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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023

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"Libertarian" is not trademarked. Anyone can use the term. I consider myself libertarian, and many other people would agree I fit the common conception of that term. But I'm not gonna defend anyone and everyone that uses it for themselves.

You also seem to have some personal beef with "vaping heterosexual white men with Asian wives". I'd suggest dropping it. This is not the kind of discussion forum for your personal grievances.


I was attempting to write up a longer post, but I'm tired and sick so it was turning into low quality crap writing. So I'm just gonna do short responses to your questions.

But this is a song and dance that has been done before. Hans Herman Hoppe laid down the law on this stuff years ago. Insofar as libertarians want to live in nice societies (they do) the only functional tool against the kind of people who destroy nice societies is physical punishment. You quickly stop being a libertarian in a universalist sense and turn into a Civic Nationalist. My question for libertarian or libertarian leaning people would be, why bother with this song and dance?

Libertarians have set out the rules pretty clearly. Property is a thing. Property implies ultimate ownership. You and only you can have ownership of your body and person. That ownership can be expanded to physical objects. The rules of how that ownership can be expanded do not have to be set in stone, or handed down by the gods of libertarianism. Violations of property are considered initiations of violence and will likely be met with violence. Libertarians have never expressed a full story of non-violence. So there has never been a contradiction with libertarians using physical violence against thieves, rapists, and murderers.

Why ground your arguments in some abstract first principles relating to freedom and whatever else when you truly do not want freedom for everyone to do what they please?

Some of us are true believers. I want you to do whatever you want. Just don't violate me or mine.

Asking for the golden rule treatment is apparently a horrible thing for libertarians to do. "Well yes, you can want to have your freedom to live in peace and not have your stuff stolen, but I also want my freedom to enact endless social problems with wealth I don't have, so I need you to pay taxes first, oh and go along with my social programs when I want".

Why not just say the things you want society to be and stand on those grounds?

Because I don't think everyone else has to live in the same society as me. I'm hoping they can live in the society they want. So how would my vision of a good society convince anyone? The idea of imposing your vision of society on others is a fundamentally statist way of looking at things. For example, I don't want to live in Amish society, but I support their right to exist. When the government tries to say "no Amish, you must do X" my thought is to push back against those government intrusions. If you ask me to defend Amish society, I'm gonna shuffle my feet and say 'well they want to live that way, so let them, yeah I agree it looks boring as hell and more than a little silly'.

To clarify I don't have a problem with vaping heterosexual white men with Asian wives. It's just a critique of what looks to me to be a blindspot. Similar to how early internet Atheism, looked at as a group of people, started expressing itself as an entity. Sure, they weren't advertised as a group of slightly autistic white teenage boys. But a lot of the expression of the group was dictated heavily by the fact that a lot of them were. Same for Libertarianism. It's mostly just white dudes.

As for Hoppe, his objection did not pertain to murderers and the like. It pertained to people who disrupted social normalcy as seen by those who connect together in a social covenant. If the covenant doesn't like homosexuals, drug users and jews, those could all be physically removed by the covenant and it would be completely Libertarian to do so.

Some of us are true believers. I want you to do whatever you want. Just don't violate me or mine.

I think the meat of the disagreement lies somewhere in the paragraph you wrote here, so let me try teasing something out.

If I set up a Discord server where I sell estrogen to consenting persons whose age I can't exactly verify, and I accept monetary and sexual favors as payment, and enforce a social hierarchy within the Discord server that functionally facilitates predation on people curios about this sort of thing, and I owe my entire existence to people under 15 consuming pornography at a great rate, that's just fine? Like, if your son comes in my discord server, pays me with sexual favors and starts consuming estrogen I sell him, rendering him sterile and depressed, but he also has permanent rectal damage after falling to peer pressure and posting videos of himself inserting large plastic items into his anus, then someone leaks the videos your son put up on the discord server, which was technically public, and your son later kills himself... Did I violate your son?

Because I didn't ask him to join the server. He got that idea from reading comments on a porn site.

As a parent, what was your course of action regarding your son? Given you don't control the internet, and you believe you should not exercise control over the internet to stifle what others can and can't see. Completely ban the internet in your house? That limits your freedom quite a bit. Try to block 'pr0n' and hope there aren't actors who want to guide your son towards watching it past the block?

My point would be that my discord server inherently infringes on your right to exist in a nice and healthy way. You should not have to live like the Amish just to avoid sexual deviants and freaks.

If I set up a Discord server where I sell estrogen to consenting persons whose age I can't exactly verify, and I accept monetary and sexual favors as payment, and enforce a social hierarchy within the Discord server that functionally facilitates predation on people curios about this sort of thing, and I owe my entire existence to people under 15 consuming pornography at a great rate, that's just fine? Like, if your son comes in my discord server, pays me with sexual favors and starts consuming estrogen I sell him, rendering him sterile and depressed, but he also has permanent rectal damage after falling to peer pressure and posting videos of himself inserting large plastic items into his anus, then someone leaks the videos your son put up on the discord server, which was technically public, and your son later kills himself... Did I violate your son?

Because I didn't ask him to join the server. He got that idea from reading comments on a porn site.

As a parent, what was your course of action regarding your son? Given you don't control the internet, and you believe you should not exercise control over the internet to stifle what others can and can't see. Completely ban the internet in your house? That limits your freedom quite a bit. Try to block 'pr0n' and hope there aren't actors who want to guide your son towards watching it past the block?

My point would be that my discord server inherently infringes on your right to exist in a nice and healthy way. You should not have to live like the Amish just to avoid sexual deviants and freaks.

In that scenario I failed my hypothetical son, not you. And if he was 14 or 15 he also failed himself to some extent. As a parent I see my job as to raise functioning adults that can navigate adult society. That means they need some ability to make decisions on their own, assess dangers on their own, and when they fail in minor ways I am to be there as a support structure for them to fall back on.

You made your scenario about sexual deviancy, and something that is on the verge of being illegal. But there are plenty of fully legal and pernicious traps in society that do not involve sexual deviancy. Drinking is a problem, sugar and obesity are problems, there are MLM and pyramid schemes that can suck people in, cults, etc. I cannot burn a path through the world and eliminate every possible danger for my kids. My only option, without engaging in a strange war against modern society, is to give my child the tools to protect themselves.

If all my children become dead and destroyed by this world, then I will wage war. But it won't be because of any high minded principles, I'll just be a broken man bent on revenge.

You should not have to live like the Amish just to avoid sexual deviants and freaks.

And you don’t. Fundamentalists mostly live in the same world as everyone else, and they don’t worry about their kids being groomed into being a freak by weirdos.

Huh? They absolutely do worry about this and frequently protest about the idea that this could even start happening. They impose a lot of harsh restrictions on their kids precisely to minimise the chances of them being groomed into freaks by weirdos, and they're not exactly quiet about it. Hell, a lot of opposition to drag queen story hours does in fact come from the fundamentalists.

And you don’t. Fundamentalists mostly live in the same world as everyone else, and they don’t worry about their kids being groomed into being a freak by weirdos.

Fundamentalists definately worry about this. Given how the Trans issue has gone, it seems a lot of other people worry about it as well.

The issue is the real world has commons. Things like providing schools which I believe almost every libertarian thinks a smart poor kid should be provided with an education.

There isn’t a strong libertarian argument against open borders. Which would then make Democracy incompatible with unlimited immigration. The voter base would change and you would be voted out. So I guess you need a dictator to maintain your politics.

Or say a community of libertarians have good well supported and agreed to schools. The current way to keep the poors out is to ban property density. But that isn’t very libertarian. If you let people do whatever they want with their property than one person sells to a developer who builds low-income housing. And the commons you did agree with is suddenly underfunded.

I think libertarian is good within boundaries. But it easily falls apart without something above it enforcing something for the commons.

I feel like I’m a libertarian when I think society is broadly good. But turn a bit fascists when it seems the system is working.

The issue is the real world has commons. Things like providing schools which I believe almost every libertarian thinks a smart poor kid should be provided with an education.

  1. School is not the commons. Schooling is a private good, and will obtain optimal distribution on its own.
  2. No I don't think that. Or the closest I get to thinking that is 'it would be nice, but in a world without infinite resources no need to force it'.
  3. Since I wouldn't force it, I'd like to be in a society rich enough to engage in charity for those cases, but its not a deal breaker. There could easily be other things that matter more.

There isn’t a strong libertarian argument against open borders. Which would then make Democracy incompatible with unlimited immigration. The voter base would change and you would be voted out. So I guess you need a dictator to maintain your politics.

Democracy isn't compatible with libertarianism in the first place, so there is no need to preserve it. If there was a form of democracy that was a fit with libertarianism, it would probably look closer to corporate shareholder voting.

Or say a community of libertarians have good well supported and agreed to schools. The current way to keep the poors out is to ban property density. But that isn’t very libertarian. If you let people do whatever they want with their property than one person sells to a developer who builds low-income housing. And the commons you did agree with is suddenly underfunded. I think libertarian is good within boundaries. But it easily falls apart without something above it enforcing something for the commons.

I didn't realize you were building up to a "trap", I genuinely disagreed with the previous stuff. Land ownership and property ownership agreements would probably happen a lot more often without zoning as a crutch. If there is an actual commons problem there are typically two ways to solve it:

  1. One person/entity is given entire ownership of the commons. They then suffer the destruction of the commons, so have reasons to preserve it.
  2. Complex systems of social governance arise to protect the commons. Elinor Ostrom won an economic nobel prize for her work on this.

One person/entity is given entire ownership of the commons. They then suffer the destruction of the commons, so have reasons to preserve it.

A post about libertarian philosophy was the last place I expected to see an endorsement of feudalism. This proposal is essentially just repainting manorialism.

Is this argument basically "feudalism was bad, thus anything associated with it is also bad"?

It isn't even an argument, just me expressing my surprise that someone claiming to be libertarian would be down with feudalism. "I've got all the liberty I want? Fine, I'm starting a new monarchy with me at the head." is the kind of statement that libertarians I've interacted with have tended to violently reject. I'm honestly not sure you'd even be able to call yourself a libertarian here if you accept that position - you'd just be a monarchist with extra steps.

Have these libertarians never been confronted with how they'd handle the commons? I feel like "have clear property rights" is a very libertarian answer.

And ownership of the commons doesn't require feudalism? That requires at least some explanation rather than a throwaway comment. The textbook example given is usually a lake where multiple farmers/fishers/something are using the lake and also polluting the lake. They can't get to a solution because its not individually beneficial to solve the pollution, but it is beneficial if they all do it.

You don't have to have someone own all the farmers to get to a solution in this scenario, you just have to have someone own the lake.

I believe almost every libertarian thinks a smart poor kid should be provided with an education.

There are methods of obtaining education that do not depend on property taxes. For example, income-based repayment income-share agreements (selling a share of all your future earnings to the school [note: link changed]) presumably could be extended all the way down to kindergarten.

That link says "sure there are problems with it, this is a book after all so it has to show problems, but it could work out" without stating how to solve the problems.

Better link

An income-share agreement (or ISA) is a financial structure in which an individual or organization provides something of value (often a fixed amount of money) to a recipient who, in exchange, agrees to pay back a percentage of his income for a fixed number of years.

That's not convincing. It doesn't even cover the most obvious flaw, which is that procedures that are no problem for corporations are big problems for individuals because they don't scale down; a corporation can afford having a corporate lawyer on call, while just the threat of a lawsuit can be ruinous to an individual. A corporation can also go bankrupt; would an individual going bankrupt void the agreement?

It also claims

However, advocates of ISAs contend that since students have no legal obligation to work in a particular industry, and since it is illegal for investors to pressure them into a certain career, students are no more “indentured” than those with a student loan.

But the whole point of the scheme the way it's presented in the first link is that investors can make you act in financially beneficial ways. To the extent that that actually alleviates the problem, it also makes the scheme not work at all.

To be clear, I provided the first link only because I couldn't remember what the real-life version was called. I'll remove it now. Just ignore it and focus on the second link.

That version still has problems. For one thing, it's about college, where people can make informed decisions to take on debt. Elementary school students can't. For another, that version only requires that the system be no worse than student loans. But student loans for elementary and high school would be horrible.

Kindergarteners can't meaningfully agree to give up their future earnings

Kindergarten isn't education. It's a daycare service.

Schooling is a service. It needs payment. Private schooling is way more efficient already, and the funds gained from cutting education taxes would certainly provide more of a service for the average "poor" family.

Can't afford an education as it stands but know that it will help you monetarily long-term? Take out a loan. The current issues of student-loan stem from the governments mismanagement of state-assigned loans, which were in of themselves a mistake.

A parent is the trustee/owner of his child. Therefore, he is empowered to sell to the kindergarten a share of that trusteeship/ownership.

In the unlikely event that the child disavows the contract with the kindergarten when the trusteeship is terminated (whether at adulthood or at some earlier date), the parent is obligated by the same contract to repay to the kindergarten the lost expected value of the child's future earnings.

If the child can disavow the contract before they ever have to pay it never meaningfully existed. This is just the parents taking out a loan and hoping the child will eventually help them pay it back

That just ends up becoming parental debt. What person at 18 years old isn’t going to repudiated the debt on the grounds they didn’t consent?

And the entire point of the income share program is to get around the parents not having the money. So the debt going back to the parent has a value of zero.

We’ve known for a while that income share programs don’t work in practice because of negative selection effects. Engineers and financially stable don’t take them.

You also seem to have some personal beef with "vaping heterosexual white men with Asian wives". I'd suggest dropping it. This is not the kind of discussion forum for your personal grievances.

I didn't read him as having any beef with them. To summarize what I believe is position is: libertarians usually are people whose personal issues with "square" conservative society are minor and not substantive, and they could easily just negociate for acceptance of them (acceptance of minor risk taking with regards to personal health, acceptance of interracial relationships with ethnic groups that seem mostly compatible) rather than agitate for the destruction of functional societies.

The vaping heterosexual white men with Asian wives line just points out how for the most part they're still heterosexual and white. That they don't consider gender/sexual anarchy to be optimal solutions since they don't for the most part use themselves the freedom it gives them, and that they are the kind of white people who move out of neighborhoods at the first signs of diversity-fueled racial unrest. But most of them are very smart, so they often write the best most convincing arguments against conservative norms, which are then picked up by people who do want gender/sexual anarchy and believe homogenous societies are inherently deficient.