The Libertarian "State"

[laklak]

Lol. You've never been here, have you?

[Mysturji]

South Africa is pretty close to being a 'failed state', not quite Somalia but give it a few years

[laklak]

To clarify - S.A. isn't my idea of where to live at the moment, but that has nothing to do with libertarianism and everything to do with the seemingly obligate corruption of "indigenous leaders". However, I'd certainly consider moving back to southern Africa, though not to Joburg because I'm not a city boy, and only if my assets were offshore. I don't trust the indigenous leaders not to confiscate my assets if the financial going gets tough and their gravy trough dries up. Mrs. Lak and I are seriously considering it, depending on election results in 2014 and 2016. We leave for Swaziland next week, we'll be looking at properties and business opportunities. If the "progressives" get control in '14 or '16 then I'm going to be among the first up against the financial wall. I don't have enough money to be one of their cronies and too much to be a dependent slave. I'm in the group that's going to fund their grey little Socialist paradise, and I didn't work as hard as I have to give my cash to a bunch of lazy dole blodgers and plutocratic apparatchiks. I'll take my bat and ball and leave, they can stew in their juices while my maid cleans my kitchen.

[MrJonno]

I've met plenty of South Africans, some of who have gone back. There are all strangely white and have generally quite comfortable in their gated communities, however judging South Africa by their standards is a bit like judging the UK/US on how people in country estates live

To but it bluntly a white South African is not a typical South African

Also the government which runs SA is technically full blown communist (forget faux 'socialist')

[Seth]

The owners of coal mines in Victorian times in Britain had all the benefits of libertarianism for the wealthy. Their workers paid the price with 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, lung disease, lousy pay, no hospitals, no schools, early death, and nothing for their widows and children. End result, poverty. But the mine owners were rolling in money, and lived lives of extreme luxury.

It was not till union action overcame that libertarian mentality that the miners began to achieve a life that was worth living.

Union action is not prohibited by Libertarian philosophy at all. In fact Libertarian philosophy relies upon the cohesiveness of the community in encouraging and enforcing fair and rational conduct by everyone. This is one of the most ignored (I'd say unknown except I know better) parts of Libertarian philosophy, which says that when a person or a company acts in contravention of Libertarian principles it's up to the community to "shun" that person by refusing to trade or associate with him in order to encourage responsible behavior. If employees of a coal company want to strike for better wages and working conditions they are free to do so. They are free to unionize and collectively bargain so long as membership in the union is voluntary and the agreements reached with the employer are voluntary and not the result of the initiation of force or fraud.

The problem with unionization comes when GOVERNMENT starts playing favorites in the labor market. Government's proper role in labor relations is strictly as a policeman and peacekeeper, not arbiter or patron of either business or labor. The problem with unions today is that they are disproportionately favored by Marxist/Progressive labor laws administered by incestuous bureaucrats who themselves come from the union movement.

Labor relations should be a matter between the employee, employer and the community, which can support whichever side it believes to be in the right by putting economic and social pressure on the other side to make socially-acceptable changes. Libertarianism's objection to the current system is the use of force by the government in favor of EITHER side, and the use of force by either side in a dispute. When such negotiations are not the product of the initiation of force each side gets to analyze the costs and benefits and negotiate a satisfactory agreement that allows both to succeed. When government supports one side or the other for reasons of social or political bias in policy decisionmaking it destroys the forces of the free market that will naturally act to correct inequity over time.

[Seth]

I'd be interested to hear the Libertarian rebuttal, if it's forthcoming.

I'm sure the two or three libertarians here can give you four or five different rebuttals. You may think you have political arguments here, but it's nothing compared to when libertarians are the only ones in the room! Here's one of mine.

Let's start from the beginning. He's wrong about externalities. Externalities are an infringement on rights. Since it's difficult to assign external costs - that's why they're externalities - they can be better handled by internalizing them. Thus, they are one of the two things that can legitimately be taxed, as a way of externalizing the cost of externalities.

Natural resources are the other thing that can be legitimately taxed. Natural resources belong to the world as a whole, so those who appropriate them for use should pay their value to the world as a whole. Thus, there should be taxes on extraction of natural resources, as well as taxes on land area.

Notice how there are no direct taxes - no income taxes, no personal property taxes - just what used to be called "excises". Despite that, appropriate taxes on externalities and land will actually provide comparable state revenue to what the state gets today. The real problem is, how to spend all this revenue. For that, we have to look at the appropriate functions of government.

If there are multiple nations, one function would be national defense, though in a perfect libertarian world, no one would bother with war, so that would involve minimal costs. A court system would be needed as the default court system for contract enforcement. It would also be required for tort law - basically, violations of the nonaggression principle. One can also argue that the government should also provide a police force, though perhaps not the only one.

Then there is the issue of monopolies, which are able to apply economic force due to lack of competition. There is little evidence for monopolies forming in competitive markets unless they have help from the government - which a libertarian government would of course not give - but in noncompetitive markets - natural monopolies - government involvement would be justified. Antitrust enforcement is the answer to the "rich get richer" problem, because as long as the market is competitive, innovative small players will be able to defeat less innovative incumbents as technology advances.

There are two types of natural monopolies. One is monopolies that are physically natural, mostly the surface street network. The two dimensional topology of the earth's surface means that there can only be one surface street network. The other is monopolies that are constructively natural - that are monopolies only after they are constructed. Before the invention of wireless telephony, wired telephony was an example of this.

Constructively natural monopolies are self limiting, because the barrier to entry is not infinite. If the monopoly charges more than twice the cost of production, a second player can make money by overbuilding the infrastructure and taking half of the market. As long as there is antitrust enforcement, the incumbent monopoly cannot prevent this by selectively dropping prices. Since prices are limited to a small multiple of cost, constructively natural monopolies are not a serious problem.

Incidentally, the article at the link is incorrect with regard to constructive natural monopolies never being competitive in practice. In fact, in most areas in the industrialized world, the traditional telecom "last mile" is extremely competitive. There may be only one player that provides that last mile using obsolete copper wires, but there are generally two or three that provide it using wireless cells.

Physical natural monopolies, such as surface streets, can then be provided by the government directly, out of revenues from externality and natural resource taxes. The extra revenues can then be returned to the general population using some reasonable apportionment mechanism.

I agree with most everything you say Warren. Let's take telephone and electrical distribution in New York and Chicago circa 1900. Before undergrounding technology advanced one could barely see the sky through the rat's nest of overhead wires in big cities. Electrocutions were common especially in the electrical and telephony trades. Fires, short-circuits, storms and all manner of hazards were rife. This is one of the reasons that major cities undertook monopolization of power and communications grids. Preventing overbuilding of infrastructure that causes externalities is a legitimate concern for government. The externalities themselves fall under the inclusive definition of "exporting of harm" that I use to describe externalities that violate the no force/fraud principles of Libertarianism.

Libertarianism does not prohibit the existence of "public" or common property, it merely forbids the majority from taking what is owned by the individual by initiating force or fraud. The concept of eminent domain does not exist in Libertarianism, but the principle of free-market negotiation most certainly does. Eminent domain as a concept holds that all land is held by individuals subject to the overarching right of the King (or the government) to use that land for its own purposes. In US law, eminent domain exists but is strictly limited by the Constitution as to how and when it may be exercised. There are two conditions stated in the Constitution itself: The taking of the property must be for "public use," and the owner of the property must receive "just compensation."

This metric worked reasonably well for a long time, until the Supreme Court made the huge mistake of making the term "public use" synonymous with "public benefit." The constitutional term "public use" meant exactly what it says; that the property to be taken must be taken for actual physical occupation and use by the public. This may be in the form of roads, or post offices, or public buildings, but the use must involve the actual occupation of the property by the public.

Just recently the Court ruled, in Kelo, that "public use" is not limited to actual public occupation but it also includes "public benefit." This egregious error means that under eminent domain the government can seize your property, pay you just compensation, and then turn your property over to another private individual who will make "higher and better use" of the property, that phrase being defined as bringing more taxes in to government coffers.

But I digress.

Contrary to current law, Libertarianism does not permit government to forcibly expropriate property, nor does it limit to "just" the amount of compensation that must be paid. Instead, Libertarianism holds that the public, or the community at large, through it's representatives in government have no better right to take what belongs to the individual against his will than any individual does, and that therefore all transactions between the government and the private individual must flow from voluntary contract. What this means is that free market forces determine the worth of property that the government wishes to acquire for a public purpose. In other words, government has no power to compel a sale, but instead must offer what compensation is agreeable to the landowner in order to obtain that property. If the landowner is reluctant to sell, then the government must weigh the costs of acquiring the property at the free-market negotiated price with the value of the project involved to the community. If the community deems the project essential to community well-being, then the community has to pony up the asking price. If the community cannot afford the asking price, then the community will just have to do without.

Does this create difficulties with essential infrastructure like highways and public buildings and parks? Yes, it does, but Libertarianism rejects the utilitarian socialist argument that the needs of the many always and inevitably outweigh the rights of the few. It's simply another iteration of the TANSTAAFL principle. If the public wants a park, then the public has to be willing to pay what the owner wants to transfer the title to the public. If the public doesn't want to pay the asking price, then like every other transaction in a free-market economy, the public has to make due with what it has until and unless it's willing to meet the owner's requirements for sale.

The benefit of this philosophy is that it keeps the government from doing exactly what happened in the Kelo case, where a woman's home was taken away from her by the government under eminent domain and was turned over to a private developer to build commercial structures that the government felt would provide more in the way of tax revenues than a single-family home did. Ironically, the development on the property that included Kelo's house ultimately failed and now sits largely idle, generating little tax revenue at all.

Under Libertarian philosophy the community, through the government, has to carefully weigh public purchases of land against their collective pocketbooks and must weigh the value of the project before trying to take what does not belong to the community.

This takes us back to overhead power and communication lines. The first principle is that there is no inherent easement over your neighbor's land for the installation of such infrastructure. It's up to you to negotiate an easement. If an electrical company wants to cross your property to serve your neighbor, it has to negotiate an agreement with you to do so. This obviously leads to problems with people who refuse to allow such infrastructure, but the existence of problems does not justify the exercise of force or fraud under any circumstances, that's a rejected utilitarian argument.

Past practice was to use city-owned rights of way in the sky to distribute electricity and telephony which lead to the aforementioned rat's nest of overhead wires by allowing multiple private individuals to each build their own network so as to compete with others. But this creates an exported harm in the form of visual clutter in the public airspace as well as significant safety hazards. Thus, in Libertarianism there is no inherent right at all to use public property (that property acquired by the community for common use) for the purpose of either travel or delivery of anything to private property. Obviously the distribution of power and phones, like water and sewers, are necessary to any city for it to function and be livable, but the point is that what the private person owns, the private person controls, and what the community owns, the community controls. Therefore, the community has every right to prevent the exported harm of overhead wire clutter by monopolizing the grids involved where they exist on public property! This is where the "final mile" issue comes in. There are actually two such "miles," the final link between the publicly-owned grid infrastructure and the private property of the landowner, and the link between the private producer of the power (or signal) and the publicly-owned grid infrastructure.

The community is obliged to provide service to all members of the community who contribute to the public infrastructure, but is NOT obliged to provide service to members of the community who do NOT contribute. The individuals of the community who make use of the public infrastructure are obligated to pay their fair share of the building and maintenance of that infrastructure, while those who do not are not similarly burdened. But the providing of the "final mile" infrastructure and the "first mile" infrastructure is not inherently a government-run monopoly. Both may be provided privately in a free-market transaction between the entrepreneur who wishes to provide the service and the community and each individual in the community who wishes to make use of the service.

Thus, the generating plant is built, owned and managed privately while the basic grid belongs to the public and the final mile of delivery infrastructure belongs to whoever invests in building it. The power producer sells power to the end user and pays the government a fee for the use of the public grid infrastructure. The producer's pricing is constrained by the ability of either the customer or the community to negotiate the price according to the supply and demand principles involved. If the producer charges too much, then consumers can contract with another power producer to provide the energy at a lower cost. If the government charges too much for the transmission fee, the members of the community will object because they cannot get power at a reasonable price. In the end the free market balances things out.

As it happens, with deregulation of the power industry this is pretty close to what happens today, although it's far from perfect. In some cases, like Colorado Springs, Colorado, the people of the community voted back in the 20s to buy the entire electrical system including the power generating plants, which means that the government has a monopoly on providing power, but it's a monopoly that's subject to the democratic processes used to determine representation. This monopoly could be brought under better control by opening up the supply chain to allow other power producers to sell electricity in the city using the publicly-owned grid, thereby creating competition to keep the price of city-owned power down.

[rainbow]

South Africa is pretty close to being a 'failed state', not quite Somalia but give it a few years

[rainbow]

In a libertarian "state", you'd see a lot more people actually helping others out of the goodness of their own hearts, voluntarily.

There would also be those that abuse their position of power gained by economic dominance.

How do you propose to limit that?

Read my answer to Pappa on the last page; it's dealt with there.

No, it wasn't.

Now answer my question.

[rainbow]

Contrary to current law, Libertarianism does not permit government to forcibly expropriate property, nor does it limit to "just" the amount of compensation that must be paid. Instead, Libertarianism holds that the public, or the community at large, through it's representatives in government have no better right to take what belongs to the individual against his will than any individual does, and that therefore all transactions between the government and the private individual must flow from voluntary contract.

Does a landowner have a right to property taken without voluntary contract?
Would that mean that all land taken by conquest would need to be returned?

[pErvinalia]

that's different.

[Seth]

In a libertarian "state", you'd see a lot more people actually helping others out of the goodness of their own hearts, voluntarily.

There would also be those that abuse their position of power gained by economic dominance.

How do you propose to limit that?

Read my answer to Pappa on the last page; it's dealt with there.

No, it wasn't.

Now answer my question.

By taking away their economic dominance. The whole point of Libertarianism is that rather than using force, including the blunt force of government sponsored redistributionism and enforcement of social correctness is that individuals and communities exercise their right to show their displeasure with anti-social conduct by excluding the anti-social from society. For example, I will never, ever do business with General Motors again, nor will I trade with General Electric because I object to their Progressive and socialist activities. No one can prevent me from showing my disdain for what I consider to be anti-social behavior by refusing to trade with or even acknowledge someone who fails to act in the best interests of the community. On a small scale, suppose that the local miller abuses his market dominance by jacking the price of flour into the stratosphere. The response of a Marxist Progressive society is to place price controls on the miller set at what the central planners think is "fair."

The response of Libertarians is to refuse to do business with the miller and to exclude him from all social contact. In essence, they shun him.

The socialist solution is the imposition of force to compel what is deemed to be socially appropriate conduct.

The Libertarian solution is to withdraw social intercourse entirely in order to encourage socially appropriate conduct.

[Seth]

Contrary to current law, Libertarianism does not permit government to forcibly expropriate property, nor does it limit to "just" the amount of compensation that must be paid. Instead, Libertarianism holds that the public, or the community at large, through it's representatives in government have no better right to take what belongs to the individual against his will than any individual does, and that therefore all transactions between the government and the private individual must flow from voluntary contract.

Does a landowner have a right to property taken without voluntary contract?
Would that mean that all land taken by conquest would need to be returned?

In Libertarian terms I think it would depend morally upon the genesis of the conflict. The "NFNF" (No force, no fraud) principle does not permit Libertarians to initiate force under any circumstances, but it does not prohibit either defensive or retaliatory force when attacked.

Saddam's invasion of Kuwait was an aggressive initiation of force against a neighboring country that fully justified a defensive and retaliatory response that would have justified Kuwait and/or the Coalition seizing control of Iraq and making it a vassal state in compensation for the damages of Saddam's invasion.

The same is true of Egypt's invasion of Israel in 1968. Israel kicked it's enemy's ass and took control of the West Bank, Gaza and the Sinai and was therefore fully justified in claiming those lands as compensation for the aggression.

On the other hand, had Saddam prevailed in Kuwait, his claim would be illegitimate because he initiated the force and therefor any and all force used to oppose that occupation is legitimate.

Nothing in Libertarianism is unreservedly pacifist. To the contrary, Libertarians fully support the use of defensive and retaliatory force, they just eschew the initiation of force. That's why Libertarians strongly support the RKBA and laws like the Castle Doctrine and Stand Your Ground.

[Warren Dew]

In a libertarian "state", you'd see a lot more people actually helping others out of the goodness of their own hearts, voluntarily.

There would also be those that abuse their position of power gained by economic dominance.

How do you propose to limit that?

Read my answer to Pappa on the last page; it's dealt with there.

No, it wasn't.

If the whole thing is too long for you, start reading with the paragraph that begins, "Then there is the issue of monopolies ...".

[Blind groper]

Re returning land taken by conquest

You have to be practical about this. That means that a time limit is required. Obviously you cannot return land taken from the old Britons by the Romans. I do not know exactly where the time limit will always be made, but it must be made. Here in NZ, it was set at anything after 1840. The reason being that 1840 was the year our native people signed a treaty with the British crown, and the current government, being the political heir to the British crown, is bound by the same agreement. Land previously owned by native tribes and taken from them unjustly is either returned or financial compensation paid.

For other nations, something like 150 to 200 years should be appropriate. On that basis, when is the USA going to return Guantanamo Bay to Cuba, since it was taken by force of arms in 1898?

[Jason]

Then there is the issue of moral issues.. A 'Libertarian' 'State' would fall into the same recursive political trap as every other theoretical system I know of or have concocted in my bid to rule the world. To date.

What you need is rule by the dumbest supercomputer imaginable. A 'quantum' computer. 0_o_O