Any libertarians here?

Post Reply New Topic

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.

I know you have that sympathy, as you have mentioned those factories at multiple points and I believe you once made a reference to Chomsky.

The big issue is that I think that anarcho-capitalists basically identify more with Nozick's idea of utopia, and as such uphold property rights and the freedom to use that property however one desires, even if that ends up taking a relatively socialist form (myself and a favorable group could freely form a commune). The idea being that with everyone going their own way, each person can live according to their personal values, and people can see what truly works and what does not rather than having a model forced upon them. The issue is that they don't necessarily agree with the more left-libertarian view of property as being as sensible, and as such under their view things such as wage labor and capital markets and renting are likely to persist in some form, so they don't invest themselves in such pursuit. After all, it must be recognized that a lot of anarcho-capitalism is influenced by economic ideas derived from classical economics. The founder David Friedman was the son of Milton Friedman, and the founder Murray Rothbard is a major figure in the Austrian school of economics. In fact, most of the anarcho-capitalist intellectuals that come to mind quickly are economists of some form, with a few exceptions.

Yes, but we cannot forget the divergent interests of the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans, as only the latter cared to stay an agrarian society, while the former wanted to move to become a more financial system without as much concern for the size of government.

I was really responding to the OP here. As for the Chomsky quote, I made one when arguing whether my characterization of Lenin as a one-party oligarch was correct with that Orthodox Marxist poster in a thread critical of social democracy. More recently, I included another Chomsky video here when addressing vibratetogether on socialism.

But I get your point over an enormous varriance in ideas of what more liberty would look like.

Which is why talking about the "small government" intent of the founders is absurd. Only a fragment of them avidly supported small government, whereas the others (Alexander Hamilton) desired industrialization with Bigger Government. Advocating small government on Jeffersonian terms is nearly impossible in an industrialized society, seeing as to how so much does not match up.

Well, right, but that isn't the issue at hand when discussing the legality of taxation. Honestly, I am not that concerned to get into the latter debate about morality, the reason being that moral anti-realism seems more viable of a theory for understanding the (non)existence of fundamental moral truths, so I do not see much to discuss other than feelings.


Hmm.... I suppose if the "hard asset" currency were flexible enough I could agree with your point.

I think the perception mostly holds although I will admit that the federal reserve can allow for extreme inflation, I just generally do not see it as likely. In any case, I don't have as many fears about the subjective perception issue, because yes, inflationary concerns are subjective, but I do think that they are also likely somewhat rational as well, and so the only way for this to be an issue is if somebody really does something wrong.

The Fed is not run by morons like Zimbabwe's economy is; they are highly unlikely to be so foolish as to cause hyperinflation unintentionally, and it would be counter to their interests to do it intentionally. And a gold standard offers no real protection against inflation anyways- governments in the past had little difficulty in debasing their metal-backed currency and causing inflation that way. The security that gold offers is a delusion. The only thing we would likely see in a gold standard is the risk of a catastrophic deflationary spiral.

The issue with this idea is that a head start does not mean the acumen to keep up with other groups. Buying other people out does not seem very practical either, as firm entry isn't usually excessively hard, and efforts to buy everyone out who enters can easily make taking William Hearst's money the way for an entrepreneur to get wealthy. In any case, in history, I do not think that there were very many monopolies in industries were competition could enter and in those fields the monopolies were generally brief and not generally destructive to the public interest. (assuming no business-government collusion)


The issue is that inherited wealth isn't all wealth, and this can be seen to a significant extent even in the mega-rich who would be most expected to exemplify your claims, as a lot of those individuals didn't just keep their family fortunes but rather are known because of their massive gains through their efforts. In any case, I would imagine that if there is a real impediment causing strong class rigidities, then that would be due to genetics and possibly culture but not necessarily due to the fact that one group has significant wealth. The reason I say this, is because I do not think that formal education really provides as much benefit as most people think and/or that these formal education benefits are only elite people can attain. As well, I think the few benefits that can be provided by wealth are more likely provided due to signaling issues which cannot themselves be bought (being rich can allow one to associate with talent but not to be talented by itself) and thus are not the end of the situation.

In any case, in poorer nations/regions, it is generally found that higher job insecurity exists, meaning that the 13 hour days can be a benefit, and I think from the history of most nations, it can generally be found that increases in national income did end up causing the growth in people who had decent livings but who were not rich (this means the middle class), as legislation could not have just created white color jobs in most industries.

In any case, I do think you take "freedom to associate" more strongly than would seem reasonable, as I do think that in modern society, individual preference tends to dominate the idea of "class" with common associations being more likely driven by commonalities rather than just the classical idea of nobility.


Aha! You invoked Chomsky in this thread as well! I just noticed. The reason why this is so is because FDR took the term "liberal" as otherwise US libertarians would take that name and sometimes they still attempt to do so by prefacing it with "classical".

With your qualification, I agree with you. What I was saying is that you can recognize the legal precedence while still holding a position with regards to whether it is "right". I recognize the legal precedence, but I think it's wrong.

While the founding fathers may have had a hard time agreeing on many things, it is the conclusions they came to that I find particularly compelling. Their decision with regard to direct taxation is one I completely agree with, and feel is a fundamental building block of a free society. Just because we subsequently destroyed that freedom through democratic government does not change the fundamental nature of this freedom.

Also, while yes, a good portion of tax protesters are of the tinfoil hat crowd, there is some historical truth to their claims. In my view, although it was put into place by the Congress, it was not actually the will of the government that passed it, it was the view of international bankers forcing the hand of government. A lot of conspiracy theories have some small kernel of truth to them.

And that isn't at odds with my claims thus far, as I haven't said anything about whether income taxes are a good idea. I personally would rather keep my entire paycheck, but I doubt we as a society are willing to give up a number of government programs, and our current tax revenues aren't even covering the government's bills. If we wanted to eliminate the income tax, some very dramatic changes would have to be implemented.


What conclusions? They continued to argue with each other their entire lives.


But you mentioned in another post that you reject other views the founders held.Honestly, it doesn't seem like you can push for "respecting the intent of the founders" on some issues, while saying "ignore them, they were wrong here" on other issues and still be saying anything meaningful, as you are just holding whatever arbitrary views and hiding behind the myth of "The Founders (tm)" whenever it is convenient for you to do so.


Or, the government needed new sources of tax revenue as the budget began to expand.

Libertarianism is just anarchy for rich people.

I'm a Ron Paul Republican, which is pretty much the same thing.