Libretarian vs Anarchist

[gumOnShoe]

I'm trying to figure out what the difference between the two is.

Every time I hear a "Libretarian Argument" on this board its against government involvement. I'm wondering what the difference is then, between a Libretarian and an Anarchist.

What comes to mind immediately is that Anarchists don't believe in gathering at all, whereas Libretarians believe in gathering, but hate when others do it. :/

Please enlighten me.

[AapoJoki]

Libertarians believe that the state should be absolutely minimal, for instance like a night watchman state. Anarchists believe that the state should be completely abolished.

[gumOnShoe]

At 11/13/09 03:56 PM, AapoJoki wrote: Libertarians believe that the state should be absolutely minimal, for instance like a night watchman state. Anarchists believe that the state should be completely abolished.

Then I'm confused by certain arguments made against institutions such as the FDA or SEC. It seems to me that if these institutions only policed the products, then they are just protecting the people from Fraud. You know, meat inspectors, drug tests etc.

In fact, every piece of literature that I've read in my very brief look into Libertarianism mentions fraud in some manor, yet many arguments on these boards specifically target the institutions that were established to be against fraud.

And it seems to me that the pursuit of many of the goals of a Libretarian still lead to a state that's at list a little bit larger than the one implied by the wikipedia article you just linked me to.

[Evark]

The libertarian believes that the state should exist to protect individual liberties. Whereas, Anarchists may agree that people should be granted those liberties, but that it should be up to them to protect them, no state is necessary.

Basically: anarchists have a completely unrealistic world-view, whereas the libertarian view actually makes limited sense.

Unless the 're' in the title isn't a typo and you're actually talking about libretarians, in which case I have no idea. : b

[gumOnShoe]

At 11/13/09 04:51 PM, Evark wrote: Basically: anarchists have a completely unrealistic world-view, whereas the libertarian view actually makes limited sense.

I'll say it sounds good in theory, even if I don't agree with the end product.

Unless the 're' in the title isn't a typo and you're actually talking about libretarians, in which case I have no idea. : b

Missed that. Oops. :b indeed.

[SadisticMonkey]

Also: Anarchists don't believe in private property, whereas libertarians may.

And don't give me this crap about 'limited sense'; it makes a hell of a lot more sense than the shit going on today.

[SadisticMonkey]

Also gumOnShoe, in minarchism aka. limited-government libertarianism, the state protects people against fraud.

[gumOnShoe]

Might believe in private property? lol

So all anarchists are libertarians but not all libertarians are anarchists?

At 11/14/09 01:36 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote: Also gumOnShoe, in minarchism aka. limited-government libertarianism, the state protects people against fraud.

So, if the SEC & FDA were fraud based only you'd be fine with that? I mean otherwise, how does a government protect them? Wait for them to die then follow up?

[SadisticMonkey]

At 11/14/09 01:53 AM, gumOnShoe wrote: Might believe in private property? lol
So all anarchists are libertarians but not all libertarians are anarchists?

No, all anarchists are by definition anti-propertarian, though this isn't what defines them, so being anti-property doesn't necessarily make one an anarchist.

ie. the difference between libertarians and anarchists is not views on private property.

[SmilezRoyale]

At 11/13/09 04:05 PM, gumOnShoe wrote:

At 11/13/09 03:56 PM, AapoJoki wrote: Libertarians believe that the state should be absolutely minimal, for instance like a night watchman state. Anarchists believe that the state should be completely abolished.

In fact, every piece of literature that I've read in my very brief look into Libertarianism mentions fraud in some manor, yet many arguments on these boards specifically target the institutions that were established to be against fraud.

Minarchists do not hate the concept of an FDA in general. But the FDA has gone much farther in it's power to control the drug market than things that constitute fraud.

When i was a Minarchist, for example, My position was that the FDA should only enforce the law that says that companies must either A) Prohibit drug companies from putting false information on the drug lables or B) Enforce laws requiring drug companies to label all drugs with the ingredients / side affects.

But that the FDA should not have the power to Ban a drug from being put on the market, even if that drug was more harmful than good, so long as the information that that drug was harmful was present, doctors wouldn't sell it.

It's not fraud i sell a car to you, and TELL YOU that the car has a terrible steering system. It does constitute fraud if i sell the same car to you, telling you that it handles like a sports car. And since this particular thread concerns matters of libertarian theory and not the actual utility of doing such a thing i won't go on a harangue about why the FDA is killing people.

The key is that everyone has subjective preferences, health preferences, risk preferences, cost preference, and telling consumers what they can or cannot buy is not protecting them against fraud.

Even when i was a minarchist i was opposed to governments making it law that businesses and people are REQUIRED to do a particular thing, except that whatever a business does, it isn't dishonest about it.

If you need more examples you have to give me more bureaucracies that you think are established to protect against fraud.

[dudewithashotgun29]

Well, a liberitarian is a person who hates a large government, and favors restricting it from stuff it sees it doesn't need to do (eg. Healthcare, drugs, weapons). An anarchist is someone who wants no government what so ever.

[SEXY-FETUS]

To put it simply.
Protect me from others not from myself.

[TheMason]

The main difference between the two is that Libertarians believe in Locke's/Hobes'/Rousseau'ssocial contract theories whereas anarchists typically take a Hegalian or Marxist view that eventually government will be unnecessary and society will rule itself by the dictatorship of the proletariate.

Thus the Libertarian sees where limited government is a necessary evil. We recognize that the collective action problem can sometimes be best solved by a government that is elected by the people of a community.

For example; police, first responders, military and education are all things that government has shown to be proficient in...or at least better at than the private sector. However, there is a caveat here; the government that governs best is the government that is closest to the community. Outside of national defense, a Central or Federal government is not well-equipped to deal with local issues such as police, first responders and education. The Federal government's police initiatives under Clinton and Bush have expired or will expire soon which means local police departments are left high and dry with officers they cannot afford to pay.

In terms of education Clinton started the ball rolling with 'testing' and filling up the teacher's workload with things other than testing. Although he was eclipsed by the Kennedy-Bush 'No Teacher Left Standing' initiative.

So for the Libertarian the most important elections are local ones...or at least the ones that have the most impact on a person's life.

====

You also talk about the SEC and FDA and the 'security' they provide. Again, is this an area where the government has proven itself worthy of our trust? Are these organizations really all that effective?

SEC:
Failed to prevent:
* Enron
* Tyco
* Bernie Maddoff

Furthermore, should we feel sorry for investors who lost everything to these crooks. The answer is a resounding 'no'. The reason: they ignored the first rule of wise investing which is to diversify. I'll tell you a little story about me and my recent deployment to the desert. It is a tax-free deployment and I took the money I would pay Uncle Sam and invested it in a Scottrade account. Now I found this stock called Cornerstone Progressive Fund CFP. It pays a dividend of $0.20/a share on a monthly basis. Even in this economy I am making an annual return of 26%.

This is incredible. I've looked at the stock and it appears solid. It takes investor's money and invests it in other companies and shares the profits. Now it has been very difficult for me not to put all my would-be tax dollars into this investment. But I know to spread the risk. I put money into GE, Intel and a medical research firm or two. This way my risk is spread out across not only several companies...but several sectors.

I don't need the SEC to 'protect' me from bad investments. In fact they ignored all the signs (and even a whistleblower or two) and let Bernie Madoff commit a massive Ponzi scheme.

And guess what? The investors are still out of their life savings.

====

FDA
* Destroys personal liberty by overly regulating the approval process of new drugs and/or proceedures.
* Chases jobs out of the US in favor of less restrictive countries such as India where Americans are starting to go on 'medical vacations' to get experimental surgeries.

They get in the way more than they protect. Furthermore, they can be made a tool of lobbyists in blocking new/small research firms from bringing new products to market.

====

Healthcare:
I know you haven't brought this up, but it is a big one. Look I think many people who want healthcare reform are of noble intent. Thus they are not evil...just wrong. I mean how can anyone have faith in the government to 'fix' the system...when they have played such a huge part in fucking it up? Furthermore, how can we trust that the public option will deliver better healthcare when the three worst healthcare networks in the country are the three run by the federal government? They are:
* Medicare
* Tricare (military medicine)
* VA

First: Tricare
* Ruins people's credit. Tricare has a labyrinthian maze of paperwork to file a claim (much worse than what the insurance companies have). Therefore if a military family dependant has to be seen off base...the claim is often denied once or twice before being paid. Now, while it eventually gets paid, the individual's credit score takes a hit. At one point I had several thousand dollars of medical debt showing up on my credit report. I was hassled by debt collectors. It is a pain in the ass.
* Difficult to see a civilian doctor. I have to drive an hour to get to my primary care doc. Why? No one in my city wants to fuck with the hassle and little pay that Tricare gives.
* Military treatment facilities are only set-up to handle the healthcare needs of a very healthy population. Afterall, you have to pass a physical to get in. However, it is crushed under the weight of retirees and dependants. This lead to my ex-wife having a miscarriage after she got pregnant the second time. She was on heart meds that were contraindicated for pregnancy, but the Air Force nurse practioner would not let her see an OB-GYN which was necessary for the off-base referal until we went up the chain of command. By then it was too late and my ex lost the baby and became very, very sick.
* Before she got pregnant, my ex got accepted into medical school. After miscarrying she started medical school. Now during her professionalization courses they brought in military dependants to speak about Tricare and military medicine. The lesson? Democratic rhetoric aside, military medicine is NOT an acceptable model for delivering healthcare to the general population.

But do you want to know what is really perverse about Tricare and Medicare? They are adding to the skyrocketing cost of medical care.

See Medicare and Tricare only pays doctors and hospitals what they want to pay...they do not cover the actual cost of treatment. For example I got hurt on the plane ride back from my deployment. It was nothing severe, but I needed to be seen. My only options was to drive almost three hours to the nearest base...or go to the ER.

A month goes by and I get my statement. It shows what the hospital billed and what Tricare paid. Tricare paid less than half.

Now do you think the local hospital just eats that expense? Of course not...if it did then it would not be able to operate. So they spread the cost to people who can pay because they are rich or they have health insurance.

So you (or your employer) is effectively paying for all the Medicare and Tricare patients whose coverage does not cover their expenses. This is one key component to high healthcare costs. One that is only made worse by government intervention. (You did know the Medicare trustfund is bankrupt, right? And Social Security is expected to go tits up in 2017?)

But you'll never see Michael Moore make a movie about that...

[SmilezRoyale]

At 11/17/09 01:33 AM, TheMason wrote: Libertarians believe in Locke's/Hobes'/Rousseau'ssocial contract theories whereas anarchists typically take a Hegalian or Marxist view that eventually government will be unnecessary and society will rule itself by the dictatorship of the proletariate.

First of all not all libertarians are natural rights philosophers, Milton Friedman Libertarians are utilitarian. Bryan Caplan, one of the most prominent Libertarians, actually sneers at the Lockean-Rothbarian types that to him appear less like economists and more like abstract philosophers.

Second OP is probably not talking about communist-anarchists, anarcho-socialists or anarcho-syndacalists. My implication is that he is talking about Anarcho-Capitalists, (An-Caps for short) in the same way that Poxpowers thread "There's alot of Laws." was adressed to An-Caps

For example; police, first responders, military and education are all things that government has shown to be proficient in...or at least better at than the private sector.

There are no good post-industrial examples of market provision of security, but every argument i have heard against the individualistic market-driven (Markets are simply the voluntary interactions of people, nothing arcane or sinister or unnatural about it. ) provision of security, arguments which I put forward for quite awhile, are bankrupt when analyzed both in theory and in case study.

I'm not putting down current or former members of the police, military (Such as yourself), or education system. My Dad's a cop and many people in my family have worked for the government. My relations with teachers are as good as my relations with peers, but the institutions themselves are fundamentally anti-social, they are just barely governed by the the market, that is, they are barely governed by personal choices.

However if this becomes a discussion on the private provision of security, I will only do it in private. I'm not able or willing to spend hours covering multiple topics and multiple criticisms from multiple people who think they can 'outsmart' some utopian anarchist.

:However, there is a caveat here; the government that governs best is the government that is closest to the community.

This is because local governments operate more like a free market then the federal government. The key here is voluntaryism. Home buyers, in a sense, can very weakly control the production habits of local governments because home buyers factor in public services and the quality / price of those services when buying a home. Elections, being local, also means that generally the only people who vote on issues are people who have a genuine interest in those issues and the government offices themselfs are closer to the location of the general populace, politicians are also easilly within reach by the people which again makes local government function more like a free market monopoly than a state monopoly. Local governments are also much more limited in the extent to which they can incur deficits.

Obviously local governments are not close enough to being purely voluntary institutions that they are as well regulated as the emergent order; the free market.

In terms of education Clinton started the ball rolling with 'testing'

As pointed out before, the very things that make the education system less of a failsauce is the fact that people have some power to control what (Elections for some federal politician who lives hundreds of miles away and doesn't give a damn about you as long as you keep paying your impost is not control) kinds of education they are getting.

I hear a lot of Libertarian-Republicans or moderate libertarians talking about half-way education reforms. Voucher programs and things like it. Fundamentally, the arguments for these things (Giving the power to parents and students, having schools compete for one another, reducing government waste) come to a rational conclusion that the best solution to education is to abolish public education entirely.

The mere existence of private education and the fact that private schools on average spend less per student is a testament to the fact that the 'public' sector has left huge caps in demand for education.

[gumOnShoe]

These are points I have contention with, but I feel they are off topic since this topic is mainly supposed to be a comparison between the two groups Libertarian & Anarchist, but I still want to discuss them on some level, but in context.

In regards to local governments. They aren't exactly equipped to deal with conglomerate corporations or the newer global economy / internet infrastructure that has come into existence, in both of which places origin and parties involved may not be from even the same country. Short of a return to ultra isolation & tribalism, local governments and their closeness, I don't think can ever really come back.

So, if we allow anarchy to rule and abolish government we'll eventually merge back into that first stage. But, if what you're telling me about Libretarians is entirely accurate, then local governments don't 100% cover the basic requirements or ideals you would want in a government. And, I know you think government is disengenous, but any ruling body is a government. A local government might be able to stop a small time fraud, but not a large one...

And simply the scale of the federal government doesn't allow the same kind of representation. It seems to me, to make this work, the U.S. would need to be dissolved.

In regards to education, while agree there are flaws, my gf teaches in a private school and a lot of my background is with teachers from both private & public places. Private schools themselves aren't affordable to many families and teachers don't want to sink their pay grades in order to help educate the students. And if any of the students have special needs, the private system isn't capable of handling that either, nor is it required to, whereas in the public system this is taken care of.

From personal experience, people who went to private schools generally have a harder time socializing in the real world having been isolated in a single culture as well. This is more of an argument on observation though, and it certainly isn't true 100% of the time and its only a correlation, which does not imply cause.

I do agree the standardization isn't really helping though, but I see that less as a failing of public education and more as a failing in not letting good teachers teach how they should. The emphasis was placed on testing students instead of guaranteeing we had good teachers and got rid of the bad ones.

Obviously anarchy would eliminate educational institutions.

But the Libretarian policy of eliminating public institutions would leave many people unserviced, especially those without the means to pay for education. It seems this would breed a class of entirely uneducated people who couldn't afford theirs and can't afford their children's.

Basic things like reading, writing, arithmetic and computer skills, which you do need now for any job wouldn't be provided for thousands, possibly millions.

[Xavierthewarlord]

An Anarchist wants no goverment.

Ever.

Like, no Police, no Laws, nothing, a complete and total civilian run society, which would never work.

[SmilezRoyale]

At 11/17/09 04:30 PM, gumOnShoe wrote:

They aren't exactly equipped to deal with .....

For the sake of organizing the discussion, if you have any more questions or complaints about the need for the government to "Regulate Big Business" if you can even call it that. Please defer to the thread you yourself created on the topic as to why the points i brought up on regulation are wrong or if i left anything out.

Local government is not isolationism, and there is no correlation between the geographic size of a country or the ammount of power that a government holds and the connection to worldly affairs. Hong Kong thrived in world trade while China was largely in the shadows for quite some time.

Local governments, in fact, have the advantage of requiring free trade, Hong Kong again being an example. A country like the United States is large enough that it may be able to get away with smaller consequences of protectionist measures are less damaging because the country is it's own free trade bloc. Small countries cannot afford to do this and so engage in free trade with other countries, which enhances the necessity of diplomacy between those countries, because the nations wealth depends upon the interdependence of other nations. Bastiat had a rather famous saying "When Goods do not cross borders, Armies will"

And that again is another benefit of a small sized state, fielding large armies, especially in an era of free trade, is rather difficult.

Do not make the globalist fallacy of equating larger governments or even a one world government with international relations.

It's funny to talk about 'essentials' that which require 'regulation' by large and powerful states. Obviously these topics are necessary to be covered individually. But it's none the less interesting to see people talk about the necessity of leviathan states to 'regulate' the chaotic order that emerges from the internet. When we compare it with the national basket cases that are Health, Education, Sub-prime mortgage lending, essentially every super-regulated industry.

So, if we allow anarchy to rule and abolish government we'll eventually merge back into that first stage....

Large governments areuselessagainst fraud. And Mason made a point of showing that. It was the Austrians, not the enlightened oligarchs in the marble chambers of washington that warned of an economic collapse. No one in the SEC was listening when warnings were made that Madoff was running a ponzi scheme. the FDA never blew the lid on those aids tainted drugs that the drug cartel (which the FDA's and other federal instution's regulations inevitably gave birth to) sent into europe.

And again this is a topic that was dealt with but never finished in your other threads. If you have something more to say about federal drug regulation there please let me know because I absolutely hate being a libertarian. Like Glenn Beck i would much rather believe that everything is being taken care of by mommy and daddy. An analogy would be the fact that, as an Atheist, I would very much love the idea of definitive proof of the existence of an all-knowing and all benevolent creator.

Private schools themselves aren't affordable to many families and teachers don't want to sink their pay grades in order to help educate the students.

That is because the effect of public education itself makes demand for 'cheap' private education. (in truth, private education, most of it anyway, is already cheaper than public education.

Consider the following.

Rob's public school is funded through taxation of 5000$ per household. (The average money spent per child by a public school varies from 6-9k per year, on average in the united states. My School, according to some numbers i dug up, spends between 10K and 14K. (I checked two different websites that gave different answers, my economics teacher says the 10k answer is what is correct)

http://longisland.newsday.com/schools/ra nkings.php?id=spending

You might wrongly think this means that the taxes paid per household should only be half the cost per student, since there is always another house hold to pay for it, but remember that most families have more than one child in the family. If half the house holds have 2 children, then it's the same as saying there is one child cost per every house hold. (It's not really the same but the cost would be the same) Since the average cost per child is 6000 dollars, i set taxes at 5000.

I know the math is fuzzy but bear with me.

Rob's Public School's Price for applying is... Nothing. It's free, it's egalitarian, it's paid for by taxpayers.

Let us say that the Utility of Rob's Public school for a parent is 100 Utils.

Now let's say that Bob's private school's price for applying is equal to it's cost for applying, assuming this is an average public school, the tuition would be 3000 per year. (approx)

And let's say that the Utility of Bob's private school is fifty percent greater than that of the public school, 150 utils.

Would parents sent their children to the private school because it was less costly per child and because the utility was 1.5x that of a public school?

No.

Take the utility and divide it by the cost, remembering that people pay taxes regardless if they send their child to a private or public school and you get the following.

100/5000 = 1/50 or .02222 <-- this is the utility per dollar spent for the public school.
150/(5000+3000) 3/140 or .21428 <--- utility per dollar spent for the private school.

In general, the fact that public education is free means even if public education is more efficient, cheaper, (property taxes are extremely regressive, and most people

:the private system isn't capable of handling that either, :nor is it required to, whereas in the public system this is taken care of.

Bullshit. I had special needs as a pre-schooler and the public school system didn't offer it. I had to go to a non governmental school in the HASC program, it's non-profit but as far as i can tell it isn't run by the government. This is something most statists forget, the whole reason people vote for the welfare state is because there is an actual demand for a humane society. efficient and effective non-profit non-state organizations emerge, on the free market, like any other profit business, in response to demand.

Government education is notoriously one sized-fits all. in fact there used to be a day when the only place you could get specially designed education programs were through private means.

From personal experience, people who went to private schools generally have a harder time socializing in the real world having been isolated in a single culture as well.

Ironic statement considering most politicians are probably from private schools.

but I see that less as a failing of public education and more as a failing in not letting good teachers teach how they should.

A product of the political nature of the education system, you can't 'change' the system without butting heads with powerful unions. On a free market consumers don't put up with shitty service like tax payers concede to constant increases in the school budgets that excede the inflation rate, even when it doesn't change the value of the service.

Obviously anarchy would eliminate educational institutions.

Education existed before the government got involved, there was no 'shortage' of education prior to this. The impetus for public education had nothing to do with a lack of education, it was done in order to control and 'civilize' American children.

Look at the quotes of men like Dewey and Horrance mann, all they talk about obedience.

[FatherTime89]

Libertarian: We need a government but don't need/don't want it to be anything more than law enforcement, a military, and things like the CIA, and FBI to protect us from foreign threats, although they should be limited in their reach (no spying on the general populace, need warrant for search and seizure etc. etc.). I think I may have missed a few other functions they also think we need so don't yell at me if I missed some. Anyway this is the extreme libertarian, I think most of them are fine with the existence of state funded fire departments and schools (or at least they can be and still be considered libertarian).

Anarchist: We don't need a government. I've heard some talk about competing law enforcement agencies so it wouldn't be complete chaos but it was complex and I've forgotten a great deal of it.

Hope that helps.

[SadisticMonkey]

At 11/18/09 04:49 AM, Toggaf wrote: Fuck Austria.

I, along with all others who frequent politcs, would greatly appreciate it if you would leave and take your shaggy-esque posting with you.

[poxpower]

At 11/17/09 06:33 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

And that again is another benefit of a small sized state

Small size state is still a state.

Plus there is no definition for "small" in this case. Hong Kong is ENORMOUS. California is as big an economy as France.
So should France by split up into smaller governments? Or should California become its own country?

Large governments areuselessagainst fraud.

Just because they don't solve 100% of problems doesn't mean they solve no problems.
They protect against mounds of fraud and abuse and make everything smoother and more convenient without you realizing it.

For instance, you can know whether a food has peanuts or not in it. It's the law. Under anarchy, if you were allergic to peanuts, your life would just be harder and you might die at any time eating products made with no regulations whatsoever.
There's so many small things governments do that people take for granted, things to protect you when you don't even know it.

So whenever some big failure happens, people go apeshit over how evil the government is and how useless they are at their job.

Rob's public school is funded through taxation of 5000$ per household.

I can't think of a better thing to spend money on than education.
If you don't offer cheap education, poor people will stay poor and eventually your entire economy goes down.

Education is a great example of something people would NOT spend money on if they could avoid to because it's long-term. You don't see the effects before 20 years.

100/5000 = 1/50 or .02222 <-- this is the utility per dollar spent for the public school.

That's just not how you can measure something as complicated as this.

efficient and effective non-profit non-state organizations emerge, on the free market, like any other profit business, in response to demand.

Except they have to run on donations, randomly shut down or pay their employees peanuts.

Education existed before the government got involved,

There wasn't anything to teach.
We've all seen the results of "rich people only" education. It's called the Dark Ages.

[SmilezRoyale]

At 11/18/09 07:54 AM, poxpower wrote:

At 11/17/09 06:33 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

And that again is another benefit of a small sized state

Small size state is still a state.

An ideal system for the provision of all goods and services is gauged by how closely it can achieve a free market. The State makes a pure free market difficult to maintain in the short run, and in the long run a state makes even a relatively free market impossible to maintain. Or at least, so long as the state itself exists.

Plus there is no definition for "small" in this case. Hong Kong is ENORMOUS. California is as big an economy as France.

Small meaning geographically small (Which more or less correlates to, a state where the existence of choice between one state and another state is as minimally hampered as possible) A nation is geographically smaller than a world empire or world government. A province is geographically smaller than a nation, a county is geographically smaller than a province and so on.

States provide monopolized services of law, arbitration, defense, etc. The elasticity of demand for these services is determined by their essential nature, and, more importantly, how near by a potential substitute for these services is located and how much personal cost is involved in switching to that substitute.

In lay mans terms, a small state is less capable of getting away with passing insane laws because it is in tougher competition with other near by states that can be migrated to with less difficulty than large states.

The exact opposite of this would be a one world government where individuals have no power to defer to a secondary organization or another state for better justice, and, assuming a democratic state, would be left with no option but to convince more than half of the six to seven billion people on this planet to vote in 'the other party'. And whether or not that party even decides to change or make reforms is hardly gauranteed given the dubious nature of elections.

So should France by split up into smaller governments? Or should California become its own country?

If a bunch of people living in France feel oppressed by their government and want to provide their own protection, law, welfare services, and infrastructure, Yes. The same thing applies to California. It's pretty much what happened in the soviet union.

Large governments areuselessagainst fraud.

Just because they don't solve 100% of problems doesn't mean they solve no problems.

Useless may have been a bad term, I cannot imagine state services being so inefficient that they provide zero utility. I cannot imagine even with the huge waste on foreign aid, some of it falls in the hands of those who actually need it, i cannot imagine even with the enormous overhead of welfare programs that some of the welfare actually helps pull some small groups of people out of poverty.

But I'm more than confident that the compulsory and incentivized inefficiencies of the state make it so that Utility is not maximized through their taxpayer based programs and schemes.

They protect against mounds of fraud and abuse and make everything smoother and more convenient without you realizing it.

They have no reason to. If they suck, there's nothing i can do. I pay them regardless of the quality of their services and often times no one else is willing or even able to provide alternative services. For example, why is it illegal for states to secede from social security and provide their own state-wide social security if the people democratically voted for it?

I trust Angie's list more than the FDA (Although they are not regulatory agencies for the same goods, i trust their word more) Because the structure of Angie's list was EARNED not IMPOSED. If consumers felt that the information gained from the collection of consumer reviews gained via Angie's list was dishonest, they would stop paying in to it.

And if it was a general trend of human nature that people were too stupid to avoid such things, democracy would be equally useless at solving the problem since those same idiots are voting for archons whose decisions affect everyone.

For instance, you can know whether a food has peanuts or not in it. It's the law. Under anarchy, if you were allergic to peanuts, your life would just be harder and you might die at any time eating products made with no regulations whatsoever.
There's so many small things governments do that people take for granted, things to protect you when you don't even know it.

http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1119 392

Again, organize the discussion please. You already made a thread for this and have not yet replied. Bringing up the same topic that was left unfinished in one topic on a new topic is annoying IMO.

So whenever some big failure happens, people go apeshit over how evil the government is and how useless they are at their job.

No, go they go apeshit over how "Capitalism" (A word they cannot properly define) and free markets (i.e. individual human choice and freedom) has failed and how the government needs to 'fix' the problem.

I can't think of a better thing to spend money on than education.

Then spend your own god damn money on your own god damn education, and save the world the brain-washing and the inefficiencies of state education.

If you don't offer cheap education, poor people will stay poor and eventually your entire economy goes down.

The current public education system is funded through property taxes, which pretty much means if you're living in a poor neighborhood, your public education will suck, period. This is why undercity public education is so bad parents are so desperate to have them sent to charter schools or private schools via scholarships.

public education shafts the poor.

Education is a great example of something people would NOT spend money on if they could avoid to because it's long-term. You don't see the effects before 20 years.

Which is why it's entirely too important to be left to the chaos of the state.

Except they have to run on donations, randomly shut down or pay their employees peanuts.

It's a fucking miracle that any charitable agencies exist at all after the government has already taken a little less than one half of their disposable income. That people feel charitable afterwards given the so-called duty of the government to welfare suggests people are far more charitable than you take them for, or that people see through the failure of the welfare state.

That charities randomly shut down can be a result of multiple things, either the charity has proven itself a failure and donors see this. Or an economic downturn or sudden change in disposable income can kill charitable organizations, all of which is related to state involvement in economic life.

[SmilezRoyale]

Too long to post in a single post. Double posting, sorry.

Education existed before the government got involved,

There wasn't anything to teach.

The level of information that needs to be learned has nothing to do with the necessity of government to run it. My feeling is this is going to probably segue into a discussion about scientific research but I'm too low on characters to dedicate a special segment on it, If it does get brought up I'll deal with it.

Education, at least at a secular level, always has been of highest quality in places where the state interfered the least with it. Secular non governmental schools were far more common in Britain than in France. And the state insistence on their 'agents' and no one else running education kept the french country far more intellectually backward than her northerly neighbor.

We've all seen the results of "rich people only" education. It's called the Dark Ages.

You've made a fool of yourself not only as a historian but as an atheist. Education in the dark ages could legally have only been provided by the Church or by guilds. Churches were the propaganda arm of the state and were heavily state funded until the enlightenment which was, you guessed it, spearheaded by the ancestors of classical liberalism.

State education is not 'new' nor is it advanced nor is it enlightened.

[Gorstak]

This picture says it all :P

[FatherTime89]

At 11/19/09 09:29 PM, Gorstak wrote: This picture says it all :P

Actually no that picture misses a huge feature of libertarianism. Yes they like fewer government, yes they generally don't like government but yet they still realize that we're going to need one. Do you like paying taxes? If no would you still agree that they're a necessary evil (and I mean taxes in general)?

Similar principles apply.

[SmilezRoyale]

At 11/19/09 09:29 PM, Gorstak wrote: This picture says it all :P

Most anarchists of the kind portrayed in that picture Oppose government on purely heiarchical grounds. And they treat the abolition of private property as being the primary objective, the abolition of state as being a secondary objective. They ignore that private property is an emergent understanding between individuals to allow each other total sovereignty over what they have acquired voluntarily from others via labor, trade, or as gifts, and in exchange recognize the right of the other person to do the same with theirs. Government is an exception to this rule and a perversion of emergent understanding, that governments can disobey these rules with very limited restraints for reasons that are never explained, or are of such poor argumentative quality that those who profess the arguments defeat themselves by simply explaining what the mean by them.

Anarchists who want to abolish private property are like Noam Chompsky, they're egalitarian despots who pretend to hate the government.

[mikailus]

I'm against both ideologies since they will epically fail.

[Ericho]

A libretarian is a person who wants the government to have less power over us. An anarchist is this taken to a more extreme level with no government at all. Anarchy has had little power in the United States or really any other country for that matter, so to say it is on the same level as libretarianism is not accurate.

[gumOnShoe]

At 11/17/09 06:33 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: Local government is not isolationism,

Wait... right here you missed my point. I didn't say a local government was isolated, I said a local government was equipped to deal with international trade and communication in the way that a larger government would be. The expenses of such regulation aren't feasible, yet letting a conglomerate exist with out some regulation leads to an environment where abuse will be more than abundant.

And the point about isolationism is that if you want an effective local government, you'd have to isolate yourself from such conglomerates. Any attempt to standardize international law will eventually lead to just another federal government.

Local governments, in fact, have the advantage of requiring free trade, Hong Kong again being an example. A country like the United States is large enough that it may be able to get away with smaller consequences of protectionist measures are less damaging because the country is it's own free trade bloc. Small countries cannot afford to do this and so engage in free trade with other countries, which enhances the necessity of diplomacy between those countries, because the nations wealth depends upon the interdependence of other nations. Bastiat had a rather famous saying "When Goods do not cross borders, Armies will"

Yeah, but free trade doesn't mean introducing monopolistic firms which actively set prices and collude where there isn't enough law or enforcement to stop them.

And that again is another benefit of a small sized state, fielding large armies, especially in an era of free trade, is rather difficult.

* Looks at the middle east *

It's funny to talk about 'essentials' that which require 'regulation' by large and powerful states. Obviously these topics are necessary to be covered individually. But it's none the less interesting to see people talk about the necessity of leviathan states to 'regulate' the chaotic order that emerges from the internet. When we compare it with the national basket cases that are Health, Education, Sub-prime mortgage lending, essentially every super-regulated industry.

I'd still say a lot of drug & food regulation is more than important. I wouldn't necessarily agree with all patents & protectionism. But true regulation, where you regulate whether a product is harmful for society is important.

Large governments areuselessagainst fraud. And Mason made a point of showing that. It was the Austrians, not the enlightened oligarchs in the marble chambers of washington that warned of an economic collapse.

Which deregulation facilitated.

No one in the SEC was listening when warnings were made that Madoff was running a ponzi scheme.

Colossal failure I couldn't combat. However: Michael C. Regan & I'm sure there are others.

the FDA never blew the lid on those aids tainted drugs that the drug cartel (which the FDA's and other federal instution's regulations inevitably gave birth to) sent into europe.

Also a failure, but there are other products they have caught.

Several times space ships have blown up on the way to space. We should stop sending spaceships because they never make it.

Like Glenn Beck i would much rather believe that everything is being taken care of by mommy and daddy.

It'll never happen. A system is only as good as the people you put in it. But regulation makes things better and catches some problems. Not all government is bad and I would think a Libretarian being anti fraud wouldn't mind some preemptive investigation in areas where such a thing is predictable and likely to happen (food, drug, & economy).

[gumOnShoe]

At 11/17/09 06:33 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

Private schools themselves aren't affordable to many families and teachers don't want to sink their pay grades in order to help educate the students.

That is because the effect of public education itself makes demand for 'cheap' private education. (in truth, private education, most of it anyway, is already cheaper than public education.

But it isn't just about total cost per child. We're also talking about affordibility, class size, and what is provided. If you want a public school to cost less it is your prerogative to join the board of education and campaign for such practices. Why would an educational institute NEED to spend more money if it were run by a government (local even) body instead of a private institution. There are many reasons for this. Some of them include just the salaries of the workers who are often paid better than their private counterparts. If there are 20 students in a class and the teacher makes 40,000 a year that's already 2000 per student which is already 1000 more than a private teacher makes. I'm basing this on local starting salaries.

We're also talking about requiring book updates more often, generally 100 dollars per book/student, costs of keeping up with technology, running buses etc.

Total cost for a private school isn't indicative of a quality of education.

In general, the fact that public education is free means even if public education is more efficient, cheaper, (property taxes are extremely regressive, and most people

I'm sorry, your paragraph never ended. I think what you are getting at though is that someone who pays for private education also has to pay for public and you don't think this is fair. My response to this is that unless private education becomes affordable to families who don't make enough, tough shit. Give everyone the opportunity to access equal levels of education to the best ability possible or too bad.

Bullshit. I had special needs as a pre-schooler and the public school system didn't offer it.

Most states don't have these requirements until grade K. I also know several kids who had to be pulled out of private institutions because the schools wouldn't meet their needs. They were put in public schools and were provided for immediately.

I had to go to a non governmental school in the HASC program, it's non-profit but as far as i can tell it isn't run by the government.

Its heavily affiliated with state schools & colleges and probably a lot of its workers go to those schools.

Additionally:
http://www.hasc.net/about.php
Unless I'm misreading this, funding is provided by CSE
CSE

But I agree, Jews are awesome. ^_^

This is something most statists forget, the whole reason people vote for the welfare state is because there is an actual demand for a humane society. efficient and effective non-profit non-state organizations emerge, on the free market, like any other profit business, in response to demand.

Yes, but they aren't wide spread and they unfortunately have limits for how many people they can actually help. My girlfriend worked as a TSS for a short time before she was driven from it because the families couldn't pay enough for her to ever have a career and the organization didn't receive enough funding either. Yes public programs weren't filling the gap, but private ones don't necessarily do that either. A combination of the two does wonders.

Ironic statement considering most politicians are probably from private schools.

Don't confuse having family connections and being affluently elitist with this. Also, we'd have to see which schools did they go to? Did they go to the private schools that cost less than public schools or the ones that cost more. If they went to the ones that cost more maybe we aren't spending enough on public education.

Education existed before the government got involved, there was no 'shortage' of education prior to this.

Anarchists don't assemble or believe in government so they can't have institutions or schools or businesses because all of these things create micro governments to run everything.

Just like markets are in everything, government is in everything.

[Cuppa-LettuceNog]

Anarchy is built on the premises that government in useless, and ultimately is a hinderence to the welfare and advancement of humanity. To embrace anarchy is to embrace the idea that government serves no ultimate purpose, and that their actions are useless to society; that we need no police officers to arrest criminals or keep peace, that we don't need a military to ward of foreign invasion, that we don't need roads or firefighters.

Libertarianism is the direct polar opposite. We believe that government is a valuable, irreplaceable aspect of human society and need to protected. However, our beliefs rest on the premise that government is most useful and effective when it is used sparingly and performs only the essential functions which can not be done by the private sector of America. By limiting the scope of government to the necessities, we insure that it keeps focus and devotes it's full energy to what's important. When government expands and gets out of control, branching off and growing fat with excessive weight, it becomes unable to handle the important duties we place on it. A government wasting it's time defining and legislating morality, telling people who they can and can not marry, telling companies what they can and can't sell, telling people what they can and can't say and think, is a government that is stretched beyond capacity and which finds itself unable to perform it's real duties: to insure and protect the life, freedom, and liberty of it's citizens.

We don't want to limit government because we hate it and want it abolished. We want to limit government to insure that it is able to effectively commit to the actions which are actually required of it. When the Vikings let the backup take over a few snaps for Adrian Peterson, it isn't because they hate him and want him kicked off the team; it's because giving an athlete 450 carries a season does nothing but leave him broken, over used, over stressed, and ultimately useless.