Faber on Big Government and Individual Rights

[Mashuri]

Re: Faber on Big Government and Individual Rights

Ok, this is a longstanding conflict between Libertarian philosophies: Anarcho-capitalists (what you call "fundamentalist") and minarchists. People like Murray Rothbard would fall into the former philosophy while the likes of Ron Paul and Ludwig von Mises himself would be in the latter camp. For people that truly want to debate these philosophies I suggest a search on the www.mises.org forums and you will come across a plethora of well-thought-out, intelligent arguments for both cases. As for me, I fall into the "nightwatchman" minarchist camp, from a practical standpoint, but with a belief that full anarcho-capitalism is the (likely unachievable) ideal.

fine, then the corrupt companies can run the country without the middle men. even better, for them. what is a warlord but the ceo of the few commercial enterprises that remain after gov't falls and, unprotected from violence and theft, everyone who can leave does so?

Government isn't the "middle man" at all. They are THE MAIN TOOL for dominant control. Without that tool, big companies would have a much harder time enforcing their will on everyone. As for your simplistic warlord/CEO comparison, do you really expect me to believe that Bill Gates has the same disregard for human life as Mohamed Farah Aidid?? Uh, yeah...

if that's the libertarian fundamentalist nirvana, plenty of 3rd world shitholes with weak gov't they can move to... somalia, etc... no need to try to turn the usa into one.

Again, an over-simplistic fallacy. Using the same logic, I argue that anyone who wants a government may as well move to Iran or bring back Nazi Germany.

'There will still be plenty who would have no problem violating our personal and private property but, if government is too weak to prevent it, they will have a much easier time doing it.'

Why is it only government that can prevent violation of personal and private property (ironically attempted with funds taken by violating others' personal and private party)? Common law came about through spontaneous order among merchants and wasn't adopted (and subsequently warped) by governments until much later. There are many examples of stateless, civilized societies thriving economically. Here's a site that points to some case studies:

http://austrianaddiction.rationalmin...tudies-in.html

of course, on the other extreme is gov't that is too strong and exploitive. again, fundamentalists don't want to be bothered with such nuances. it's either all or nothing.

Don't you think you're over-generalizing a little here?

fantasy land. the hallmark of the fundamentalism is that it discourages curiosity.

See above.

they may wonder... why does no town on earth have competing private fire companies, even in somalia? in the usa we discovered that competing private companies fighting over a fire to get the insurance money resulted in burned down buildings. doesn't work. we learned this, oh, around the time of the civil war. libertarian fundamentalists haven't got around to it yet... those pages were torn from their history books.

I want to give this paragraph special attention. My "bullsh*t" alarm went off because I remember how an old firefighter friend of mine kept telling me that U.S. firefighters were all volunteers before becoming municipal. You mention that "libertarian fundamentalists haven't got around to it yet... those pages were torn from their history books." Wow! You must really keep up with Fundamental Libertarian studies to know they have completely ignored it! Luckily, a simple search on the Libertarian Mises site brought up this in-depth study of the very subject:

http://mises.org/journals/jls/3_3/3_3_6.pdf

Private companies indeed! Did you get your info from the same history books that tell us FDR rescued us from the Great Depression? Never mind that. Think of it from just a logical point of view: How would making fire fighting a government monopoly eliminate the moral hazard of insurance fraud? What's to stop a property owner from simply giving the municipal firemen a cut of their insurance payoff instead?

history can be selectively sifted

You can say that again!

, like the law, to find the precident one wishes to see. if one is searcing for cases of gov't oppression it can be found in the soviet union or hitler's germany, etc, where large state bureaucracies crushed the will of the people and stole their liberty. if one is looking for oppression from private enterprise unfettered by gov't, one can look to love canal, or 1000 cases of corporations poisoning and exploiting citizens.

Love Canal is an example of a corporation, Hooker Chemical, (actually, we'll leave out the culpability of the Niagara Falls Board of Education for argument's sake) empowered by government, just as all corporations as they exist today are. It's our government, for example, that has privileged them with limited liability even with people they have no contracts with.

but the fundamentalist does not seek to understand that the choices are not one or the other... not all gov't or all free enterprsie... but how to get the right balance.

I believe "fundamentalists" see choices as individual, that shouldn't be limited unless it infringes on the personal or private property of another.

our nation's founders understood that but they did not anticipate that some day private corp. could manage opinion and elections to get around all of the checks and balances they built.

There it is again. The image that government is some poor, hapless, well-to-do entity that gets corrupted by the evil corporations. Our government made corporations what they are today because it helps expand its own power. They are serving each other and are equally culpable. In fact, corporatism, the direction we're now heading with Obama, is defined as a form of fascism. You'll see Mussolini's name associated with that word a lot.

argue left vs right!

argue utopias! small gov't! big gov't! no gov't!

abortion!

gays!

school prayer!

guns!

whatever you do, do not argue about us the guys who run your country.

If you mean we are wasting energy arguing about these nuances then I could agree. For me, however, discussions like these can help me learn something new as well as clarify my own causes and provide better direction. Certainly not all the time though.

[metalman]

Re: Faber on Big Government and Individual Rights

Ok, this is a longstanding conflict between Libertarian philosophies: Anarcho-capitalists (what you call "fundamentalist") and minarchists. People like Murray Rothbard would fall into the former philosophy while the likes of Ron Paul and Ludwig von Mises himself would be in the latter camp. For people that truly want to debate these philosophies I suggest a search on the www.mises.org forums and you will come across a plethora of well-thought-out, intelligent arguments for both cases. As for me, I fall into the "nightwatchman" minarchist camp, from a practical standpoint, but with a belief that full anarcho-capitalism is the (likely unachievable) ideal.

fair enough.

Government isn't the "middle man" at all. They are THE MAIN TOOL for dominant control. Without that tool, big companies would have a much harder time enforcing their will on everyone. As for your simplistic warlord/CEO comparison, do you really expect me to believe that Bill Gates has the same disregard for human life as Mohamed Farah Aidid?? Uh, yeah...

it was an extreme example... was arguing against the extreme case.

Why is it only government that can prevent violation of personal and private property (ironically attempted with funds taken by violating others' personal and private party)? Common law came about through spontaneous order among merchants and wasn't adopted (and subsequently warped) by governments until much later. There are many examples of stateless, civilized societies thriving economically. Here's a site that points to some case studies:

http://austrianaddiction.rationalmin...tudies-in.html

who is to protect the courts?

Don't you think you're over-generalizing a little here?

perhaps.

I want to give this paragraph special attention. My "bullsh*t" alarm went off because I remember how an old firefighter friend of mine kept telling me that U.S. firefighters were all volunteers before becoming municipal. You mention that "libertarian fundamentalists haven't got around to it yet... those pages were torn from their history books." Wow! You must really keep up with Fundamental Libertarian studies to know they have completely ignored it! Luckily, a simple search on the Libertarian Mises site brought up this in-depth study of the very subject:

http://mises.org/journals/jls/3_3/3_3_6.pdf

Private companies indeed! Did you get your info from the same history books that tell us FDR rescued us from the Great Depression? Never mind that. Think of it from just a logical point of view: How would making fire fighting a government monopoly eliminate the moral hazard of insurance fraud? What's to stop a property owner from simply giving the municipal firemen a cut of their insurance payoff instead?

don't think fdr saved us. wwii saved us. the 1920s credit bubble killed us... literally.

Love Canal is an example of a corporation, Hooker Chemical, (actually, we'll leave out the culpability of the Niagara Falls Board of Education for argument's sake) empowered by government, just as all corporations as they exist today are. It's our government, for example, that has privileged them with limited liability even with people they have no contracts with.

so it is the corp structure enforced by the legal system that in your early point can function w/o gov't that prevents love canals or is it gov't? supporting your point is no love canal events in europe. or does that contradict it?

I believe "fundamentalists" see choices as individual, that shouldn't be limited unless it infringes on the personal or private property of another.

fundamentalists see things simplistically... reductionists.

There it is again. The image that government is some poor, hapless, well-to-do entity that gets corrupted by the evil corporations. Our government made corporations what they are today because it helps expand its own power. They are serving each other and are equally culpable. In fact, corporatism, the direction we're now heading with Obama, is defined as a form of fascism. You'll see Mussolini's name associated with that word a lot.

agree 100%.

If you mean we are wasting energy arguing about these nuances then I could agree. For me, however, discussions like these can help me learn something new as well as clarify my own causes and provide better direction. Certainly not all the time though.

i'm trying to learn, too. there is more to know than i'll ever know. thx!

[flintlock]

Re: Faber on Big Government and Individual Rights

Excellent exchange between you two. keep it coming.

[Sharky]

Re: Faber on Big Government and Individual Rights

Mashuri -- great post. I share your perspective, and find it wonderfully refreshing when I see it explained so well.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Faber on Big Government and Individual Rights

an old firefighter friend of mine kept telling me that U.S. firefighters were all volunteers before becoming municipal.

That's how it was when I was a child in a small New England town. Quite a few of the able bodied men would learn how to operate the equipment, and whichever of them were within ear shot of the fire station alarm would rush to it when the alarm went off, and head off in the fire truck and what other vehicles were needed to fight the fire. The town owned the fire truck and the building it was kept in. It used the upstairs of that building to house the local public library.

One thing we often seem to lose track of in these discussions is the different levels of government. Back then, Washington, DC was a long, long way off and had little to say about most of our daily lives. The state government was closer, but even that only dealt with a few fairly major items. The county and town governments dealt mostly with roads, schools and local police, with few rules imposed from above. The school, grades K-12, serviced perhaps 600 students with only a principal, a secretary, a janitor, a librarian, perhaps 30 teachers and some part-time school bus drivers. There were minimal state reporting requirements, and no federal reporting requirements whatsoever.

But I digress. My point is that just because "the government" should control something doesn't mean that the "federal government in Washington, DC" should have primary regulatory and budget control. There is far too much power and money vested in the federal government these days.

Back to my school example: when authority and funding are local, then yes it is true that quality will vary immensely. Some schools will be better than most any school we know of these days, and some schools will be lousy. But nowadays we pay some $200,000 to $300,000 per classroom (only a small part of which goes to the teacher) and we have only mediocre schools at best, with even worse (little better than juvenile prisons) schools at the bottom. We pay ten times what we should for half (at best) of the education. I absolutely favor government schools -- local government! The Department of Education is one of the Federal departments that should be entirely abolished.

Please, let's not get trapped in a simple "government or not" dichotomy.

[snakela]

Re: Faber on Big Government and Individual Rights

Does anyone else see that corporate influence on the government is a rational response to a government constantly increasing its power?

If you were running a billion dollar project on behalf of shareholders and Politikin' Pete came around and threatened to change the rules on you half-way through the game and threatening to ruin you, wouldn't you throw him a little something?

From the federal level down the the local municipality who's trash contract goes to the mayors brother-in law governments are corruptible.

It is funny in a gallows-humor type way that anyone thinks that their favorite form of government can not be corrupted if only it had a little more power over everyones' lives.

[blazespinnaker]

Re: Faber on Big Government and Individual Rights

There are plenty of examples of areas which are trying to move towards the ideal of "minarchists".. They are the states (southern, rural) that vote for people like Ron Paul.

I suggest you move to Ron Paul's district. You will no doubt find people who subscribe to your philosophy and I'm sure a majority of the police / firemen will buy into it as well.

Me, I have no desire to live in these places. I find the people who live there generally not to my taste.

What I'd like to see are zones where adults without children can move to and are allowed to live as they please .. ie, no police.

They'd have to sign a waiver with the words "raped", "robbed", "killed", "enslaved" all in big bold letters though.

But you know what would happen? Someone would start up a Home Owners Association for a bit of mutual protection, and suddenly you'd have a government and everybody would be whinging about it.

"minarchism" or libertarianism or whatever is just basically people hate being told what to do, even if it's from their strata, Obama, or just their wife. Fact of the matter though, that's life for you. Someone is going to tell them what to do. No man is an island.

Warren Buffet has a game he likes to play .. pretend you are a loving parent and you're about to have a baby. There is a small probability this baby will have down syndrome, probably about the same probability he will be an olympic athelete or a genius or a hard worker or a slacker or whatever.

Now, being that loving parent, you'll want to create a world that this child will be happy and will thrive in.

[lurker]

Re: Faber on Big Government and Individual Rights

Does anyone else see that corporate influence on the government is a rational response to a government constantly increasing its power?

\

No, because it's not.
Corporations seek to influence the government because
a) They can. The US has a system of private funding of political campaigns that is simply begging to be subverted by corporations with deep pockets. Bring in strict public (tax) funding with mandated broadcast time for all parties (free) and the deep pockets of the corporations will be less able to influence.
b) It pays to write laws and/or contracts to favor your corporation. It pays whether the government is buying (big government) or whether the government compels the people to buy (pharma) or the government simply shuts down your competitors (pharma).
I agree that the constant expansion of the federal government is a problem, but I don't think it's the real reason that corporations spend so much time effort and money trying (and succeeding) to subvert the democratic process.

[cjppjc]

Re: Faber on Big Government and Individual Rights

There are plenty of examples of areas which are trying to move towards the ideal of "minarchists".. They are the states (southern, rural) that vote for people like Ron Paul.

I suggest you move to Ron Paul's district. You will no doubt find people who subscribe to your philosophy and I'm sure a majority of the police / firemen will buy into it as well.

Me, I have no desire to live in these places. I find the people who live there generally not to my taste.

What I'd like to see are zones where adults without children can move to and are allowed to live as they please .. ie, no police.

They'd have to sign a waiver with the words "raped", "robbed", "killed", "enslaved" all in big bold letters though.

But you know what would happen? Someone would start up a Home Owners Association for a bit of mutual protection, and suddenly you'd have a government and everybody would be whinging about it.

"minarchism" or libertarianism or whatever is just basically people hate being told what to do, even if it's from their strata, Obama, or just their wife. Fact of the matter though, that's life for you. Someone is going to tell them what to do. No man is an island.

Warren Buffet has a game he likes to play .. pretend you are a loving parent and you're about to have a baby. There is a small probability this baby will have down syndrome, probably about the same probability he will be an olympic athelete or a genius or a hard worker or a slacker or whatever.

Now, being that loving parent, you'll want to create a world that this child will be happy and will thrive in.

You have no idea about the people who live in Ron Pauls district. The only things I've read is that they respect his honesty.

[Mashuri]

Re: Faber on Big Government and Individual Rights

There are plenty of examples of areas which are trying to move towards the ideal of "minarchists".. They are the states (southern, rural) that vote for people like Ron Paul.

I suggest you move to Ron Paul's district. You will no doubt find people who subscribe to your philosophy and I'm sure a majority of the police / firemen will buy into it as well.

Me, I have no desire to live in these places. I find the people who live there generally not to my taste.

What I'd like to see are zones where adults without children can move to and are allowed to live as they please .. ie, no police.

They'd have to sign a waiver with the words "raped", "robbed", "killed", "enslaved" all in big bold letters though.

But you know what would happen? Someone would start up a Home Owners Association for a bit of mutual protection, and suddenly you'd have a government and everybody would be whinging about it.

"minarchism" or libertarianism or whatever is just basically people hate being told what to do, even if it's from their strata, Obama, or just their wife. Fact of the matter though, that's life for you. Someone is going to tell them what to do. No man is an island.

Warren Buffet has a game he likes to play .. pretend you are a loving parent and you're about to have a baby. There is a small probability this baby will have down syndrome, probably about the same probability he will be an olympic athelete or a genius or a hard worker or a slacker or whatever.

Now, being that loving parent, you'll want to create a world that this child will be happy and will thrive in.

You've got a lot to learn about what minarchists believe in or what Libertarianism is about. Your projecting, however, does tell us a little about where you're coming from.