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Originally Posted by Willravel
I'm not a libertarian. I believe I understand a lot of the broad strokes of libertarianism, but I find myself constantly questioning libertarians about their beliefs and very rarely get answers (as many of them are libertarian in name only).
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Well, I dropped my LP membership after realizing that the party has no direction and is an incoherent mix of single-issue voters dedicated to every cause out there, religious nuts who want to dismantle government authority so that religion can take its place, and right-wingers who don't like the religious connotations of the Republican Party. Only one of their top candidates had an immigration policy that was anything other than xenophobic or outright racist, and Bob Barr ... that was a joke, right? But I'll answer anyway. I do not agree with everything I'm saying, but I'm giving the libertarian response to each question.
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What do libertarians do about the environment? It seems that libertarianism largely ignores non-human issues that could eventually have some effect on humans but do not have any short term effects. Things like climate change or pollution often are left to the market, which is more concerned with itself.
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The basic libertarian principle is to regulate only to prevent harm to others and to force those who do harm to take responsibility. Air/water/food quality and sustainable use of natural resources are necessary to prevent harming ourselves and others, so ideologically pure libertarians would believe that legislation to prevent individuals and businesses from polluting to a dangerous degree is ethically allowable. LP members are more likely to favor a free market of carbon credit trading regardless of the fact that it wouldn't work.
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Why do you believe rights are inalienable? Obviously it says so in the Constitution, but I've had several discussions on TFP before where it's been plainly established that there is a proportional relationship between how sacred a right is and how powerful proponents of said right are. If only 80,000 people in the US were pro-gun proponents, I suspect that the right to bear arms would be largely ignored despite it's presence in the BOR.
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The basis of libertarian philosophy is that the right to extend one's fist ends at the tip of your neighbor's nose. If something does not directly harm others, it should not be regulated. Therefore, guns shouldn't be regulated, using them to harm others should.
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Where does the idea of privately owned property get it's genesis and why is it an assumed mode in libertarian theory? Mises went on and on about private ownership, but I have yet to encounter a libertarian that can explain why there is a connection between using something and somehow having an exclusive right to said thing. I've argued before that in pre-agrarian societies of humans, most property was collectively owned by the group of humans, and this can be demonstrated in other primates and intelligent animals.
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A person who owns property (by allodial deed) is free to act on his property in any way that does not directly harm others. Food, water, and shelter are basic human needs and may not be taken away by a government. Deeds in the US and most other countries grant permission to use the land to a certain depth below ground level and a certain height above ground level, but can be seized through a number of legal means. To put conditions on property ownership means that the individual is not the fundamental unit of society, whereas libertarianism holds the individual as that fundamental unit.
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Why do you believe freedom to be more important than equality? Can you demonstrate that a more "free" society is more successful? More happy? What about people who repeatedly make bad decisions that effect others?
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Libertarianism holds that an individual is entitled to what he earns in a free market, not what a government decides he is entitled to or says he is allowed to earn. This is the basis of opposition to affirmative action, income tax, etc.
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Originally Posted by CandleInTheDark
Climate change is a more difficult solution. Certainly within one area (region or country), air pollution litigation is certainly a solution (especially with in the USA). Where a country has a truly free market, the people will speak with their wallets. They will buy products that produce less GHGs, or invest in less GHG intensive industries and companies. Or they will simply believe the evidence is incomplete, and should not be forced by their fellow citizens to change their lifestyle.
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The fundamental problem with this approach is that a libertarian system will function only if each individual is a libertarian who holds the same beliefs. Think
Galt's Gulch in Atlas Shrugged. If that condition isn't met, the system is as flawed as any other.