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desultude
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
Location: Dangling my toes in the Persian Gulf
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 Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2005 4:08 pm Post subject: |
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| Cthulhu wrote: |
jaganath69 wrote:
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Being allowed to live your own life as you wish is what REALLY appeals to me.
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Amen, brother. That's one aspect where liberalism and conservatism both need a solid kick in the ass. |
This appeals to me, also- as a philosophical anarchist.
That's all good in theory. In the real world people are often pretty screwed up, and living your own life as you wish always impacts other people. This is a problem on both the macro and micro level. On a micro level, we do need to protect ourselves and others from the true miscreants (not the victimless criminals, but people who really do harm to others) and on a macro level, we have to protect the environment and the treatment of animals and humans less able to protect themselves. Tell child slaves about free choice, and tell the Chinese in cities about how unrestricted industry will provide clean air.
Theory, my major concentration in graduate school, gives me a headache these days. Lovely ivory tower ideas about the perfect world. My favorite philosopher then, and now, is Foucault- you know he stood on the roof of the university with Sarte, his enemy in theory, throwing rocks at the police. He knew clearly the line between theory and practice. |
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Tiger Beer
Joined: 07 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2005 4:21 pm Post subject: |
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| desultude wrote: |
The problem with classical liberal ideas being applied to today's world economy is that there are way too many barriers to entry, and way too much protection of major industries and corporations.
It is a fine ideal for the small market in a village, but the corporate world is not an even playing field with equal entry, access to information and to markets. The rules just don't aply. |
Good points!
Just as an additional side, I've always been annoyed by pro-communists who wrap up modern capitalism and the ideas of Adam Smith as the same thing. Absolutely worlds aparts!! Two drastically different concepts and ideas.
Nice to see it separated here as well. |
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jaganath69
Joined: 17 Jul 2003
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| Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2005 4:25 pm Post subject: |
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| desultude wrote: |
| Cthulhu wrote: |
jaganath69 wrote:
| Quote: |
Being allowed to live your own life as you wish is what REALLY appeals to me.
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Amen, brother. That's one aspect where liberalism and conservatism both need a solid kick in the ass. |
This appeals to me, also- as a philosophical anarchist.
That's all good in theory. In the real world people are often pretty screwed up, and living your own life as you wish always impacts other people. This is a problem on both the macro and micro level. On a micro level, we do need to protect ourselves and others from the true miscreants (not the victimless criminals, but people who really do harm to others) and on a macro level, we have to protect the environment and the treatment of animals and humans less able to protect themselves. Tell child slaves about free choice, and tell the Chinese in cities about how unrestricted industry will provide clean air.
Theory, my major concentration in graduate school, gives me a headache these days. Lovely ivory tower ideas about the perfect world. My favorite philosopher then, and now, is Foucault- you know he stood on the roof of the university with Sarte, his enemy in theory, throwing rocks at the police. He knew clearly the line between theory and practice. |
This is where you are wrong, the limit of individual freedom in classical liberalism is when your actions affect the life and liberty of another person. What I am on about is personal choices that affect me an my property, the right to paint my house whatever colour I like for example (I know it is a small and trite one, but bare with me). In an interventionist system we have ordinances that say I can't do anything to my property that isnt in accordance with the rest of the neighborhood. Why should something I purchased be subject to the tastes of others? Likewise, my right to persue education for my children, religion, lifestyle, sexuality and a whole host of other things have no bearing on you or yours. Why then does government see fit to regulate these things?
Cheers
Jaga |
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Leslie Cheswyck
Joined: 31 May 2003
Location: University of Western Chile
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| Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2005 5:09 pm Post subject: |
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| Yaya wrote: |
If you're young and not a liberal, you have no heart.
If you're old and STILL a liberal, you have no BRAIN. |
Hey, Ya ya. Great avatar. That was the BEST series back in the day.
I tend to agree with what you said there. It was Churchill, no?
It gives me an idea for another thread. But I'll launch it later in the day or tomorrow. I want this thread to mature (as in ripen) a little. |
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desultude
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
Location: Dangling my toes in the Persian Gulf
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| Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2005 5:55 pm Post subject: |
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| Leslie Cheswyck wrote: |
| Yaya wrote: |
If you're young and not a liberal, you have no heart.
If you're old and STILL a liberal, you have no BRAIN. |
Hey, Ya ya. Great avatar. That was the BEST series back in the day.
I tend to agree with what you said there. It was Churchill, no?
It gives me an idea for another thread. But I'll launch it later in the day or tomorrow. I want this thread to mature (as in ripen) a little. |
I would amend that to say that when you are young if you have a heart you are idealistic, when you are older, if you still have a heart, you become more humanistic and realistic.
jaganath69
| Quote: |
| What I am on about is personal choices that affect me an my property, the right to paint my house whatever colour I like for example (I know it is a small and trite one, but bare with me). In an interventionist system we have ordinances that say I can't do anything to my property that isnt in accordance with the rest of the neighborhood. Why should something I purchased be subject to the tastes of others? Likewise, my right to persue education for my children, religion, lifestyle, sexuality and a whole host of other things have no bearing on you or yours. |
Okay, as to your first point, about paint color- as far as I know, the places where paint color is mandated is in restricted communities. You elect to live there, you elect to live by the rules. Anyplace else, it is certainly a curtailment of your freedom.
As for education for your children- you pay for it, you get what you want. If you opt for private education in the religion or philosophy of your choice, no problem.
Here is the problem- education itself is a public good. There are public costs and public benefits to having people educated. So there is an interest in having children educated per se. Now you (at least I think it was you) indicated earlier that you think children should be educated better in terms of finance, etc. Now we all know that approaches to economics are based on political beliefs as well as subjective values. Now we have the grounds for serious conflict. I actually believe that children should be taught how to handle guns, at least in the States, where guns are a fact of life, and death, of course. Equally unlikely to happen.
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| This is where you are wrong, the limit of individual freedom in classical liberalism is when your actions affect the life and liberty of another person. |
I actually quite agree- the problem is defining harm. This is the slippery slope of liberalism. Mill argued that bad behavior, such as gambling, drugs, alcohol, should be taxed to the amount that it costs society. Now, that is premised on agreement of what the terms "harm" "bad behavior" and "costs" mean.
And, if the limits are defined by affects on life and liberty of others, and we can agree that a lot of people do affect the life and liberty of others regularly, in the real world, then how do we control them? Oops, that brings us right back to the devil, some form of government.
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| I am not surprised the Desultude completely misses the point in her argument. There are barriers to entry BECAUSE OF GOVERNMENTS and they are the problem to establishing effective free trade that would benefit the world's poorer nations |
Asa! Therein is the problem. Tell me please how to get rid of governments and return to the pristine state of nature. Lots of thinkers have tried. I am not surprised that you are not surprised by what you think is my missing the point. That is the point. It's pretty amazing that my statement about being a philosophical anarchist flew right past you. I am in agreement with most of the ideals of Libertarianism. But, as they say, the devil is in the details, and it is a damned big devil.
Yes, idealism is great when you are 20, but after that, hopefully, you start developing some more subtlety in you thinking, and this comes with experience in the real world. Libertarianism? As the anarchist philosopher Proudhon said, true anarchy can be had when everyone cooperates voluntarily (a bad paraphrase, but that is the spirit of it.) Never will happen. Coercion is a necessity. The question is who to coerce and why. These become questions of power. That is why I prefer Foucault- who is first and formost a theorist of power.
I want maximum freedoms. Don't mess with my beliefs, my sexuality, or the color of my house. But someone will always want to, and the government of my choosing would protect me from them, not become them. And that will happen, as they say, when pigs fly.
Last edited by desultude on Thu Feb 03, 2005 6:14 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Cthulhu
Joined: 02 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2005 6:07 pm Post subject: |
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desultude wrote:
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| That's all good in theory. In the real world people are often pretty screwed up, and living your own life as you wish always impacts other people. This is a problem on both the macro and micro level. On a micro level, we do need to protect ourselves and others from the true miscreants (not the victimless criminals, but people who really do harm to others) and on a macro level, we have to protect the environment and the treatment of animals and humans less able to protect themselves. Tell child slaves about free choice, and tell the Chinese in cities about how unrestricted industry will provide clean air. |
That is why I distanced myself from philosophical libertarianism in favor of, as I put it earlier, "practical small scale libertarianism." I'm not interested in deconstructing government nor with living a pure libertarian lifestyle free of all interference; these are pipe dreams in the modern world. What I am concerned with is streamlining government and removing a lot of the bloat that directly affects our lives.
So many things affect us personally, whether economic or social. I don't support largely conservative-inspired censorship issues. By the same token I do not like my hard earned tax dollars going to expanding liberal social programs that have absolutely nothing to do with my life. Outside of basic services from my tax dollars I get no direct benefit subsidizing other individuals or special interest groups. These are some of the things that bug me about conservatism and liberalism. As I said before, there are aspects of both systems which are very useful as well, but I hardly see them as being ahead of libertarianism in the field of personal freedom, imperfect as it is.
We have to put up with a necessary amount of interference in our lives simply because there would be chaos without it. But what we have these days goes far beyond a necessary amount of goverment. It even goes well beyond acceptable waste in government. It seems like a giant pork barrel and my $$$ are paying for it with virtually no benefit for me. On top of it the traditional left/right parties are wallowing in it. No wonder there's all this talk about a vanishing middle class. |
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Rather_Dashing
Joined: 07 Sep 2004
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| Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2005 11:05 pm Post subject: |
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| So are there any actual ECON majors out there? Doesn't look like it. I haven't read so much disinformation in my life. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2005 2:02 am Post subject: |
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What does being an ECON student have to do with anything? Libertarianism (a stupid name, so lets just call it Liberalism) has as much to do with moral philosophy as it does economics. The Foundation for Economic Education in New York even calls it Freedom Philosophy now.
I hate referring to myself as a Libertarian, it sounds so Freshmanish. But, according to current America-speak I am such, and if you want to debate and/or learn more about it I would suggest reason.com, lewrockwell.com or cafehayek.com as good places to start.
To find out if you have leanings towards Liberalism, take the Smallest Political Quiz http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz.html .
P.S.
Dude, if you "haven't read" so much disinformation in your life, you can't or don't read. I can't even figure out what you are talking about... |
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dutchman
Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Location: My backyard
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| Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2005 2:27 am Post subject: |
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| BJWD wrote: |
Dude, if you "haven't read" so much disinformation in your life, you can't or don't read. I can't even figure out what you are talking about... |
Cut him some slack. He's just out of uni and thinks he learned something. Don't break his bubble just yet.  |
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bobbyhanlon
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Location: 서울
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| Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2005 3:11 am Post subject: |
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hayek is decent, but ayn rand.. awful, just awful. i never met any serious academic who had any respect for that nonsense.
i'm surprised no-one mentioned karl popper yet. open society isn't full-blooded libertarianism of the no rules, no government crowd, but it's a step closer to freedom without venturing into hobbes' state of war- hobbes' leviathan also is good reading for anyone under the illusion that total anarchy would be a good idea.
i enjoyed that quiz from theadvocates.org... apparently i'm a 'liberal'... always makes me laugh hearing that word. there seem to be a million definitions of it. it seemed a bit harsh on the economic side; just because i didn't want to privatise social security and cut government spending by 50%, i'm practically a communist on the left-right scale. i think this reveals some interesting political differences between the u.s. and europe. |
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Reflections
Joined: 04 Jan 2005
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| Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2005 3:38 am Post subject: |
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| I'm a Libra, but not a Liberal~~ |
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Cthulhu
Joined: 02 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2005 5:34 am Post subject: |
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Rather_Dashing wrote:
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| So are there any actual ECON majors out there? Doesn't look like it. I haven't read so much disinformation in my life. |
Says the guy with the one line contribution. Put up or shut up. |
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gmat
Joined: 29 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2005 9:50 am Post subject: |
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Hey that's a great little political quiz. Short and sweet.
My result:
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funplanet
Joined: 20 Jun 2003
Location: The new Bucheon!
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| Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2005 5:38 pm Post subject: |
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as long as my actions don't infringe on the rights of another person, and I have the freedom to engage in those actions, that is libertarianism....
Hayek is a must read but so is ayn rand, no matter what you feel about her....the austrian school of eco is good as well....anyway,
I'm a liberatarian 'cause I believe government (in the US, at least) has overstepped its purpose as defined in the US Constitution...the democrats want your money (they believe it belongs to gov anyway) and the republicans who are trying to control your body (abortion, etc they have a fascination with a woman's ovaries  )
leave me the f* alone to do what I wish to do (whether smoke dope all day or build a business) as long as I don't infringe the next guy's rights...
government has two functions and only two-protect and defend the US and to protect our rights as defined under the Constitution
that's it |
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Yu_Bum_suk
Joined: 25 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2005 6:55 pm Post subject: |
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I don't agree with some of the fundamental principles of libertarianism, but I have a great deal of respect for libertarians, primarily for two reasons:
1. Their tireless fight for absolute freedom of speech and expression.
2. They don't believe it's their nation's job to impose it's values on others, and want to influence other nations by way of example, not force.
If the majority of Americans were libertarians I can't hazard a guess as to what America would be like (better with libertarian principles used in moderation, I would think), but the rest of the world would without a doubt be a lot better off. |
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