Libertarianism: what are some good books?

[HombrePequeno]

Originally posted by: fitzov

That's the philosophy of liberty. That's classical liberalism.

If you want to talk about CL that's fine, but don't confuse it with modern libertarianism. The only reason why libertarians say that they are just relabeling an older political philosophy is for the very superficial reason that CL has a good reputation, whereas anyone who even looks into libertarianism realizes that it is a philosophy for wealthy people who don't want to pay any taxes.

For someone who points and yells "Personal Attack!" all the time, you sure do make a lot of them.

I see you quoted the Wiki article in your previous complaining about people saying CL=libertarianism.

Here's another quote:

Classical liberalism (also called laissez-faire liberalism[1]) is a term used by various groups to describe the following:

* the philosophy developed by early liberals from the Age of Enlightenment until John Stuart Mill [2]
* the revived economic liberalism of the 20th century, seen in work by Friedrich Hayek[3] and Milton Friedman.[4]
* Libertarianism

Two of those point towards libertarianism. One specifically points it out and the middle one points towards Milton Friedman reviving it. I hate to burst your bubble but Milton Friedman considers himself a libertarian.

 

[fitzov]

Two of those point towards libertarianism. One specifically points it out and the middle one points towards Milton Friedman reviving it. I hate to burst your bubble but Milton Friedman considers himself a libertarian.

CL begins with Locke's The Two Treatises of Government (1689). It is a response to the idea that a dictator may have a divine right to rule. It argues for the right of individuals to create and dissolve the state for the purpose of protecting liberties.

Milton Friedman is a 20th century economist who advocated laissez-faire capitalism, that is, the basic idea of the free market, untaxed, and unfettered by any kind of government regulation whatsoever. If the article on CL claims that Friedman is a member of CL, and also a member of libertarianism, that is entirely possible, but Friedmans economic ideas do not define what CL is.

 

[Vic]

So, fitzov, why don't you point to a single socialist figure's works and tell us that that is what socialism is and nothing else?

:roll:

 

[HombrePequeno]

Originally posted by: fitzov

Two of those point towards libertarianism. One specifically points it out and the middle one points towards Milton Friedman reviving it. I hate to burst your bubble but Milton Friedman considers himself a libertarian.

CL begins with Locke's The Two Treatises of Government (1689). It is a response to the idea that a dictator may have a divine right to rule. It argues for the right of individuals to create and dissolve the state for the purpose of protecting liberties.

Milton Friedman is a 20th century economist who advocated laissez-faire capitalism, that is, the basic idea of the free market, untaxed, and unfettered by any kind of government regulation whatsoever. If the article on CL claims that Friedman is a member of CL, and also a member of libertarianism, that is entirely possible, but Friedmans economic ideas do not define what CL is.

That's the thing; the two aren't mutually exclusive. In fact they share many of the same ideas. There's also the fact that there is a large range of what a libertarian actually is. Not all of them believe in anarchy.

Do the equal each other? Maybe not but they do share many of the same philosophies.

 

[Dissipate]

Originally posted by: Vic

Hey man, if you want total anarchy, go move to one of the warlord states in Africa. That's what anarchy looks like.

Translation: the Dictator is afraid of black people taking over his neighborhood.

 

[Dissipate]

Originally posted by: Vic
That is exactly it. It is the philosophy of peace and mutual cooperation and exchange with your fellow humans, treating each and every one of them as sovereign equals, endowed withe same inherent rights that you have, and the steadfast refusal to abuse the rights of your fellow human beings, to initiate force against them, or to ask someone else to initiate force against them, except in cases of rightful and just application of the rule of law.

You sealed the deal. Your ideology is completely devoid of any meaning whatsoever.

What is 'cooperation?'
What is 'exchange?'
What is an 'equal?'
What are 'rights' and where do they come from?
What is force?

What is the 'rule of law?'

and if there is such a thing:

What is the 'rightful and just application of the rule of law?'

That's the philosophy of liberty. That's classical liberalism.

Then the 'philosophy of liberty' is dead out of the gate.

Any other discussion is plain bullsh!t. You want "OMG no man is an island!" that's Dissipate and his anarchy. You want sociopaths, look to rot and fitzov with their megalomaniacal aspirations of forcing their person utopist vision on the world.

Your ideology is pure bullsh!t. It's completely meaningless and loaded with nothing but feel good verbiage that has absolutely nothing to do with reality whatsoever. It's meaning resides only in your own head.

 

[imported_hscorpio]

Originally posted by: fitzov

That's the philosophy of liberty. That's classical liberalism.

If you want to talk about CL that's fine, but don't confuse it with modern libertarianism. The only reason why libertarians say that they are just relabeling an older political philosophy is for the very superficial reason that CL has a good reputation, whereas anyone who even looks into libertarianism realizes that it is a philosophy for wealthy people who don't want to pay any taxes.

I think your splitting hairs here. The only reason the term libertarian is even really used is because the term liberal came to be associated with people more likely to admire Marx and Lenin than Locke and Jefferson.

There is no other modern ideology/political view that would be more equivalent to classical liberalism than libertarianism.

 

[fitzov]

Originally posted by: hscorpio

Originally posted by: fitzov

That's the philosophy of liberty. That's classical liberalism.

If you want to talk about CL that's fine, but don't confuse it with modern libertarianism. The only reason why libertarians say that they are just relabeling an older political philosophy is for the very superficial reason that CL has a good reputation, whereas anyone who even looks into libertarianism realizes that it is a philosophy for wealthy people who don't want to pay any taxes.

I think your splitting hairs here. The only reason the term libertarian is even really used is because the term liberal came to be associated with people more likely to admire Marx and Lenin than Locke and Jefferson.

There is no other modern ideology/political view that would be more equivalent to classical liberalism than libertarianism.

This professor disagrees with you. The first article cited discusses why libertarianism should not be thought of in the scheme of liberalism.

http://www.phil.upenn.edu/faculty/freeman/

 

[imported_hscorpio]

Originally posted by: fitzov

Originally posted by: hscorpio

Originally posted by: fitzov

That's the philosophy of liberty. That's classical liberalism.

If you want to talk about CL that's fine, but don't confuse it with modern libertarianism. The only reason why libertarians say that they are just relabeling an older political philosophy is for the very superficial reason that CL has a good reputation, whereas anyone who even looks into libertarianism realizes that it is a philosophy for wealthy people who don't want to pay any taxes.

I think your splitting hairs here. The only reason the term libertarian is even really used is because the term liberal came to be associated with people more likely to admire Marx and Lenin than Locke and Jefferson.

There is no other modern ideology/political view that would be more equivalent to classical liberalism than libertarianism.

This professor disagrees with you. The first article cited discusses why libertarianism should not be thought of in the scheme of liberalism.

http://www.phil.upenn.edu/faculty/freeman/

I wasn't able to find his article with a fast google search. Got a link to it or care to summarize his position for me?

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: Dissipate

Originally posted by: Vic

Hey man, if you want total anarchy, go move to one of the warlord states in Africa. That's what anarchy looks like.

Translation: the Dictator is afraid of black people taking over his neighborhood.

Okay, read the history of Sicilian "government" (or lack thereof, as the Sicilians were conquered people who were denied to form their own governments for 2000 years). What happened? Warlords aka "Dons" ruled with an absolute hand over the people. That's the reality of anarchy.

Or oh sh!t does this mean I'm afraid of Italians? :roll:

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: Dissipate

Originally posted by: Vic
That is exactly it. It is the philosophy of peace and mutual cooperation and exchange with your fellow humans, treating each and every one of them as sovereign equals, endowed withe same inherent rights that you have, and the steadfast refusal to abuse the rights of your fellow human beings, to initiate force against them, or to ask someone else to initiate force against them, except in cases of rightful and just application of the rule of law.

You sealed the deal. Your ideology is completely devoid of any meaning whatsoever.

What is 'cooperation?'
What is 'exchange?'
What is an 'equal?'
What are 'rights' and where do they come from?
What is force?

What is the 'rule of law?'

and if there is such a thing:

What is the 'rightful and just application of the rule of law?'

That's the philosophy of liberty. That's classical liberalism.

Then the 'philosophy of liberty' is dead out of the gate.

Any other discussion is plain bullsh!t. You want "OMG no man is an island!" that's Dissipate and his anarchy. You want sociopaths, look to rot and fitzov with their megalomaniacal aspirations of forcing their person utopist vision on the world.

Your ideology is pure bullsh!t. It's completely meaningless and loaded with nothing but feel good verbiage that has absolutely nothing to do with reality whatsoever. It's meaning resides only in your own head.

After this, I don't think you're one to be calling me a dictator. Tell ya what... you go back to dreaming of your perfect little utopist anarchy that you wish you could force upon the rest of the world.
The irony here is that what rot like to accuse me of being, is actually you. I always suspected. I think that's why he likes you so much -- you prove him right where he wants to be proven right.

However, to humor you and answer your questions (which IMO were not rhetorical), whenever people get together they like to play games. One game that people play that they don't think is a game is called "society." Yeah yeah, it's all BS, but whenever people play a game, they have to have rules, or else somebody's gonna get hurt. That's just the way it is. Think of the difference between a nice orderly game of baseball or an ugly no-rules game of kill-the-guy-with-the-ball. The difference between the 2 are the rules. Those rules are the "rule of law." It's something we come up with beforehand to humor ourselves with, but at the same time is a very serious way to try to ensure fairness and proper conduct. Why? Because societal advance requires human investment over decades, and no one would have the confidence to invest in their society if it did not provide them with at least some feeling of confidence and security, of knowing that their investments will not be in vain. Hence, cooperation, exchange, equal, rights, and the rule of law. Force is when one person treats another unfairly in violation of those, like changing the rules in the middle of a game or say a foul in a basketball game. You can argue the foul doesn't exist all "in reality," but it most certainly does in the game. And like I said, society is just a game to begin with.

So yeah, it's all just "feel good verbiage." Tell ya what, why don't you go move out into a little cabin in the middle of nowhere and live all on your own, ok? Either that or as Charles Taylor is the only way you're going to be happy, I think.

 

[Moonbeam]

Vic, I think your Libertarianism might really be a moral philosophy, a notion of how to treat others as you would like to be treated by them. It includes things like an understanding of the potential perversion of human nature, an understanding of good and evil. I am saying that beneath thought and understanding is a genetic code from which all our morality flows, one based on our capacity for empathy and the potential we have, deeply hidden, to transcend duality. For he who has retrieved his true self there is only the action of love in the now. Virtue here is not principle, it is flow. There is no self in which conflict can arise.

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
Vic, I think your Libertarianism might really be a moral philosophy, a notion of how to treat others as you would like to be treated by them. It includes things like an understanding of the potential perversion of human nature, an understanding of good and evil. I am saying that beneath thought and understanding is a genetic code from which all our morality flows, one based on our capacity for empathy and the potential we have, deeply hidden, to transcend duality. For he who has retrieved his true self there is only the action of love in the now. Virtue here is not principle, it is flow. There is no self in which conflict can arise.

If it is your desire to change the world in a fashion other than by changing yourself, then there is still a self in which conflict does exist.

Everything derives from morals. If I hurt you, I hurt myself. If you hurt me, you hurt yourself. I cannot defend my own rights without defending yours as well, no matter how much I might disapprove of what you do with your rights. I cannot unjustly strip you of your rights without doing the same to my own. And so forth.

Love is wonderful, Moonie, but most people go their whole lives without ever feeling it, and (sadly) you can't make them feel it if they don't want to. Leave them alone. You only make it worse.

 

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
Vic, I think your Libertarianism might really be a moral philosophy, a notion of how to treat others as you would like to be treated by them. It includes things like an understanding of the potential perversion of human nature, an understanding of good and evil. I am saying that beneath thought and understanding is a genetic code from which all our morality flows, one based on our capacity for empathy and the potential we have, deeply hidden, to transcend duality. For he who has retrieved his true self there is only the action of love in the now. Virtue here is not principle, it is flow. There is no self in which conflict can arise.

If it is your desire to change the world in a fashion other than by changing yourself, then there is still a self in which conflict does exist.

Everything derives from morals. If I hurt you, I hurt myself. If you hurt me, you hurt yourself. I cannot defend my own rights without defending yours as well, no matter how much I might disapprove of what you do with your rights. I cannot unjustly strip you of your rights without doing the same to my own. And so forth.

Love is wonderful, Moonie, but most people go their whole lives without ever feeling it, and (sadly) you can't make them feel it if they don't want to. Leave them alone. You only make it worse.

The only way to change the world is to change yourself. And so forth.

You can't make anybody love. But it always has to get worse before it can get better because the journey to love travels through hell. But getting worse isn't getting worse, it is only seeing more clearly how bad it really is. Everybody is in hell. They just don't know it. And knowing it is the only way out.

 

[Dissipate]

Originally posted by: Vic

After this, I don't think you're one to be calling me a dictator. Tell ya what... you go back to dreaming of your perfect little utopist anarchy that you wish you could force upon the rest of the world.

Hmm, is that sort of like your minarchist utopia that has never existed for anything more than a short period of time in the entire history of the world? There isn't a single place on this planet that currently lives under a minarchy. Looks like we have to junk your theory as well.

The irony here is that what rot like to accuse me of being, is actually you. I always suspected. I think that's why he likes you so much -- you prove him right where he wants to be proven right.

However, to humor you and answer your questions (which IMO were not rhetorical), whenever people get together they like to play games. One game that people play that they don't think is a game is called "society." Yeah yeah, it's all BS, but whenever people play a game, they have to have rules, or else somebody's gonna get hurt. That's just the way it is. Think of the difference between a nice orderly game of baseball or an ugly no-rules game of kill-the-guy-with-the-ball. The difference between the 2 are the rules. Those rules are the "rule of law." It's something we come up with beforehand to humor ourselves with, but at the same time is a very serious way to try to ensure fairness and proper conduct. Why? Because societal advance requires human investment over decades, and no one would have the confidence to invest in their society if it did not provide them with at least some feeling of confidence and security, of knowing that their investments will not be in vain. Hence, cooperation, exchange, equal, rights, and the rule of law. Force is when one person treats another unfairly in violation of those, like changing the rules in the middle of a game or say a foul in a basketball game. You can argue the foul doesn't exist all "in reality," but it most certainly does in the game. And like I said, society is just a game to begin with.

So yeah, it's all just "feel good verbiage." Tell ya what, why don't you go move out into a little cabin in the middle of nowhere and live all on your own, ok? Either that or as Charles Taylor is the only way you're going to be happy, I think.

Society is not a 'game.' It is a mental construct that is based on the idea that individuals interact with each other. Your 'rule of law' inevitably has to be interpreted by someone who has prejudices, preconceived ideas and agendas. This is just like in a basketball game when a referee makes a call that could have just have been called the other way. In other words, it is completely arbitrary and made up. Your definition of a word can mean the exact opposite to me. Hence, there are no rules here, the government is really just a form of anarchy. The agents of the state will do anything they think they can get away with as long as no one actually stops them. In the end it all just comes down to whatever the people are willing to put up with until they start grabbing their guns and going to the streets. That's the ultimate limit to government power, not the 'rule of law' or 200 year old documents.

A secondary 'limit' to government power is economic output. The agents of the state don't want to kill the golden geese that are laying the golden eggs. If people are upset they might stop working in order to fight for their cause. This causes economic output to go down which in turn causes government revenues to decrease.

My point? You are working on a government owned and operated plantation. Your wages fatten the coffers of politicians, lawyers, bureaucrats and multitudes of other government parasites. You can either reject their system or continue to believe in fantasies about reforming it. So when you talk about the 'philosophy of liberty,' to me that is just saying that you want the slavemasters to stop being so cruel instead of just going away entirely. To me this is a rather ridiculous position. You don't ask a slavemaster to go a little bit easier, you get rid of them entirely.

 

[Moonbeam]

D: Society is not a 'game.' It is a mental construct that is based on the idea that individuals interact with each other.

M: What you think society is is a mental construct. Society, however, is a real reality on the ground. We are a part of society because we are physically in contact with other people.

D: Your 'rule of law' inevitably has to be interpreted by someone who has prejudices, preconceived ideas and agendas.

M: Right, by what we call the independent Judiciary that we do what we can to shield and protect from bias, vote on and independently check and remove from office of found to be biased.

D: This is just like in a basketball game when a referee makes a call that could have just have been called the other way.

M: Right and too many other way calls and the ref will lose his job .

D: In other words, it is completely arbitrary and made up. That is chaos.

M: Nonsense, a basketball ref can't call a jump shot intentional grounding. There are rules and any arbitrariness has to be about them. That's not chaos but a disagreement over a focused point

D: Your definition of a word can mean the exact opposite to me. Hence, there are no rules here, the government is really just a form of anarchy.

M: Rubbish. We define words very carefully. You may willfully create any meaning you want about anything you want, but nobody will understand you. It is because we do know what we mean that we can communicate. You certainly expect me to understand what you mean when you say we can understand words differently. That means we all understand the exact same thing, right?

D: The agents of the state will do anything they think they can get away with as long as no one actually stops them.

M: You see yourself in others, doubtlessly.

D: In the end it all just comes down to whatever the people are willing to put up with until they start grabbing their guns and going to the streets. That's the ultimate limit to government power, not the 'rule of law' or 200 year old documents.

M: Rubbish. We have the vote, we can become politically active, we can run for office.

D: A secondary 'limit' to government power is economic output. The agents of the state don't want to kill the golden geese that are laying the golden eggs. If people are upset they might stop working in order to fight for their cause. This causes economic output to go down which in turn causes government revenues to decrease.

M: Those sinister agents are people we elected. They represent our will. The last election was all about what happens when they don't.

D: My point? You are working on a government owned and operated plantation.

M: Government is not a 'plantation.' It is a mental construct that is based on the idea that individuals interact with each other. Your 'view of the meaning of government' inevitably has to be interpreted by someone who has prejudices, preconceived ideas and agendas. This is just like in a basketball game when a referee makes a call that could have just have been called the other way. In other words, how we see government is completely arbitrary and made up. Your definition of government can mean the exact opposite to me. Hence, there are no rules here, the government is really just a form of anarchy. The agents who make up their own notions of what government is will do anything they think they can get away with as long as no one actually stops them. In the end it all just comes down to whatever the people are willing to put up with until they start grabbing their guns and going after each other. That's the ultimate limit to thinking the government is anything you want.

D: Your wages fatten the coffers of politicians, lawyers, bureaucrats and multitudes of other government parasites.

M: Ah no, it is the parasites who fatten themselves on infrastructure government provides and then don't want to pay their taxes.

D: You can either reject their system or continue to believe in fantasies about reforming it.

M: It is constantly and actively reformed every day. Government is a work in progress.

D: So when you talk about the 'philosophy of liberty,' to me that is just saying that you want the slavemasters to stop being so cruel instead of just going away entirely.

M: The notion of slavery is a mental construct invented by you to account for why you feel trapped.

M: There is no external freedom, freedom is always within.

D: To me this is a rather ridiculous position. You don't ask a slavemaster to go a little bit easier, you get rid of them entirely.

M: You don't enslave yourself in a mental prison without claiming your chains come from outside. Our self contempt is to great to admit we have made our own prison. It's bad enough to be in prison without having to admit you did it to yourself, eh?

 

[SirStev0]

Read anything by Goldwater. He basically was a libertarian.

if you want some information Goldwater

Very conservative man, hence the nickname Mr. Conservative, however he was against reagan and the christian right republicans. Supported woman's choice. Against large gov and large spending.

 

[piasabird]

Try looking at www.homepower.com

If you can make your own power, then you are truly free?

 

[JLGatsby]

OP, the book by Harry Browne entitled "How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World," is all you need.

It's considered one of the most important mainstream books in Libertarianism, a classic.