"Freedom" thread or something

Gerinski wrote: It would have been fun if Moses had established a toll gate for anyone wanting to pass through his Red Sea opening

It would have also been unjust, since God parted the Red Sea, not Moses.

thellama73 wrote: The T wrote: I have a question that has always been in the back of my mind since my early days coming to these threads, and one that no article has fully satisfied in its answer. Maybe one of you has a better answer. Libertarianism holds some rights to be natural, inviolable, among them life and property. Now, life we all can understand (I hope) its origins, its value, the need for it. What about property? Why does it deserve to be put in the same category? At what point does a person acquire property in such way that it becomes a natural right? A person without life ceases to be a person, what ahout property? How can it be said that property is a natural right (which means it comes with a person by birth to put it simply) when the only thing a person brings from birth is life itself? I have thought of ways to answer this but some leave me completely dissatisfied. And much of libertarianism relies on giving property value, the value of a right. Even the issue of taxation is involved here. I agree with Pat that natural rights are the weakest part of the argument and very difficult to satisfactorily explain. Both Rob and Pat are correct, however, that the right to life and right to property are essentially the same right. Whether you view property as an extension of life or life as an extension of property doesn't really matter, and there are convincing arguments for both.

On reflection, I agree with you.

Epignosis wrote: dtguitarfan wrote: thellama73 wrote: It isn't, because I didn't move to the U.S. I was just born here. You have to physically sign an agreement when you move into an apartment complex to abide by their rules, and I have no problem with that. Exactly.  You were born into an apartment complex that's very big, and long ago your ancestors agreed to the rules of the apartment complex because they got a better deal on a bundle of services than anyone could get by buying each service individually.  And you hate that you are billed for things you didn't ask for.  But most people appreciate having these services and would like to continue having them in a bundle like that, but we'd just like to get the services improved because they've gone downhill lately. Damn right we hate it.  We hate being billed for offensive wars.  We hate being billed for corporate bailouts.  We hate being billed for shady IRS executives who get bonuses worth more than three years of my salary.  We hate being billed for fraudulent practices by contractors that go unchecked.  We hate being billed for agricultural subsidies.  We hate being billed for the meddling in the housing market.  We hate being billed for the IRS making spoofs of Star Trek and Giligan's Island.  We hate being billed for fighter jets and tanks being given to the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt.  We hate being billed for helping Russia recruit nuclear scientists.  We hate being billed for the $27 million spent on teaching Moroccans how to make pottery.  We hate being billed for the 2 billion rounds of ammunition Federal agencies purchased for "training purposes."  We hate being billed for the talking urinal pucks in Michigan.  We hate being billed to find out if "Gaydar" is indeed a real thing.  We hate being billed for the $4.5 billion in inappropriate or abusive SNAP purchases.  We hate being billed for the Pentagon creating its own line of beef jerky.  We hate being billed for Oklahoma's hardly used Lake Murray State Airport.  We hate being billed for drone strikes in the middle east.  We hate being billed for the Alabama Watermelon Queen Tour.    We hate being billed for a soccer field in Guantanamo Bay.  We hate being billed for Pakistani Sesame Street.  We hate being billed for the $800M+ the GSA spent in Las Vegas for training 300 people.  We hate being billed for the $2.6M spent on teaching Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly.  We hate being billed for the study of sexual behavior in Argentinian bars.  We hate being billed for the millions that went to banks, 21 of which, when asked, declined disclosing how the money was used.  We hate being billed for the program that teaches men in South Africa how to wash their crotches.  We hate being billed for pornography.  Yes, taxpayer money goes to porn.  I will gladly do with private roads, schools, and mail delivery to save us from being robbed to fund bullsh*t. Putting aside your own ideology (yes, you have one), do you agree with the government taking people's property to fund any of that stuff I listed?

I absolutely agree with you that most of what you listed there is bullsh*t (there's a few things I would like to continue, and don't think will continue if they are not funded by government, such as PBS - all we would have is mindless sh*t on the air).  But I would argue this - you mention hating paying the bill for the outrageous bonuses of IRS executives.  I do too...and I hate working for a private company where when the going gets tough they lay off thousands, but meanwhile the executives (who arguably do NOTHING to help the company) get bigger bonuses than last year.  You think getting rid of government is going to fix everything.  I believe if you get rid of government, you're just going to have a new one - a government by corporations.  True, our current system of government in the US is basically the same thing with a mask on, and that's what I want to fix.  The purpose of government, as I see it, is to protect consumers from unfair practices by those in power.  The little guys need protection from the big guys and that's what government is for.  Our government in the US has done a terrible job of this lately, and has gone the route of protecting the big guys against the little guys (ridiculous).  And that's why you legitimately have a problem with it.  But the answer is not to eliminate government.  The answer to the problem is to turn it towards its true purpose.

I also love The T's question there - he hints at one of my problems with Libertarianism.  I don't see how you can argue that your property is legitimately all yours when everything you do is built upon the shoulders of your ancestors.  You can't possibly build a business today without using what other people have done.

And there's absolutely no way you can argue me into believing that health care should be controlled by the free market - I find the idea completely offensive.  Human life is absolutely sacred to me, and no one should EVER be turned away from health care that they need.  Thus, I find the idea of health care for profit to be completely offensive...but I also believe that those who work in the field should be able to make a living.  I can't see any way to reconcile these two things without a system based on the ideas of socialism.

dtguitarfan wrote:   And there's absolutely no way you can argue me into believing that health care should be controlled by the free market - I find the idea completely offensive.

Libertarians don't object to collectivism, just forced collectivism.

thellama73 wrote: dtguitarfan wrote: Here's a question for the Libertarians - real life situation happening to me right now.  Ok, so you guys are big on personal property, and I shouldn't have to pay for anything if I don't want it, etc. etc.  Ok, so I own a house.  It's on a road.  Who owns the road?  Do I own a piece of it right outside my house, and only that piece?  Right now we have a problem on my road - some jerk is parking his big fat van right on the corner, and it makes it hard to get around the road, and to make matters worse, we found out that if there were an emergency situation, the emergency vehicle might not be able to make it down the street.  This is a cul de sac, so there's only one way in.  How do you deal with such a situation without some sort of governmental authority structure that says "the road is public property, owned by the government, and you must move your vehicle or it will be towed"?  I mean, you guys don't want there to be government run structures such as police departments and fire departments and departments of transportation, etc.  So in a theoretical Libertarian society, I'm not even sure whom I would call?  My own private security company I pay for (instead of a police department) or my own private "department of transportation" that I pay for?  And if my neighbor uses a different company, and insists that the space of road outside of his house belongs to him and therefore he's allowed to park his big fat van on it and screw the rest of us, then we have a war of the private security companies on our hands and the biggest company wins.  At some point there has to be a way of forming a structure that says "this is public property - we all have say in what happens on it, and there is an authority structure over all of us and outside of all of us that will make decisions when one of us is using this public property in a way that prevents others of us from using it in the way it was meant to be used."  And I simply don't see a way of running such a structure without taxes.  You can call it a different name - a neighborhood fee.  And then some Libertarian extremist is going to be pissed off that he has to pay it and call it tyrannical taxes and we're back to our original stupid arguments. There are two possible solutions. First, the road could be privately owned, in which case you could alert the owner, who would not be happy to have access to his property blocked by the van Two, there could be a condition of purchasing a house along the road that you will submit to the will of the neighborhood association when it comes to maintaining the roads. This is how most neighborhoods work now. You can't buy a house there unless  you agree not to leave huge piles of trash on your lawn and other such unsightly things and it is both effective and consistent with liberty.

So...basically we'd all end up with the same problem we have with Cable companies right now.  So you don't really have a choice anyways, because there's only one Cable company that serves your neighborhood anyways, and it sucks, and it's not going to improve anyways because there's no competition because the Cable company that serves your area owns the cable in your area....  Do you see what I'm getting at?  I don't know how cable is in your area, but I've never really had a great experience with cable - most places I've lived, the only choice was Comcast (which my wife and I affectionately referred to as Comcrap), and it always kind of sucked.  We always had problems where we'd turn on the TV to find out it wasn't working at all, internet would go out for no apparent reason, and we'd have to call their 800 number and stay on hold forever.  The only improvement on this was when I moved to Chattanooga and you had the choice of either cable (which in my area is Comcrap), or EPB, which is fiber optics.  So the only reason you even have competition in my area is because you have the competition between cable and fiber optics.

So you'll forgive me if I fail to see how the Libertarian way of dealing with my issue is an improvement.

dtguitarfan wrote: thellama73 wrote: There are two possible solutions. First, the road could be privately owned, in which case you could alert the owner, who would not be happy to have access to his property blocked by the van Two, there could be a condition of purchasing a house along the road that you will submit to the will of the neighborhood association when it comes to maintaining the roads. This is how most neighborhoods work now. You can't buy a house there unless  you agree not to leave huge piles of trash on your lawn and other such unsightly things and it is both effective and consistent with liberty. So...basically we'd all end up with the same problem we have with Cable companies right now.  So you don't really have a choice anyways, because there's only one Cable company that serves your neighborhood anyways, and it sucks, and it's not going to improve anyways because there's no competition because the Cable company that serves your area owns the cable in your area....  Do you see what I'm getting at?  I don't know how cable is in your area, but I've never really had a great experience with cable - most places I've lived, the only choice was Comcast (which my wife and I affectionately referred to as Comcrap), and it always kind of sucked.  We always had problems where we'd turn on the TV to find out it wasn't working at all, internet would go out for no apparent reason, and we'd have to call their 800 number and stay on hold forever.  The only improvement on this was when I moved to Chattanooga and you had the choice of either cable (which in my area is Comcrap), or EPB, which is fiber optics.  So the only reason you even have competition in my area is because you have the competition between cable and fiber optics. So you'll forgive me if I fail to see how the Libertarian way of dealing with my issue is an improvement.

It is conceivable that some private owner of a road would do a bad job of maintaining it, but there are lots of badly maintained roads now and at least force will not have been used.

However, it seems unlikely that someone would just own a road in a residential neighborhood, as it would be impractical for making money. More likely, the owner of the property for rent would also buy the road. If the road were poorly maintained, property values would drop and he would lose money, so he has an incentive to keep it in good repair.

The neighborhood association is also a probable solution, and as I said it works nicely already.

Broadband internet is a relatively new technology and it takes time for people to come up with means of competing, but this is already happening as people switch to wireless networks through mobile devices. The U.S. has more competition for internet provision than all but two other countries, so government regulation seems not to have been very successful at helping. The big cable companies also do a ton of lobbying for laws that prevent alternative arrangements, which would not be possible with a smaller government.

thellama73 wrote:   It is conceivable that some private owner of a road would do a bad job of maintaining it, but there are lots of badly maintained roads now and at least force will not have been used. However, it seems unlikely that someone would just own a road in a residential neighborhood, as it would be impractical for making money. More likely, the owner of the property for rent would also buy the road. If the road were poorly maintained, property values would drop and he would lose money, so he has an incentive to keep it in good repair.

Regarding the health care question, "X is scarce" =/= "X has to be made for-profit to work".

^I'm not sure what else qualifies as a health care system that "works". Not according to what a person wants (serious waste of resources here) but what a person needs.