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Thread: Books on Libertarianism - Starting Strength Radio

  1. #11
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    I have always been conservative....sometimes moderate. However, as you stated, with recent events, Covid,totalitarianism and police brutality, I have gone even more right. I always thought the libertarian philosophy was a pipe dream, perhaps some of it is. However, I would rather dream for freedom and individual responsibility, than group think bureaucracy. It scares the shit out of me that these people have power over how you and I live our lives. America is special, I always knew this but could never explain why. Now, with all the current events, I understand. We are exceptional, instead of choosing to be dictated (the easy way out), we choose to make our own way, even if that means making mistakes. One mistake conservatives and libertarians make is not explaining their position well enough. Or maybe it is a case of "I cant make you understand it." I guess it is much easier to explain Santa Clause (dems/socialist) than it is to explain libertarian philosophy. Nonetheless, I look at Lew Rockwell's website and Future for Freedom? They seem to have some good stuff there too.

  2. #12
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    Within libertarianism, can I effectively oppose open-borders mass immigration, and most importantly can I oppose the inevitable eventual demographic replacement of my fellow native people in my own ancestral homeland, based on an argument which asserts an ethnic group should have a right to secure its own existence?

    Is there a liberal thinker who covers this question of race and nationalism?

  3. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nockian View Post
    That’s well argued Satch and at first read, who could argue ? But hell. For the sake of a good debate. Let’s go.

    Let me begin my rebuttal on your first point that libertarianism “begins with self-ownership from which property rights are derived“. That’s a circular argument. Your argument is that property rights are derived from property rights (self ownership being property). Not valid.

    I don’t want to push this any further until you can find a logical argument which supports property rights.
    Would you prefer "control of body" as opposed to "self-ownership?" Given that the statement of what property rights constitute are norms for the control of scarce resources.

    I'd disagree that the formulation is circular and counter that it is actually deductive. The body is after all the prototype for a scarce good, because even in a Garden of Eden situation of superabundance in all things, two people can't claim control of one body. Thus, some kind of rules for control have to be established. I mean, they can claim whatever they want; but, it is still only one person one body. As such, those rules can be extended out to other scarce goods.

    To put it simply: If you cannot control your own body, then how can you control anything else?

    That being said, if a person doesn't own himself or control his own body, how does anything that Locke wrote about in terms of the first user, mixing of labor, title transfer, etc., work? How are claims or conflicts over usage resolved?

    I think the stumbling point is who is assigning those norms. I don't think there's disagreement on what property rights constitute functionally. I think the argument is the very nature of who establishes those norms.

    Quote Originally Posted by Matt Jackson View Post
    Within libertarianism, can I effectively oppose open-borders mass immigration, and most importantly can I oppose the inevitable eventual demographic replacement of my fellow native people in my own ancestral homeland, based on an argument which asserts an ethnic group should have a right to secure its own existence?
    This is the $47,000 question, the face that launched a thousand autistic ships across the internet. There are those who argue that beyond non-aggression, all things are permissible. Others will ask, "OK, but what kind of world would that be?"

    My answer to you would be "yes" because I am one of those people who ask about the kind of world we would live in. Culture does matter. It is very important to people. At the end of the day, what's being argued for is the freedom to do what one chooses, but not to be forced to live in that community and to not expect other people to want to either. Moreover, it's the understanding that doing what one chooses might not be beneficial for the continuation of human society.

    Quote Originally Posted by Matt Jackson View Post
    Is there a liberal thinker who covers this question of race and nationalism?
    Hoppe and the blogger Bionic Mosquito are good places to start.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Matt Jackson View Post
    Within libertarianism, can I effectively oppose open-borders mass immigration, and most importantly can I oppose the inevitable eventual demographic replacement of my fellow native people in my own ancestral homeland, based on an argument which asserts an ethnic group should have a right to secure its own existence?

    Is there a liberal thinker who covers this question of race and nationalism?
    It’s called national socialism. Tribal collectivism.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Nockian View Post
    That’s well argued Satch and at first read, who could argue ? But hell. For the sake of a good debate. Let’s go.

    Let me begin my rebuttal on your first point that libertarianism “begins with self-ownership from which property rights are derived“. That’s a circular argument. Your argument is that property rights are derived from property rights (self ownership being property). Not valid.

    I don’t want to push this any further until you can find a logical argument which supports property rights.
    What is your alternative to self ownership/bodily autonomy?

    The most obvious one is that some other person or group of people has a greater claim to your own body than you do. We have another name for that: Slavery.

    The less obvious one is that no one has any claim to your body or bodily autonomy, which quickly devolves into absurdity and untenability. And effectively is the same as option 1 in practice - if I do something to you that you disapprove of, say punch you in the face. You have no right to be angry or even consider this wrong, because while I don't own or have control over your own body, neither do you. Which is effectively the same as if I or others owned it, because you have no right to stop us from doing anything because you don't own it either.

    So, your job is to either defend one of those two other propositions or come up with another alternative that is logically consistent and that we will accept. For example: Option 1 is logically consistent, but no one will accept it because we all agree slavery is wrong. Otherwise: Self ownership --> private property rights --> NAP.

    There are libertarian arguments for exceptions to this rule, whether or not we find them compelling is a separate issue. But at the very least, this is the starting presumption. I'm no expert on Rand, but I thought she agreed on it, and just made a few very small exceptions such as national defense, because she felt it untenable to privatize literally everything. Someone like Milton Friedman made more exceptions than Rand. Someone like Rothbard made no exceptions. But in any case, this is at least the presumptive starting point.

    Quote Originally Posted by Matt Jackson View Post
    Within libertarianism, can I effectively oppose open-borders mass immigration, and most importantly can I oppose the inevitable eventual demographic replacement of my fellow native people in my own ancestral homeland, based on an argument which asserts an ethnic group should have a right to secure its own existence?

    Is there a liberal thinker who covers this question of race and nationalism?
    You probably want Hans Herman Hoppe here. I'm not saying I agree or disagree with him, but he's the most prominent libertarian thinker I know of who is decidedly not open borders and addresses this head on from a libertarian perspective.

    I will insufficiently attempt to summarize, but obviously attribute any issues to my own lack of understanding and further simplification by summarization. Agree with him or not, he's worth reading in full.

    That said:
    In theory, 100% "pure" libertarianism believes in 100% private borders. Property owners can decide who comes onto their land and into their homes, just like now, except that instead of having some places that are government/publicly controlled, it would be all privatized. Let's leave aside the economic Qs for now such as free rider and public goods issues, and focus specifically on the immigration.

    What you'd likely see develop is very efficient means - much more efficient than we have now - by which to screen people before entry, and this means all immigration is done with a specific invite from a property owner. Even if some of the property owners are either lazy and don't screen, or purposefully trying to be subversive, the fact that any other private property owner - including roads and other things we now assume are always "public," - can effectively not allow them onto their land or property mitigates against a lot of those issues.

    To quote Hoppe here:
    Under this scenario, no difference between the physical movement of goods and the migration of people exists. As every product movement reflects an underlying agreement between sender and receiver, so all movements of immigrants into and within an anarcho-capitalist society are the result of an agreement between the immigrant and one or a series of receiving domestic property owners.
    However, this isn't the current reality, and small government libertarianism - minarchists and constitutionalists - would say that borders are one of the small set of legitimate functions of the national government. Either way, the current reality is that government does control the borders. So, says Hoppe, since we live in this less than ideal scenario, who gets to decide how the gov't runs those borders? The taxpayers.

    This seems similar to the way I view public schools. I think it would be vastly better (and cheaper) if the entire system were privatized. But since public schools exist, whether I like it or not, it's reasonable for me to state a preference for them to teach 2+2=4 and not 2+2=5. So if the taxpayers want restrictions on immigration, so be it.

    Anyway, here Hoppe says:
    If a domestic resident-owner invites a person and arranges for his access onto the resident-owner’s property but the government excludes this person from the state territory, it is a case of forced exclusion (a phenomenon that does not exist in a natural order). On the other hand, if the government admits a person while there is no domestic resident-owner who has invited this person onto his property, it is a case of forced integration (also nonexistent in a natural order, where all movement is invited). … By admitting someone onto its territory, the state also permits this person to proceed on public roads and lands to every domestic resident’s doorsteps, to make use of all public facilities and services (such as hospitals and schools), and to access every commercial establishment, employment, and residential housing, protected by a multitude of non-discrimination laws.
    For the full texts of where I pulled these Hoppe quotes, see: here and here.

    My own personal view is that I don't know. I see arguments from both sides (Bryan Caplan is a good source for the other side of the debate from a libertarian perspective), and also have seen how royally the government screws things up, so am not sure that even if I accepted the Hoppean argument in theory, I'm not sure I'd want the feds to enforce it in practice. I don't know.

    But - like many issues within all political philosophies, including progressivism and conservatism and all others - there are multiple views on some issues, and broad agreement on others.

    Quote Originally Posted by Nockian View Post
    The problem with libertarianism is that it begins with the non-aggression principle. There is no getting around the fact that aggression is sometimes required in defence of individual rights. Either everyone has to defend their own rights (anarchy), or they have to appoint a Government as the monopoly of force to defend those rights. We already have Antifa and BLM promoting anarchy, should the Government stop them, or do we all take up guns and see who is the best shot, the most aggressive fighter and the biggest gang ? The reason there are now so many shades of libertarianism is because it is essentially mysticism in a faux free market wrapper, so there are pink libertarians and most obviously Christian libertarians.

    What should really be studied is the morality of capitalism, in which all property is privately owned and the need for that right to be protected by some form of Government, which itself cannot violate those rights, except where there is an initiation of coercive force.
    I am wrong in remembering from past posts that you're a Randian or Objectivist?

    This is Rand in one of her famous Donahue appearances, explicitly endorsing the non aggression principle:



    Of course, it's NOT non-violence. It's non-aggression, opposed to the initiation of force against peaceful people and their property, even if we don't approve of what they're doing, as long as they themselves aren't being violent towards other peaceful people.

    The exact parameters of how this would apply in real life cannot be deduced logically and axiomatically, and this is where things like common law and such come into play. David Friedman and I believe Stephen Kinsella have done a lot of work in this area, among many others. So let's not get too twisted around the pole in trying to come up with one-off gotcha scenarios.

    This is, at least, the starting point, the beginning presumption, which even Rand - with her objectivism and opposition to being called a libertarian - agreed with.

  6. #16
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    NAP is an integral part of an entire philosophy, it cannot simply be extracted out of context as a point of agreement.

    I didn’t suggest an alternative to self ownership. I showed that the Libertarian argument for property rights was circular and hence invalid. This is precisely why I won’t engage until a valid argument is presented.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Nockian View Post
    It’s called national socialism. Tribal collectivism.
    Unfortunately, a consequence of the human condition is that individuals act in groups. Another nasty feature is our innate concern for blood, kin, and community. This does nothing to discount the primacy of the individual; but, part of the value judgments made when an individual acts includes social pressure, how the choice will affect his standing in a community, what consequences might his actions have for the immediate world around him, what are the consequences for others in his immediate orbit, etc. Even the advocacy of the state doing anything exposes this reality, if in a kind of a twisted way, as it indicates solidarity with one group and norms against another.

    And I think I'll speak for all here in good faith, as I hate arguments, particularly internet ones, is let's not fall into the ad hominems​ and Godwin's Law violations. At least, not yet.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Satch12879 View Post
    And I think I'll speak for all here in good faith, as I hate arguments, particularly internet ones, is let's not fall into the ad hominems​ and Godwin's Law violations. At least, not yet.
    It won't, I assure you.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Nockian View Post
    NAP is an integral part of an entire philosophy, it cannot simply be extracted out of context as a point of agreement.

    I didn’t suggest an alternative to self ownership. I showed that the Libertarian argument for property rights was circular and hence invalid. This is precisely why I won’t engage until a valid argument is presented.
    Except, that it's not. You can derive private property rights from the concept of self-ownership without declaring that the self is property in its own right, at least not in the sense that a tangible commodity is. A person is not property (at least, not in modern thought). Ownership of property is transferable, whereas the self can only be owned by itself-- not another person, or the state. At least that's my take on the libertarian construct, and I think it's a good one.

    "Derived from" does not mean "homologous to" or even "analogous to."

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    Quote Originally Posted by Nockian View Post
    NAP is an integral part of an entire philosophy, it cannot simply be extracted out of context as a point of agreement.
    You said libertarianism is predicated upon the prohibition of aggression. I corrected you by stating that it is actually predicated upon self-ownership from which the prohibition against aggression is justified. Your initial assertion seemed to be that the philosophy was invalid because you declared that one of its derived features is invalid. I agree that the prohibition on aggression is integral to the philosophy. I also agree that it cannot be examined or taken out of context or justifying assumptions. You cannot regard the conclusion of a proof without examining the initial assumptions used to derive the conclusion.

    If you have a problem with a prohibition against the initiation of force against an otherwise peaceful individual or his property, then make the case. I don't see how you can do that without justifying the right of the person or the property owner to his claim to control over his body and thus external scarce resource.

    Quote Originally Posted by Nockian View Post
    I showed that the Libertarian argument for property rights was circular and hence invalid. This is precisely why I won’t engage until a valid argument is presented.
    You asserted that it was circular; I stated that it was deductive.

    I explained that because of the reality of a world of scarcity, norms for control of scarce resources are required in order to avoid conflict. I explained how property rights are derived from self-ownership, i.e., they are an extension of the claim on the exclusive control of the primary scarce resource, a person's body. I then explained that the prohibition against the initiation of aggression against a person or property was justified because it constituted a violation of the claim on the use of a scarce resource.

    I'm sorry if you do not wish to continue this discussion. I have to also say that I am also disinterested in continuing on until an actual counter argument is made.

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