Libertarian Discussion Thread II - Don't Thread on Me

[The Liberated Territories]

Any word on any major Libertarian Candidates running yet? Do we still have that same meme-making crop out there?

God damn I do hope Amash runs.

Edit: Lincoln Chafee, ex-GOP senator and Democratic governor, is running for president as a Libertarian

Well, I guess I'll take that though I do have my concerns.

Hornberger is the most popular it seems, if reddit is anything to go by.

[Duvniask]

Oh, believe me, demanding better pay, labor rights, etc. is what socialists have been doing pretty much from the beginning.

You seem to have missed the first part of my suggestion. Just demanding more money is insufficient, you must show that you are worth more by increasing the value of what you will give. This is one of the problems with many socialist concepts, increased skills are not rewarded in any significant fashion.

Except, like I said, under socialism this depends directly on how much work (and how intensely) you do. In your instance, if you program a lot faster or better than everyone, you will have contributed more in terms of input per hour of work. It doesn't have to be stipulated in some contract, it's a direct result of your efforts.

[The Liberated Territories]

the waifu is back lads

[Xuloqoia]

the waifu is back lads

Absolutely disgusting, m8.

[Zurkerx]

Any word on any major Libertarian Candidates running yet? Do we still have that same meme-making crop out there?

God damn I do hope Amash runs.

Edit: Lincoln Chafee, ex-GOP senator and Democratic governor, is running for president as a Libertarian

Well, I guess I'll take that though I do have my concerns.

Hornberger is the most popular it seems, if reddit is anything to go by.

Really? Never heard of him before. I'll have to read a bit more about him.

[Antityranicals]

A socialist's definition of freedom is a pick-and-choose kind of freedom, as are all systems of positive rights. A positive right by definition means a positive obligation for someone else. If, for example, someone is said to have a "right" to food, that means that someone else has an obligation to grow, harvest, and transport that food to that person. Some 1600-1700 years ago, the Roman Empire tried that. The result was serfdom, where farmers were tied to their land, because they had an "obligation" to grow food. I don't know about you, but I don't call that freedom.

This is all-around a bad argument, and the mental gymnastics necessary to come up with it must've been something to behold. You will get nowhere with this kind of reasoning.

There has never been a society where the procurement of food, in whatever form, wasn't necessary. A society does not function without food for its members, and whenever you have a society where even a single individual is not spending their time procuring food, it becomes necessary for the others to supply them with said food; otherwise they will starve and die. In practice, unless you want nothing more than complete subsistence, this is always necessary. In our time, no one is forcing people to produce food, yet people do it anyway for various reasons. If there was a right to food it would obligate society to provide it, but that doesn't mean people have to be made serfs to do so; people can enter into this line of work and be compensated for it in the same way as any other line of work. I mean for fuck sake, this is like saying that the right to have a lawyer in court means we must enslave people to become lawyers or the right to see a doctor means we have to force people to go to medical school; it doesn't work like that. Get our of your libertarian ivory tower and take a look at the real world.

Second: your denigration of positive rights entirely undermines your own position. The property regimes necessary to maintain any capitalist society are positive rights. The enforcement of contracts, the legal recognition to hold property comes from the state. Your property doesn't exist in nature, in the Hobbesian free-for-all, where anyone stronger than you can lay claim to whatever you own and take it away, at which point there is nothing you can do about it. You having any legal right to property places obligations on society too. All rights (that I can think of at the top of my head) have both positive and negative aspects. The right to life is just as much as right to keep living (if possible) as it is a right to not be killed. Even an imaginary negative right like "freedom from death" places positive obligations upon others to keep you alive. The right to own property is first and foremost a positive one, because property doesn't meaningfully exist in the state of nature. Unless your ilk recognizes this fact, you will continue to be a laughing stock.

Of course, there are things which people need to survive. But to call these things "rights" builds to a framework of coercion and slavery, as I demonstrated above. Just because something is necessary to survive doesn't mean that people have a "right" to it. I don't have a "freedom from death," I have a freedom not to get killed. The former is positive, the latter is negative. Positive rights are paired with someone else's positive duty, while negative rights are paired with someone else's negative duty. Because of my negative rights, I am free from others thwarting my efforts to attain positive goods, the most basic of which is staying alive, so long as these efforts do not involve my violating my negative duty to not violate the rights of others. None of this requires any positive rights. Nor, technically, do you have a "right" to have others enforce your contracts. You have a right to enforce that contract, or to pay others to enforce that contract, but you don't have a right to have someone actually do that. Certainly, the person who is violating the contract is violating your rights (most likely...), but just as in the food example, you don't have the right to the labor of others, which contract enforcement requires. Ultimately, socialism and Communism must necessarily be characterized by the theft of the labor of the proletariat, the very same crime which they often level against capitalism, while in reality, the "theft" of capitalism is a voluntary and mutually beneficial exchange. Does that make sense?

[Victoriala II]

what the fuck is socialism, genuine question

[The Liberated Territories]

what the fuck is socialism, genuine question

whatever people want it to be

[Great Minarchistan]

friendly reminder that the op is now a neoliberal and doesnt update it anymore out of the very intent to damage libertarians

[The Xenopolis Confederation]

what the fuck is socialism, genuine question

A political ideology and movement generally characterized by a desire to abolish private property (a.k.a abolish Capitalism), and replace it with a system where production is controlled by workers or a representative of those workers, and often advocates abolishing markets, abolishing currency, and staging a violent revolution in order to bring Socialists to power.

[The Liberated Territories]

friendly reminder that the op is now a neoliberal and doesnt update it anymore out of the very intent to damage libertarians

Methinks the Left Wing Discussion Thread is more your style, hombre.

[The Xenopolis Confederation]

friendly reminder that the op is now a neoliberal and doesnt update it anymore out of the very intent to damage libertarians

So the truth comes out!

[Great Minarchistan]

friendly reminder that the op is now a neoliberal and doesnt update it anymore out of the very intent to damage libertarians

Methinks the Left Wing Discussion Thread is more your style, hombre.

ok anti-dmv license libercringe

[Great Minarchistan]

friendly reminder that the op is now a neoliberal and doesnt update it anymore out of the very intent to damage libertarians

So the truth comes out!

watch as i trace the steps of arkolon but unlike him i ascend to defend state capacity neolibertarianism

[The Liberated Territories]

Methinks the Left Wing Discussion Thread is more your style, hombre.

ok anti-dmv license libercringe

imagine thinking that human welfare is better than liberty :smirk:

[Kowani]

ok anti-dmv license libercringe

imagine thinking that human welfare is better than liberty :smirk:

Yeah…it kinda is. Liberty is only important in so far as it can security human welfare.

[Great Minarchistan]

ok anti-dmv license libercringe

imagine thinking that human welfare is better than liberty :smirk:

i too like it when my life is put at risk on a daily basis because a group of 13yr old teenagers might kill me as they drive a clunker :^)

[The Liberated Territories]

imagine thinking that human welfare is better than liberty :smirk:

Yeah…it kinda is. Liberty is only important in so far as it can security human welfare.

Nah, liberty or death.

[The Liberated Territories]

My entire philosophy can be summarized by this song.

[Kowani]

Yeah…it kinda is. Liberty is only important in so far as it can security human welfare.

Nah, liberty or death.

Quoting a slaveowner on Liberty? I see the American tradition hasn’t changed.

[The Xenopolis Confederation]

imagine thinking that human welfare is better than liberty :smirk:

Yeah…it kinda is. Liberty is only important in so far as it can security human welfare.

Anyone asking you to choose between liberty and wellbeing is a charlatan.

[Great Minarchistan]

Yeah…it kinda is. Liberty is only important in so far as it can security human welfare.

Nah, liberty or death.

does the universe rupture if i choose a shade of gray on this palette

[Kowani]

Yeah…it kinda is. Liberty is only important in so far as it can security human welfare.

Anyone asking you to choose between liberty and wellbeing is a charlatan.

Or they live in reality.

[The Xenopolis Confederation]

Anyone asking you to choose between liberty and wellbeing is a charlatan.

Or they live in reality.

No, they live in a dystopian world, where the people in power make their subjects choose between living a well off life and living a free life. In reality, the two are not only compatible but more often, mutually necessary for each other.

[The Liberated Territories]

Nah, liberty or death.

Quoting a slaveowner on Liberty? I see the American tradition hasn’t changed.

Ok boomer Spaniard

Nah, liberty or death.

does the universe rupture if i choose a shade of gray on this palette

Yes. There are no greys. Only black and white. Anything else is serfdom.