AfterOnionsFeb 28

Libertarians are not a monolith.

https://lemmy.world/post/43659543

Libertarians are not a monolith. - Lemmy.World

Libertarian is a political label. Rothbard took the label “libertarian” from socialist anarchists. American libertarians are antiauthoritarian (and to varying degrees anti-statist) capitalist liberals. Most of the world would call us liberal. We are skeptical of all concentrated power. All power should be decentralized democratically to the individuals of a population. You could be a center-right (on the left in the US) libertarian that believes that taxes are necessary to give a modern fiat currency value and that economic regulation is crucial for a well-functioning competitive free market, but you are extremely antiauthoritarian and against all concentration of power. You need taxes to shrink the money supply down after the Congress spends money into existence. If you remove taxes now, then the currency will inflate over time into oblivion. I believe that fees are better than taxes and that taxes on things on land value, energy, and radio spectrum are fine. I believe in social democracy that is for the most part outside of the state through taxpayer (and later fee payer) funded chartered non-profit organizations. All power (economic and political) should be decentralized as much as possible. Concentration of power (political or economic) should never be trusted and be heavily regulated against.

Show threadfreagleFeb 28

You still have to deal with the concept of ownership, which is a constructed legal fiction that relies on violent authority, even if distributed, to function.

The entire concept of private property is an exclusionary violent concept of global proportions. Take a single 100-acre ranch. A single person declaring it to be private property means that every single other human being, all 8 billion of them, are now forbidden, on the owner’s authority, from access, use, benefit, or governance of those 100 acres. More than that, if the owner holds that land for 70 years, all the children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren of all 8 billion on the planet are forbidden, on the owner’s authority, from access, use, benefit, or governance of that land.

And if you can pass private property down to your children, or establish corporate persona that can own land literally forever, the number of people affected by this grows exponentially.

It doesn’t take a lot of math to realize that this is a recipe for a very small group of people to control all of the land in the planet and have authority over everyone else, and that such a minority will always have the ability to bond together, voluntarily, to manage their private property and everyone else will need to engage in conteacts, voluntarily, to provide the owners with benefits in exchange for permission to live on or use that land.

Show threadAfterOnionsFeb 28
Do you own your own shirt?
Show threadfreagleFeb 28
I do own my shirt. I own my shirt in an entirely different way than I own land. This is understand by libertarians and non-libertarians alike. Don’t commit the mistake of conflating ownership of a shirt, or a toothbrush, with ownership of land. The different between these two things has been established in law, in philosophy, in politics, and indeed in your own understanding, for a very very long time.
Show threadAfterOnionsFeb 28
I don’t believe in ownership of land.
Show threadfreagle

OK, be more clear. I believe in ownership of land, that is to say, I believe that ownership of land exists today in the social construction of private property. Do you mean to say that you hold the position that ownership of land doesn’t exist at all or that it shouldn’t exist?

If it shouldn’t exist, then explain what you mean by libertarian, which, in America is deeply tied to private property.

Feb 28 at 2:09amWeb
Show threadAfterOnionsFeb 28
I am a geolibertarian so I am for a land value tax. Air and water pollution taxes would be good for all human beings on planet earth.
Show threadfreagleFeb 28

Straight from wikipedia:

Geolibertarians recognize the right to private ownership of land, but only if fair recompense is paid to the community for the loss of access to that land.

So do you believe in ownership of land or not?

Show threadAfterOnionsFeb 28

I believe in the ownership of land but you have to pay land value tax to the community.

“Geolibertarianism leaves the title holder with full rights of possession, so long as the community rent is paid.”

bleedingheartlibertarians.com/…/the-geolibertaria…

The Geolibertarian Ethics of Land Rent - Bleeding Heart Libertarians

I coined the term “geolibertarian” in 1981 to designate the branch of libertarian philosophy which deems the natural rent to equally belong to human beings. Public finance theory prescribes land...

Bleeding Heart Libertarians
Show threadfreagleFeb 28
OK. So let’s start again. Private property is a fundamental problem. Your turn.
Show threadAfterOnionsFeb 28
How do you enforce a lack of private property?
Show threadfreagleFeb 28
Private property is a legal and social construct. It’s not a natural state of nature. It only exists if it’s enforced by violence, which violates the NAP.
Show threadAfterOnionsFeb 28
How do you enforce a lack of private property?
Show threadfreagleFeb 28

How do you enforce a lack of magical fairies?

Again, private property is a socially constructed concept that has only ever existed because it was enforced by a centralized government. If you are a libertarian who seeks to eliminate centralized authority, especially violent centralized authority, the way you "enforce a lack’ of private property is by not having private property laws, and by not believing in exceptions to the NAP on the basis of private property concepts.

Show threadAfterOnionsFeb 28
I guess you are not going to answer that. That’s okay. What animal does not defend what it feels is its territory or a source of food?