[Kman]

If anything, the Chilean experience shows that people will not vote for a libertarian regime.

People will if they are educated and intelligent like the americans who lived in the 19th century where for long periods the US had a very libertarianesque system with no income tax and almost no regulations.

[Pants-of-dog]

People will if they are educated and intelligent like the Americans who lived in the 19th century where for long periods the US had a very libertarianesque system with no income tax and almost no regulations.

I am a little confused here.

Are you saying that Chileans are uneducated? Or are you saying that they are unintelligent? Or both?

[Kman]

I am a little confused here.

Are you saying that Chileans are uneducated? Or are you saying that they are unintelligent? Or both?

Since they were dumb enough to elect a socialist I would say a bit of both.

[Pants-of-dog]

Since they were dumb enough to elect a socialist I would say a bit of both.

Feel free to provide evidence that those who voted for Allende are or were uneducated or unintelligent.

Voting for someone you do not like is not, however, evidence.

EDIT: By the way, I wish I could say that I enjoyed the subtle racism, but that would be incorrect. I don't really enjoy it.

EDIT II: You can, if you wish, provide evidence that people who vote for leftist parties in general are less educated and less intelligent than others. You need not limit your evidence to Chile. For example, the province of Quebec recently voted overwhelmingly for a party about as leftist as Allende's government. If you were to provide evidence that the Quebecois are somehow less educated and intelligent than their Canadian counterparts, I would accept it.

[ingliz]

if you wish, provide evidence that people who vote for leftist parties in general are less educated and less intelligent than others.

A peer reviewed study in the Social Psychology Quarterly suggests intelligent people are more likely to be left-wing atheists.

[Rich]

The US has been a terrible failure. sure compare it to Somali and it has done great, but only an idiot would choose that as a serious comparison. The obvious choice is Canada. Canada was so worthless, that the British wanted to give the to the French in the Seven years war and keep Guadeloupe. In the end they felt they had to return Guadeloupe and make do with Canada. Who can deny that the area of North America which didn't undertake the American experiment has done significantly better in terms of development than the US?

However there were some good ideas in the article, but they really apply to all political evangelists not just Libertarians.

[Lightman]

Who can deny that the area of North America which didn't undertake the American experiment has done significantly better in terms of development than the US?

Um, anyone who looks at any statistics whatsoever?

I'm the first to say that the United States could do much, much better. But to call the US an abject failure ignores the fact that we continue to be the wealthiest country in the world, we continue to have the best higher education in the world, we continue to be the greatest power in the world, etc. We are certainly falling behind, but we are hardly at a point where this country could be called a failure.

[The Immortal Goon]

Full democracy is not compatible with libertarianism. Anyone paying attention should be well aware of this by now.

Then libertarians should stop pretending they want any kind of equity and just admit that they want a tyrannical industrial form of feudalism. In short, fascism and libertarianism are both dictated by petite bourgeois people and apologists that are in no better place than they were when the first action Engels described happened. They can try any number of things, but it's a historic dead end even when they succeed - as they did in fascism - because it doesn't actually address any of the questions.

The entire idea of glorifying a fictional past so that men can own women as property also plays into this whole garbage. Libertarianism is a failure as an ideology. You are pitiful, isolated individuals. You are bankrupts. Your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on—into the dustbin of history.

[Daktoria]

Also, in a possibly related part of CATO thinking - Pinochet's ministers were great libertarians, and his regime worthy of emulation!

This link is bunk fyi. Nowhere is a reference to Pinochet to be found.

Anyway:

Freedom in this sense is not, at any rate logically, connected with democracy or self-government. (p.160)

Yes, libertarians almost always oppose democracy on the failure of groupthink from public choice.

[Pants-of-dog]

This link is bunk fyi. Nowhere is a reference to Pinochet to be found.

Jose Piñera was Secretary of Labor and Social Security, and Secretary of Mining, in the military government of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

Anyway:

Freedom in this sense is not, at any rate logically, connected with democracy or self-government. (p.160)

Yes, libertarians almost always oppose democracy on the failure of groupthink from public choice.

If a community democratically decides to promote positive freedoms, then there is a logical connection between democracy or self-government and freedom. The CATO beef is that communities actually do this.

[Potemkin]

If a community democratically decides to promote positive freedoms, then there is a logical connection between democracy or self-government and freedom. The CATO beef is that communities actually do this.

Libertarians define freedom only negatively (freedom from, not freedom to), so by their understanding of the word 'freedom' they are entirely correct to assert that freedom and democracy are not logically connected, and can in fact be antagonistic.

[Rei Murasame]

This link is bunk fyi. Nowhere is a reference to Pinochet to be found.

Jose Piñera was Secretary of Labor and Social Security, and Secretary of Mining, in the military government of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

I just love PoFo for moments like this. I mean, there is no chance that Daktoria will have a comeback for this. Well done, Pants-of-dog.

Caplan makes the (common libertarian) mistake of only acknowledging government (or force initiation) as a barrier to freedom. But imagine a society in which social norms (but not the law) require that women stay and work at home. Employers, while legally free to employ women, tend not to. Universities similarly tend not to accept women, etc.

In a world like that, while women are technically "free", they are, in practice, less free than they are in our world. To the extent that that represents 19th century America, I find myself disagreeing with Caplan on this point.

Aha, so if you can see that, then it only requires one step from there to embrace third world feminism or socialist feminism, or something of the like.

However, you are seemingly trying to go this way:

With women out of the work-force, for example, a clever entrepreneur could under-price his competitors by hiring (cheaper) women. As a matter of practice, unjustified inequality rarely survives the selection process of the free market.

See, but this opens up a lot of interesting questions:

• What is equality anyway?
• If a woman is starving (literally or metaphorically), why should she comply with the free market?
• What is the definition of 'justified'?

The third question is the most important, because who decided that there was a universal 'justice'? Example, women are paid less because we might have to take time off for reproductive reasons. Who decided that this is just?

It's only 'just' if we say it is and have the force to back it up, right?

For example (and this is just a random one to make the point with), in a free market society, if a woman attempts to get the same pay as a male by pointing a machinegun at her boss, the state would arrest her and put her in jail (thus enforcing what? Exactly). But if she gets the state to threaten to use force against her boss if he doesn't comply, then she doesn't end up in jail, does she?

As you can see, when you look at it like that, the rules of the 'free market' were written by males for males. There's no reason for women to comply with any of that setup other than a calculus that involves avoiding the aggression of males and/or avoiding the aggression of the state.

But in all other cases, it is clearly in the interest of women to initiate force all over the place to change the system, if the opportunity is there to harness the state and do so, since the state is the only entity than can get away with that.

[Eran]

Are you saying that Chileans are uneducated? Or are you saying that they are unintelligent? Or both?

How would you characterize the Germans that voted for Hitler? Since I am sure you have no evidence that they were either uneducated or unintelligent, we must conclude that educated and intelligent people can vote for terrible leaders, right?

Full democracy is not compatible with libertarianism. Anyone paying attention should be well aware of this by now.

Absolutely. But full democracy is not compatible with (modern-sense American) liberalism either. Constitutional protections are nothing if not restrictions on full democracy. They basically say some things even a willing majority shouldn't be allowed to do.

Libertarians merely expand the scope of actions that even a majority isn't allowed to take.

Aha, so if you can see that, then it only requires one step from there to embrace third world feminism or socialist feminism, or something of the like.

I agree that women (and other minorities) can find themselves lacking substantive opportunities due to the attitudes of the society around them. I agree that such situations are undesirable. Where you and I might part ways is that I don't think government can ever be the solution to such a situation. Government is invariably controlled by the powerful groups in society. Democratic governments always pander to societal norms. Thus in the context of a discriminating society, government would only make things worse for women - by institutionalizing discrimination. Market forces in a free society, by contrast, tend to reduce discrimination (see below).

See, but this opens up a lot of interesting questions:
What is equality anyway?
If a woman is starving (literally or metaphorically), why should she comply with the free market?
What is the definition of 'justified'?

I'm not sure how to answer the first question. I don't think I brought up equality, did I?
If a woman is staving (literally, NOT metaphorically), all bets are off. The normal rules of justice cease to apply in emergency, "lifeboat" or starvation situations. The "metaphorically" part, however, is a wide open door to see any relative privation as akin to "starvation" and thus justifying suspension of the rules of justice.

As for "justified", what I meant was "irrational". Some times discrimination is rationally justified. For example, women tend to be better with children. It may make sense to discriminate against men in certain situations in which testing individuals is too costly. Discrimination literally means differentiating between people based on some criterion. Discrimination is at the same time immoral and economically inefficient when the criterion is irrelevant for the purpose of the differentiation. It is both potentially morally permissible and economically sensible otherwise.

Example, women are paid less because we might have to take time off for reproductive reasons. Who decided that this is just?

How much a woman (or a man) is paid is subject to voluntary agreement between them and their employer. No voluntary agreement is unjust. A pattern of under-paying a subgroup of the population for no good reason is not economically sustainable. Absent government coercion, it tends to erode. Women are currently underpaid because they exhibit different preferences to men in terms of home/work choices. One telling fact is that if one restricts one's statistics to women and men who have never been married, the pay difference disappears.

For example (and this is just a random one to make the point with), in a free market society, if a woman attempts to get the same pay as a male by pointing a machinegun at her boss, the state would arrest her and put her in jail (thus enforcing what? Exactly). But if she gets the state to threaten to use force against her boss if he doesn't comply, then she doesn't end up in jail, does she?

In the former case, she would properly be punished for threatening the initiation of violence (in other words - aggression) against another person.
In the second case, she gets the government to do the same. That would obviously not be a free market society, and the fact that neither she nor anybody else ends up in jail just shows that such a society is not just.

As you can see, when you look at it like that, the rules of the 'free market' were written by males for males.

Not at all. I am not sure who you think wrote free market rules. The rules of just property acquisition were written by males (and some females), for all humans, not just for males. There is nothing pro-male about them.

The principle is to give people freedom to freely express their values (provided they don't initiate force against others). The principle is that people should be free to do that even if their values do not coincide with those of the majority, or the powerful elements in society.

Given that traditionally, men have dominated societies, is a strong indicator that it is women, more than men, that would benefit from the freedom to violate the will of the powerful elements in society. The more power we give government, the more concentrated the power of those powerful elements (men). The more we disperse power in society, the better off would women and other minorities be.

You are implicitly assuming that the state is more likely to be a force for good than for evil. History flatly contradicts that assumption.

[Rei Murasame]

I agree that women (and other minorities) can find themselves lacking substantive opportunities due to the attitudes of the society around them. I agree that such situations are undesirable. Where you and I might part ways is that I don't think government can ever be the solution to such a situation. Government is invariably controlled by the powerful groups in society.

Then people need to become powerful!

Democratic governments always pander to societal norms. Thus in the context of a discriminating society, government would only make things worse for women - by institutionalizing discrimination.

Which is why there has to be a war of position.

As for "justified", what I meant was "irrational". Some times discrimination is rationally justified.

I agree, but that doesn't really answer the question. Rational means 'in my interest', I would assume, right?

The rules of just property acquisition were written by males (and some females), for all humans, not just for males.

Can you demonstrate this?

Given that traditionally, men have dominated societies, is a strong indicator that it is women, more than men, that would benefit from the freedom to violate the will of the powerful elements in society. The more power we give government, the more concentrated the power of those powerful elements (men).

This is where you go wrong again, because it's not about concentration. Quite the reverse actually, because by concentrating the power into a really obvious-looking place, then everyone knows exactly where an oppression is emanating from because you can just trace the orders back to what entity called for it.

However, the more liberal things become, the more dispersed and reformulated the patriarchy becomes. It basically moves, but remains in place. I don't want to give them the opportunity to engage in plausible deniability games, so it is actually better if they keep the state in plain view, and even better if the pose around all over it so we can see who they are.

No voluntary agreement is unjust.

Kind of an interesting statement in your admittedly male-dominated society. You see where I'm going with this? I can 'voluntarily' agree to all sorts of ridiculous things thanks to being placed in a social role that was carved out by patriarchy and the patriarchal capitalist state.

Abolishing the state would not magically undo what they have done to society already.

The state is not just Westminster, by the way, the state is all sorts of institutions, including private organisations, civic groups, churches, you name it, it can be an ideological state apparatus. The one at Westminster can directly use force against you, its satellites are there to prepare you so that you are less likely to trigger that aggression and more likely to comply with its ideology.

It's because feminists can see this, that we know that if someone magically abolished the state, the situation would not change, there would simply be a temporary instability while they all figure out how to set that big battle-tank back up again either in the same way as it was before, or in a more subtle way.

This is why feminism seeks to get into everything rather than just focussing on the state alone. Because the whole system is interlocking.

So in a 'war of position' (the term I mentioned earlier in this post), our goal would be to get influence over everything, so that the orders sent to the battle-tank known as the state's main gun, no longer read as, "lob tank-shells at women".

That's really the simplest way I can explain it.

The more we disperse power in society, the better off would women and other minorities be.

This is a complete aside, but women are not a minority at 50%. I don't know where this idea came from.

You are implicitly assuming that the state is more likely to be a force for good than for evil.

I am not assuming this at all, since I don't know the definition of 'good' and 'evil' per se. I know that the state is basically a giant gun, and it can be used for anything.

[Eran]

I share your desire to empower people who are less powerful (such as women). I will support it provided you do not advocate the use of aggression (the initiation of force against just property) to resolve it, either directly or through government.

Rational means 'in my interest', I would assume, right?

In that context, yes.

Can you demonstrate this?

For one thing, those rules would prohibit most abuse suffered by women today and in the past. Practices such as forced marriage, disproportionate (and discriminatory) penalties for female infidelity, laws prohibiting women from owning property or being legal persons, etc, all violate the Non-Aggression Principle.

Can you demonstrate how those rules in any way favour males?

However, the more liberal things become, the more dispersed and reformulated the patriarchy becomes. It basically moves, but remains in place. I don't want to give them the opportunity to engage in plausible deniability games, so it is actually better if they keep the state in plain view, and even better if the pose around all over it so we can see who they are.

I understand your sentiment. I feel similarly when comparing the current state with the roving Viking tribes. Both are criminal, but the former is much sneakier.

Free markets and free societies have a great advantage over democracy (or any other form of government). Yes, people are free to discriminate, provided they personally pay the cost of discrimination. That one feature have made freely-contracting people stand out for lesser (or no) discrimination amidst otherwise discriminating societies.

Abolishing the state would not magically undo what they have done to society already.

Depends on how we abolish it, doesn't it? But, as I stated above, while everybody's interests would be served by abolishing the state (except, of course, the political class and their cronies), the interests of the weak elements in society would particularly benefit.

The state is not just Westminster, by the way, the state is all sorts of institutions, including private organisations, civic groups, churches, you name it, it can be an ideological state apparatus. The one at Westminster can directly use force against you, its satellites are there to prepare you so that you are less likely to trigger that aggression and more likely to comply with its ideology.

In my usage, the state is Westminster and its many tentacles, including local government and various quangos, state-monopolies and mostly-state-funded institutions (e.g. NHS, school system). It is NOT private organisations, civic groups, and churches. Those are parts of society, and I can see you having legitimate issues with them. But since they are not authorised to use force, you cannot legitimately use force against them.

This is why feminism seeks to get into everything rather than just focussing on the state alone. Because the whole system is interlocking.

I can see that. To the extent that there is still discrimination against women (I cannot much of it in today's Britain, but then I am a man...), your work as a feminist is not done, and I wish you success.

Once divorced from the use of force, anti-woman discrimination, together with all other forms of bigotry, as well as other forms of immoral behaviour that don't rise to the initiation of force against humans, can all be fought using peaceful means. Demonstrate. Boycott. Educate. But don't try to use force, directly or indirectly.

This is a complete aside, but women are not a minority at 50%. I don't know where this idea came from.

Chinese or much more numerous on Earth than are British people, yet they are considered a minority here. Women are more numerous in the population as a whole, but surely you'd agree are under-represented "where it counts", in government and the top layers of civic society. In that sense they are still a minority. The other sense, of course, is that women's demands are so similar to the demand of racial, religious and ethnic minorities that it is convenient to use the term in a broad sense. To show that the term shouldn't be taken literally, surely you would consider it odd if people referred to white males as a "minority group" (though they are numerically a minority of the population).

I know that the state is basically a giant gun, and it can be used for anything.

Yes. And as a member of a weaker group, I strongly suggest giant guns are not a good idea for you and the others you care for.

[The Immortal Goon]

I share your desire to empower people who are less powerful (such as women). I will support it provided you do not advocate the use of aggression (the initiation of force against just property) to resolve it

I think that this is an important thing to touch upon. The concept of "just property," is dependent upon the system being used. It's artificial, flexible, and has changed time and place throughout history. The notion that women (and other people) are less powerful in society often stems from an institutional disadvantage because of the concept of property.

This is largely why most forms of feminism is at odds with Marxism; though Marxism is friendly to the feminists.

The women’s world is divided, just as is the world of men, into two camps; the interests and aspirations of one group of women bring it close to the bourgeois class, while the other group has close connections with the proletariat, and its claims for liberation encompass a full solution to the woman question. Thus although both camps follow the general slogan of the “liberation of women”, their aims and interests are different. Each of the groups unconsciously takes its starting point from the interests of its own class, which gives a specific class colouring to the targets and tasks it sets itself. ...

However apparently radical the demands of the feminists, one must not lose sight of the fact that the feminists cannot, on account of their class position, fight for that fundamental transformation of the contemporary economic and social structure of society without which the liberation of women cannot be complete.

If in certain circumstances the short-term tasks of women of all classes coincide, the final aims of the two camps, which in the long term determine the direction of the movement and the tactics to be used, differ sharply. While for the feminists the achievement of equal rights with men in the framework of the contemporary capitalist world represents a sufficiently concrete end in itself, equal rights at the present time are, for the proletarian women, only a means of advancing the struggle against the economic slavery of the working class. The feminists see men as the main enemy, for men have unjustly seized all rights and privileges for themselves, leaving women only chains and duties. For them a victory is won when a prerogative previously enjoyed exclusively by the male sex is conceded to the “fair sex”. Proletarian women have a different attitude. They do not see men as the enemy and the oppressor; on the contrary, they think of men as their comrades, who share with them the drudgery of the daily round and fight with them for a better future. The woman and her male comrade are enslaved by the same social conditions; the same hated chains of capitalism oppress their will and deprive them of the joys and charms of life. It is true that several specific aspects of the contemporary system lie with double weight upon women, as it is also true that the conditions of hired labour sometimes turn working women into competitors and rivals to men. But in these unfavourable situations, the working class knows who is guilty. ...

The woman worker, no less than her brother in misfortune, hates that insatiable monster with its gilded maw which, concerned only to drain all the sap from its victims and to grow at the expense of millions of human lives, throws itself with equal greed at man, woman and child. Thousands of threads bring the working man close. The aspirations of the bourgeois woman, on the other hand, seem strange and incomprehensible. They are not warming to the proletarian heart; they do not promise the proletarian woman that bright future towards which the eyes of all exploited humanity are turned. ...

The proletarian women’s final aim does not, of course, prevent them from desiring to improve their status even within the framework of the current bourgeois system, but the realisation of these desires is constantly hindered by obstacles that derive from the very nature of capitalism.

...

But we are not talking of that kind of ‘freedom’ object the advocates of free marriage. On the contrary, we demand the acceptance of a ‘single morality’ equally binding for both sexes. We oppose the sexual licence that is current, and view as moral only the free union that is based on true love.” But, my dear friends, do you not think that your ideal of “free marriage”, when practised in the conditions of present society, might produce results that differ little from the distorted practice of sexual freedom? Only when women are relieved of all those material burdens which at the present time create a dual dependence, on capital and on the husband, can the principle of “free love” be implemented without bringing new grief for women in its wake. As women go out to, work and achieve economic independence, certain possibilities for “free love” appear, particularly for the better-paid women of the intelligentsia. But the dependence of women on capital remains, and this dependence increases as more and more proletarian women sell their labour power.

And it is the same with race and everything else. The system itself created and enforced inequalities. Not on purpose, rarely as part of any kind of conspiracy, but because that's how the capitalist system works and how property has been defined. It takes a special kind of foolishness to say, "Well, I want everything to be different too - we'll change it by not changing anything."

[Eran]

I think that this is an important thing to touch upon. The concept of "just property," is dependent upon the system being used. It's artificial, flexible, and has changed time and place throughout history. The notion that women (and other people) are less powerful in society often stems from an institutional disadvantage because of the concept of property.

As a matter of historic observation, you are obviously correct - different people at different places and times differed in their view of what constitutes "just property".

When reviewing my writing, "just property" should be understood in the Rothbardian sense - the only sense in which property can never be (justly) acquired using force. To be clear, property can be protected using force.

I challenge anybody to suggest an alternative system for the definition of property rights in which force is not an integral part of property acquisition.

[Wolfman]

I challenge anybody to suggest an alternative system for the definition of property rights in which force is not an integral part of property acquisition.

The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.

In other words: Private property is pretty much the foundation of all crimes.

[Eran]

How is that an answer to my question?

I asked for an alternative definition of property rights (I didn't say "private"), in which force is not an integral part of property acquisition.

[Wolfman]

If property causes crimes, why does it matter how property is defined?