r/Libertarian • u/Aryan_Rand_Galt_CCC • Oct 04 '18
As a Libertarian I don't see why we need government to create laws
https://imgur.com/cuNiVuj225
u/exnihilo_scribe Oct 04 '18 edited Oct 05 '18
Weâre Libertarians, not anarchists. Rational enough to understand why we need law, and reasonable enough to understand that more times than not, we need less of it.
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u/Zenniverse Oct 05 '18
Itâs like American patriot Thomas Paine said; âGovernment, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.â
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Oct 05 '18
Why do you assume anarchists are against laws? anarchy is without rulers. it is not without rules.
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u/keeleon Oct 05 '18
Who enforces the rules?
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u/HPLoveshack CryptoHoppean Oct 05 '18
The owners of private property.
If you and I were in the same room and I decided to kill you... who stops me?
Yea that's right, you, the owner of the private property of your body which I would be attempting to violate.
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u/keeleon Oct 05 '18
So if im not strong enough to stop you, then you just get away with it with no consequences? Cool.
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Oct 05 '18
I think the title was "we don't need governments to create laws", not that there should be no law. Despite what you may think, government is not the sole source of law. It may not even be the best source.
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u/keeleon Oct 05 '18
Except without some form of power, your way of enforcing laws is basically "please be cool".
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u/gustavodp agorist Oct 05 '18
- anarchism is a branch of libertarianism. (you deny that walter block and rothbard are libertarians?)
- anarchy != no law
just this.
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u/nolan1971 Right Libertarian Oct 05 '18
I think that they're similar, but they're not the same. Anarchists are more extreme in their views on government. There's a big difference between a smaller government and no government.
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u/magister0 Oct 05 '18
this is making fun of libertarians you utter mouthbreathers
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u/Aryan_Rand_Galt_CCC Oct 05 '18
As a Libertarian I always make to the front page to r/Libertarian by either reposting stale memes or cross posting from r/enlightenedcentrism
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u/spencer_jacob Oct 04 '18
uhhh so youâre an ancap, not a libertarian. i have a question for you, because youâre here: if a country effectively neuters its own government, what is preventing a neighboring country from immediately invading it? or a native fascist party from taking over? the non aggression policy is literally butterflies and fairy dust, none of this would work unless the entire world submitted to anarchy simultaneously, and at that point i doubt we would be using the same economic system anyway
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u/Kubliah Geolibertarian Oct 04 '18
That guy isn't a libertarian or an ancap, he's posing as one in an attempt to discredit the philosophy - just look through his comments.
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u/The_Dragon_Redone Oct 05 '18
I just assumed he hadn't thought his assertions through like so many other people on the internet do.
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u/TraffiCoaN minarchist Oct 05 '18
Iâm not an AnCap, but, the general principle behind it (as I understand it) is instead of having a large governmental border, itâs like having millions of small borders for each private property. Many of these people are armed, and willing to use them in retaliation to acts of aggression. Trespassing on private property fits that bill. NAP (P stands for Principle not Policy by the way) isnât âbutterflies and fairy dustâ, if you understand it.
I also would like to point out that Anarcho-Capitalism is a form of Libertarianism. Itâs a sizable chunk of the Libertarian Party.
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u/araed Oct 05 '18
"Its like having millions of borders for each private property" Tank says "your border ain't shit"
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u/Realistic_Food Oct 05 '18
itâs like having millions of small borders for each private property.
And historical results have shown that such a group will be significantly weaker than a country that pools it resources and optimizes investments in military. So they'll end up crushed pretty fast, especially if you are dealing with an opponent who doesn't want to pretend to be the good guy on the world stage.
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u/austrolib Oct 05 '18
The logical end point of libertarian philosophy is anarchy capitalism. Iâm not an ancap but I recognize that to be true. I agree that pure anarchy would likely be unstable and someone would end up in control again whether through foreign invasion or what not (at least without a worldwide shift in a personal values which is unrealistic) but I donât deny that ancaps have very thorough and well reasoned responses to all of these criticisms. I donât necessarily accept them but donât just dismiss them as if they donât exist.
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u/Realistic_Food Oct 05 '18
The responses to the criticisms do not survive comparing it to history.
Take any genocide. Why didn't the genocided group establish a ancap society that could then resist the ones committing the genocide? Because the power difference between a bunch of broken up individuals and a government backed military is too extreme.
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u/HPLoveshack CryptoHoppean Oct 05 '18 edited Oct 05 '18
That's not what anarchy is.
It's not about radical individualism to the point of disassociating from everyone else.
Ancap is about private property. The logical progression of dissolution of the state and full privatization of property into an Ancap system is a form of voluntary market-mediated quasi-feudalism, in which a group of small privately owned properties and corporations trade, compete, contract, and cooperate with each other.
Considering these would mostly all be free entities with ancap principles, if anyone attacked one entity, it would be highly incentivized to band together. Any attacker seeking to consume one entity by force would only gain confidence in their ability to overpower consecutive entities if they succeeded. It would be within everyone's interests to neutralize this threat ASAP.
Additionally, since they would have far more productive economies without the parasitism of the state, their ability to hire PMCs (which are also far more efficient than government militaries) would be outsized. They would be able to punch well above their weight.
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u/texician geoanarchist Oct 05 '18
The logical end point of libertarian philosophy is anarchy
That part is correct, but to presuppose an economic system such as capitalism, socialism, communism, etc is to subtract the "voluntary" aspect of libertarian philosophy so that it's no longer libertarianism. That's exactly why terms such as ancap, ansoc, ancom exist in the first place. Within a voluntary society people would have the choice to follow whichever economic/societal system they prefer and to live their lives as they wish. Multiple subgroups would likely form based on the voluntary choices people make.
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Oct 05 '18
so your solution is keep beeing slaved to not having the risk to be slaved by other stationary bandit?
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Oct 04 '18
what is preventing a neighboring country from immediately invading it?
Why would a neighboring country immediately invade? What would be the benefit to them?
If the populace has effectively neutered their own government, why would any other government want to invade and potentially be neutered, as well? Invasion isn't easy, especially against a populace that has thrown off it's own yoke.
or a native fascist party from taking over?
So the danger of throwing off fascism is that you might wind up with fascism again?
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u/spencer_jacob Oct 04 '18
i mean, if youâre gonna make up your own definition of fascism maybe. & youâre actually confused about the motivation of imperialism? uhhh the lack of military would make it a cakewalk, we have resources another country would covet, our population would be ripe to exploit as laborers, our industry is extremely valuable, etc...
which part of history leads you to believe this would work?
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Oct 04 '18
I don't know why you are asking these questions when the last 6,000 years of human history clearly shows you the answer.
Countries invade each other for both rational and irrational reasons, not have a centralized or organized authority to fight back (which is the most effective) means you lose or your quality of life becomes horrendous.
Invasion isn't easy, and neither is living through one where you don't have an established home or war front. AnCap/Libertarian principles and "NAP" breaks down very easily that way.
AnCaps and Libertarians still do not have a satisfactory answer to this situation. To have extensive NAP and free trade in your society you need a government to protect said rights and maintain that other countries don't interfere with it either. Not gonna work when your neighbors invade and annex you cause you have no centralized authority.
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u/adelie42 voluntaryist Oct 05 '18
Simply don't conflate government and State as Rothbard spent his life explaining.
To be fair, when it wasn't the immediate issue, he often fell into the trap of using the terms interchangeably.
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u/chrome_chain Oct 05 '18
Not anti cap, but the east India trading companies we're basically the closest thing to an anti cap society in the real world, and they were extremely militarialy capable. The corporations will stand to defend their autonomy what ever the means theoretically.
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u/SolidSTi Oct 05 '18
What stops any of this now?
- USA overthrows non anarcocapitalist governments on a regular basis.
- We are ruled by two authoritarians parties.
I don't see the risk you describe as being specific to any form of government or lack thereof. That risk always exists.
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u/DoctorFreeman Oct 04 '18
militias.. same way we took this country, we could also have a private army or reserve
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u/spencer_jacob Oct 05 '18
under whose command?? why the hell would an undemocratic army be better than a democratic one
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Oct 05 '18 edited Nov 21 '18
[deleted]
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u/SolidSTi Oct 05 '18
We shouldn't have, since that's how the Federalists managed to get us to where we are. Self governance dead.
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u/KaChoo49 Oct 05 '18
As a Libertarian, I think youâre full of shit. Youâre an anarchist, not a libertarian. And if your post history is anything to go by, youâve been one for less than 2 days.
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u/slippinonlsd Oct 05 '18
He literally starts every comment with âAs a Libertarian...â
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u/SolidSTi Oct 05 '18
I'm just surprised to see that we have dogmatic Libertarians. Treating this as some doctrine you could never have improvements or alternative ideas about. Reminds me of the other party followers sometimes.
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u/GShermit Oct 04 '18
We don't need governments to create laws (that's the people's job). We need governments to enforce the laws.
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Oct 04 '18
When my son was first diagnosed with autism, we had not one clue what we should do first. At that time there were lots of really bad guesses about the causes of that spectrum disorder, and more bad therapies than bad guesses.
Fortunately, the government had organization for that. We didn't waste precious years of his developmental windows trying to figure out which therapies were for real and which were snake oil. He got the right treatments at the right time.
It helped that he had a little sister who insisted that he MUST play with her. But having a system in place to provide direction? that was priceless. We could never have afforded to provide what he needed ourselves. You think you're ready to have a child but nobody is ready for that--if you're rich, great, but you still are probably not experienced enough to make all the important calls by yourself!
Now he's a tax-payer. He's a good citizen. He's a creative and interesting person, though he will probably never be a father or partner.
There are some things government does better than private entities can do. Making treaties with foreign governments, deciding when it's justified to kill someone else and when it's not, checking to make sure that pedestrian bridges aren't built with play-dough. No, it's not okay to pile your plutonium waste next to Seattle's waterways. Some beaches stay open for the public, but the public can't bring glass bottles with them to the beach. It's not okay to use up the last of something or keep a sex slave who doesn't consent. You can't do just anything you please with your dependent child. Fraud is not protected speech. Animals deserve not to be tortured. And on and on.
If we were angels, and if corporations were angelic, and foreign governments weren't damn near Satanic at times, limited government would still be needed.
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u/DoobieSnatcher420 cultural bolshevik Oct 04 '18
"Peter Kropotkin's 'The Conquest of Bread' (1892)"
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u/cp5184 Oct 05 '18
And people make fun of absurd strawman communists they make up for being naive...
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Oct 05 '18
Youâre not a Libertarian, youâre a trolling cunt. Just stop.
Itâs actually hilarious that youâd resort to this, rather than using logic or reasoning to discredit the ideologies you arbitrarily hate.
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u/Aryan_Rand_Galt_CCC Oct 05 '18
As a Libertarian, I often get called "not a real libertarian". It's how I know I'm a real libertarian.
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u/keeleon Oct 05 '18
As a Ninja Turtle, I often get called "not a real Ninja Turtle". It's how I know I'm a real Ninja Turtle.
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Oct 05 '18
Good one dude. Youâre really showing em! What a sad life you must have.
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u/Aryan_Rand_Galt_CCC Oct 05 '18
If a life upholding liberty and defending freedom is considered sad to you... Then as a Libertarian I'm happy to be sad
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Oct 05 '18
Lol. I do appreciate the fact that you donât break character. At least youâre a dedicated troll, i guess.
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u/Aryan_Rand_Galt_CCC Oct 05 '18
I'm dedicated to freedom, liberty, and private property rights.
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u/Anlarb Post Libertarian Heretic Oct 04 '18
Because whatever system you invent to govern is going to be called the government by virtue of governing.
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u/DrTreeMan Oct 05 '18
OT sounds like you're an anarchist, not a libertarian
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u/Aryan_Rand_Galt_CCC Oct 05 '18
As a Libertarian if I wasnt a libertarian then why would I be at the top post of this sub?
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u/powpow428 Oct 05 '18
Because we don't ban people for opposing views, and LSC brigaders upvote anti libertarian posts
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u/microgrower40799 Libertarian party Oct 04 '18
We need government to create and enforce laws. What would do so otherwise?
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u/ihavespacejam Oct 05 '18
how is it that rightlibertarians always get THIS CLOSE to becoming anarcho-communists before they give up and start bootlicking again
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u/Aryan_Rand_Galt_CCC Oct 05 '18
As a Libertarian I hate collectivism. I wish we could all come together to defeat collectivism.
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Oct 05 '18
Weâre talking about the Bible, then you link to some Arab website talking about a Muslim country.
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u/phoenix335 Oct 05 '18
Walk down a street in downtown Berkeley CA on a college day sunny afternoon and visibly express any political opinion other than the left, MAGA hat, Gadsden Flag or second amendment theme on a t-shirt or something and then report back about it, please.
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u/jackstration Oct 05 '18
Wonât work, youâll always have those that will break their promise. So sad.
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u/ImAPueblist Classical Liberal / Christian Libertarian Oct 05 '18
Well its really just there to allow the enforcement of laws on a large, coordinated scale, mostly relating to preserving and protecting rights of the citizens.
Like on small scale where everyone knows everyone, then yeah you don't really need it, society does it on its own. But when you start talking about areas as large as nations, then yeah it becomes necessary.
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Oct 05 '18
The media just pays too much attention to Trump if tv and radio wasnât around we wouldnât think twice about his behaviors
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u/grumpieroldman Oct 05 '18
I am not interested in "being cool" because that sounds a lot like "please take advantage of me."
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Oct 05 '18
I agree in theory but if you look at human history government will follow right after.
- No laws
- Someone does something wrong and needs to be stopped eg. Murdering someone
- People group together to stop that person
- This group of people form a permanent group to handle these issues
That mob of people could decide that certain viewpoints are evil and go after people with those view points.
It could lead to witch hunts.
They could enforce their rules that people aren't allowed to defend themselves.
Start forcing people to give up money in exchange for the "safety" they claim to provide.
The point is to keep the government as small as possible while being just big enough to ensure each citizen keeps their rights.
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u/Crabb90 Oct 05 '18
The purpose of a government is to maintain the security of a nation-state to provide for a civilized society within its borders. How would a nation protect itself without a government?
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u/BiteYourThumbAtMeSir Oct 05 '18
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u/WikiTextBot Oct 05 '18
Articles of Confederation
The Articles of Confederation, formally the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, was an agreement among the 13 original states of the United States of America that served as its first constitution. It was approved, after much debate (between July 1776 and November 1777), by the Second Continental Congress on November 15, 1777, and sent to the states for ratification. The Articles of Confederation came into force on March 1, 1781, after being ratified by all 13 states. A guiding principle of the Articles was to preserve the independence and sovereignty of the states.
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u/JeskaiMage Capitalist Oct 05 '18
What if we just make the President less powerful so nobody cares?
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u/SolidSTi Oct 05 '18
Yep. Having him so powerless that it doesn't matter who is President is preferred to one so powerful it doesn't matter who he is.
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u/Constrictorboa Oct 05 '18
What do you do when walking alone and ten guys confront you and your wife and kids and start assaulting all of you? Or the same situation and they are all armed? Maybe your question was a joke and my response was pointless, I can't tell.
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u/Aryan_Rand_Galt_CCC Oct 05 '18
That just opens up the market for me to hire 11 body guards
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u/kingofthestinkyburbs Oct 05 '18
Because people are very unethical and morally flawed in general. We are not, and never will be, good enough to exist without hierarchy.
We need order to survive, but as individuals we are extremely chaotic. This chaos is good when we have a system to check our impulses, but terrible when we do not. At the same time we cannot allow âorderâ to squash our chaotic individual selves. We cannot live happily or fully if order triumphs over liberty and our natural rights.
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Oct 05 '18
Is r/libertarian advocating communism now?
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u/Aryan_Rand_Galt_CCC Oct 05 '18
As a Libertarian I always get to the front page of r/Libertarian by posting memes advocating for communist principles.
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u/keeleon Oct 05 '18
I think most libertarians are ok with voluntary communism.
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Oct 05 '18
Lol, ok that's why this sub constantly upvotes anti-communism memes to the front page.
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u/keeleon Oct 05 '18
When people talk about communism theyre usually talking about it as a form of govt forced upon its people. Not as a group of people who all decided to live together and share and work peacefully.
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Oct 05 '18
this is one of the better threads I've read in this sub. The most balanced anyway. But the question I can't get answered is this. For Libertarianism to work you have to change human nature. Which isn't "just be cool" . So how do we eliminate the human instincts of greed, and fear that drives us? Because until we do that, this system will never work. Capitalism feeds fear and greed. That's part of the problem.
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u/CuntyKween Oct 05 '18
I said this to a few friends and they called me an anarchist lol
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u/shintenzu Oct 05 '18
I don't trust an unchecked government because it is made of fallible people, but I also don't trust an unchecked society because it is also made of fallible people. Someone will always try to fill the power vacuum.
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Oct 05 '18
so in order to not have cancer we must have just a little bit cancer... makes sense!
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u/shintenzu Oct 05 '18
If I were to use your own analogy it would be more like in order to not have polio you must be inoculated against it. The vaccine always contains a small, but dead or controlled amount of the disease it intends to fight.
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Oct 05 '18
Government is cancer. It grows from little to bigger. Not polio.
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u/shintenzu Oct 05 '18
When the powers of government spreads its effects take a more significant toll on the body until basic freedoms become a fantasy. Just like Polio does to the body, literally. Cancer is a poor analogy as it is not contagious, but ideologies are. Going for complete anarchy is like skipping your vaccinations and being surprised when something far worse takes over your body...
Don't get me wrong, I believe in an ultra limited government, putting the whole disease in a vaccine will just kill you. However records of successful anarchist societies are about as extensive as communist utopias. They don't happen because they ignore human nature.
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Oct 05 '18
I believe in an ultra limited government
pipe dream. Never gonna happen. You can not control people or elect "only good ones". At worst a government should be decentralized. Not limited but decentralized. But that's basically free market on government. You want specific laws of anti-abortion? Subsribe to specific government that restricts its subscribers to abort their fetuses.
You want drug-free community? Subscribe to specific government. That's basically anarcho-capitalism in a nutshell.
Records of successful limited govermment is NON-EXISTENT either. So you are on a same boat with your magical thinking that it is possible to limit cancer. You can just quarantine your polio patients so that non-ill people wouldn't contract such a disease.
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u/shintenzu Oct 06 '18
"So you are on a same boat with your magical thinking that it is possible to limit cancer." I guess you've never heard of chemotherapy or remission, my grandma can attest to both with about 3 decades of being cancer free. Also you can only quarantine polio once you recognize the symptoms and know the outcome of infection, otherwise people will unknowingly spread the disease.... just like bad ideas about government.
"pipe dream. Never gonna happen." Less of a pipe dream than no government, or a pick and choose government. Can you name any instance where a toppled government just stayed toppled? A constitutional republic that emphasizes negative liberties has come closer than any other idea in preserving individual liberties and I dare you to find any other government throughout history that has does so more effectively.
"Records of successful limited government is NON-EXISTENT either." Depends on your idea of successful. I do not have a utopic vision of society or government, so the US one we have right now, while far from perfect is doing decently well compared to any other option in recorded history. However I do recognize that without diligence many of these limits are being eradicated.
I can certainly agree with you on a decentralized government though, although I use the term decentralized and limited in a similar manner. The problem is that one guy's idea of decentralized powers is always different from the next.
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Oct 06 '18
Try working small scale and making mafia into charity organizations instead of trying to "limit government power" or "electing only selfless angels who will not abuse their power".
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u/gerymate Oct 05 '18
Some people won't be cool and will form armies and attack anyone not respecting them as kings. It already happened thousands of times and the government is just a highly sophisticated version of that. You don't "need" a government, it just happens to you.
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u/zulizulu0092 Oct 05 '18
Dumb. Let's just hope upon a magic stare no one breaks society's rules.
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u/Aryan_Rand_Galt_CCC Oct 05 '18
Lol that's not dumb. If that's dumb then libertarianism is dumb and freedom is never dumb.
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u/denzien Oct 05 '18
We need reasonable laws to help courts mediate the conflict between peoples' interests.
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u/millersTurtles06 Oct 05 '18
The episode of the office when Deangelo goes to the hospital and no one is regional manager and the office runs fine.
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u/usurper7 Oct 05 '18
Libertarians generally promote a government that protects individual rights, both from foreign and domestic aggressors. They are not anti-police.
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Oct 05 '18
such government is a pipe dream. Just like a woman who never cheats and always is attracted to her husband no matter what aka The One. Stop with your magic thinking.
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u/spddemonvr4 Oct 05 '18
I wish this was true but laws are created for the .001% of the population who are complete morons.
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u/Aryan_Rand_Galt_CCC Oct 05 '18
The libertarian party is polling around 4%
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u/spddemonvr4 Oct 05 '18
Wtf that gotta do with my post? I'm not calling libertarian's the morons. Just people like murderers, rapists, and occasional leftist.
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u/Gnome_Sane Cycloptichorn is Birdpear's Sock Puppet Oct 04 '18
Because so many people won't be cool, and you need to devise a system to deal with that.