Does libertarianism just shift tyranny from the government to individuals?

chiro

You have collective responsibility and personal responsibility: personal is something we can look after but collective is something different.

Ultimately the collective stems from the sum of all personal actions so when everyone does the best to take their own responsibility not only for themselves but how that translates into other things, then this is a way to indirectly show a contribution to collective responsibility.

I think this whole game we are playing is one an experiment to teach us about freedom and especially what the consequences are of not only our personal actions but how all these actions relate to the actions of everyone else: i.e. just a way to teach us about cause and effect and like Sklyer0114 said: the ability to do things and live through their consequences.

With regard to your welfare comment, I think you should use your own insight and see it from the collective set of all actions that are somehow integrated into the complex mechanisms of societal structure that we see today.

We offer welfare if we believe in such a thing (and many of us do) and I think if you ask a lot of people why they would support and not support something, the most important questions to ask include "Would you like the outcome if it happened to you?" (this is probably the best way to judge equity under uncertainty especially when everyone agrees but then again this is hard) and most importantly "Has it happened to you?" or a weak version would be "Have you been around someone that has experienced it?"

Personal responsibility forces the individual to consider the consequences of their actions and social responsibility forces them to consider how their actions have a ripple effect everywhere else.

The thing though is that we all have different experiences and are moulded in different ways so the only real definite way to get even some insight into the experiences with others is through some form of highly concentrated empathy (and I don't mean this BS of comforting someone who's husband died: anyone can do that).

Some might say that the social responsibility is then largely taking the time out to think of what others have gone through so that the personal actions can be considered in the context of these outcomes.

Unfortunately we have a lot of people who just don't know any better and if they are kept in the dark of what the real world is like (both good and bad), their own actions will reflect the absence of this knowledge and likely result in things that others with such experience or knowledge may despise: the best we can do is not to expect them to follow what we say, but just to tell them what is going on so that they can make up their mind and ultimately at the end of the day, they do.

No one is an island though, and in hindsight I think it's a good thing: the reason why a lot of stuff is so screwed up is because people are so ignorant of what is really happening out there in the real world, and as a result things as so distorted as to cause many people to not only make certain decisions but to support collectively others making similar ones.

Skyler0114

I never said that welfare removes freedom, that is a fallacy. You took my statement that there exists a subset of people on welfare who lose freedom by becoming so dependent on the state. Instead you are saying I said that being on welfare implies you have less freedom, which is not true. It can provide you with more freedom (fix a broken leg, treat an illness) but it can at the same time make you a slave to the system.
I never said that either is a bad thing or that they are the only forms of freedom, only that freedom has checks and balances within it.

Skyler0114

Well thought out analysis.
It's nice to see that someone took the time to try and see what I was saying. As am I glad someone was able to bring empathy into this discussion. It is such a crucial part of the human experience, I can't even begin to describe it. I know some of my comments make it sound as though I'm saying everyone should really be on their own, but that's completely not what I mean.

I believe that given an opportunity, a person can truly do great things, but we need the freedom to innovate society on our own terms. Society should be what each individual wants to make out of it, and institutionalizing our society and forcing people into the structure should not be desirable in a truly free society. Trying to take another's freedom should not be tolerated, unless the actions of that person's freedom will deprive others of their freedom. We should be free to decide what we define our society as.

Ryan_m_b

This doesn't seem to match up with what you've said previously but ok. I still don't agree that welfare ever removes your freedom. If there is a reason that you can't leave welfare then whatever that factor is is what is removing your freedom.
In my experience very few people disagree with this but what they define as depriving of freedom and how they rate said deprivation can be very different. Person A may argue that the fact that mimimum wage deprives them of their freedom to offer what they want for an employee makes it wrong, however person B may argue that mimimum wage results in greater freedom for the most amount of people by reducing the chance of economic oppression.

russ_watters

RE: welfare removing freedom: Ryan, do you consider taxes and elimination of choice to be a reduction of freedom? To me it would appear that social programs reduce negative liberty through taxes and loss of choice, while increasing positive liberty. And, of course, the people having negative freedom reduced and those having positive freedom increased are two different groups. And that last part doesn't play well with what you said about deprivation of freedom. You gave an example that supports your view, but it wasn't relevant to the topic at hand. Minimum wage laws protect negative liberty, but positive liberty for one usually comes at the expense of negative liberty for another....unless, of course, we abandon some traditional forms of liberty.

Ryan_m_b

We're mostly in agreement here. Increases in some forms of freedom can come at the expense of others. Whether or not one believes that is justified depends first on ones morals and second on the evidence that points to whether or not those actions help achieve moral goals.

russ_watters

Fair enough. Extending that, I'd say that while Western political history/theory/development from Hobbes to about 1900 focused almost exclusively on protection of negative liberty, the past 100 years has seen provision of positive liberty go from virtually nonexistent to elevation above negative liberty in many cases. Your opinion?

russ_watters

Extending further, while I think few people would disagree that providing needs to the truly needy serves a moral good, where we would disagree is:
1. What is true need?
2. Should gov't provide beyond true need?
3. How much negative liberty should be sacrificed to achieve these?

Oltz

1. How can we even determine this when a majority still define "poverty" as a percent of average income regardless of quality of life? The "poor" now live better then the majority did 80 years ago. Being poor and being in poverty are not the same.

2. No.

3. As little as possible.

The key moment in history for that philosophical change in our governments role was the passage of the 16th amendment in 1913 changing how the federal government receives funds. Prior to that they needed to bill each state based on its census population and the states raised the funds by what ever means each state legislature had agreed upon.

Once state taxes and federal taxes were divorced the federal government was able to give itself more money any time it needed it by simply adding a new tax or fee. Thus starting the tax and spend cycle. Paving the way for the predicted demise of democracy in the famous quotes about candidates buying votes with other peoples money and the majority realizing they can vote themselves money.

By the way some states funded through taxes others with tolls and fees for licensing (barber, hunting, liquor) the key being that the constitution had given the federal government strict limits on its ability to directly raise funds as a check against governments accumulation of power (tyranny)

The 17th Amendment completed the task by making state senators elected by popular votes instead of chosen by state legislature. This made the senate more susceptible to the innate desire to favor certain constituencies and certain parts of their state that had larger populations and more easily influenced by the public instead of answering to a more equally distributed legislature and governor who had the express task of watching over the shoulders of the senators.

The write up on wiki for the 17th is actually pretty good.

mheslep

I find idea that "welfare" never "removes freedom" frustrating. The decades of experience with welfare, followed later by reform, grant us a good data set to show the effects of welfare dependency and all that goes with it: increased poverty rate, increased out of wedlock and teenage pregnancy. To my mind these afflictions are also loss of freedom, brought about by state action.

Ryan_m_b

I'm not sure I know enough about the history of the various countries to comment.
That's a very hard question. To be honest I'd rather not use the term need at all because it's largely arbitrary; some would say that need is purely the physical needs of food, safety, healthcare etc but others (me amongst them) would go on to include economic and social needs. Human beings have more needs to live fulfilling lives than is usually thought. I'd say a need is something that is necessary to allow you to live to fulfilled, prosperous and healthy life. It's easier to work out on a case by case basis but to be honest I think we lack a suitable metric by which to measure it by.
In a democratic setting in theory a government is what the majority of people taking part want it to be (that includes majority support for legislation to avoid majority rule). In terms of providing I'd like to replace that with the term "take steps to ensure/enhance". Going back to the idea of a metric if we did have a technique that we use to measure a range of things from underemployment rates to happiness levels I'd say a governments role is to ensure ever higher scores on that metric.
It's largely incomparable without a good metric and some data to look at. If we just took a simple metric like GDP per capita then we might as a question a long the lines of "would GDP per capita increase/decrease if we took X% from these people and used it to educate these people?" Does that make sense?

Skyler0114

Quite frankly, as a person living in the US I think our system so backwards. Welfare can go awry and when it does it can be debilitating to the individuals involved. Apparently student loans for a masters degree can count as benefits that interfere with welfare. Here is an example of what I mean:
http://familyfraud.com/i-need-legal-...lege-loans.htm
Personally I think that student loans should not be considered welfare in any sense of the word. It's a loan.

Our health care system is completely backwards, with the majority of medicine being focused on treating symptoms, not the disease itself or the sources of disease. Instead of producing healthy citizens it's only there to treat us once we get sick. Instead institutions that promote poor health are either grandfathered into our society or are integrated into our society.

Our agricultural backbone is buckling from the effects of genetically modified food, which ironically ties back into topics. I honestly don't see how one can claim that food that enables higher concentrations of pesticides within food, or provides the plant the ability to produce pesticide, should not be subject to long term studies before being deployed into the agricultural infrastructure of our country. If there is even a few studies that indicate a new product is dangerous to consumers, why should it be allowed into the market? How does being forced to buy seeds every crop cycle due to the plants being sterile decrease costs to farmers?

Our environmental policies are very weak. Corporations causing terrible environmental damage, such as hydraulic fracturing go on with little issue even when they refuse to acknowledge the existence of dangerous chemicals in their "fracking fluid" or the fact it gets absorbed into farmers groundwater. Those times that the government steps in the companies are given a slap on the wrist. Ranchers with animals dying due to contaminated groundwater are provided with water as the frackers continue to frack up the local ecosystem.

If any one wants to nitpick with the last 3 points just know that this isn't uneducated blabber, and that I've spent months looking at evidence in those areas (and a lot more). You will kind of open up a flood gate if you decide to debate on those, and I really would rather not think about such sad things. But, I digress. The "safety net" that the US government is allegedly producing has so much wrong with it that its only going to get worse if we continue to expand it without doing ALOT of house cleaning first.

Oltz

First I would love to see sources for any of this.

Second the reason our medical care focuses on symptoms is that is what consumers are willing to pay for to get remedy the market pushed care in that direction. Think about it many people I know will spend 20 dollars a month treating a symptom instead of thousands up front for a cure, but there is another reason I personally need major back surgery but I would not be able to even start rehab for a year and then would need months of rehab before I could go back to work. I can not afford to be off work that long can you ? so I treat the symptoms as best I can.

Third every plant an animal we currently produce can be considered GMO due to selective breading even "wild rice" is not wild rice. With out GMO crops modern machinery and irrigation the world would starve. Per acre pesticide use is down in the US from pest resistant crops AFAIK.

Fourth Show me one case where "livestock was killed due to groundwater contamination" the only cases I know of where livestock was harmed were actually surface spills. Which if you have ever been in industry you know can not be completely avoided only mitigated as best as possible. I also have never seen a single test showing frac chemicals in ground water. There are plenty of cases of Methane in water but that obviously is not a frac chemical. Lastly http://fracfocus.org/chemical-use/wh...icals-are-used the chemicals are easily available at several registries like the one linked to help with confusion you look at a list like that and any given job will select 4 or 5 chemicals off of that list and they are added to water at ratios in the 1 to 2 gallons per thousand gallons of water. They are then pumped a mile underground where they mix with millions of gallons of brine (salt) water that are already present at that depth making the chemicals highly dilute and frankly very far from any potable water. Failed casing and cement jobs can and hve casued issues but again these are not "fracking" problems they are drilling and well integrity problems.

My degree is environmental geology and I work for a natural gas producer in PA. I am not sure what any of these points has to do with the election but I am curious. I will have any conversation you like in PM.

Galteeth

Yes, this is a point a lot of people miss in the debate. "Welfare" and collective interest do not necessarily have to come from government. I think in many ways, pawning off social problems on the government makes people less inclined to the collective interest, as in "that's the government's problem, not mine." I think it's a pretty dim view of humanity that says no one would ever help anyone else unless they're forced to do so at gunpoint.

Ryan_m_b

I think that's a mischaracterisation of taxes and how people perceive but regardless charities do not raise as much money as governments in similar fields and I don't see that they would necessarily if governments weren't responsible for those fields. Take healthcare for example in countries with no universal healthcare schemes. Are there charities that attract enough money to provide for those who cant pay?

jduster

The answer is yes.

Angry Citizen

I believe that this has become a naive view, given that the killing capacity of firearms has improved markedly since the late 18th century, and given that the military could stomp the populace of America with relative ease despite the prevalence of high-powered munitions in the public domain.

Furthermore, I believe the Second Amendment was clearly intended to support the use of well-regulated militias, not Joe Six-Pack having a Howitzer in his backyard. We have well-regulated militias - they're known as the National Guard. Does anyone seriously believe the Texas National Guard will ever fire a shot in anger at the United States Army, even if the United States becomes a tyranny?