Any libertarians here?

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Well, the original intention of the founding fathers is irrelevant given that there was a constitutional amendment. There could be a constitutional amendment to say that all people under 5 feet of height should be killed. It would never happen, but an amendment is a change to the foundational document of the US legal structure.

In any case, given that this amendment is accepted as an amendment by all legal authorities in existence, it becomes hard to make a claim above them and expect that to be taken as a reasonable claim.


Well, it would be legally correct though because it is legally justified, and that is the sum of the issue, not the moral question at all. Morals are not so easily nailed down as matters of accepted legal standards.


Real value doesn't exist. The closest thing to real value is food and housing. Beyond that there is just exchange value based upon something being accepted as a medium of exchange. Our current money has that. I don't see the problem beyond that, particularly given that gold tends to have short-term greater variability in value than the dollar does, the only thing that gold has as an advantage is lower inflation, and I wouldn't consider that a major benefit.



Well... the thing is that "New World Order" does not mean that a group exists, it means that the organizing principle that is governing national and international relations is different than it used to be. If we interpret "New World Order" in those terms, then it becomes very comprehensible as to why these politicians would do that while reducing the number of entities in existence, thus favoring Ockham's razor.

Is it not possible that the New World Order can mean a group of loosely connected elites working towards the elimination of national sovereignty?

So what? It was the original intent of our founding fathers that:

1. Black people should be slaves and not allowed to vote
2. Women should not be allowed to vote
3. Congress members should be chosen by state legislatures, not the people.

Very few if any agree with these now - at least the 1st 2, but guess what? Constitutional ammendments changed the law.

I'll accept your first point about "imperfect information" being accounted for by Austrian Economics. But how do you or any anarcho-capitalist (or "anarcho-conservative") propose to deal with the tremendous inequity in economic power that exists currently? We have corporations that can take down the entire marketplace. The ([b]somewhat[b/]) free (or at least relatively deregulated) markets of many third world nations have fallen victim to being the less powerful party in a contract. If government were disbanded, corporations could easily extort consumers.

One may point out that corporations are a monster created by governments (or, more acurately, courts, which have resulted in profit-based corporations as opposed to the originally public projects based corporations). Would Anarcho-Capitalists, as a last act of government (before disbanding the whole enterprise, either at once or gradually) break up de jure monopolies which can easily transform into de facto monopolies under an Anarcho-Capitalist system?

While I'm currently not ready to advocate anything untested, I have enormous sympathies for libertarian socialism (decentralized institutions run by all the stakeholders). I would really like to see a large scale experiment. I admit I need a bit more information on the various already run experiments.

I know Owen's cooperative colonies in the US did not fly by smoothly. The Paris Commune was crushed by outside forces. Right now, it's too early to tell what result will come out of Argentia's recovered factories.

I understand that. And from this perspective, it is an unreasonable claim. However, coming from the perspective of someone who loves freedom, I think quoting it's legal significance is irrelevant. You are not free unless you are truly free, and this includes freedom from direct taxation. Again, I understand this is not a view voiced very often, but it is one that I hold.



That may very well be the sum of the issue for you, and I recognize that it is the sum of the issue for many, but it is much more profound to me. Aside from the fact that the check I write disappears into a black hole of debt and irrational spending, I view direct taxation as a form of theft. So to me, it doesn't matter if you legalize theft, it's still theft.



Eh, I sort of agree with you, and I'm not necessarily advocating the gold standard. However, it does seem to me that money that is backed by "hard assets" (we'll consider this real value for convenience sake, I recognize your argument though), is inherently superior to fiat paper and plastic. It may seem right now that our paper money is stable, but I believe that is merely perception. I fear that if perception changed, even very slightly, which I think is at least a viable possibility, it would have a snowball effect that would send us into hyper-inflation.



I readily admit that the founding fathers had a lot wrong on SOCIAL issues. However, with regards to economic policy, I think they were spot on. We don't need to respect their views on everything, but I think we should respect those views that are, well, respectable. In their time, they were truly rebels, with the sincere desire to create a freedom that had not previously been available. I feel that we have lost that over the centuries, and if that core spirit of freedom were to be renewed within our population, things would change for the better.

Right now we're pathetic consumerist automatons.

I don't think any economic views to the right of moderate socialism deserve respect.

"Socialism" is pretty vague. The US and former USSR used the word to describe economies ran by a highly centralized one party oligarchy. Initally, it refered to some highly decentralized society based on institutions which are democratic and worker self-managed. And in another sense "moderate socialism" refers to some sort of social democratic society with a sturdy social welfare state.

I think clarity is neccessary on this front.

I'd say somewhere between the systems in Britain and Scandinavia.

And I'd say that you are very mistaken in this view.

Whether you like or not, a large part of freedom is economic freedom. Even with moderate socialism you do not have economic freedom. That's what I advocate, freedom. Even when there are some consequences to come of that freedom, I feel that without freedom, the individual is doomed to suffer the tyranny of either the majority (socialism) or the government (fascism). While I am concerned with the plight of the suffering, I see that less as a result of too much freedom and more as a result of our particular form of capitalism (which does not even come close to being a free market).

I respect where you're coming from, I just think that perhaps your views on economics are a reactionary result of your social views.

Why should people be able to suffer the tyranny of those with the majority of dollars? Assume one self-made entrepreneur (George Hearst) makes a lot due to his innovation and savvy. His progeny (William Randolph Hearst) inherits or is just given some of that vast sum of money. With this tremendous head start advantage which smaller publications simply cannot compete with, the inherited rich captain of industry can simply buy out the competition.

I see no more reason why inherited wealth so be any less of a problem in a stateless capitalist society than in a state capitalist society. As a matter of fact, I should find it worse, given the utter lack of an inheritance tax.

These inherited wealthy, over a few generations, with gain more wealth through their selective advantage. Over there own free will or because like people tend to associate, they may group together (closely or loosely). They may expand there enterprises. They may work in regions that are quite destitute. They may negotiate a "free" contract with a starving mother to work under gruelling conditions 13 hours a day. Both parties are making an economically free, contractually, decision. Yet one of the party’s freedom is obviously more constrained than the other. As well, you will get a society which naturally forms a plutocratic class which can easily realize their collective interest at the expense of others through the might of its dollars.

This is why I think the US is quite at odd in its use of libertarian, I point I'll happily admit agreeing with Chomsky on.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugq86q9KyPE[/youtube]

On the Founding Fathers

The closest to a libertarian of the lot, Thomas Jefferson, supported a relatively small government on the basis of a non-industrial, Agrarian society of self-employed Yeoman farmers. I think this makes a world of difference. The only urban, industrial analogue to a self-employed, somewhat self-sustained Yeoman farmer would be self-managing workers.

Referring to the "original intentions of our founding fathers" is pointless. They were a heterogeneous, argumentative lot.

I never made any claims to the rightness or wrongness of income tax, only as to its historic legality. So actually, there is no room to have a position between mine and zer0netgain's. It is a factual yes-or-no question. My claim is supported by history and law, his by paranoid raving lunatics.

Honestly, anarcho-capitalists (I don't know where anarcho-conservative came from, but I don't like the term, apparently though vibratetogether sees that as related to anarcho-capitalism though?) don't have a set plan for making the current world into the desired anarchist world. There are a few paths that they seek to go:
1) Black markets undermining the power of current legal authorities. This is the path of the agorists, and by doing this, it automatically destroys the power of large corporations by seeking to undermine the foundation of society.
2) Finding a way to leave society. This seems odd, but some anarcho-capitalists wish to just move away from government, with projects such as seasteading or other efforts and see this as better than just fighting the powers.
3) Gradual changes in social structure over time, as anarcho-capitalists usually are not revolutionary, and it is not uncommon to think that society will have to evolve somewhat so as to include the social mechanisms that are necessary for anarchism.

To boil things down, here are the claims of anarcho-capitalists.
1) The government is bad.
2) We can do better without government.
3) Structure without government will generally take the form of market structure where trade prevails and payment follows a subjective theory of value rather than an objective theory of value.

What exactly 3 will look like is relatively unknown. Heck, one person who is generally anarcho-capitalist as far as I can tell, Per Bylund goes so far as to just call himself an "anarchist without labels" simply because he puts more weight on points 1 & 2 rather than the particulars of any emergent structure. As such, going into too much depth likely depends upon the opinions of the thinker, as some anarcho-capitalists likely look more like right-wingers and traditional US libertarians as they fell into this group through such sources, for example economist Bryan Caplan is actually on a list of "right-wing intellectuals" that a left-wing site criticized, while others have sought to identify themselves with left-libertarianism, as can be seen with Roderick Long who is an Austrian School anarcho-capitalist who has openly self-identified as a left-libertarian and Samuel Konkin III who is identified as the founder of agorism and who identified as a left-libertarian as well.

Frankly, you've got to be off your f*****g rocker to possibly take those quotes in a context to support the evil cabal NWO/Illuminati/Reptilian conspiracy theories. The Bush quote is quite plainly referring to an altered international dynamic following the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. I didn't feel like listening to the whole Kissinger video, but again, it sounded like just a change in international relations as a result of changing circumstances.Nothing particularly sinister about that. Neither of them refer to any organization called "NWO."

This is a common tactic of people like Alex Jones and his ilk- falsely claim that the powers that be have "admitted" to something when they in fact have not.

And America was a largely agricultural, agragrian society of Yeoman Farmers.