cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
1d ago
I remember one of my old workplaces kind of avoided this due to the heroic efforts of a few very curmudgeonly and perhaps slightly autistic engineers that liked their environments and notifications in very particular ways. They would absolutely be the ones to say "no I don't care if this major product is down in production, I don't need to know about it because I work on this other unrelated minor product. You can't have an engineering team wide alert for your system going down.
cjet79
4d ago
I specifically said that sometimes libertarians agree it is fine to use violence. Its just that they want a high threshold for deciding when to deploy state violence or collective violence. Your point about corporations turning into states is more relevant to anarchist strains of thought.
They are specifically willing to deploy that violence:
- In defense against random violence by others i.e. to prevent the Hobbesian war of all against all.
- To protect property rights because they don't think most of civilization can function without property rights.
- However they are unwilling to deploy it for social projects.
Point 1 puts them in disagreement with various anarchist strains of thought. Point 2 puts them in disagreement with various modern progressive strains of thought and most marxist/socialist strains. And point 3 puts them in disagreement with just about everyone.
Point 3 is simultaneously why most people dislike libertarian thought, and why most critiques of them suck. Its all just special pleading by each specific author on why their specific social project deserves an exception. "Yes, it is good when libertarians want to oppose the social projects of people I hate, but the idiots don't realize that they need to allow my social project or society will of course collapse". The pattern becomes obvious after reading the same type of critique a few times, but I've had the misfortune of reading the same damn thing over a hundred times.
cjet79
4d ago
Government rules are enforced through violence and kidnapping.
Libertarianism poses a simple question for any would be government bans: is the thing you are trying to ban worth killing and imprisoning people to reduce that thing?
For many libertarians there are things that definitely meet that criteria. Murder, kidnapping, serious bodily assault, etc.
They phrase it in the post as "who are you to ban that thing, why should we listen to you?" But really it is "who are you to say we get to kill people just because you think something is bad?"
There are a lot of things that are bad but less bad than killing and kidnapping people. And it sometimes feels like everyone is just playing signalling games when they say the government should ban something but can't affirmatively answer "yes it is worth killing people and imprisoning them in order to ban this thing" Meanwhile it feels like libertarians are one of the few groups acknowledging the on the ground enforcement costs of government actions.
cjet79
2d ago
I think the problem of petty tyrants crosses systems.
Breaking down life into multiple areas:
Family, Social, Market, and Government.
Of these areas I think petty tyrants are weakest and least effective when wielding the market against their victims. The word Tyrant literally comes from someones name in Greece who was wielding a government against people.
The other answer which I know people hate is that markets are going to reflect reality. And when reality is ugly markets will look ugly. But punching a mirror doesn't fix the ugly face staring back at you.
I don't think markets are the end all be all of all problems. There are certain classes of problems that they solve extremely well. And plenty of problems that they do very little about.
I do think governments are generally terrible at solving most problems, and often make things worse They can certainly supercharge petty tyrants.
cjet79
3d ago
If you define property rights as a social project, sure I guess that follows.
cjet79
4d ago
Wish I hadn't seen the libertarian critique. It was bad like most critiques of libertarianism are bad. Scott still holds the record for the only good critique I've ever read.
Every other critique makes it sound like libertarianism is a group of scolds that just want to take away the toy that everyone calls government.
cjet79
2d ago
Calling for collective action seems to have an abandonment of responsibility that I dislike.
I love the phrasing of your second paragraph because it illustrates the problem.
It's not "I want to throw you in a wood chipper for your annoying pedantry" it's 'someone should throw people like you into a wood chipper for their annoying pedantry '. The functional result on my end is the same, but you've dodged responsibility for directly calling for me to be killed.
cjet79
2d ago
Possibly it is one of the oldest and most successful social projects. I guess that would make me some kind of arch conservative.
cjet79
7d ago
cjet79
3d ago
You say in the first paragraph that libertarians are wrong and reductive to call government enforcement a form of violence.
You say in the second paragraph that obviously government is violence and it always has been, and only an idiot would think otherwise.
So which is it?
If it is the second paragraph that is true I don't disagree with you. If it's the first paragraph I do disagree with you.
And that threshold of necessary violence is decided by the people of the nation, not libertarians!
If you don't have that, you don't really have a society: only a collection of strangers in an economic zone.
The people of a nation are made up of individuals. You are one such individual. Where do you personally draw the line? What social projects do you think are necessary enough to be enforced with violence? I can't speak with "the people of the nation" I can only speak with individuals.
This vagueness of thrusting off responsibility for calling for the violence is also familiar.
cjet79
3d ago
Contracts can pre-agree to enforcement methods. One of them is to just piggy back off of state enforcement and say that one party now owns stuff.
If a stable society needs some form of social enforcement that would pass my bar in the same way that property rights does. But I'm generally suspicious of such requests. Non government entities like religion have had more success and longevity enforcing such things through social means. After all violence is only one means for achieving social ends. You can try to convince people, pay them, or use negative social consequences. None of those things are what I'd consider "violence".
cjet79
3d ago
I'll think about this. My sense is that the base relationship is what matters. The base social relationship is talking. The base family relationship is love/nurture. The base relationship with the state seems to be an imbalanced power dynamic in favor of the state.
cjet79
11d ago
I had the opposite reaction medication names are the fucking worst.
If you want me to remember the name of a medication name it something that makes sense like "blood pressure fixer" not something that looks like a latin vomited up a few different flower names. If there is more than one blood pressure fixer pill then start adding numbers or company names after the initial part of the name.
cjet79
3d ago
There are some flavors of libertarians that derive a lot of stuff from contracts.
I suppose I see contracts as more of a good operating system, but the way violence is wielded and property rights are protected is more like having CPU and motherboard for your computer.
cjet79
10d ago
Summer pool season started a few weeks ago. I'm on the board for the local pool. It is probably one of my most time consuming volunteer activities.
On the upside the board is mostly fun people who have real lives, so the meetings are often productive with a minimal amount of political jockeying. We drink at board meetings, and one of the guys on the board runs a local wine shop and does a yearly wine and dine event for board members.
On the downside the type of people that join the board are still generally busybodies. The treasurer is very opinionated on people following the rules and has a strong desire to punish rule breakers. She had a very Political-Managerial-Class idea of how to enforce rules though. Her latest idea was a strongly worded email to all the members with enumerated punishments for not following particular rules. I had to point out that the people breaking rules were probably least likely to read any such email, and that we already had the authority to punish them we didn't need to warn them first.
I would generally suggest people get involved with their local community. There will absolutely be people that disagree with politically. But if you are serving a common cause then that political difference gets papered over as irrelevant more than you'd think. And it's a good way to have things bent in a direction you'd prefer.
I will maybe share more board stories in the future. Some stories might be heavily more culture war oriented, like the little trans kid on the swim team, or the twelve year old that pulled a knife out on another kid in the park across from the pool. These stories are kind of uninteresting in the way that we are generally trying to optimize for non-controversy. None of us want to be in a media segment about trans kids on a local swim team.
The actual controversial stuff that people argue over during the board meetings are financial things. Money is tight, and it's hard to know how to beat spend it to maintain a good experience for the pool members.
cjet79
17d ago
I'm wondering if we watched a different Iraq war.
I remember nothing but breathless exhortations about him definitely having WMDs. And that there was evidence because of yellow cake refinement. I don't even really know what that is. But then we invaded Iraq and there was a two or three year search for WMDs that then turned out to be totally fruitless. The only thing approaching WMDs were the defunct chemical weapons stockpiles we gave to them to fight Iran.
For a lot of people it was a huge black pill moment on media credibility.
cjet79
10d ago
I think it's the same for most defenses of basic rights. Either defend the rights of scumbags or everyone loses the right.
Happens in free speech when it's Nazis that need defending. Happens in criminal law when it's pedophiles or rapists getting railroaded.
And of course the question gets asked why not just defend the right for "decent" people. But "decent people" always tends to start looking a little too much like "my political allies".
It would be nice to not have this slippery slope hanging over our heads for every basic right.
cjet79
10d ago
We ban them from the pool. Short term bans at first and escalate to full membership removal. There have also been some party rentals that haven't cleaned up at all, cleaning fee for them.
By comparison to this forum I feel like there are way more options for punishment.
cjet79
10d ago
I feel like these burdens should get their own category. It's not really onerous. It's actually very easy to meet the requirement to upload a picture of my driver's license. It's just stupidly dangerous for my well being.
It would be like if airport security asked you to stick your hand into a wood chipper that sporadically turns on to get your fingerprints. There is a helpful little red and green light to tell you when it's safe, but damn I'd rather not trust my fingers to this machine run by minimum wage employees. And of course if my hand gets mulched I'm allowed to sue the judgement proof employees, or the shell company wood chipper manufacturer, but not the government that put the requirement in there in the first place.
cjet79
1mo ago
Great post, reminds me a bit of my parents marriage, which has thankfully and surprisingly survived the Trump years.
My mom: heavily pro-choice, bit of a hippy, microbiologist PhD, main breadwinner doing government contracting stuff, likes reading books about myers briggs personality, or deep getting in touch with your feelings type stuff. Sucks at making friends, only talks well with very close friends or family. Can be bossy and annoying unless too drunk. (cavalier culture)
My dad: redneck, carpenter (but doesn't make much money doing that these days), was barely too young to ever go to vietnam and was sad about that, weed and age have helped his anger issues, ocd, generally republican, thinks trump is funny but doesn't personally like him, loves voting for trump, hates political correctness, likes racist jokes and dropping the n-word. Makes and keeps friends easily. Easy for everyone to talk with, fun to be around. (border culture)
Idk I feel like there are multiple scenarios where both of them could have just gone a little further off the deep end on their respective sides and it would have been an end for the marriage. As much as they sort of sound like stereotypes at times (my dad being the redneck stereotype, and my mom being the PMC karen stereotype) they also have the awareness of why those sterotypes are bad and annoying. They both have friends that have fully crossed over into those stereotypes, friends who would never get along with my other parent.
I get along with all of them, both of my parents, and all the crazy friends of theirs that feel like walking stereotypes. I think you are in a somewhat similar spot as me. You are no one's outgroup and everyone's far-group. You might as well be living in a different country. I used to think that I'd just learned some social skills and had the right attitude of "I can't lose friends over politics, because my views are too weird and I will have no friends." But its really more on other people. Having enemies is usually exhausting. Smart, well adjusted people learn to keep their enemies in the hypothetical.
cjet79
10d ago
I think if you are not allowed to ban something then you shouldn't be allowed to make access risky. All bans are is adding a risk component to a thing. You can at least pretend like onerous requirements serve a purpose. Where onerous crosses over into risky is where I'd prefer courts to draw a line and say "you are just banning the thing, so unless you are allowed to just straight up ban the thing, get rid of that requirement."
cjet79
10d ago
Hasn't come up yet honestly. It would definitely be the call the cops option. Where we live they'd show up and actually deal with the problem and probably get a round of applause.
Troublemakers are most often teenagers being teenagers. Though recently it was an inebriated adult causing problems. Which pisses me off way more because now the pool will probably start cracking down on any kind of drinking at the pool, and thus ruining it for all the adults that can have a few beers on the sly and not become complete animals.
There is a checkin area so we will generally know if someone is trying to enter when they shouldn't, but yeah in the past people have apparently tried to dodge their punishments. Memberships at the pool are acquired as a family unit, so we can kinda get family's to punish bad teens by threatening to remove the entire family unit if a particular teen does not behave. If they are incapable of controlling their teen ... Well we have a wait-list for membership so they will be replaced by a better behaved family.
Ya just a poster that comes through and always posts "oh look at these terrible Nazis and what they've done, how could they think these very specific things don't they know this is evil and wrong? Here is specific Nazi x y and z doing this new thing that barely anyone knows about. But now a Jewish newspaper has written about it."
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