What do you think of the libertarian party?

Question

http://www.lp.org/issues/platform_all.shtml

Mary Eda - you bring up a lot of good points, I only take issue with your feeling that government provides rights. Government does not provide rights. Government can only restrict rights. Government can give out priveleges. A right, however, is something you are born with. It is the ability to conduct transactions on a voluntary basis, this includes voluntarily submitting yourself to force and enforcement.

The idea behind property rights is pretty powerful. The idea is that you can do whatever you want on your property and I can do whatever I want on my property.

And one's own body is included as personal property. Basically, the right to ingest and remove whatever you want, including removal of one's own life.

And while you are right to be concerned about poor, you overlook humanity's compassion and focus soley on their greed. While greedy, humans are also a charitable bunch. Private property means the ability to use it according to ones own values, including helping

Answer 1

I don't have time to check your link, but I think they're ok in principle. They seem to take the few remaining good parts of the Republicans (freedom of the individual) and leave the religious baggage.

That being said, they strike me as an overly boring, overly serious lot.

Answer 2

I think that the Libertarian party is the best political party that exists, because they have the right idea about how to protect our borders. Libertarians also think that we should strictly follow the Constitution when it comes what laws govern us too and I also think that we wouldn't have gotten into this whole mess with the Middle East if our president was a member of the Libertarian party.

Answer 3

I like it...good in theory, but the problem is that most Americans have come to rely too much on the government and won't want to give up that security.

Answer 4

It's awesome. We need to throw out these bums' we currently have in office. The GOP and the DNC are equally worthless.

Answer 5

A bit too far away from the mainstream. My opinion only.

Answer 6

hmmmmm its open freindship kind

Answer 7

not much

Answer 8

Libertarianism is the belief that the maximum happiness for the maximum number is best procured by :
promoting individuals' rights and freedoms, particularly property rights. Since Libertarianism is mainly propounded by Americans on the internet, individuals' rights to bear arms frequently feature very strongly in addition
reducing the role of government in individuals' lives to a minimum
allowing all services to be provided in a totally free market, though not necessarily an unregulated one
avoiding the initiation of force except in "self-defence" and, sometimes additionally, to enforce contracts.
As with any idealogical model, libertarianism is much fragmented and there are many variations on the theme but the above seems to be a reasonable generic list.
Individuals in this essay may be taken to be the smallest political unit, be it one person or a family group. A number of individuals acting in concert form a community. Either an individual or a community may act as a party in any interaction and I use party throughout unless the more specific terms Individual or Community are required.
Initiation of force is the ultimate no-no in Libertarianism. It is a very loosely defined term, if indeed it is defined at all, so here's my idea of what it means -- Initiation of Force is when one or more parties in a transaction act in such a manner as to compel other parties in that transaction to act in a manner contrary to their own perceived best interests.
Contracts are the main interactions in Libertarian models and, as is commonly understood in other models, are binding agreements between any number of parties. The precise interpretation of Contract will become important later on.
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Arguments in favour of Libertarianism
There is no doubt that the proponents of Libertarianism have many persuasive arguments on their side. Libertarianism, after all, is popular among many groups of intelligent people, most noticeably the internet-aware. I would never have thought about the subject too deeply had I not been connected to the internet : I'm from Scotland and we're not too big on Libertarianism over here. I should also say, in fairness to all concerned, that certain points of the Libertarian program are eminently sensible. It is my belief that it is unnecessary to legislate against damaging yourself, only damaging other people.

The main arguments for Libertarianism, then, may be summarised as follows. I make no apology for over-simplification in this section since much of it is over-simplified or idealistic to begin with. I've tried to keep this section entirely pro-libertarian but keen readers will doubtless spot my own bias creeping in. I've numbered them so we can return to them later on.

Individuals' Rights are the foundation of a well-governed community
How can anyone disagree with the basic position that the community that respects and promotes the basic freedoms of its members is more likely to be contented and well-governed than one which does not? Enforcement of property rights means the members of the community are assured of a place to live. Freedom to bear arms means they feel secure in the knowledge that they can resist with deadly force those who wish to infringe on their freedoms. Freedom from discrimination means that they will be confident that they will arrive at the position best suited to their attributes and abilities.

Property rights are the cornerstone of this idea as this ensures that everyone has a vested interest in their community. The lack of respect for your property rights by Government engenders insecurity, fear and mistrust and produces poor citizens. Conversely, if you know that, come what may, your personal property (land, house and indeed your person) are your own and protected by strong rights in law, you are secure and stable within your chosen community. A community that is secure is one which will endure (hmmm..., a possible slogan there, methinks).

Parties, by avoiding the Initiation of Force, will get along better
Since all parties in the community will be committed to the non-initiation of force and since it will be the absolute right of all members to respond to the initiation of force with force, this provides a suitable system of checks and balances to keep order without the need for a Government-run police force. Since security and law enforcement can be provided by private companies which will be able to provide such services at a reasonable cost, the market will provide such mechanisms if they become necessary.

In addition to this, since all parties are aware that all other parties are armed and able to protect their freedoms with deadly force, it necessarily follows that all parties will respect each other's rights. An armed society, as esr has observed, is a polite society.

As all parties have an interest in the community, it will be stronger
In reply to the commonly heard criticism "But how would Libertarians defend their borders without a military force?", the simple reply is that all members of the community have a vested interest in its continuation. Also, all members are armed and versed in their rights. Thus, any attempt to overwhelm the community by force will be met by the combined might of the citizenry, formed into a militia for the duration of the crisis. This model has been shown to work by the example of Switzerland where all (FIXME male only?) citizens are required to do military training, be part of the reserve militia and keep their weapons at home, fit for use. And Switzerland has been successfully neutral for hundreds of years and is a very polite country. In addition, this armed citizenry resisting aggressive attempts to quell their community is essentially the story of the American War of Independence.

To quote esr again, "[W]ould you want to invade a country full of well-armed libertarians?"

Government taxation is largely synonymous with coercion
The government steals your property (ie deducts or demands taxes from your income and enforces this deduction by law) for no other reason than it can. The fact that it has been "voted" for is meaningless -- it can be mathematically proven that no voting system is ever fair and anomalies will always arise and there is a history of despotic governments being eagerly voted for by their subjects in "fair" elections. The taxes do not pay to provide you with a service so they are not proportionate to your received services and it is likely you will give more than you receive. In addition, if you don't pay what's demanded of you then the Government has allowed itself the power to send armed agents after you to collect what it says it is owed. Governmental actions have no checks or balances.

Given this, it is clear that Governments infringe on personal freedoms and so are not governing in the best interests of the community -- see point one. Coercion here may be regarded as an initiation of force and so an appropriate response would be to defy this with force in "self-defence".

The Market will provide all services at an equilibrium level
If I want a loaf of bread, I can go to Mike, Alex or Jane, all of whom are bakers. If Mike charges 20 shekels for a loaf and Alex and Jane charge 15 shekels but Alex' bread is tastier, clearly I will buy from Alex. Over time, everyone will buy from Alex so Mike and Jane will adjust their price and quality respectively or else change business. Assuming they don't change business, bread will soon be 15 shekels from all three and one or other will decide to undercut the competition in order to get more trade. Over further time the price of bread will stabilise at an equilibrium rate. Alex, Mike and Jane will do regular business and the community will have bread. This argument extends to all other commodities such as electricity, water, transport, weapons and so on. This parable demonstrates the smooth working of market economics.

A common argument against libertarianism is on the grounds that if, say, one becomes unemployed then doors will close to you -- you cannot afford medical treatment, your mortgage etc. but this is untrue. While employed you insured yourself with companies which provide you with these items whilst you are unable to provide them for yourself. Your old-age pensions and care requirements are likewise provided by private companies with whom you have insured yourself against these times. These companies, as with private insurance companies currently trading, will be able to provide these services at a competitive cost and still turn a profit.

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Basic problems with Libertarianism
This section concerns itself with actual physical delivery problems and human nature problems. In any final analysis, Libertarianism is a system intended to guide the interactions of people living in a society so if they are a problem then that problem must be dealt with.

The Human Problem -- people aren't fair
People will favour what they favour, consciously or unconsciously : "No dogs, no blacks, no Irish" was a common sight in the windows of UK guest houses in the sixties. No problem there under libertarianism, the guest house is simply enforcing its property rights but if whole communities do so, there's no problem there either since government won't interfere in property disputes. And when workplaces enforce the same rights? The result is underclasses and segregation. In libertarian philosophy, apartheid is fine since it's just the owners of property deciding who they will permit to use that property. And who'll enforce anti-discrimination laws? Come to that, who'll make them? To use esr's FAQ again, libertarians "...oppose racism, sexism, and sexual-preference bigotry, whether perpetrated by private individuals or (especially) by government." But there's no sign of how they'd enforce that in a low government society where all transactions are carried out between commercial entities.

The Community Problem -- it's mine, not ours
I very rarely see, in pro-Libertarian writings, mention of communal services or, much more complex, communal property. The idea of community property is very important to society -- all societies of which I am aware have some idea of "group property", from common grazing land to white bicycles. Individuals naturally want the largest amount of property possible to them but a community with no "public" property cannot function -- at least, if one ever has I have yet to find out about it. The centres of many cities contain large public parks which are effectively communal property.

This lack of communal property leads not unnaturally to a lack of attachment to a community. If everything is someone's specific property then in what way are your interests best served by protecting it? In the example I gave above, of Switzerland, the well-armed citizen militia live in a tightly-regulated country proud of its independence and neutrality and with a governmental stance that allows it to continue enjoying this neutral position in the centre of Europe. Of course, it also enjoys certain geographical advantages that make it inconvenient to invade.

The Market Problem -- you can't sell everything
You can't sell air is one thing often heard. But another example may be useful : I write this in my house (private property, of course) at about 11:30 at night. It's dark outside but there are streetlights so I can see there's no burglar in my front garden. In a libertarian society, of course, a private company (Streetlites-R-Us) runs these lights and I pay them for their light. If I default on a payment then, presumably, they'll turn off my light leaving the lights outside my neighbours' houses switched on. But their lights spill into my property so I can still see there's no burglar. Have I "stolen" their light?

The Start-up Problem -- where's our baseline?
It is decided. We become a libertarian country as of midnight tonight. At 00:01, who will own my house? Me? Well, I owe many thousands of pounds of its purchase price to a building society, from whom I borrowed the money. Do they own my house? Well, they're owned by the people who have money invested in them, they're a Mutual Society in UK law. I have a loan from them but my wife has a savings account with them so she's a member and I'm not -- does she own my house? She's only got a few hundred pounds and my house is worth many thousands but the society has charge over the property -- is my house owned by the people who have savings with the building society and in what proportions?

Bollocks to that, you think, you own the house and have entered into a contract to pay back the purchase price to the Building society. OK, then who owns the streetlight outside my front garden? The council (Government -- bad!) currently own it and change the bulb if it blows but we're all libertarians now so it must be private property, but whose? Have I turned over all the council property to private companies and if so where do these private companies come from? If I get a gun can I declare it my property and defend it?

In short, who decides what's mine in the New Libertarian Utopia?

It's a trivial looking problem but there's no simple answer. I discuss this a bit more later on.

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More subtle problems
The Rights Problem -- only if we say so
This one's awkward. The USA has a Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the constitution including Free Expression and Bearing Arms), there's a UN Declaration on Human Rights and likewise an EU charter of Human Rights so it's probably going to sound a bit presumptuous of me to say that, actually, nobody has any rights at all. Of any sort.

None.

What we have is a set of conditions that we think human communities should provide as a starting position. They aren't rights any more than money is a right -- they are simply conditions communities believe they should provide. And there's the rub -- someone has to guarantee those rights or they're worthless. And who guarantees them? Government.

Now, a US libertarian will say that their rights are guaranteed by the constitution but that misses the point : the constitution is merely a set of ideas and desires. It's not a guarantee of anything unless there's an enforcement mechanism. The Bill of Rights came later, the first thought of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was to stabilise and rationalise the Government of a new country, inserting checks and balances to exclude special interest groups from hijacking it. Without a government to enforce it the constitution is a piece of paper, and nothing else. The UN Declaration on Human Rights is theoretically the baseline from which the members of the UN should begin governance but the UN has no enforcement apparatus and so member countries do roughly what they like. Saying the market will provide safeguards because it operates within the constitution is like saying Iraq will respect all the human rights of its citizenry because in subscribes to the UN. Unenforced rights are as bad as no rights at all.

Well, says the libertarian, the citizenry will be armed and able to repulse efforts to deny their rights with deadly force if necessary.

But rights are given to you in law and are not intrinsic to you or your society. In the libertarian Utopia, where your rights are apparently decided by the size of your armaments, the only limiting factor to what you consder your rights to defend your propery are those you impose. And, as I've noted elsewhere, people are not interchangeable units and will have different ideas of what's right.

The Meeting of Minds -- where's your law now?
Here's an interesting one which I throw in because it hasn't been addressed elsewhere. In a libertarian community, contracts between reasonable parties form the basis of interactions and indeed the basis of law determines your "rights" and your rights determine what contracts may be made. But who enforces those contracts? It seems to be a truism that parties will stand by their side of a contract becaus eof the threat of legal enforcement along with loss of prestige, trust and eventually income. But where is this contract law codified? And where is your court and under what jusrisdiction? Without central law, what's legal in one community might well be illegal in another, much like selling alcohol was in Canada and the USA in the 1920s. There needs to be a set of standards governing a community or there is no community.

The Spiderman Premise -- rights are not standalone
As Spiderman has been saying for years "With great power comes great responsibility" and the same is true of your "rights". Just as you have a right to your property under libertarianism, so you are obliged to respect the rights of other property holders. By agreeing to uphold the constitution you accept the rights it confers upon you but you equally accept the responsibility the state places upon you to uphold and defend the constitution and the country. It seems that libertarians regard the enforcement of their personal (ie property)rights the only resposibility they have.

The Root of All Evil -- money over people
Before going on to describe the impossibility of living in a force-free environment, Id like to make a point here which sums up one of the real problems with libertarianism but which is also shared by any number of political philosophies. That problem is money. Libertarianism is not a system of governance nor a system intended to run a country, nor a group interaction dynamic, it's an economic system. That means it's concerned principally with money as can be told by the fact that it operates from a base of property rights, not personal ones. In essence, those without property are disenfranchised from the system as their rights are secondary to those of property-holders. The maximum happiness it provides is assumed from the inference that honourable parties will act in concert for the good of the whole. Thus, it is argued, will trees be protected, artists supported and so on.

The inescapable flaw in this argument is that people are not interchangeable economic units. Some are altruistic, some are miserly, some are committed, some are lazy, some are clever, some are stupid and so on. This neglect of the personal means that those who are best placed to exploit the system inevitably will. This occurs under all governance systems of course, I'm not pretending libertarianism is unique in this resect, but under a libertarian system posessions are effectively more important than those who possess them. This has been seen in the past in the horrors of the early industrial revolution in the UK or the slavery that marred the early American states. These particular offences were removed by Government action rather than market pressures and were resisted tooth and nail by those who benefited.

The Force Problem -- one man's force is another man's contract
I've got this down here as a subtle problem because it's a subtle point but it lies at the heart of libertarianism and so it's almost the fundamental problem. Essentially it's one of definition : just what the heck is "Force", anyway? My definition above was deliberately lax since libertarians are fond of declaring anything they don't like as an initiation of "force" against them, thus giving them the "right" to respond with appropriate force in "self-defence". But they overlook the fact that force is implicit in almost every human transaction -- I must buy bread from someone or else I'll starve. The urge to live is a pretty powerful force. And what if I have 20 Shekels but want bread and milk -- I can pay the 15 Shekels for bread but if I have five Shekels and there's only one milk provider I can find, they can force me to part with all five simply because I have no choice.

But, says the libertarian, you will have a choice, which the market will provide. Others will provide milk at three shekels and drive the price down to a supportable equilibrium. But, if I have cows and provide milk at three, isn't that an initiation of "market force" against the five-shekel trader? Aren't gangs' turf wars simply commercial competition allowed to run unchecked? The point, and you can labour it as much as you like, is that without force, real or implied, contracts are pretty much unenforcable.

For instance, if I enter into a contract to provide, say, ten bags of lug nuts to you in exchange for payment, what prevents me from only giving you three? It's the thought that, if I do that, you'll come and demand (with menaces if you think that appropriate) the remaining seven bags. The contract is honoured because all sides appreciate the implied application of force that would be used in cases of dishonouring the contract. The force may not be explicit "men with guns", it may be "loss of face", "bad publicity", "loss of market position" or simply being prevented from trading. Force is implicit in contractual relationships. Libertarians would define the provision of the three bags rather than ten as an "Initiation of Force" against them. Why, after all, do we speak of "enforcing" a contract?

J'y suis, j'y reste -- Because I say so
Enough abstraction, let's take a specific example and work it through. And we'll take the one dearest to libertarians' hearts : property rights. Just what are "Property Rights" is the first thing? I need a definition so lets try this :

Property Rights are the safeguards put in place to ensure that property to which you have a valid claim cannot be arbitrarily removed from you. They further allow you to dispose of that property according to your own desires.
This definition is a little on the fuzzy side but it'll do -- it covers ownership and transfers and implicitly gives you the go-ahead to defend what's yours and the dispose of clause will allow you to charge for that property's use. Let's examine that in some detail and we'll see that the use of force is continual in the assertion of those "rights".

First, by what claim is that property "yours"? As I mentioned in the baseline problem note above, most property is owned by people only as far as there is implicit trust in the contract between them and a finance organisation. If that organisation decides, in a free, unregulated market, to call in all its debts on the 1st of August, the property ceases to be yours at all if you can't pay. And there's no point stating that that's an initiation of force against you, the finance company can simply point to the contract and send in the hired goons.

Even if you have actually paid for the land, how far back do you go in your search for Property Rights? According to the title deeds, my house here in Edinburgh was built in 1936, before that it was farmland which was bought by the building company from the farmer. By what right was the land "his"? If you're in the USA or Australia or New Zealand then chances are you live on land that was either used or inhabited by the pre-colonial inhabitants. Where's your line drawn -- 31st July? 1776? 1066? Written history? Oral History? The fossil record? However you look at it, someone somewhere has changed the land from "uninhabited" to "inhabited" and it's unlikely to have been you so your claim to the land and thus the property is based on enforcement of a contract with the original settler.

It is a natural assumption from the principle of non-initiation of force that all land in the inhabited world should be returned to its original owners, if they can be traced. In Europe, where the records are unreliable prior to about 2,000 years ago this is unlikely and impracticable but in the Americas and Oceania, where land is mainly owned by those of European descent, the records exist to reasonably trace the original inhabitants' descendents. I have yet to come across a libertarian who believes in this.

Secondly, what about the other items that are somebody else's property? I have an electricity meter, a gas meter and a telco access point inside the walls of my house. The contracts I signed when these were installed stated these remained the property of the companies that installed them. The broadband internet access by which I upload this page goes from my computer through a telco's cable modem, cable and access point before leaving my property. The contracts for these items also states that the original owners are allowed to use any reasonable means to retrieve their property should I default on the contract I signed to pay for their services. Does this infringe on my Property Rights in the libertarian Utopia?

Property Rights are a complex issue and there are large corpuses of case law over the years but the basics comes down to "How do you decide who owns what and who's allowed to do what?". English Law (though not Scots Law) is a minefield in the matter of "Rights of Way" : these can essentially exist in perpetuity and activist groups have won cases allowing public access to grounds controlled by everything from private companies to the military. Are all these to be abolished? Apparently so. I have yet to come across a libertarian scheme which actually involves redistributing any property as part of a changeover to libertarian governance. The natural inference from this is that those who own property now will continue to own it after any changeover. But the Government is always a large landowner as is, in the UK, the Crown ("Royal Family" for Americans). What happens to all their lands and buildings and boats and cars and stamp collections and so on? What about "common" land such as untamed moors, village greens, the foreshore and the like?

In addition, the property-rights basis effectively excludes anyone who does not currently own property. What rights will tennants have? What about the homeless? How will slum landlords be discouraged or prevented if their property rights are the basis of the society they operate in? I have yet to see this addressed. It has been said that this appeal to the property-owners means libertarianism is essentially a middle-class bourgeois ideology. I am reluctant to assign all political schemes to the "class vs. class" method but the point is well made in this case.

As a (reasonably) final note on the topic of Property Rights, I have yet to see an enumeration of the specific rights referred to only the use of blanket terms and fuzzy definitions, much as in my argument above which easily holds water as well as any Libertarian argument. When I'm given absolute specifics I will respond with absolute specifics.

The Bogeyman Problem -- government is just another contract
In most libertarian writings it is taken that Government is a big evil force that wastefully extorts our property in the form of taxes and creates very few benefits. "We didn't want this, we want to live lives less interfered with and free to do as we choose." is a paraphrase of the common cry over "wasteful interfering" government. As Frank Zappa said : "I'm in favour of a smaller, less intrusive government. What, you too?". Who could argue with that?

Well, not me, obviously. I'm all for reducing Government waste and bureaucracy. But I'm not for doing away with Government altogether. Indeed, the very Constitution which libertarians are fond of pointing out guarantees their freedoms is nothing more than the specific contract the Government made with the Governed back in 1787 and the right to bear arms wasn't in it then. By removing, presumably, the Executive branch of the government you change the terms of that contract and will require a new one.