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SirTweek
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I'd rather not go through the libertarian parties website. The reason some enviromental lawsuits have been dragged out has nothing to do with drug lawsuits clogging up the system but with the system itself. I could cite a few of these cases if you really want me to. Public defenders being a joke in prisons is sometimes true since I deal with some of them at my work, besides without the public defenders to defend these people they would have no one. Typical case of a criminal whining about something they got for free they do this while they whine about the lack of golf courses and colour TVs in every room. I won't argue against drug laws, prostitution laws, ect... since I also believe they should be repealed. Oh, and I wasn't complaining I was simply asking if that was how it worked, that's why that sentence ended in a question mark.
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Agathon
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Leafs 4TW!! - CPA
Dec 2002
time: 00:26
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quote:
Originally posted by Ramo
There are a number of things that are inconsistent about Randism (and many of which carry over to other variants of libertarian capitalism).
For instance, the idea of a prison. In these institutions, the the liberties of people are taken away to an incredible degree, particularly in more authoritarian states (the US, for instance). Rand would say that this can be justified from the "natural right" to self-defense. But this is a logical fallacy, for it is not strictly self-defense, just as if I were hit, went home, and then hit that person in retaliation is not strictly self-defense. Prison is a pre-emptive denial of one's liberties to protect society in the event of future crime through exluding these people from free society and ideally rehabilitating them (and prison often degenerates into a state-sponsored revenge, but I doubt she would try to justify that). This cannot be justified under a Randist ethics system, just as drug prohibition or gun control cannot be justified under a Randist ethics system. These are all pre-emptive actions intended to protect society (and often do more harm than good).
Another case in point is the idea of "natural rights." The idea of natural rights is that there's an absolutely good ethical metric independent of person. But ethical systems are philosophical systems, and as such, can be constructed arbitrarily within the human mind. The only way you get an absolute ethical metric is if you start with assumptions about what which ethical metrics are best, or if you are theologically inclined, you believe everyone actually has the same ethical metric, and people who disagree are lying or something like that.
Then, there's property. Which I'll get to later.  |
I agree wholeheartedly: the whole system is just a huge toilet. Offhand I can think of at least four fatal objections to it, and that's without trying too hard.
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Agathon
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Leafs 4TW!! - CPA
Dec 2002
time: 00:26
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quote:
Originally posted by Wraith
In any case, the basic argument is laid out here.
I'll see if I can find a better presentation online, though.
Keep in mind this is the Objectivist argument, not necessarily the Libertarian one. The two will likely be different, depending on whom you ask. |
Fair enough. I already gave an outline of my reasons why I disagree with Rand. The main one is that there is an illegitimate move from the rationalty of means to the rationality of ends made by an argument that appears to commit a version of the naturalistic fallacy.
quote:
Because you are still ignoring one of the main points. If you wish to continue harping on your liberty argument, how is what the robber doing not infringing on your liberty? He has artificially narrowed your range of choices down to two, which are both detrimental to you. |
Yes, but so does the boss who offers his secretary the choice of sleeping with him or being fired. What you need to show, I'll say it again, is how this case is different. By doing that you need to show how one's liberty is violated in one and not the other.
quote:
But you still have to live in reality. It's this disconnect of yours that causes the problem. All you have to do is ground your ethics system in objective reality, which is what Rand attempts (whether or not she suceeded is something you can decide for yourself). |
The problem is that she appears to commit the naturalistic fallacy (inferring a value from a fact).
I can't infer from "X has natural property Y" to "X is good" without ultimately having a premise along the lines of "natural property Y is the good" and that is always an open question.
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Rex Little
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quote:
Originally posted by Agathon
Yes, but so does the boss who offers his secretary the choice of sleeping with him or being fired. What you need to show, I'll say it again, is how this case is different. By doing that you need to show how one's liberty is violated in one and not the other.
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The difference, as has been said before, is that what the robber threatens to do is a rights violation, while what the boss threatens to do is not (assuming no employment contract). I understand why you think that makes no difference, and you're. . . entitled to your opinion.
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Agathon
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Leafs 4TW!! - CPA
Dec 2002
time: 00:26
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quote:
Originally posted by Rex Little
The difference, as has been said before, is that what the robber threatens to do is a rights violation, while what the boss threatens to do is not (assuming no employment contract). I understand why you think that makes no difference, and you're. . . entitled to your opinion. |
You know maybe I should just bang my head against a wall. I'll say it again: what the robber does is threaten a rights violation rather than actually violate a right. Unless Libertarians can come up with some convincing argument that the former violates a person's liberty (i.e. is a rights violation as well) in the way the latter does, then it's all incoherent hot air.
Any attempt to say that the robber is engaged in coercive behaviour faces the problem that he actually gives the victim a choice. So does the boss. I wish that you'd get it out of your head that I think the boss is necessarily doing something bad (he would if he raped her).
The comparison is not that one is bad and the other is good, the point of comparison is intended to illustrate the fact that the Libertarian conception of liberty is absolutely neutral on what our options actually are - it only cares that we consent freely to one of them. On a Libertarian conception we aren't obliged to provide people with good choices as opposed to bad choices, we just have to obtain their consent (which is what the robber attempts to do). Merely offering a person a choice between two evils is perfectly compatible with libertarian morality.
This is why Libertarians say (but almost no one else does) that a worker who faces a choice between being sexually abused by her prospective employer and starving to death (something that happens in third world countries) satisfies the Libertarian criterion of being free, and if the said worker agreed to work and become the employer's sex slave, that there would be nothing wrong. I fail to see how this is any different from a robber offering his victim a choice. Of course if the victim chooses to resist and is then beaten and robbed, it would be a rights violation - but the latter is not what I am talking about.
In a nutshell the Libertarian conception of liberty cannot account for the wrongness of restricting someone's options per se, unless they are restricted to one or zero. Moreover, the "freedom" it promises is commensurate with a choice between starvation or enslavement (nothing in libertarianism prevents persons being sold if they consent to it - and they might if they were starving and there were no other option.).
That is not a freedom worth having.
Last edited by Agathon on 10-03-2003 at 02:00
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Berzerker
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topeka, kansas,USA
May 1999
time: 23:26
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Agathon - quote:
You know maybe I should just bang my head against a wall. |
If that'll help you understand the meanings of freedom and coercion.
quote:
I'll say it again: what the robber does is threaten a rights violation rather than actually violate a right. |
And freedom requires the absence of coercion or constraint on choice or action. And coercion includes force and the threat of force. I don't know why Rex and Wraith don't explain that to you, but I have repeatedly.
quote:
Unless Libertarians can come up with some convincing argument that the former violates a person's liberty (i.e. is a rights violation as well) in the way the latter does, then it's all incoherent hot air. |
The coercion in your example of the robber violates the victim's freedom.
quote:
Any attempt to say that the robber is engaged in coercive behaviour faces the problem that he actually gives the victim a choice. |
So what? Coercion is the threat of force to induce a particular response, the fact the victim has a "choice" is irrelevant to the reality that coercion is involved and influences the choice.
The boss is demanding she sleep with him, but he isn't holding a gun to her head - no threat of force.
quote:
I wish that you'd get it out of your head that I think the boss is necessarily doing something bad (he would if he raped her). |
You don't? I do, he's scum.
quote:
The comparison is not that one is bad and the other is good, the point of comparison is intended to illustrate the fact that the Libertarian conception of liberty is absolutely neutral on what our options actually are - it only cares that we consent freely to one of them. |
"FREELY" as in FREEDOM as in the absence of coercion on choice or action. And what is coercion? Force or the threat of force.
quote:
On a Libertarian conception we aren't obliged to provide people with good choices as opposed to bad choices, we just have to obtain their consent (which is what the robber attempts to do). |
Via the threat of force - coercion.
quote:
In a nutshell the Libertarian conception of liberty cannot account for the wrongness of restricting someone's options per se, unless they are restricted to one or zero |
The number of options is irrelevant, whether or not the choice is made in the absence of coercion is.
Tiny Pen!s - quote:
Which post of mine here is a troll? |
Ahem, you're the one who accused me of "impaired" debating skills, so you go through those threads and support your accusation then I'll look for your trolls.
quote:
There are the thread's. Nobody is going to read them anyway but since I promised. |
You didn't read much of them the first time, so why start now?
quote:
To insult You? Or to insult your politics? That's a lie. |
You can now read my mind to know if I'm lying? Did you insult me in that thread? You've already admitted being rude. And what brought on your rudeness? Was it really because you didn't like my style of debating or was it because of my politics? A lie my a$$.
quote:
Like I said from the start, only reading those threads and desiding for oneself is proof. |
No, offering examples of my "impaired" debating skills is proof, not telling others to look for the proof you won't even look for.
quote:
The rest are just opinions or believing in opinions which is not proof. |
Usually people offer an explanation supported by evidence for why they have an opinion. You just keep offering the opinion...
quote:
However you allready illustrated your lack of skills in debating in this thread too, the same old style that you use in those threads. |
 And I suppose you'll tell readers to look for the evidence for that opinion rather than identifying examples yourself.
quote:
Really no need to reply at all, I won't mind. This has gone far enough allready. |
Accusing me of telling a lie is reason enough to respond. I know you don't talk to people that way face to face, but since my debating skills are supposedly "impaired", perhaps you will analyse Agathon's argument about the armed robber and my rebuttal and tell us whose argument is impaired. Oh yeah, you don't actually analyse arguments, you just offer opinions.
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Berzerker
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topeka, kansas,USA
May 1999
time: 23:26
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Tiny - I went through the second thread and found the entirety of your "contribution":
quote:
Wellcome to the club
This is some funny stuff, I'm already waiting impatiently for his next answer. |
quote:
I'm not ****ing with you... but uh did you read the last thread...Berz did to Agathon what he did to everyone else. If you have too much spare time, why don't you read it again and try to understand the points people are trying to make and the responses they get from berz. Nothing but punch in the face. It seems like this guy doesn't understands anything or is just annoying on purpose |
That last one was your attempt to convince Orange he was wrong when he supported me, and quite comical given the fact Agathon insulted libertarians in his opening post and only got nastier as the thread went along while I refrained from insults for quite a while before getting tired of his behavior. Both trolls, no issue being debated, no analysis, nothing but insults.
Then I went through about 12 pages of the first thread and found only these:
quote:
Well done David, this is the most ridicilous thing I have seen in months. |
Again, no analysis, no explanation for the insult, just an insult.
quote:
If One_Brow would have power to adjust laws by his logic, then serial killers would have a blast  |
Oops, One Brow made the mistake of agreeing with David and me, so naturally you insult him too.
quote:
David attempts to avoid answering to a really easy question are funny, you should read them Well, it's possible that he is stupid enough to not been able to even understand the question, like it seems, he likes to debate the details (which have nothing to do with the actual question). So it's a small possibility that he is not avoiding, but thinks he is giving an answer  |
How nice, the troll insults David and offers nothing to support the insults again. Notice a pattern?
So what do the targets of your insults have in common? They agreed with each other, i.e., you were only targeting people with insults based on their politics.
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Berzerker
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topeka, kansas,USA
May 1999
time: 23:26
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quote:
Originally posted by Wraith
You haven't made a case yourself. The only reason I'm in this argument is because of some vicious misrepresentations of Objectivism and Libertarianism that I've been attempting to correct. You continue to ignore these corrections. |
I've given an argument multiple times now and all you have done is counter with mere assertion.
quote:
As I said before, I will no longer address your strawmen arguments. This leaves little for me to say, since the only other argument you've made is an appeal to authority. |
You sound like you've been reading some introduction to logic book. None of my arguments is a strawman. You show me where I misinterpret Rand - I lifted that stuff straight from "The Virtue of Selfishness".
quote:
Your question contains an invalid assumption, that is, a strawman. If you understand the philosophy as well as you claim you do, then you are doing this out of spite or malice. If not, you merely do not understand as well as you think you do. Either way continuing this is pointless unless you're willing to acknowledge that you do not know as much as you think you do. |
There is no straw man. Why do Libertarians always accuse people who argue with them of this? I suppose because it is the easiest response to an argument you don't understand.
quote:
"Liberty" is not where these rights derive from. All rights derive from the most fundamental right, the right to life. |
Nope. I know for a fact that not all Libertarians think this way. John Hospers in the "Libertarian Manifesto" certainly does not. In any case this is a laughable assertion since as everyone knows Libertarians think that suicide is morally permissible and the reason it is, is because individual liberty trumps any reasons we might have for thinking that life is sacred. Similarly the right to life derives from the right to liberty because if I kill someone without their consent I have violated their liberty; but if I kill someone with their consent Libertarians think there is nothing wrong. This shows that Liberty is doing all the work here and not some independently established right to life.
quote:
The rational behind the right to life is quite simple. Rights, by definition, are things that apply only to humans in a social context. A social context requires more than one person. If you go around killing everyone you meet, there is soon no social context. |
That's an absolutely terrible argument for the existence of rights. The fact that rights require a social context to accrue to persons does not entail that the existence of a social context entails that people have rights. A social context is necessary for rights to exist, but it is not sufficient (now that's real logician's talk).
quote:
The full argument goes into more detail, but that's a quick summary. The right to property, etc, are all derived from the right to life, not this liberty you keep bringging up as a shibolleth. |
I'm afraid you are mistaken here, since as I've just explained to you the right to liberty does a good job of justifying the Libertarian attitude towards the right to life whereas the right to liberty cannot be derived from the right to life without making certain other claims.
quote:
This is your fundamental error, and you refuse to be corrected on it. |
Because, evidently, I am not the one in need of correcting. Here's hoping that some Libertarian will jump in and show you the error of your ways.
quote:
It's like claiming that someone building a road through your house without your consent isn't violating your property rights because you've still got the house. |
It is not like that at all. If someone builds a road through your house without your consent then he has violated your rights. That isn't equivalent to my robber situation at all. What would make it equivalent is if the person gave you the choice of having the road built or being run over. Admittedly, that's not much different in practice, but it does show how silly the notion of negative liberty is.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Hmm...someone's guilty of hypocrisy, that was your copy and paste job, Agathon.
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Wraith
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Austin, Texas, USA
Aug 1999
time: 23:26
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--"Now it sounds exactly like the society we have with taxes, lawyers, courts and government regulations."
Not exactly alike. Fairly similar, just a much smaller government. No farm subsidies on the one hand (to artificially raise the price of food) and no food stamps on the other (to let poor people aford the artificially expensive food).
--" I also assumed and this may be a false assumption that in a libertarian society the crown as it is called in Canada would not prosecute people for breaking laws"
Depends which Libertarians you talk to. The anarchists will probably agree with this, since they won't want any laws or government.
The minarchists will disagree. We'll say that the government was created to protect the rights of the people, and it's only true purpose is to protect those rights (and prosecute those who break them).
--"I'll say it again, is how this case is different."
Working a particular job is not a right (if it were, that would mean someone is obligated to give you a job, and the internal contradictions there should be self-evident). You do have a right to both your life and whatever property you have earned. The boss is not infringing on a right, the theif is infringing on one of two, merely letting you choose which.
--"I can't infer from "X has natural property Y" to "X is good" without ultimately having a premise along the lines of "natural property Y is the good" and that is always an open question."
She argues that life is the highest value. After all, if you lose your life you can't value anything at all anymore.
In any case, if you understand the argument and disagree with it, that's one thing. As I've said, I'm not interested in persuading anyone to change their minds.
--"Why do people have a right not to be threatened with the violation of their rights"
The threat of violence differs from the action of violence only in degree.
--"and is this right derived from the principle of liberty?"
Not as far as I'm concerned, whoever else you've been reading.
Wraith
Of course I'm warped - it's faster than impulse
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Ramo
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Austin, Texas, USA
Oct 1999
time: 23:26
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quote:
Before getting to your post, can you address Agathon's question about the robber not violating the victim's freedom under libertarianism if he is only bluffing? |
I would indeed consider threat of coercion a form of coercion depending upon the circumstances, as threats can certainly impose constraints on the actions of a person. But I would agree with Agathon in that I don't know if it qualifies as such in a Randist sense; that is, I don't know if it's ethically consistent to prohibit threats of violence to extort money under a Randist ethical system. For, do I not have a "natural right" to speech? But my speech doesn't take the life or property away from anybody any more than the speech involved in threatening a person with firing someone from a job, etc. for money. Therefore, the state cannot prohibit my speech, correct?
quote:
The degree is not a product of libertarianism, you know roughly half the prison population would be freed under libertarianism. |
Nonetheless, huge numbers would remain. Any the prisons themselves are incredibly authoritarian. Even the least objectionable prisons, such as those in Finland, still take away the liberty of people in them to an extreme degree. For that is the nature of prison. And, frankly, I don't find many libertarian capitalists fighting for less oppressive prisons.
quote:
It is true retaliation and self-defense are not identical, but the former is related to the latter. If I try to kill you and, in your defense, you kill me, I'm punished for my action. |
But this is a different matter entirely. In the cases of prisons, the liberty of people are taken away after the fact. It isn't "self-defense" in the sense analagous to dealings between individuals. Just because someone is a murderer, doesn't mean he will kill me or anyone else.
quote:
If your defense fails and I kill you, the state's retaliation is still a result of my action. |
If I've already been killed, the state didn't defend me. No action by the state could possibly defend me.
quote:
Then prison is not retaliation, it's prevention. |
Retaliation and prevention are both after the fact (i.e. result from an "initiation of force"). That's the reason for my analogy.
quote:
If your self-defense results in my death, your action is still justified as is the state's in putting me to death in retaliation. |
Retaliation? I thought libertarian capitalists were above state-sponsored revenge. I find violence and force motivatated by revenge just as immoral as violence and force not motivated by revenge. If you hit me, I go home, and then hit you, my action is no more justifiable than yours.
quote:
It is not a logical fallacy to claim a right to retaliate based on a right to self-defense, both are actions resulting from the initiation of force, one just comes sooner than the other. |
That isn't a logically valid assertion. Self-defense is self-defense, retaliation is retaliation. Just because the motives of both actions are the same (some initiation of force), doesn't make them equally morally justifiable.
quote:
Leaving drugs and guns out, why? Rand was against retaliation or prevention? |
I assumed she was against retaliation as I find it an ethically base and morally reprehensible action, but apparantly I was wrong. Anyways, her support is revenge is inconsistent with "natural rights" as well. And yes, she was against "prevention," or using force in anticipation of force. Otherwise she would've been pro-drug prohibition and gun control.
quote:
If you and I were the only people in the world and I was intent on murdering you and had already tried to accomplish my goal, wouldn't you be justified in restraining me, even by killing me? |
Depending upon the circumstances, perhaps. But it is not consistent under a Randist system. Retaliation and pre-emptive restraint aren't justified from the Randist concept of self-defense.
quote:
Punishing people for attempted murder is not pre-emptive, they've already taken the action. |
Punishing a person by locking him up in a prison is ethically reprehensible.
quote:
Lying? No, hypocritical. |
quote:
We've had this debate before, but excluding extenuating circumstances such as painful disease or emotional trauma brought on by life's occurences, no one wants to be murdered. |
Or different brain chemistry, etc., but yes most people don't want to be killed.
quote:
Therefore, this universal desire creates a standard by which a natural right to life can be discerned (as well as identifying the rightful owner of your life). |
Near-universal desire, but you still haven't justified this assertion.
quote:
Only the hypocrite would murder others when he would not want others to murder him. |
Wanting something isn't the same thing as believing it is morally good, and not wanting something isn't the same thing as believing it is morally bad.
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09-03-2003 22:24
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