are subsequent to a social contract. However, some Libertarians, like Jan Narveson, argue that, properly understood, Libertarian rights are something on which all rational persons would agree and in that sense they are natural, if rationality is natural (you can read the article I linked above for his arguments). Narveson's position is an interesting attempt to argue for (A), but it is not the one for which I will argue. I argue that Libertarians must have a contractarian understanding of (B) – the legitimacy of political and legal power.
I don't think that any serious Libertarian is going to argue for a wild west scenario, where each person is his own judge, jury and executioner. The practical and moral problems with such a system are obvious: in essence it would be a state of nature and people would be able to wreak havoc on others with nothing to stop them other than fear of reprisal. Such a wild west system of justice would not be very effective at producing justice anyway, since it is a state of nature and might would in practice be right.
So sensible Libertarians will pursue the same remedy that almost everyone else does: surrendering the claim to personal retribution to a judicial system. This is in essence no different in kind to Hobbes' contractarian conception of government. Everyone gives up the right to be one's own judge, jury and executioner in order to more effectively protect one's natural rights. To whom is the authority to punish criminals transferred? Obviously to the judiciary, who are a special class of citizens who enforce the law. In order to enforce the law, they must have the authority to punish any citizen who breaks it, whether that person agrees or not. Some Libertarians complain that it is wrong to punish people who have not agreed to surrender such authority when they break the law. This is absurd because it would entail rampant criminality. If you break a contract you agree to, and the police turn up at your house, it is a feeble argument to say that you don't agree with the law, because if everyone did that, there would be no law and we would be back in a state of nature.
How then to justify the transfer of authority to the judiciary? Obviously the only way that Libertarians can accept this, is if it is somehow voluntary. That is where the social contract comes in. The contractarian argues that it is rational for every person to voluntarily surrender the right to personal justice because if everyone else does, people are more likely to be punished for violating the rights of others than in a state of nature.
In short, if you want to protect people from rights violations, a state of nature is the worst option. The only other option is for everyone to put legal authority in the hands of certain persons who then have the power to enforce the law over everyone. The only justification for doing so that is in any meaningful sense voluntary (as Libertarians require) is the idea of the social contract. Of course the members of the judiciary will have to be chosen by some voluntary process in order to be consistent with the Libertarian value of consent (obviously it will be democratic elections, as lots or volunteers won't work), but that is a further issue.
Any Libertarian faces the choice of accepting legal authority over themselves, or rejecting it. The latter leads to a state of nature; the former to a legal system that can actually be effective at making sure that people don't violate others' rights, or at punishing them if they do. The contractarian point is that everyone has to accept legal authority or the authority cannot be justified. If Libertarians want to insist that no law that we haven't agreed to has any power over us (whether just law or no) then welcome to the jungle.
Whining about how the current judiciary sucks is no argument against this. As a matter of practical fact, even the worst judiciary is better than a state of nature.
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Berzerker
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topeka, kansas,USA
May 1999
time: 23:27
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Aggie quote:
Own goal. Jan Narveson wrote the article, he's the libertarian. He's arguing (interestingly in my view) that contractarianism is compatible only with libertarianism (I disagree, but it's an interesting line). |
Gauthier is not a libertarian and thats what I said. Narveson is merely exploring the ramifications of Gauthier and his exploration hardly means I dont understand libertarianism.
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As for the rest of your usual cut and paste marathon, it's not worth my time to respond to, since you have misunderstood my arguments, wilfully or no, and in most cases responded with irrelevancies. Perhaps if you engage in reasoned argument rather than cut and paste, this would be a more interesting discussion. |
If you find cut and paste so offensive why do you cut and paste yourself? God I get tired of this double standard.
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It's plain to me that you obviously do not understand libertarianism, which makes it kind of weird that you insist on calling yourself one. |
You said that before and then linked to a non-libertarian's ideas as if he is required reading for all libertarians.
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A contractarian political system is one in which either (A) the rights that people have, or (B) the institutions of political and legal power they are subject to are justified as being those to which all rational persons would voluntarily agree. The rhetorical device for capturing the essence of a system is to imagine a giant contract that everyone could sign. |
We voluntarily vote, we don't voluntarily abide by whatever the state says or does. What happens to your social contract then?
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Libertarians believe in natural rights, so they are not a group who imagine that rights are subsequent to a social contract. |
Bingo! Natural rights come first, this is the basis of libertarianism, not your social contract. To further the goal of preserving natural rights we have a duty to respect the rights of others and empower the state to do certain things. You can call that a "social contract" but it sure isn't what left wingers mean by it and you know that to be true. Hell, not too long ago y'all were telling me the social contract requires us to tax the hell out of the rich.
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If Libertarians want to insist that no law that we haven't agreed to has any power over us (whether just law or no) then welcome to the jungle. |
No, welcome to natural rights.
Kid quote:
You need to go back and look at what I said. That's where the problem is. I never said that a person is guilty of jerking off because they oppose it. You're changing my argument. I'm not going to play your games. |
Geez, where did I say that? Here is what you said:
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I can say I'm opposed to jerking off all I want, but if I do it then I'm responsible. |
So how does your inconsistency make the person who is consistent guilty? This was your analogy as to why people who either vote against the government or dont vote are guilty.
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07-02-2005 18:13
And yes, I would say innocent. We are in part responsible for certain things - ok - but for me this is not the same as being guilty. For me guilt and responsibility are two different things.
Just because I am a lefty does not mean I agree with what the guys with a guilt trip are saying. I think this proffessor is an idiot, and I don't think the people in the WTC have any blame for 9-11. I consider myself a moderate socialist with emphasis on worker-run corporations in non-vital industries. As I said in a few other threads, I think (unlike the Marxists) that greed is a part of human nature, but just because greed is a part of human nature does not mean greed is good.
You need to go back and look at what I said. That's where the problem is. I never said that a person is guilty of jerking off because they oppose it. You're changing my argument. I'm not going to play your games.
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