• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Split Thread Libertarianism

lightfire22000 said:
Provide a fight that you wouldn't want because you'd get killed. Anybody who tried to own slaves would get killed. Once they all got killed, no one would enslave others. Once you coerce and seize property, you become government and should be abolished anyways.
Click to expand...
A pair of wolfs (drkitten & paximperium) will have an easy picking of a disorganized herd of lemmings (lightfire22000 & friends).

Highly organized fighting forces are far more effective then 'militia'.
 
AWPrime said:
A pair of wolfs (drkitten & paximperium) will have an easy picking of a disorganized herd of lemmings (lightfire22000 & friends).

Highly organized fighting forces are far more effective then 'militia'.
Click to expand...

Actually, I find it interesting that he will "provide a fight that WE won't want because WE might get killed." Evidently the possibility that his side would take casualties never occurred to him.

Of course, it's possible he's right; if he can get enough people on his side to make the odds overwhelmingly against us, then he can probably guarantee a victory through sheer numbers. But that's hardly a fight that HE would want either.

And in order to get that many people on his side, as rocketdodger pointed out, he'll have to come to some agreement on rules of engagement and mutual respect; i.e. he will be forced to reinvent government anyway....
 
lightfire22000 said:
I don't see any compelling evidence that our current government works.
Click to expand...

And there we have it, ladies and gentlemen! CT.

Seriously, if you think the government doesn't work then you're missing out on a number of services provided by it. I can't speak for the US but up here in Canada I can tell you our taxes actually serve a purpose.
 
AWPrime said:
A pair of wolfs (drkitten & paximperium) will have an easy picking of a disorganized herd of lemmings (lightfire22000 & friends).

Highly organized fighting forces are far more effective then 'militia'.
Click to expand...

Tell that to the USSR when they invaded Afghanistan or to the US when they invaded Vietnam. History is not on your side there AWPrime.
 
rocketdodger said:
This is what I just don't get about certain Anarchist types -- they completely fail to realize that total freedom for everyone is an extremely unstable state. That is, such a state will rapidly transition to something else regardless of what you do.
Click to expand...

Anarchists tend to be pretty naive. They seem to think that people are naturally nice to one another. Besides, if they get nasty you can always hire a security force! :rolleyes:
 
drkitten said:
Actually, I find it interesting that he will "provide a fight that WE won't want because WE might get killed." Evidently the possibility that his side would take casualties never occurred to him.

Of course, it's possible he's right; if he can get enough people on his side to make the odds overwhelmingly against us, then he can probably guarantee a victory through sheer numbers. But that's hardly a fight that HE would want either.

And in order to get that many people on his side, as rocketdodger pointed out, he'll have to come to some agreement on rules of engagement and mutual respect; i.e. he will be forced to reinvent government anyway....
Click to expand...

Yeah, but you wouldn't want to risk it either. So I could defend myself if you attacked because I'm confident in your fear of casualties.
 
paximperium said:
And the "Nanny State" fails because? A lack of power isn't it? A Libs answer is to take more power away, very smart indeed.
Click to expand...
And a Statists answer is to take more power away as well: from the individuals and local communities, and grant it to the state. As to how smart the statist approach is, history has certainly illustrated the epic genius of granting more and more power to the state.

Of course the real question is not which extreme is better--neither is--but what balance to strike between individual and local power, and central state power. This is an important question, and it's because of this question that I appreciate the Libertarians: Because they oppose the statists, and by advocating for the individualist extreme they provide the necessary tension that keeps our society from drifting further and further to the opposite extreme.
 
theprestige said:
And a Statists answer is to take more power away as well: from the individuals and local communities, and grant it to the state. As to how smart the statist approach is, history has certainly illustrated the epic genius of granting more and more power to the state.

Of course the real question is not which extreme is better--neither is--but what balance to strike between individual and local power, and central state power. This is an important question, and it's because of this question that I appreciate the Libertarians: Because they oppose the statists, and by advocating for the individualist extreme they provide the necessary tension that keeps our society from drifting further and further to the opposite extreme.
Click to expand...

OTOH general perception of Libertarians is often that they're a bunch of wack jobs (and quite often perception and reality agree), so they wind up having the opposite effect--driving more people toward the statists' point of view. Tension between opposing points of view can be quite healthy without extremism on either end.
 
Prometheus said:
OTOH general perception of Libertarians is often that they're a bunch of wack jobs (and quite often perception and reality agree), so they wind up having the opposite effect--driving more people toward the statists' point of view. Tension between opposing points of view can be quite healthy without extremism on either end.
Click to expand...

I think part of the problem here is terminological.

Would all the actual "statists" in this discussion kindly raise their hands? No hands? I thought not. Thank you.

There are no "statists" any more; indeed, there never were very many. I think everyone involved in this discussion feels that there should be a balance between individual liberty and state power to make sure that liberty is used responsibly.

... except for the Libertarians. Who are, as you pointed out, "a bunch of wack jobs" who reflexively and unthinkingly oppose any form of state power and insist that anyone who disagrees must be a "statist."

I would be much more sympathetic to the libertarian point of view if they were arguing with people who actually existed. But I haven't seen a single hard-core Leninist or Maoist on this board; I have seen hard-core Fascists, but those are usually off doing Holocaust denial. Indeed, the closest I've seen to "statist" would be the theocratic Godbotherers.
 
lightfire22000 said:
Yeah, but you wouldn't want to risk it either. So I could defend myself if you attacked because I'm confident in your fear of casualties.
Click to expand...

What about the brainwashed thugs that drkitten and maximus convince to fight for them?

Are you confident in their fear of casualties?
 
lightfire22000 said:
Tell that to the USSR when they invaded Afghanistan or to the US when they invaded Vietnam. History is not on your side there AWPrime.
Click to expand...
Actually in both cases they were highly organized, but the winners won through use of terrain and superior numbers, etc. Both advantages you won't have.
 
And vietcong didn't care about their losses of their fighters and couldn't care less about losses of civilian lives. They couldn't got voted out of power.
 
AWPrime said:
Actually in both cases they were highly organized, but the winners won through use of terrain and superior numbers, etc. Both advantages you won't have.
Click to expand...

Lol yeah. He seems to think we meant homeland population when we said "superior numbers." Which seems odd to me -- I would automatically assume you meant the number of soldiers on the battlefield, not the number of grannies knitting mittens back at home.
 
AWPrime said:
Actually in both cases they were highly organized, but the winners won through use of terrain and superior numbers, etc. Both advantages you won't have.
Click to expand...

They were both extremely decentralized groups that only organized naturally to achieve victory. They did not organize for the sake of bureaucracy, which is exactly a statist's conception of government. They were both predominantly flexible fighting units with very loose authority as long as every party was committed to their cause. There was little forced organization in both instances. They were "militia" in every sense of the word.

Often, they did not even have superior numbers, though most of the time they did.

Plus, if you attacked, you couldn't stomach the losses you'd face. Also, if you invaded, you'd be a government anyways since you'd be coercing.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom