- A government imposes taxation on the citizens to fund the services the citizens are required to use for daily life.
Libertarians: “GOD THIS IS AN UNJUST TYRANNY TO ME AND ONLY ME”
- A corporation imposes a new service fee and increases the subcription charges, to fund their wallets and act like its better than it was before.
Libertarians: “This is normal and just, everyone is stupid except for me, I read Ayn Rand.”
I’m down to talk out what is a just tax, what is unfair, what the taxes should go to once collected, but I think Libertarians are too hooked on think tank propaganda to decide something for themselves.
It’s even better: a lot of essential or close to it things are pretty much monopolies or cartels (for example, Internet access in most of the US) so people have no actual choice but to pay a specific entity whatever they chose to charge.
It’s like tax but without the upside of taxes (which is that they’re money that’s supposed to entirely end up benefiting you, even if most of it indirectly) because when you buy a product or service from a monopoly or cartel only part of it goes to cover the cost of the actual product or service you’re getting and a large fraction or even most of it goes to shareholder dividends, which has zero benefit for you.
I’ve taken to call these things Taxes Paid Directly To Private Companies.
Weird. How did those ISPs end up the only option?
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Government and corporate interests can’t help but suck each other off. Petty tyrants are gonna tyrant.
The land the utilities were built on were through government seized easements generally. The monopoly wouldn’t exist unless propped up by a state.
Sounds like we should have made ISPs government owned then!
That could be a better system than the current government enforced monopoly.
Corporations are fucked up. They will never allow the state to be abolished because they need to collect taxes in order to bail themselves out of trouble and in order to fight wars for them at the taxpayer expense so they can reap the profits… a corporation will never go to war alone. War is fucking expensive and is rarely directly profitable. They want to socialize expenses and privatize gain, which is impossible to do without a government of some kind.
…so, what, we’re supposed to build an entire society on people’s inherent willingness to help each other and just trust that crime will stop happening?
Like mate, I hate to break it to you, but psychopaths exist. The entire problem with capitalism is that some people are never satisfied no matter how much they have and will do anything they possibly can to hoard anything that could give them an advantage at the expense of the group.
Its true, the things that stop crime can only ever be made by a state.
In fact, people never managed to stop or punish theft or a murder until we invesnted states.
Yup, before states, if someone came a murdered your friend you had to trust that what you just witnessed didn’t happen because there was literally nothing you could do about it, as states hadn’t been invented yet.
Its good thing were too smart to fall for that…
…and your proposed alternative is…?
I really, really hope I don’t have to explain why vigilante justice is a bad idea.
I heard him say he murdered his friend.
Pity there is no third party to investigate my claim. We’ll just have to string him up ourselves.
I call dibs on his shoes.
Well, in a society without judges, as the article linked proposes, I’m having a hard time seeing it any other way.
Lol nice try but I don’t have to provide you with an alternative for you to attack. You’re wasting youre time there.
The point is, even all those hundreds of years ago, we had an alternative to just trusting that crime wouldn’t exist, as you suggested was the only alternative.
Other than its state-ness exaplin the difference between state vigilante justice and the exact equivalent done by any other kind of group.
I really, really hope I don’t have to explain why it being done by a state doesn’t magically make it better, in of itself.
Lol nice try but I don’t have to provide you with an alternative for you to attack. You’re wasting youre time there.
“See, the thing is, I already know I’m right, so I’m not going to waste time by giving you arguments to find flaws in.”
I really, really hope I don’t have to explain why it being done by a state doesn’t magically make it better, in of itself.
…you mean why a system of justice that is held liable to a court system is not superior to a system of justice where people can just go after whomever they want? yeah, you do have to explain that actually
Before states if someone murdered your friend it would either split the tribe and/or you’d go to war with the tribe that killed your friend. Is that really better?
Maybe so, maybe not so but, whatever it is, its a hell of lot more than just trusting that crime didn’t exist, don’t you think?
I’m not sure where anyone suggested that people had to trust that crime doesn’t exist.
One is something you choose to pay, the other you get shot if you don’t pay. There is a pretty big difference.
One is something you choose to pay, the other you get shot if you don’t pay.
Contract claims and property claims are ultimately enforceable by government force, as well. A “no trespassing” or “no loitering” sign, or a “Copyrighted work, all rights reserved” notice is enforceable by men with guns, too.
If taxation is theft, the same reasoning would extend to property being theft, too.
Depends how the property was claimed. Most property in the US was illegitimately claimed.
Surprisingly, tyranny.com is for sale.
Do you expect despots to shell out their own money for things like that?
I promise that if I ever get elected Tyrant, I will pay for my own domain name out of pocket.
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me
That was amazing. Please tell me there’s more of this.
This is better than Greentext.
This is art.
I went to elementary school when whitehouse.com was still a porn site. I remember a class in the computer lab where we were supposed to do research on the government. Our teacher was very clear about going to the .gov website and absolutely not the .com one.
Whatever adult content blocking they had set up did not work.
The best short summary I’ve seen in a while
I hate how the american version of “libertarianism” is what people think of instead of the original french left wing ideology.
It’s deliberate. Left-wing ideologies are basically “we don’t really benefit from these traditional hierarchies and we’d be better off if we didn’t concentrate resources in the hands of a small number of owners so much”, which is hard to argue against.
So those who want to keep their power in the current system try to misdirect the debates themselves with “libertarianism” and “neo liberalism” which are both economically conservative ideologies that try to separate the idea of personal freedom from economic ones and ignore that any “freedom” in business is against a background of negotiation leverage, so more freedom in business gives more advantages to those with more leverage.
That first paragraph is also why conservatives put so much attention towards making it difficult to vote, get a good education, or find various supports. They know trying to argue that they should have control of most of the wealth is a losing argument so they go for confusing as many as possible or keeping them busy with their own survival.
Liberal was stolen so libertarians had to find a new word
Liberal in america somehow means left wing which is far from what it means in the rest of the world
Its because of the Roosevelts or more specifically FDR. One of the many reasons to hate FDR.
Most “Libertarians” grow up as soon as they read any political theory, I personally became an Anarcho-Syndicalist
What are your views on sword-based governance?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate of the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony
I’m glad we all agree you can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
This kinda insult is just lazy. Right-wingers say “I used to be left wing then grew up when I read economics”, left-wingers say the same in inverse. The real answer is just that you had views that were based on an intuition or something, then you read stuff interrogating those views, realized that may align more with your values and changed your mind. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t people with different values than you, or people who now disagree with you are all the same as you.
You’ll be even more baffled when you read some history!
Yup, especially the histories of the FAI/CNT and how Spain could have been Anarcho-Syndicalist (for a time Catalonia was). In addition popular Syndicalist movements in France and the Anarchist black army in Ukraine could have gone very differently.
I prefer tyranny.co.uk
Monarchists 🙄
The Redcoats are coming!
Just $5/yr, up for grabs
Sounds like a dessert
It actually is, but I don’t recommend it. It has a tendency to rule your lower digestive tract with an iron fist.
Tranny.com is a shitty cam site.
Trust me. I thoroughly checked so you don’t have to.
What about .gov?
🤷 didn’t feel like it was necessary to check.
Not left libertarians (typically). I’m trying to reclaim this term from the right-wing chuds who have taken it over.
Best I can do is Libarbarians
I’ve seen the term Libertarian Communist around and that makes sense in an international setting. In the US both terms are tainted though. You could try a synonym like Social Autonomy though.
Libertarian Socialism is the one I see around the most.
I’ll have to do more reading but it looks like it’s contemporary to the Libertarian Communist writers and maybe, hilariously, a parallel attempt to unify anti-statist socialism and communism.
Putting this here mostly to help my memory and have a searchable comment on my history. Proudhon referred to himself as a Mutualist, an Anarchist, and later a Federalist. But not a Libertarian. Left Libertarianism obviously has cause to reach back and claim him but those writers came later, and not as some claim, contemporary with Marx. It is fair to say LL has it’s roots in the first international, but it is very much an evolution of left Anarchism, not an origination of left anarchism.
maybe don’t
Why not?
I’d say because it’s a losing battle. It takes substantially less effort to drag a symbol or label through the mud than it does to clean it off. Add to that it’s still in active use by rightoids, and all you’re going to accomplish is giving people the wrong idea of what you stand for.
As an Anarcho-Syndicalist I disagree, the term Libertarian should be reclaimed by those who truly support Liberty and oppose hierarchy
sounds like you already have a term for that
Just like how the American left wing is still right of center, it feels like American libertarians are still auth of center. Glad there’s at least one maniac like me out there
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Left and right wing are relative terms, leftist and liberal are not.
The American left wing is barely able to agree on universal healthcare, much less seizing of means.
In my experience, right leaning Libertarians are just Republicans that are kinda indifferent with gays having legal rights.
Yeah a lot of them don’t seem to be very committed to libertarian ideas unfortunately. The government isn’t the only force that can restrict liberty.
I don’t think you’ve ever watched a libertarian convention or rally, they’re pro-immigration, pro-drug legalization, anti-war, etc.
What is a leftibertarian in your opinion?
From Wikipedia, not dunking on you, I just thought this was a very clear explanation of why right-wing libertarianism is the anomaly:
In the mid-19th century,[10] libertarianism originated as a form of left-wing politics such as anti-authoritarian and anti-state socialists like anarchists,[11] especially social anarchists,[12] but more generally libertarian communists/Marxists and libertarian socialists.[13][14]
These libertarians sought to abolish capitalism and private ownership of the means of production, or else to restrict their purview or effects to usufruct property norms, in favor of common or cooperative ownership and management, viewing private property in the means of production as a barrier to freedom and liberty.[19] While all libertarians support some level of individual rights, left-libertarians differ by supporting an egalitarian redistribution of natural resources.[20] Left-libertarian[26] ideologies include anarchist schools of thought, alongside many other anti-paternalist and New Left schools of thought centered around economic egalitarianism as well as geolibertarianism, green politics, market-oriented left-libertarianism and the Steiner–Vallentyne school.[30]
I can’t be the only person who had to lookup usufruct right?
No lol I did too. It’s an interesting concept. And cool that it’s such an old one.
I don’t know who wrote that Wikipedia article but it’s really really wrong. Libertarian as a leftist idea actually surfaces in the early to mid 20th century, at the same time as the mostly unrelated right wing libertarianism. They had maybe a decade head start on using the term. It really gets going around 1920 when leftist political philosophers start trying to synthesize lessons from all of the different sections of communism.
The mid 19th century is Karl Marx. The citations mostly talk about anarchism. One of them expressly says to call yourself a whole ass anarchist. So as best as I can tell this is a case where left and right wing editors have gone back and forth on the page with little oversight from political historians and left us with a page that doesn’t reflect reality.
The word “Libertaire” (french for left-wing libertarian, the amercian libertarian is called “Libertarien”) was created in 1857 to differentiate from “Libéral” (which could be seen as an equivalent to nowadays liberals). In France it is still used as a synonym for ‘Anarchist’, though it has a wider sense, since it describes any left-wing movement that opposes authority/power (so libertarian communists that do not accept the “anarchist” label are still included in the “Libertaire” label). The Wikipedia page seems well written from what I know.
@LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net Good luck in your reclaming of the word. There are parts of the world and languages in which it is still a powerful and unifying word for anti-authoritarian left, english language can still evolve this way !
That’s great. In one language. France also calls potatoes ground apples. But we don’t directly translate it. We use the words from the thinkers of communism. Which are Communism, Socialism, and Anarchy.
In French it goes back to antinomianism. In English it goes back to the free will debates in religion and political philosophy.
It hasn’t been a standardized label used by political thinkers until the early 1900’s though. The Wikipedia article is just plain wrong unless it’s the French language page. Which it isn’t.
I mean, do you really think political theories, especially ones that promotes international unity, developed themselves separately in each country? If you really wanted to use words from the thinkers of communism, you should at least know that :
- a good part of them were french
- a good majority of them lived in france at some point
- a huge majority of them were from Europe and traveled across many countries to avoid political repression
In fact, terms you actually use for anarchy, socialism and communism are both directly translated from french and influenced by philosophies elaborated in France. It does not even matter that it’s France specifically. England and Germany both have a huge role in this, Switzerland has a great role in the development of anarchist theories. Spain had a lot of influence on the notion of Libertaire. Russia and China of course brought a lot to the communist theories though mostly not for the better. All of these countries influenced each other, it is still the case.
Libertaire/libertarian was never a standardized label and still isnt, but it was used and not only in France, since half the 19th century. Just because it’s english language does not mean it should only analyze the political theory of english-speaking country. Without this analysis you cannot understand half the anarchist history of at least France and Spain.
Just because a word has evolved to a specific sense does not mean we should forget its previous meaning, nor does it mean it cant evolve back.
I understand the international nature. But English is very much the language of the world and outside of Lemmy I have found zero sources to support a 19th century use of Libertarianism or Libertarian in any formal manner. I’ve seen a lot of Mutualist and Anarchist.
Unless you have sources where they actually label themselves libertarians, as in “call me a libertarian”, (like they do for anarchist) then all the of internationalism in the world doesn’t matter.
There are writers and thinkers from the early to mid 20th century that claim libertarianism. And that’s generally an attempt to unify the 10 different kinds of anti statist leftists that exist at the end of the 19th century. Both the pages available for Libertarian Communists, and Libertarian Socialists identify roots in the 1800’s, but do not claim their ideology actually started in the 1800s. And it only takes a look at the writers they claim originated them to see they were writing from about 1910 to 1950.
This isn’t some semantic thing. Some people want to believe libertarianism came from the first international itself, but from what I’ve read Proudhon never identified as a libertarian.
Understanding where ideologies have been and where they’re going is really important. So people trying to muddle the waters to claim some kind of moral superiority is dangerous and a sign of someone bound more by rhetoric than facts.
Similar to anarchism with a large overlap but I would say it includes other related ideologies as well. To be an anarchist I think you need to be very anti-capitalist and very anti-state. I think left libertarianism needs to be at minimum very skeptical of all authority structures but not necessarily opposed to them in all circumstances.
For myself, I’d like to get to anarchy long term but I see more of a gradual transition happening. So I am OK with retaining some state and capitalist structures as intermediate steps with the long-term goal of eliminating them once we develop superior social systems.
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Yeah I can see how many people might call me an anarchist but I don’t use that term because there are a small number of annoying gatekeepers and I just don’t care to argue with them. Also, I have significant disagreements with most anarchists—although maybe that’s normal for anarchists 😅
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So I am OK with retaining some state and capitalist structures as intermediate steps with the long-term goal of eliminating them once we develop superior social systems.
That’s like saying you’re ok with leaving a malignant tumour whose entire purpose is to infect the rest of your body in your brain because it’s easier than having surgery to remove it.
A system that by definition seeks growth at all costs is not a viable partner for change, never mind progress. Never will be.
I’m not viewing them as partners or saying they should be left unchanged. The fight against these structures doesn’t need to be all or nothing.
The cancer metaphor is apt. When a tumor is embedded in vital organs, you don’t simply operate and hope for the best. You pursue other strategies to try to shrink the tumor instead.
Like it or not, billions of people today depend on the state and capitalism to meet their basic needs for survival. While I would like to start taking radical steps to disassemble that dependency, not all elements of the state and capitalism are equally necessary and not all are equally harmful. While there as some elements that are so harmful they need to be stopped as soon as possible (the war machine, coal power, etc.) there are others that are more benign and can be retained while we build alternatives.
In my mind, markets are a great example of such a feature. While today’s markets emphasize growth to meet the needs of the wealthy, it seems quite possible to engineer markets that behave differently. Markets are not inherently evil—they’re merely decentralized optimization algorithms that operate on the knowledge of the masses. But of course if you optimize to satisfy the whims of a tiny minority of people, of course you’ll have a terrible outcome. But can we design markets that optimize for human and ecological well-being? Maybe not perfectly but certainly to a much, much greater extent than today. And as right-libertarians correctly point out, markets, by their decentralized nature, avoid the concentration of power that is necessary in a centrally planned economy.
Long term, I hope that mutual aid will be able to replace most or all market activities. And I certainly support efforts to develop those networks out starting today. But there’s never been a mutual aid network anywhere near the scale we need and there are a lot of potential pitfalls to navigate there. I think it’s smart to pursue multiple strategies and see which works best in a given situation.
Ha, a rare example of an accurate meme about libertarianism.
Though, to be fair, libertarianism doesn’t necessarily advocate for a market devoid of regulation (regulation being paradoxically required to ensure consumer freedom), but, generally, libertarianism seeks to maximize market freedom within the confines of the desired level and flavor of consumer freedom.
And yet every libertarian in practice just hates paying taxes and whines when potholes don’t get filled in despite them never reporting them. They’re sad and angry at the world and feel hyper-insecure about asking for, or even accepting, help.
in despite them never reporting them.
To be fair this is problem everywhere.
Reminds me about RosYama project.
Buuuuut I think piblic transport should be funded first.
And yet every libertarian in practice just hates paying taxes and whines when potholes don’t get filled in despite them never reporting them. They’re sad and angry at the world and feel hyper-insecure about asking for, or even accepting, help.
The absolutist language that you used in your comment reduces it to one large faulty generalization. It is impossible to know the beliefs of every single libertarian. Less absolutist language would still be rather dubious without any supportive studies.
Libertarians can’t even agree among themselves if you should be allowed to sell meth to five year olds. That is to say, yes, they have a lot of diversity of opinions, but it’s not in ways where they come out looking good.
All this needs is the political compass overlaid & this is perfect TBH
I hate to say I misread the site name the first time.
Honestly kind of works like a political compass lol
